Magazine/Mayor face-off

By Chantal Braganza

A lot of editors, in both magazines and newspapers, will tell you that faces sell copies. When you're standing in front of a news rack tiled over with options, there's just something about the human face on a cover or front page people connect with, especially (duh), when they're famous. 

As Toronto's mayoral race starts to pick up speed, there are two faces I've been thinking about. One is of George Smitherman on the cover Toronto Life, where writer Gerald Hannon profiled him for the March issue. 

 

Courtesy of Toronto Life

It's pretty arresting, as a cover. How many readers would otherwise get to see George this close up? 

The next one is just as striking, but for a different reason:

 Courtesy of the Women's Post

This is Sarah Thomson, another mayoral candidate on a magazine cover. One that she happens to publish—or at least did before announcing she would also join the race as Toronto's first female candidate this race.

Don't get me wrong: this post isn't about pitting the political merits of one candidate against the other. It's about coverage. One magazine decided to run a profile of a candidate it thought was an interesting character. The other used its pages as a political bullhorn for its own publisher.

The Women's Post bills itself as "the only nationally distributed magazine designed specifically for professional women," with a circulation of 70,000. It was started by Thomson, and built by her. But are the pages of your own magazine an appropriate space to advocate for a campaign?

There are actually guidelines against doing this type of thing as promoted by the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors. According to their playbook on keeping advertising separate from editorial—and according to CSME, the cover page is most definitely editorial—Thomson putting her face on the cover of her own magazine is wrong on multiple levels. Namely rules three, six and seven: 

"No advertisement may be promoted on the cover of the magazine or included in the editorial table of contents, unless it involves an editorially directed contest, promotion or sponsored one-off editorial extra..."

"No advertiser may purchase product placement or mention in editorial pages, photographs or illustrations."

"The names and/or titles of editorial staff and regular contributors should not appear on, or be associated with, special advertising sections. Editorial staff should not be required to prepare advertising sections for their own publications, other publications in their field or advertisers in the fields they cover."

Of course, this would assume that what Thomson had run in her magazine was, in fact, advertising. When I called her about it, she explained it to me as an editorial decision.

"I’ve never put myself on the cover because we’ve always tried to find women who are stepping up to the plate," Thomson said, pointing out that up to a year ago her staff had decided if a woman ran for mayor in this election, they would promote her in the magazine. “I ended up going, ‘You know what? I’m going to run,’ and so it’s fit in with our editorial mandate, as a woman running for mayor.”  While that may work, there’s also the problem that in order to put her face and campaign message in the cover and pages of her magazine, Thomson had to pay for the space.

Many industry editors would call paying for space advertising, or advertorial: that fuzzy practice of presenting an advertisement as an objective article or piece. Unfortunately, this situation isn’t a whole lot clearer. She says she was just following municipal election rules by doing so: “With the election financing laws, in my editorial, if I write anything on the election, I have to pay for it,” Thomson said. “So because I was a candidate for mayor and [in her editorial] I was talking about what it takes to run, why I believe I’m a good candidate, I have to pay for that editorial.” Election Services Office director Bonita Pietrangelo told me Thomson was likely referring to a City of Toronto by-law (page 3) that prohibits corporations from making a contribution to candidates for office. By paying for the space, Pietrangelo says, Thomson’s campaign could have filed it as a legitimate expense. “I’m usually a very humble person,” said Thomson. “But you have to step out when you’re writing in politics. You have to expose yourself and take that risk. And people can shoot me down for it, that’s fine, but I’m trying to show other women what it takes."

So what to make of the quandary? “Our philosophy on this is that it’s a matter of perception,” says Bob Sexton, president of CSME and associate editor of Outdoor Canada. “If people are tripping up on something or feel that it smells somewhat, then I think that there’s a problem. The idea is never to present editorial or cross those lines, or intentionally or unintentionally blur those lines.” Regardless of the rules, most readers can tell when a publication is trying to sell them content that's anything less what it's supposed to be: unbiased editorial. Treating readers as if they don't know the difference is a pretty good way to lose them.

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

The winning side of Twitter

By Lauren Crothers

I'm no technophobe.

