Jan Wong's advice for young journalists: be curious, ask questions, always be on

By Ann Hui

Earlier this month, Jan Wong spoke to a group of student journalists at the Canadian University Press conference in Edmonton.
 
Wong, the former Globe and Mail reporter turned Ryerson journalism prof, spoke about her battle with depression and leaving the Globe.
 
She also had some helpful advice for young journalists, listing off her personal top 10 list for getting the story.
 
A full review of the event is also available here, but pasted below is the list, in no particular order (via College Media Innovation):

1. Push yourself - get out of your comfort zone. If you don't know anything about sports go figure it out. You ought to push yourself, because no one else will. In the newsroom, there's a culture of low expectations. Why should you bother? Because we live in a democracy. We need journalists.

2. Is there anything that you won't do? Try not to break the law. Be careful if you do.

3. Push people to talk to you. Get out there and nail them. Don't just put that cheap little line in your stories.

4. Don't worry about asking a stupid question. Always ask a stupid question. Push people to talk to you on the record.

5. Always ask at least one question where there is no good answer.

6. Everything is a story. Always be on.

7. Break down barriers any way you can. Your goal as a journalist is to get people to open up and reveal themselves.

8. It's not over until it's over.

9. Fight for time and resources. The more time you have, the more you can write and report.

10. Consciously write for page one.

Ann Hui is a radio room reporter at the Star. She's also in her final year of the master of journalism program at Ryerson University. ahui@thestar.ca

Debate rages over the Serial, Oxford, and Harvard comma

By Chantal Braganza

Who gives a **** about an Oxford comma?

Nerd-hip crooner Ezra Koenig, of college band Vampire Weekend, would like to know. It’s the first line of “Oxford Comma,” the highest-charting single they released from their self-titled debut album in 2008. The words go on to say:

I've seen those english dramas too
They're cruel
So if there's any other way
To spell the word
It's fine with me, with me

Don’t worry, this isn’t a music review. I’m not even really a fan of the band.

Even if you’re not familiar with Oxford commas, you’ve likely seen them before — the last punctuation you do or don’t put before the last object in a given list.

Like say: apples, oranges, and pears.

Some publications, like the Star, generally don’t use them. A basket of fruit at our paper would read: apples, oranges and pears.

I’ve been told of a time when Oxford commas (or serial commas and Harvard commas, as they’re also known) used to incite a divisive passion in copy editors at newspapers and magazines alike. To use them, or not to use them? There are myriad arguments for and against, which meant that a house style guide could as much be a red-faced shouting match about semantics and the history of language as it was a simple guide to how a publication deals with words.

As an intern copy editor, someone who’s learning the ropes of a profession Mr. Koenig seems to find archaic enough to reference in his fashionably flippant prose, I’m kind of at a loss for how to answer his question (though I doubt he cares about anyone’s answer).

Sure, I care about Oxford commas (as in I prefer not to use them), but does that seem super relevant at a time when people are questioning whether there will be a newspaper on which to print (or not to print) them? I’d like to think that wherever words are used — in print or online — the rules that govern their use matter. Even if they’re constantly changing, or in the case of Vampire Weekend, the “ironic” butt-end of a joke in a chart-topping song.

Chantal Braganza is a Star intern copy editor and recent graduate of the Ryerson Journalism program cbraganza@thestar.ca

No more copy editing?

By Tamara Baluja

As I had already worked as radio reporter for CFRB News, I managed to get advanced standing in a couple of my courses at Centennial College. But being the superbly nerdy person that I am, I asked my college if I could take an extra course to fill my schedule.

I decided to take a course in copy editing!

Unfortunately, I was told that I could not enroll in that course, because I was in "fast-track" journalism program. As exciting as that sounds, it simply means that all students enrolled in the program have an undergraduate degree. Unlike me, most of these people had never even written an article before. Only students in the normal journalism stream could enroll in the copy editing course, I was told. 

It's definitely a safe assumption that most of my peers had never heard of the Canadian Press style guide before our news journalism prof asked us to buy it. Yet somehow, the college deemed us all fit to copy edit our work in what was probably only five hours of copy editing training - within our news writing course.

This definitely rankles.

I don't know much about copy editing, but I can definitely vouch that those copy editors at the Star are almost on the level of demi-gods. As my colleague Ann Hui wrote, "professional editors not only edit for basic factual or grammar errors, but also spot legal issues, lapses in logic, and general flow." Even experienced reporters rely on the nitpicking of copy editors, so how is it that my college does not see the value of training us in copy editing?

