Star summer internships no day at the beach — but they're quite the journey

By Wendy Gillis

You might not lounge all day at the beach or spend weeks at the cabin, but a summer at the Toronto Star will take you places.

Past Star summer interns have covered the trial of fallen media baron Conrad Black in Chicago and tracked down one of the jurors, delved into the depths of a bitter custody battle over a whale at Niagara Falls' Marineland or poked fun at the picturesque city's anti-Toronto marketing campaign, and covered the abrupt layoffs of over a thousand workers at an Oshawa call centre. 

They've gone to Korea Town to see if World Cup fans will cheer for North Korea, sniffed that new train smell when the TTC unveiled its rocket, and attempted to get the most bang-for-golden-buck as prices soared to new heights. Last summer — during the first week of our internship — Star reporter Amy Dempsey and I went undercover with protesters in the days leading up to Toronto's G20 summit.

Summer interns have asked why Toronto beach bums won't dare set foot in the lake (okay, so maybe you will go to the beach), why Mayor Rob Ford allegedly flipped the bird while driving, why Toronto doesn't have a public bed beg registry and why police fired into crowds at the Caribbean Carnival.

If you haven't figured it out already, a summer internship at the Star will send you somewhere unexpected, interesting, fun and important, even on the days when you've only left your desk for a coffee refill. 

What's more, the on-the-ground experience — including reporting and writing, shooting photos and videos, tweeting and live-blogging, and more — in a competitive but supportive newsroom will take your journalism career further in 12 weeks than you ever thought possible. Just be prepared to learn, adapt and be ready for anything. 

That, and work hard. Summer interns replace staff journalists on vacation, and editors rely on them to fill these reporters' shoes, wherever those shoes are taking you.

Sound good? Applications for the a summer at the Star are due November 18, 2011.

Oh — and don't just take my word for it. Read what three former summer interns had to say about the program.

Jasmeet Sidhu, Summer 2010:

More than any technical journalism experience, the summer internship at the Toronto Star really taught me to step outside my comfort zone: to learn how to drive on the Gardiner Expressway, to speak with mothers of fallen Canadian soldiers, and to be on the ground during a hostage-taking at a Swiss Chalet. But most of all, it was wonderful to spend a few months with some of the greatest reporters and writers in all of Canadian journalism right there in the Toronto Star newsroom.

 

Gilbert Ndikubwayezu, Summer 2011:

 I enjoyed my summer at the Star first, because it challenged me: I would always come with a terrifying feeling that  I was working for this big paper and that if I ever screwed up, it would be such a disappointment to t heir esteemed readers. Thus, the idea of fact-checking was huge. Second, because of the schedules: some weeks I would work day shifts, which normally mean you're bound to doing stories that are assigned to you; and other weeks I would work evening shifts which are normally super slow and thus you get a chance to develop your own feature ideas.

Amy Dempsey, Summer 2010:

Most people will tell you that life as a journalist or life in general is a marathon, not a sprint. Life as a summer intern is unquestionably a sprint. It's also a lot like living in a reality TV show. Exciting, dramatic and often bizarre. 

 

 

 

 

Wendy Gillis is currently in the one-year program at the Star, and was a summer intern in 2010 and 2011.

Toronto Star interns bank on interesting walks

                                                                                                                   Photo by Roger Gillespie
                        
Toronto Star interns crane their necks and snap pictures as Toronto Star columnist Chris Hume expounds on the evolution of bank buildings in Toronto.  (Left to right) Radio roomer Dylan Roberston, one-year intern Alyshah Hasham, Chris Hume, Massey Fellow Elizabeth Bowie, one-year intern Stephanie Findlay, one-year intern Emily Jackson, one-year intern Niahm Scallan, one-year intern Josh Tapper and one-year intern Chantaie Allick.

 By Vidya Kauri

Most people get a tour of their workplace when they land a new job. Toronto Star interns get to tour the city’s financial district with famed architecture critic and Star columnist Christopher Hume.

What’s to see in Toronto’s financial district? There are many tall buildings -- some quite unattractive -- with chilly wind tunnels, and bland, privately owned expanses of concrete sidewalk. Are they worth rolling out of bed to see and discuss on a chilly Saturday morning in October? With Hume for a tour guide, yes!