At a newspaper I used to work for I spent a big chunk of time on the multimedia desk working on daily podcasts, putting together video reports and working on the web desk.

But it took me a while to join Twitter.

Initially, I was fastidiously against the idea of it. Many of the updates I'd seen were of the "I'm making some toast," "I'm going to the loo," "I'm doing my homework," variety. Ugh. Who cares?

I dug in my heels - happy to be a pariah in a world of tweeting journos - but eventually I caved.

How else was I ever going to be 'socially' connected to Charlie Brooker?

Until now, there's been no tangible benefit to my participation with the site. Until now. For yesterday, I won the Digital Journalist's Handbook by Mark Luckie of 10,000 Words. He is giving away copies of the book this week and the first to correctly reply to a question he asks - this one was about cameras, how perfect - wins a copy.

Anyone whose book cover is in the same colour family as those ruler-like things you could snap and wrap around your wrist in the 80s (what were they called??) is a friend of mine. Aesthetics aside, I'm really looking forward to reading this book. For all the experience I've gained to date, there's always more I could know and I hope to glean such information from this read.

And in an ever changing and increasingly competitive industry, it never hurts to stay on top of your game.

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

How to get me to write about you

By Ann Hui

Journalists get a lot of email. Much of it is junk.

Beyond the regular junk mail -- penis enlargement supplements and such -- we also get mail from PR firms -- press releases, pitches, event notices, etc.

When pitches are aimed appropriately and well-executed, they can sometimes lead to story ideas. PR and media relations people who are smart, learn to use email and social media to generate conversations and create relationships with journalists.

More often than not, however, what we get in our inbox is spam. The pitches often have little to do with our beat, or are completely wrong for the publication we work at.

Know your audience

When I was working at the Victoria Times Colonist, I would often receive pitches for arts or sports stories. The pitches were often well put-together, and relevant to the publication. Only problem? I was a news reporter, not an arts or sports writer.

Other times, I would receive spam mail from the same groups each day, every day. The messages were identically formatted (Subject: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE), and almost always irrelevant for my audience. As a result, I would ignore all messages from them -- even ones that, in other circumstances, might have resulted in at least some interest.

"PR profession really needs to get a grip"

Earlier this week, Tech Crunch founder Michael Arrington wrote about a nasty exchange he had with one PR company who he says sends him an average of 15 emails per day -- never once having resulted in a story.

After a particularly frustrating day, Arrington posted a screen shot of his inbox on Twitter, writing that the company “really needs to chill out on the unsolicited press spam, and give an unsubscribe link."

The accompanying photo was a screen shot of his inbox from that single day, showing 32 emails from the same PR company -- many of them duplicates of the same message.

His post sparked an angry response from the PR firm, resulting in a back and forth exchange and culminating in Arrington declaring on the blog “… the whole PR profession really needs to get a grip.”

Obviously, this isn’t the first time the PR industry and journalists have butt heads over spam.

A couple years ago, writers from the phone blog Phone Scoop posted a particularly unpleasant email they’d received from a PR practictioner after asking to be removed from her spam list. (At one point, the PR person writes “I have seen nasty people like you melt away faster than a snowball going up hill in the rain.”)

Elsewhere on the internet, the Bad Pitches Blog documents bad PR pitches from all over the world.

A love-hate relationship?

Surely this doesn't mean journos and PR people can't coexist happily. To some extent, we do depend on one another to do our jobs.

We just have to be a little smarter. PR people need to be smarter about how and who they send releases to, and journos have to understand that for PR people, well, sending releases is just part of their job.

Plus, you never know when a press release might turn into a great story.

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

Jon Montgomery, Olympic athletes and the race to the finish line

By Lauren Crothers

This year's Olympians aren't the only people with sweaty palms and a constant hunger to cross the finish line.

The unfaltering night shifters at the Star are figuratively in the same boat. (Literally, none of us are in quite the same shape as, say, Jon Montgomery. Swoon. Ohhh, he's lovely)..

Anyway, since the torch was lit and the bulk of Fleet Street's not-so-finest began bitching and moaning about this Olympics, here at the Star things have sped up.