Slightly disturbed by all of this, I explored the online curriculum of the other three journalism schools in Toronto. Only Ryerson offered a course in its undergraduate program for grammar and copy editing. Seneca and Humber might be teaching copy editing within other courses, but didn't seem to have a course exclusively devoted to the subject.

Suffice it to say this trend speaks volumes about how colleges view the future of copy editing within the journalism industry. Why else would they not teach the subject or make even make it mandatory?

My solution: J-schools might have given up on copy editing, but I'm going to devour that CP style guide on my own, dry and boring as it might be, just in case one of my college peers becomes a copy editor too!

Tamara Baluja is radio room reporter, a journalism student and former GA at CFRB News. tbaluja@thestar.ca

Hey journalists, get out of the newsroom

By John Rieti

Last week journalist Mark Luckie walked into a Berkeley Starbucks. He ordered a cinnamon dolce latte and some instant coffee to bring back to the newsroom, then he sat down by the door, where everybody could see him, and got to work calling sources and writing stories.

A simple act. But committing an act of journalism outside of the newsroom can seem downright revolutionary these days.

“(Journalists) are always in this confined office, always talking with each other and collaborating on stories, but to be out in public and be among people … like non-journalists … was very refreshing,” says Luckie.

The café experiment was part of California Watch's "Open Newsroom" day. The plan was to allow journalists to connect with readers, and, to give journalists a nudge out the door and into the city they cover.

“I think the project was a great idea,” says Luckie. “We were all expecting to be bombarded with people … or at least have a steady flow of people coming in.”

Blame it on the Berkeley rain — uncool weather for the golden state — or maybe blame it on the coffee. Or, just maybe, people didn't approach Luckie because despite having their names (and sometimes faces) in print, most journalists spend more time in cubicles than on the street.

Yes, lots of journalists are mainstays at council meetings and in the corridors of courthouses, but most file the bulk of their stories from the newsroom. 

(I, it must be said, am one of those reporters, but mostly because I must remain within earshot of the police scanners.)

So, should more of us be taking our show on the road? I asked Luckie about the pros of writing in public.

“I think when you see the people you’re writing about you inject more feeling and more of a human element to your stories,” says Luckie, who also writes the blog 10,000 words about the craft of storytelling.

While he didn't get any story ideas (another goal of California Watch's), Luckie did field a few questions. “When you’re making calls in front of people and discussing issues … people were kinda looking over like ‘Who’s that guy?’” says Luckie with a laugh.

Perhaps, if the open newsroom is looking for future ideas, it could experiment with a public story meeting of sorts.

There were a few difficulties, though. As Luckie wrote a loud argument broke out between a guy who was taking self-portraits for his website and the Starbucks’ manager.

Luckie was also distracted by another scene.

“One woman had a coffee, but pulled a bottle of wine out of her bag and started pouring a glass," Luckie says.

But don’t those things all happen in the newsroom?

“Maybe just not all at the same time.”

---

So what do you think? Should Star journalists take our work to a cafe near you? 

John Rieti is a caffeine-addled Master of Journalism student at Ryerson University who can routinely be found getting his fix at Bulldog Cafe. Get in touch at jrieti@thestar.ca.

The toughest call a reporter has to make

By Adrian Morrow

I remember the first time I had to make the call to the family of a dead person.



I was an editor at a campus newspaper, and a student had been found dead in her dorm room the night before. I had talked to some of her friends at the residence building, got her name and a few biographical details for a web story.

The next day, I tried to track down her family.



She came from a small town in Northern Ontario, and I looked up her last name in the directory. Twelve listings. I set out my note pad, wrote down a few questions and practised what I would say five or six times. Then I started dialing.



At the first number I tried, no one was home. At the second, a man answered and said he wasn't a relative. On my third try, a teen girl picked up.



"Hello. I'm a reporter with The Eyeopener, a campus paper at Ryerson University," I said, then asked if she was related to the girl who had died.



"Yes," said the voice on the other end of the phone, almost breaking. There were butterflies in my stomach, my heart was pounding. Before I could say anything more, someone else picked up the phone at the other end, an older-sounding woman.

"Hello? Who is this?"



"I'm Adrian Morrow, I'm a reporter with the student paper at Ryerson. I'm so sorry for your loss," I said. "Do you have a couple of minutes?"



"We don't have any comment, but we appreciate the call," she said. She sounded confident, put together.



"Okay," I said. "I'm just hoping to find out something about her . . . how will you remember her?

