How odd. It's called the radio room but plays no music

By Roger Gillespie

They are the unsung heros of the newsroom. They spend hours in a tiny room, listening to police dispatches, monitoring emergency service websites, answering phones, taking dictation and making sure the Star is first with breaking news.

Listening and waiting. Waiting and listening. They are the early warning system at the Toronto Star. They are the young reporters who staff the Toronto Star radio room.

If something blows up in the middle of the night, it will be a radio room reporter who hears about it first. A radio room reporter will rouse the troops and get the first file up on the web.

The Toronto Star radio room is a legend in Canadian journalism and more than a few outstanding careers started in the 'box.'

Early September brings a changing of the guard in the radio room as fresh faces join us for the school year. They are required to be post secondary students and they often have to juggle work and school but they are at the front of the front row on news in the GTA and around the world.

Meet the Star's radio roomers for 2010-2011.

Alexandra Macaulay Abdelwahab is in her fourth year of journalism at Ryerson. She interned at The Gazette in Montreal this summer as an online editor. In May, she spent a month at Global News in Toronto as a health intern. This semester, she'll be heading off to London, England where she will be interning at CBC.

 

Tamara Baluja is back for her second stint in the radio room after a summer at The Province in Vancouver. She has worked as a reporter with CFRB 1010 and is an editor for the South Asian magazine, Anokhi. Tamara has a BA in English and History from U of T and is entering her final year of journalism at Centennial College.

 

Gloria Er-Chua is returning to the radio room after a four-month stint this summer. She just graduated from Queen's University, where she was news editor of the campus paper, the Journal. She is completing her French certificate at Ryerson University. She's worked at the Kingston Whig-Standard and interned at a magazine in Quebec.

 

Liam Casey is a graduate student in the Ryerson journalism program and was a reporting intern with the Star this summer. He studied biology at Queen's and wrote a manuscript under the tutelage of Paul Quarrington at the Humber School for Writers. He is the editor of the winter 2011 Ryerson Review of Journalism and has interned at the Ottawa Citizen and Toronto Life.

 

Christine Dobby is entering second year of Ryerson's master of journalism program but she still remembers a couple of things about the legal system from her time practicing family law for two years before returning to school. She spent the summer in Saint John, New Brunswick working as a business and provincial reporter at the Telegraph-Journal.

 

Daniela Germano is in her final semester of the Ryerson journalism program. In 2007, she traveled through the Iberian Peninsula and worked for a golf magazine. She has also interned at two community papers, the Town Crier and Vaughan Today. She was the arts editor for The Ryersonian and an assistant editor and copy editor for Ryerson's feminist magazine, McClung's.

 

Wendy Gillis is pleased to be back at the Star after a summer internship. Wendy has been a reporter for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and the central bureau chief with Canadian University Press. She was also the editor-in-chief of The Sheaf, the University of Saskatchewan student newspaper. She is entering her second year of the master of journalism program at Ryerson.

 

Noel Grzetic is entering her second year of the post-grad journalism program at Humber College. Prior to journalism she studied psychology at the University of Guelph and was involved in autism research at Sick Kids Hospital. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Noel moved to Toronto in the 1980s.

 

Hayley Kelman is a York University graduate and currently attending Seneca's journalism broadcast program.  She spent the past two years living in the U.K. interning for The London Weekly focusing mostly on entertainment and pop-culture.

 

Carys Mills will start her final year of Ryerson's journalism program in the fall by interning at The Globe and Mail before joining the Star's radio room. This summer she worked at The Windsor Star as a reporting intern. Last summer she worked as an intern at the Queen's Park Press Gallery and will be graduating with a politics minor.

 

Emmanuel Samoglou is in his final year of the post-graduate journalism program at Humber College. Having previously studied finance and marketing at Ryerson University, he plans to take his diverse background and deep interest in politics abroad where he hopes to report, write, and photograph from the world's emerging hot spots.

 

Liem Vu is a MJ student at Ryerson. He has reported for The Varsity, The National Post and The Globe and Mail. He was the lead singer of a barbershop quartet called The TemptAsians. After an amicable split, he got a degree in Criminology at U of T. As a journalist, his experience includes kettling during the G20 and a one-day stint as Bob Geldof's transcriber.

Madeleine White is a radio room vet. She has also worked for a Liberal leadership contender and federal MP. When not in the radio room, she is completing her Master of Journalism degree at Ryerson and her Major Research Project - a multimedia project profiling women running in Toronto's municipal election.