Because we're producing a much larger book every day, there's more for the presses to . . . press. As such, we're now putting the paper to bed at 11 p.m. every night as opposed to the usual deadline of 11:30 p.m.

It may sound negligible to some, but there are some nights I've really felt the void left by that missing half hour, secretly pining for it in the deepest parts of my gut as sweat beads form (under my bangs, thankfully) and my neck gets uncomfortably warm.

We use a publishing system called CCI (and believe me, I'm going to save posting about it until another day) and one of its most grating functions is a little note that appears at the top of working pages as the shadow of a deadline begins to loom ever so uncomfortably on those editing them. The message is capitalized - Kanye West probably designed it - and goes something like this: YOU HAVE 10 MINUTES UNTIL PAGE DEADLINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is my attempt at paraphrasing - I've never been quite able to look directly at it, in the way one would avoid the sun, the thought of Margaret Thatcher sans les vêtements or a mirror after a particularly heavy night.

But that's the idea. It's the written version of something like this, only less embarrassing for the nerd in the mask. Imagine something scarily nemesis-like. That.

If it's driven one thing home, however, it's that I need deadlines - always have - whether I've been a news reporter, copy editor or page designer. If I have that sick feeling gnashing at my heels I reach for the carrot all the more. So this Olympic experience has been one of the steeper but most beneficial learning curves I've been around since joining this paper.

And, a week or so into it, I think I'll actually miss that 11 p.m. sign off when things are over. In the same way I'll miss the sight of Jon Montgomery grinning back at me when I steal a few seconds from cropping a picture or resizing a headline to glance at the TV.

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

1,400 social media junkies swamp Ryerson for Podcamp Toronto 2010

• Guest post
  

By Lauren O'Neil

What happens when you bring together 1,400 social media junkies and set them loose in a multi-level, wi-fi equipped, state-of-the-art communications centre -- smart phones in hand and laptops in … well, lap? One heck of a bumping Twitter hashtag, to start. I’m not kidding. Check out this.

It’s the number one trending topic in Canada right now, beating out Olympic hockey! 

What I used to fantasize about and wish for every single day (and lonely Saturday nights) in high school has finally  come true! No, Brad Pitt hasn’t whisked me away to the south of France (yet) – I’m talking about the other thing. The geeks have beaten the jocks! Techie Conference beating Olympic Hockey! We now reign supreme with our L33t knowledge and programming prowess! Nerd is the new cool! At least, it was in the twitterverse.



Welcome to PodCamp Toronto 2010, a free two-day “un-conference” that brought together the city’s web-savvy elite, tech-curious business people, bloggers, podcasters, journalists and anybody else who is even remotely interested in new media and related technologies. The annual event, in its fourth year, went down this weekend at the Rogers Communication Centre at Ryerson University. And, it was ... Huge.

Long before the official opening remarks Saturday morning, the halls of the RCC were crammed with an eclectic mix of humanoids from all walks of life. It was actually pretty funny to watch them mingle, which is what I did, from an upper-level balcony ... like the creeper that I am. 

Neon-haired amateur podcasters gregariously introduced themselves to curious HR professionals and marketing execs. Professional tie-wearing journalists mixed with the who’s who of Toronto’s blogging community (no rousing debates over the future of the news industry broke out, much to my bloodlusting chagrin); backpack toting students sucked up to digital media bigwigs (you know, so that upon graduation they too can score one of those cushy “social media strategist” gigs that nobody had heard of two years ago).



Also in attendance -- at least one hyper-tweeting j-schooler who was drawn in by the promise of free learning, free coffee and ample opportunities for people watching/business card gathering/cute-nerd-boy scouting … *cough*

I’ve actually been PodCamp curious since I first read about it a few years ago. The original was in September 2006 in Boston, and since then, these networking events have been held in cities all over the world.

Being the new-media nerd that I am, I figured it was high time I checked out a PodCamp myself – no “too busy” or “none of my friends will go with me” excuses. I plotted PodCamp Toronto 2010 into my daybook and gathered up the cajones to go it alone.