"

She repeated that she was declining to comment. I can't remember if I asked a third time. In any case, I eventually thanked her, and she hung up. I didn't realize until then that I was holding my breath.



I've made that phone call dozens of times since then. I've talked to the families and friends of people who've been murdered, crashed their cars or choked to death in fires. Sometimes, I call 10 or 20 people without ever finding the one I'm looking for. Other times, I know just one phone call will determine if I have a story or not. 

On occasion, I fool myself into thinking that it's getting easier: there are times I pick up the phone and punch the number in before I have a chance to think about it. But most of the time, I have to psych myself up before I make the call, just like the first time. 

The best interviews, sometimes, are the hardest ones to do.

Adrian Morrow is a veteran of the Star's radio room. He also worked as a summer reporter last year. amorrow@thestar.ca

Cops and social media can be friends

By Madeleine White

Tuesday the OPP announced it was joining Twitter and would be posting links to its news release on its feed.
 
While it’s great that we can now have an instant notification of a new OPP press release to our smart phone, automating new cop reports is not really that helpful.
 
Sgt. Tim Burrows, who is one of the media officers for Toronto Police’s Traffic Services Unit, has been using Twitter for a while now and he knows that he can promote road safety a lot more effectively when his interactions on social medias are more than automated posts.
 
As a reporter, I really appreciate Sgt. Burrow’s tweets because he is good enough to announce online when he is scheduled to arrive at the scene of an accident.
 
But as a citizen, I appreciate it more because he is starting a discussion on street smarts that may otherwise not take place on something like Twitter.
 
I think that other police forces ought to use Sgt. Burrow’s pioneering efforts as a model to become more responsive and engaged with their communities. And I think all of us could learn from his 140-character wisdom with all of these recent pedestrian deaths.

Maddie White is a reporter in the "box" where she awaits breaking news impatiently. Outside of the radio room, she is a journalism Masters student at Ryerson University. mwhite@thestar.ca

The streetcar is a wonderful capsule from behind a lens

By Lauren Crothers

I love to ride my bicycle, I love to ride my bike. As a foreigner, however, I’m not used to the mercury plunging as low as it's known to here.

And the ice. The ice! Treacherous. I wouldn't go as far as branding myself a fairweather cyclist though — Ireland can be unforgivably wet and there are people who can vouch for me having cycled to work or play only to resemble a drowned rat, leaving sorry little puddles pooling into the carpet around my shoes. What a sad image.

As the bike's moving parts solidify in the garden shed this winter, my work commute has segued from expletive-ridden confrontations with motorists to the relative peace and undulating roll of the Rocket. Luckily, my route (the 510) flows down the Spadina artery, turning left on Queens Quay and practically to the Star's doorstep.

The streetcar is a wonderful capsule from behind a lens, which is where I often find myself. Quietly trying to blend in at the back, cringing when the clunk of my D80's shutter cuts through the air like a knife.

"What's so special about them seats?" a driver once asked me on one of my late night journeys home from work. I was the only passenger at the time, so had taken full advantage, hopping around the lolling tram as if I was the lone participant in a game of musical chairs.

"This," I said, showing him one of the pictures I'd taken.

Perhaps you'll agree.

Lauren Crothers is a Star copy editing intern with one eye behind a lens. lcrothers@thestar.ca

Doctor or journalist? walking a fine line in Haiti

By Chantal Braganza

Reporting from Haiti right now must be a complex and at times emotionally trying experience. The on-the-ground and Twitter updates we get from correspondents tell of the crowds, confusion, looting and devastation in which they have to keep a straight head and do their work.

A few of them though, have another issue to grapple with: how do you report on the lives of people that you also happen to be saving? Since the earthquake, a number of journalists have been helping out in a very hands-on way, causing a reporting ethics stir.

The Washington Post ran a piece last week pointing out the number of journalists with medical training who are pitching in with the relief effort by treating patients and, in some cases, even helping save lives and helping to deliver children. They give examples:

Jennifer Ashton, CBS News's medical correspondent and a doctor, assisted with the treatment of a teenage girl whose arm had been amputated. NBC's Nancy Snyderman, a surgeon, has spent days splinting broken bones, while ABC's Richard Besser, a doctor formerly affiliated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, helped a woman deliver a premature baby.

Calling it an "extreme form of participatory journalism," writer Paul Farhi suggests journalists walk a fine line when they start reporting on the lives they get involved in. He points out CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta's tireless on-camera efforts to help the sick and wounded in the quake's aftermath. In many cases, the doctor-journalist has tweeted, recorded and reported on the operations he has done in the field.