If you have seen Hume’s videos on thestar.com, you will be familiar with how animated he is as he talks about his five best and five ugliest buildings in Toronto. With the same level of passion, Hume delivered a fascinating history lesson that outlined the evolution of bank buildings since 1885. Bank buildings are interesting because financial institutions don’t actually create any products. The image they portray is an important part of how they sell themselves, said Hume.

With nine intrepid interns in tow and a Massey Journalism Fellow, Hume’s first stop for us was the former Bank of Montreal, now the Hockey Hall of Fame. The building, built in 1885, has an opulent façade with many hand-made ornate carvings and an inviting corner entrance. This kind of showiness was more important than creating tall buildings during that era, said Hume.

View Hume's tour in a larger map

We saw the Commerce Court North Tower built in 1930. Clearly, height was gaining prominence by this time, but the ornate carvings were also an important part of a bank’s image. The arched entrance is adorned with carved symbols of hard work like a bee and a beaver.  For about three decades, this limestone-clad building, on King St. W., was the tallest in Toronto and had an observation deck which is now closed.

Another building we looked at in the Commerce Court was the West Tower designed by the famous Chinese-American architect, Ming Pei in 1972. The building is the headquarters for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

Hume said people have always been resistant to tall buildings. He said it’s irrelevant how tall a building is though -- it’s what happens at ground level that really matters.

He contrasted these two buildings with the Toronto Dominion Centre on the south-west corner of King and Bay sts. The pavilion was designed by modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe circa 1967. The opulence of the previous era was replaced with a very “formal” and consistent look. Three dark towers with bronze-tinted glass all look identical and there is nothing flashy about them – just tall rectangular towers. Moreover, the pavilion’s entrance is removed from the sidewalk by a considerable distance. This is unlike the entrances of the former Bank of Montreal and Commerce Court whose entrances spill out onto the sidewalk. The difference may be seen as an attempt by financial institutions to distance themselves from the community surrounding them. However, the nondescript exterior suggests that banks were trying to identify themselves with the common man who didn’t have the wealth indicated by gaudy facades, said Hume.

Another interesting highlight of the tour was the glittery Royal Bank towers at the south-west corner of Bay and Front sts. Hume said the gold buildings were a way of attracting attention especially because the Royal Bank missed out on being at the very heart of Toronto’s financial district at King and Bay. For the second time during the tour, Hume bemoaned the stretches of privately owned empty spaces that connect sidewalks to the bank entrances. He wished the open spaces could be put to better use, similar to how the Merrill Lynch building at 200 King St. W. houses a restaurant at sidewalk level.

When asked what his inspiration for giving us this tour was, Hume merely said that "Roger made me do it."

Roger Gillespie is AME visuals and also responsible for recruiting interns at the Star. He said he asked Hume to give the tour because Hume “can make anything sound good.” He added that Hume had been giving tours long before Gillespie joined the Star four years ago.

Gillespie, who took the tour, is right. Hume is a master story-teller who has changed the way I look at bank buildings. I can look at them with a more critical and appreciative eye knowing that their architectural evolution is an integral part of Toronto’s history, and I wonder if people working in the financial district know as much about the history of their buildings as we learned. Despite the ache from craning my neck up to see tall buildings for almost an hour, I highly recommend future interns go on Hume’s tour for his educational and insightful commentary.

The tour ended with a stop at the World Press Photo 2011 exhibit in Brookfield Place at 181 Bay St. What a treat!

                                                                                                          Photo by Roger Gillespie

Interns (left to right) Alysha Hasham, Gustavo Vieira, Stephanie Findlay and Vidya Kauri listen attentively to Chris Hume's discourse on bank building architecture.

Vidya Kauri is a Toronto Star intern. She works in the radio room. You can find her on twitter.

Two siblings and two perspectives on one digital era

         By Jessica Vitullo

I recently had an epiphany: my intelligent, web-savvy 13-year-old sister has never lived in a world without Google. She doesn’t remember having to use the phone line to connect to the internet, has never used the once-popular search engine AskJeeves.com and grew up using USB sticks instead of floppy disks. Remember when we thought these technological inventions were actually good?

The extent that technology has changed over the years got me thinking about how people today have the capability to do much more and it wouldn’t have happened without the internet. With Skype and emailing, we can remain in touch with family and friends from around the world; we can buy clothes, vacations and even groceries online! Forget the weekly trip to the bank; you can pay your household bills online.