From the moment I stepped through the door and saw the scads of red name tags bearing Twitter handles, I felt comfortable. When I saw this Tweet from another attendee pop up on the #pcto2010 hashtag, I felt downright UNDERSTOOD!

“@ellerich: I love explaining #PCTO2010 & mtg ppl from Twitter to my non-social media friends. Reaction? "Did you play World of Warcraft too?” (Mad Lulz.)

I’ve never been to an “unconference” before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Unlike traditional conferences, there’s no hierarchy between attendees and speakers – anyone can lead a session and jump in on one with their ideas. Participants are encouraged to come and go from sessions as they please, create their own schedule for the day, and actively record their experience through tweets, blogs, photos and videos.

With more than 60 sessions to choose from, there really was something for everybody. I particularly enjoyed the sessions led by commandN’s Jeff MacArthur and Canadian Association of Journalists Chairman Saleem Khan – but my favourite session of the day, hands down, was journeywoman.com CEO Evelyn Hannon’s “Building an online community is not Rocket Science." Homegirl was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most innovative thinkers of the new century, and her website gets more than one million visitors a year. But that’s not why she’s impressive. She’s impressive because she’s become insanely successful online despite not having a Blackberry or iPhone. She can barely use a computer and she’s 70 years old. Plus, she’s hilarious and my new idol.

While organizers describe it as a way to bring together professionals and hobbyists to explore the cutting edge of new and social media, I see it as an excuse for us bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, tweeters, social media gangtas, online content creators and internet aficionados to simply get out from behind our souped-up Macbook Pros and out into meatspace. I wasn’t able to make it to the after party last night (alas, the demands of J-School), but from what the Twitterverse tells me, it involved a whole lot of free nachos, beer, open mic tomfoolery and people furiously pawing away at their smartphones.

Lauren O’Neil is a student in the Master of Arts - Journalism program at the University of Western Ontario. She is rarely, if ever, spotted without a pink Blackberry in her hand and is fluent in both HTML and English. Please follow her on Twitter so that she can continue to build up her mad social media cred @laurenonizzle.

Thirteen years later, there is a place for Edmond Yu

• Guest post

By Alexandra Bosanac

Fourteen people gathered Friday afternoon in Grange Park, behind The Art Gallery of Ontario, to remember Edmond Yu on the 13th anniversary of his death.

The guests, each holding a single yellow chrysanthemum, took turns sharing their memories of a man they say was ‘brilliant’ but troubled; someone who managed to enjoy life despite his illness, but ultimately fell victim to the mental health system, landlords and the police.

Yu, 35, was shot six times by a Toronto police officer on a TTC bus on Feb. 20, 1997. He was homeless, transient and living with paranoid schizophrenia. He was not taking his medication. The police officer was cleared of any wrongdoing by Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit.

In death, Yu became an important figure to the psychiatric survivor community in Toronto. Activists say the need for housing, the right kind of housing, is more urgent than ever.

Bob Rose, program director at the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre, recalled Yu's habit of wearing seven watches on his wrist.

“It’s as if he was saying ‘how much time is this going to take?’”

But things have taken a turn for the better and next year the Yu memorial will take place in a brand new safe house for psychiatric survivors named in his honour.

Construction of Edmond Yu Place is underway at Queen and Dowling streets, the same place where a large rooming house stood derelict for nearly a decade following a massive fire. That rooming house once counted Yu as a tenant.

Residents will have 24-hour security, access to counselling, peer support, employment training and food services through PARC, the organization that spearheaded the project.

“I feel like we could have done more, but we got the Edmond Yu safe house online, so that’s good. Not exactly the model we wanted, but it’s housing,” said Mel Starkman, former co-chair of the Edmond Place Safe House Committee.

The original plan was to build housing similar to the Runaway House in Berlin, Germany. The Runaway House provides lodging, meals and emotional support to people who have decided to stop taking psychiatric drugs. Fifty per cent of the staff are psychiatric survivors.

Alexandra Bosanac is a freelance writer and journalism student at Ryerson University. abosanac@ryerson.ca

The joys of a little Black History Month display

By Thandiwe Vela

There's been a little skip in my stride entering the U of T Athletic Centre for track practice lately.

