Extreme Makeover: Office Edition
Long gone are the days when cigarette butts and cluttered desks shaped a newsroom. How modern design influences storytelling—and puts digital first
As winter turned to spring in 2014, journalists at The Hamilton Spectator worked to the sound of contractors drilling through concrete floors and reconfiguring the wiring. The “banana cream” yellow on the walls soon became grey and indigo blue, the Spec’s corporate colours. The paper moved the curved desks to create pods of four and […]
No Comment
Digital publications are silencing their readers, but is that a move that benefits many or a tactic to control public image?
Russell Wangersky peeled away the cling wrap encasing the chicken, thinking of it sizzling on a barbecue. When he turned the bird over, he saw “a great honking fistful of still attached skin and fat” tucked in where the ribs should have been. Over six months, he investigated the meat-to-fat ratio of Newfoundland Farm Products […]
Why conservative columnists can’t live up to Peter Worthington
A tribute to the Toronto Sun co-founder, risk taker and fierce journalist.
By Luc Rinaldi & Abigale Subdhan In May 1976, three Mounties walked into Peter Worthington’s glass-walled Toronto Sun office with a search warrant. They wanted a leaked RCMP letter that contained information about Canadians charged with espionage and treason, which the Sun editor had recently mentioned in a column. He refused to hand it over. When they pleaded for […]
Endangered species
In an era when the Toronto Sun misspells "Correction" in a correction column, is there any hope for a revival of good copyediting?
By Gin Sexsmith It’s 1972, and the scent of cigarette smoke and stewed coffee acts as a backdrop to the clack clack ching of manual typewriters inThe Globe and Mailnewsroom. Men’s voices fill the room—asking questions, bouncing ideas off one another, laughing at crude jokes. About 15 men in ties and white shirts are seated around a large, […]
The Little Paper That Shrank
After the resignation of editor-in-chief Jim Jennings, Sun Media is set to rationalize editorial with its "Centres of Excellence," producing identical content for Sun papers in different cities
On the night of Tuesday, September 19, Toronto Sun city hall reporter Rob Granatstein heard something that upset him. Please say it isn’t so, wrote Granatstein in an email to Jim Jennings. Right now, I’m still your editor-in-chief, replied Jennings. Wait until 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. Then we’ll talk. At 10 a.m. the next morning […]
Post Mortem
Something died when The Toronto Sun turned The Financial Post into a daily tabloid
Once upon a time, there was a great grey lady of the financial press. Prim, pedigreed, if a trifle sheltered and old-maidish, she was a respectable broadsheet, born of leisurely and writerly ways, contemplative and conservative in her nature. Every week (more or less at the same time, depending on the whims of Canada Post), […]
The Power and the Story
Journalists not only cover stories, they often shape them
Journalism is about power. From the stories we choose to cover, to the way we present them, to the conflicts between writers and editors-every aspect of the industry assumes some type of control over our audience, our subjects and ourselves. More and more, journalists are seen as sources of information, “experts” on whatever subject they […]
Making It Hot for the Sun
The charge was 'racism.' The countercharge was 'censorship.' And when the opposition grew as fast as the Little Paper itself, both sides ended up shedding a lot more heat than light
Toronto is having a nice day. Despite the time of year-it’s July 24th-the air is as fresh as the sky is blue. Later on, it will get hot, but at least it won’t be humid. Which is always a blessing, especially for those who crowd into buses, streetcars and subways to begin their daily journeys […]
Peake’s Performance
(FLASH) “Right hand a bit lower on your bum Suzie.” (FLASH) “That’s it, head up, smile.” (FLASH) “Good now turn a little to your right and show us what you’ve got.” (FLASH) “Fantastic!” The studio on the second floor of the Toronto Sun building is small, dark and cool. But the air is filled with […]
Pressed for Time
The perils of preprinting: will the real Mexio please stand up?
Last Sept. 21, a page-one headline in The Toronto Star‘s Saturday edition read “Reeling Mexico battered again.” The second earthquake in two days had rocked an already devastated Mexico City and its Pacific coast. The government had estimated that the final death toll might be as high as 4,000. Everyone mourned for Mexico as images […]