Not only has the internet made our daily lives much easier, but it’s also changed the way we get our information. With social media websites and web browsing on our cell phones, information is literally in our hands in any given second. People used to wait for the daily newspaper or wait for the nightly news broadcast. So why wouldn’t the way we hear about news change?

Online newspapers and magazines allow readers to browse stories, skim headlines and read up on everything going on around the world without waiting for breaking news stories to be - well - old news. We can access news, videos and documents about anything with the click on a mouse or a tap on a cell phone. People can be made aware of news the moment it happens, giving journalists an edge in providing readers with the most up-to-date information. This way, you will be in the know about whatever it is you should know about.

The Telegraph published an interesting article in February explaining exactly how much information we are exposed to on any given day. Check out these stats:

- We receive five times as much information every day than people in 1986.
- Between emails, text message and other methods of digital communicating, one person produces an average of six newspapers worth of information in comparison to two and a half pages in 1986.
- The equivalent of 600,000 books is the amount of information that can be stored in computers and microchips.

This is a huge feat. What’s fascinating is this is the digital era that my younger sister, along with millions of other kids, are growing up in. The nine-year age gap between the two of us illustrates how people today will be very used to this constant access of information, something I only began to learn about when the .com boom first happened. It hasn’t always been like this, yet it feels like we’ve been living in this era forever.

Jessica Vitullo is an intern at the Toronto Star. She works in the radio room. You can follow her on twitter.

The bottom of the food chain: Meet the newest radio roomers

By Molly Hayes

It’s at the bottom of the newsroom food chain, but the Toronto Star radio room is a coveted gig amongst young journalists. It’s a foot in the door for students and a way to hone crime reporting and breaking news skills.

This time around, 12 “boxers” staff the room; a mesh of post-secondary students studying journalism, professional writing and documentary media. Between us, we keep the newsroom staffed 24/7 listening to the scanners, scrolling through Twitter and tracking down sources.

We write about crime, traffic accidents, protests, cute animals, vicious animals, gas leaks, potholes — and of course the weather.

Some of us are learning the ropes as we go, and some have been here for months. By now, we’ve all at least figured out what a 10-16 is, and how to keep coffee hot on the graveyard shift.

We are:

 

 

MOLLY HAYES My stint in the radio room follows a summer spent at the Hamilton Spectator where I covered literacy, murder, and lingerie football. I love local news. With mere months until graduation and adulthood, I hope to use this "foot in the door" to pry that door open, lock it behind me and stay forever (please).

 

 

 

GUSTAVO VIEIRA grew up in Rio de Janeiro where he studied and practiced law. He’s now going through a career change, finishing his master's in journalism at Ryerson. Before the radio room he interned for CBC and Al Jazeera English.

 

VICTORIA PTASHNICK is a former makeup artist and a Carleton journalism grad. She’s now studying documentary media at Ryerson because she was “tired of telling news stories in the same conventional way.”

She runs marathons and is obsessed with true crime novels. The radio room has taught her how to survive on Red Bull.

TIM ALAMENCIAK is in his second year of his MJ at Ryerson. He’s reported for the Globe and Mail, OpenFile and the Eyeopener. He has a bachelor’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Waterloo, and aspires to cover international affairs. In his months at the Star so far, Tim has had two front-page stories and has covered everything from murders to language exchange meet ups.

KIRSTEN PARUCHA is a recent journalism grad from U of T-Centennial College. As a student, she was editor and sports editor of Toronto Scarborough Campus’s news magazine, The Underground. She has also written for the East Toronto Observer. After the radio room, she hopes to continue in the print journalism field and eventually land an editorial position at a magazine.

A few weeks into the job and after her first ever all-nighter, she is still coffee-free.

ZOE MCKNIGHT is a veteran of the radio room. She’s worked at the National Post and the Telegraph Journal. Back an extra semester to finish her MJ at Ryerson, she’s been in school for 22 years.

In her months at the Star so far, she’s covered shootings and sinkholes, car crashes and cute dogs. “If and when I ever graduate, I hope the Star will have be back and let me out of the box,” she said. If so, she says she’ll need a new camera.