Some observers may even call it a strut.
I'm happy to see you too, coach Carl, but the real source of my recent upbeat demeanor is this little setup with pictures of Canadians who look like me -- their significant contributions to physical education, sport, and health prominently displayed for all to see, even if only for just one month.
Harry Jerome (right), Chifumbe Chintu (pdf profile),  Darren Lowe  -- OK, they don't look as much like me as a black Canadian woman on the display would (Charmaine Crooks would be a great addition) but the Faculty of Physical Education and Health's public celebration of these black heroes has been a great source of pride for me.

Likewise, black students across the country can take pride this month in the great achievements of black Canadians past and present (largely absent from curriculum, sight and thus young marginalized black student minds), as their legacies are celebrated in assemblies, displays, events and other initiatives during Black History Month.

While the athletic centre's display is dedicated to black Canadian heroes with athletic prowess, their equally impressive academic and social accomplishments are highlighted as well.

It is this sometimes misunderstood dichotomy of the black scholar-athlete, that a panel discussion being held by the U of T Centre for Leadership Training and Education lends itself to on Thursday.

The free event, featuring a stacked group of respected and highly knowledgeable panelists including director of York University's Centre for Education and Community, Dr. Carl James , is sure to set off an insightful discussion, and asks: "Are black students expected to be on the court and not in the classroom?"

If the outstanding black Canadians featured in the athletic centre's Black History Month display that has brought such a twinkle to my eye are any indication, surely we can excel in both. 
  

Thandiwe Vela is a Star radio room reporter, secretary of the Canadian Association of Black Journalists and a Varsity Blues track and field athlete currently training to beat Usain Bolt in a 60-metre race. tvela24@hotmail.com

Was Olympic luger death video just pandering to voyeurism?

Guest post

By Christine Dobby

Someone is always watching. Whether it’s a security camera, cell phone, cheap digital camera or professional camera crew, major and minor events alike are all documented.

Occasionally, this means people’s deaths are caught on film. Their dying moments, rendered in slow motion, become part of our collective celluloid memory.

But should they? Should media outlets publish these images and distribute them widely for general consumption?

The death of a Georgian luger, just prior to the opening of the Olympic Games last week, raised these questions anew. The video of Nodar Kumaritashvili’s death was initially broadcast in its entirety before most networks began showing an edited version.

The New York Times published an interesting graphic representation of the fatal run on its website which showed Kumaritashvili’s sled position at various points in the run. The final frame includes a picture of his body hurtling towards a steel pole, milliseconds before impact. Some outlets, like the Vancouver Sun, decided not to post video or still images of the death.

Also in the news this week, the anonymous amateur video, which captured the last moments of Neda Agha-Soltan’s life during the 2009 Iranian election protests, won a George Polk Award for Journalism. And closer to home, the Toronto court presiding over the trial of two men charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of a passerby outside the Brass Rail in 2008 released security footage of the moment John O’Keefe was shot and killed. The Globe and Mail, as well as other news organizations, published the video on its website.

There’s an argument to be made that the public has an interest in seeing these images. It has been said that the video of Neda’s death produced heightened awareness of just how serious the situation in Iran was. Similarly, images of Kumaritashvili’s crash tell the story and illustrate the sheer danger of his sport and the track in a way that words alone cannot convey.

But I wonder whether part of my own interest in these photos and videos is not simply grim fascination and voyeurism. Meanwhile, friends and family of the deceased are left to confront the images, often while still in the throes of grief.

Legitimate public interest has to be balanced against good taste and compassion and deciding whether and how to publish is a tough call. One worth thinking about before I’m actually in the position to make it.

Christine Dobby is a former lawyer now studying journalism in Ryerson’s master of journalism program.

Gordon Lightfoot, Harry Truman and other embarrassing mistakes

By Adrian Morrow

Every time there's a neck-and-neck election, someone trots out the famous photo of President Harry Truman holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune that erroneously declared his defeat at the hands of Thomas Dewey. More than a repudiation of the pundits and pollsters who nearly all predicted electoral doom for the pugnacious president, it's one of the most enduring symbols of a major media outlet getting a big story horribly wrong. A lack of technology was partly to blame for the mistake: at that time, the paper had to be put to bed early for the first editions to get out in time, and editors at the Tribune (and other newspapers) relied on their best guesses and poll numbers to predict the election result.