The Los Angeles Times has also noticed. After running a four-minute video report on treating an injured baby, the paper questioned in a blog post the motives behind both Gupta's video and CNN's decision to give it big play on its website. Yes, Gupta is doing good work in Haiti, the piece conceded, but why was he doing it? For readers? Website hits?

“There definitely are cases where a journalist who is qualified can and should provide medical assistance when the need is immediate and profound,” Bob Steele, a journalism values scholar told the Times. “The problem in Dr. Gupta’s case is that he has done this on a number of occasions in Iraq and now in Haiti. If it’s imperative that he intervene and help medically, then take him out of his journalistic role and do that.”

Now, I've never reported in a disaster zone and am barely able to pick my own splinters, let alone perform an emergency amputation. I couldn't imagine what it takes to do both. But the rise of the doctor-reporter? If not reporting ethics, that's got to be bending some Hippocratic rules.

But though like Mr. Steele, the idea of ulterior-motive journalism is difficult to stomach, so too are the endless stories of Haitian heartbreak and aid that's so desperately needed. It's a tough line to walk.

Chantal Braganza is a copy editing intern at the Star and a Ryerson jschool graduate. cbraganza@thestar.ca

Copy editing? There's an app for that

By Ann Hui

Copy editors everywhere were covering their ears when Craig Silverman, author of Regret the Error, blogged about three new apps that can be used for error prevention in newsrooms.

Now, before editors start looking into second careers or stealing office supplies, they should know that the apps aren’t designed to replace professional copy editors. Rather, they’re meant as an extra line of defence against errors, making it easier for readers who want to edit existing web content and submit corrections―kind of like a Wikipedia for content.

One of the widgets, designed by gooseGrade, for example, can be downloaded and added onto any existing blog or website. A “copy edit” button appears below content, which readers can click if they notice grammar, factual or other errors in the copy. The suggestions are then sent onto the site author, who can choose to accept or reject changes.

My only beef is with the name: gooseGrade's "copy edit" button implies that the widget performs all functions of a copy editor―far from true. Professional editors not only edit for basic factual or grammar errors, but also spot legal issues, lapses in logic, and general flow.

But a widget like gooseGrade’s does present interesting potential for news sites.

Here at the Star, we have a public editor through whom errors are filtered through. But at other news sites, submitting errors is far from simple. With a copy-editing widget, not only will readers have an easier way of notifying journalists of mistakes―clicking a button right below the content is, after all, easier than tracking down an individual journalist or editor's email address―but it also gives journalists a simple way of filtering and keeping track of feedback.

Giving readers a simple―and visible―way of correcting journalists' errors can also help with the credibility issue so many news organizations are facing.

Want to know more?

Tech Crunch blogged about gooseGrade earlier this year, and blogs such as MediaStyle, maintained by communications consultant Ian Capstick, are already using it.

Other copy editing apps include Bite-Size Edits, which operates on a similar collaborative style as gooseGrade, and Artificial Proofreader.

Ann Hui is a radio room reporter at the Star. She's also in her final year of the master of journalism program at Ryerson University. ahui@thestar.ca

Haiti basketball star makes a date for an interview

By Thandiwe Vela

How 'bout it, Dalembert?

I phoned Haitian-Canadian NBA player Samuel Dalembert on Sunday evening to talk about Haiti (yes, us high-profile athletes all know each other).

He said, over a very loud background, that he was having dinner.

I asked him, quite melodramatically, if he thought everyone in Haiti was having dinner.

He was not amused.

However, the stand-up guy that he is, Dalembert did not hang up. In fact, he may have stood up and left the table because the background noise dimmed.

I expressed condolences for everything that's happened in his native country and told him that all the news from Haiti is completely heartbreaking.

He concurred.

I told him that I'd like to write a positive feature on Haiti, to give the people there hope amidst so much desperation.

He agreed this was a good idea but reminded me he was still having dinner.

I told him I'd call him Monday, so I can write the feature - after he's done dinner (a salary upward of $10 million can buy a lot of dinner).

He agreed.

If all goes well, my feature on Haiti will be published this week.

Thandiwe Vela is a Star radio room reporter, a student, a track athlete and secretary of the Canadian Association of Black Journalists. Her goals are to graduate, to be president of her native Zimbabwe (if the position ever frees up), and to beat Usain Bolt in a 60-metre match race. tvela24@hotmail.com