Such mistakes still happen in the digital age, and this afternoon's example (when Canwest mistakenly reported the death of singer-songwriter and Canadian icon Gordon Lightfoot) is only the most recent. (For a good laugh, google the screenshots from CNN's website on April 16, 2003, when the broadcaster accidentally published dummy obituaries for several famous people, identifying Dick Cheney as the "UK's favourite grandmother" and Fidel Castro as a movie star). A lot of writers will probably take this chance to opine about how this wouldn't have happened in the old days and how digital media has degraded the quality of reporting. They're wrong.

While the Internet, and particularly sites like Twitter, have allowed rumours to spread instantaneously, they have also allowed them to be corrected within minutes. Not long after the web filled with chatter about Lightfoot's death, the musician himself heard about it and called CP24 to let everyone know he was still alive. When Mayor David Miller waded into the fray by mistakenly tweeting that the Star and the Sun were to blame for the false reports, his readers immediately let him know that he was wrong.

In the old days, by comparison, it took hours, days, even years to set the record straight. In 1899, when four unscrupulous newspaper reporters in Denver fabricated a story about the Great Wall of China being busted down and sold for scrap, newspapers around the world picked it up for months afterwords. Lacking the resources to check if the story was true, many of them never corrected themselves. In 1948, when the Tribune declared Truman's electoral defeat, it took several hours, when the next edition was printed, for the paper to fix the story.

The old rules -- double-checking your stories, making sure your sources are reliable, getting all the facts straight -- apply as much now as they ever did. But as much as technology makes it easy for a false report to circulate quickly, it makes it even easier for readers (or Gordon Lightfoot) to set the record straight. And that's a good thing.

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

Could Iceland be the new home for journalistic freedom?

By Tamara Baluja

Go to the Cayman Islands if you want a haven for tax evasion. Go to Switzerland for a extremely secure bank account. Go to Iceland for journalistic freedom?

Between Feb. 17 and 26, the Icelandic Parliament will be debating a resolution that could make the Nordic country a dream package for whistle blowers and journalists alike. 

The proposal stems from 2008 devastating economic collapse in Iceland, which was partly traced to corruption uncovered by reporters abroad. Eventually, it prompted calls for improving information access and protecting whistle-blowers.

To that end, the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) has called for new laws that encourage source protection and guarantees for whistle blowers.

"Iceland is at a crossroads," the IMMI states on its website. "Because of the economic meltdown in the banking sector, a deep sense is among the nation that a fundamental change is needed in order to prevent such events from taking place again."

The goal of the IMMI proposal is to find "ways to strengthen freedom of expression around the world and in Iceland, as well as providing strong protections for sources and whistleblowers ... with the purpose of assembling the best laws to make Iceland a leader of freedoms of expression and information."

I think the legislation has a good chance of passing and I certainly hope it does.

The Icelandic economic meltdown highlights the importance of investigative sites, such as WikiLeaks that published internal documents on loans made by Kaupthing Bank, one of several Icelandic banks involved in the crisis. WikiLeaks protects the identities and origins of its sources, so that it is virtually untraceable.

The IMMI proposal also hopes to counteract "libel tourism" in countries such as Britain where media are challenged with laws that heavily favour the plaintiff in libel cases.

Without a doubt, this could be the start of a new journalism era.

As for the rest of the world, it’s hard to say. In the U.S., the Government Accountability Project and the Paley Center for Media hosted a rather timely session honouring whistle blowers on Feb. 17. Several notable people were part of the conference including Daniel Ellsberg, who was responsible for the leak of the Pentagon Papers. The session highlighted the challenges that whistle blowers face, including loss of job and credibility.

But if Iceland is any indication, the Canadian government should take heed. Public thirst for accountability will not quickly forget Richard Colvin's reports on the torture of Afghan detainees.

We, too, stand at crossroads. 

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