SARAH RATCHFORD — another veteran — studied at the University of New Brunswick where she was the editor of the university’s campus paper (the oldest in the country). She was also the Atlantic bureau chief of Canadian University Press (CUP). She freelanced for NB publications before heading to Toronto where she’s working on her MJ at Ryerson.

“Getting a front page byline this summer was my proudest journalism moment yet, second only to getting hired at the Star in the first place,” she said.

MICHAEL GREGORY studied history and political science at the University of Waterloo. He is now in the post-grad journalism program at Humber. A former varsity swimmer, athletics are a big part of his life outside of the box.

His favourite part of the radio room is being in the newsroom environment: “Teamwork is such a crucial part of the job because you’re constantly passing, and being passed news tips from other colleagues.”

VIDYA KAURI is in her third-year of J-School at Ryerson. She freelances for the United Church Observer magazine and spent four months this summer as an intern reporter for the Hamilton Spectator. At the Star so far, Vidya’s reported on crime, traffic accidents and other breaking news stories. She has a basic understanding of Hindi, Arabic and Kannada.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JESSICA VITULLO is a soon-to-be graduate of the professional writing program at York. She has been involved with two of York’s campus papers, The Pipe and Excalibur, as editor, copy editor and writer. She reported for several Toronto newspapers at Multicom Media last summer.

 

 

 

ALEXANDRA POSADZKI is another radio room veteran. She’s in her first year of Ryerson’s MJ program after earning an undergraduate degree in psychology. She spent the better part of a year covering Ontario news for The Canadian Press, and was the editor of York University’s Excalibur newspaper.

She had her 15 minutes of fame when her photo – leaning off the edge of the CN Tower during a media preview of EdgeWalk – went global.

 

 

 

 

DYLAN C. ROBERTSON is a first-time radio roomer, though he was first published in the Star at age 12 in the “for-tweens-by-tweens Brand New Planet” section. He’s been a journalist ever since, studying at U of T-Centennial, working at The Varsity and interning at the Gazette in Montreal. He hopes to become an investigative reporter or foreign correspondent.

 

— Molly Hayes is a radio roomer. You can follow her on Twitter here.

Occupy Toronto: We joined the world but now what?

 
                                                                                                                                     Photo by Michael Gregory

                 Activists make their way past the KPMG building in downtown Toronto on Saturday.

By Michael Gregory

A carnival of political activists converged on a downtown park Saturday, as Toronto joined the global sit-in movement against, well, everything.
Missing in action were the black hoods last seen at the G20 protests. Even police chose their bicycles over riot gear, perhaps sensing the  ‘occupiers’ were willing to go about their business peacefully.
The energized group, led by Occupy Toronto organizers wearing armbands made of floppy orange fabric, chanted catchy slogans and flexed their banners and signs
"We are the 99 per cent. . . . They set cutbacks we say fight back,” they shouted.
The eventual destination for the march was St. James Park, just east of Adelaide St. and Church St., and right next door to St. James Cathedral. Police would later say more than 2,000 people were at the event.
Theresa Boyle, Jayme Poisson, Josh Tapper and I -- The Star’s live blog team -- were part of the media swarm on scene to capture it all.
Snap a picture, Tweet it, repeat.
As activists paraded into the park, the hand-holding organizers who had led them there, disappeared. Leaderless, the crowds almost collectively sighed as if to say "now what ? "

 

                                                                                                                Photo by Michael Gregory 

                  This musical duo kept crowds entertained at St. James Park.

 Luckily, someone had ordered up the musical entertainment as an acoustic duo took over, playing for the masses who gathered around an old tree.

“Where did the money go? “ they belted out. Many encores ensued.
All the while, on the outskirts of the park the first remnants of a true tent city were beginning to pop up. A medical station, stocked with donated supplies and more than a dozen volunteers was ready for any minor emergencies.
“We’re expecting a lot of cases of hypothermia,” said a volunteer medic.
Nearby, people gathered around the Occupy Toronto legal committee as they ran through mock police-activist scenarios to better educate participants on their rights.
 Stopping to talk with people setting up their tents, I asked the obvious question: How long are you going to stay ?
"I would be ready to leave when the government came out and talked to us . . . I'm a student . . . I'm a minority . . . I'm part of that 99 per cent,” said one woman.
A girl named Sundus made her way through the crowd with her mother and sister carrying a sign that read “Look around . . . It is possible.”
“People all over the world have been fighting for their rights and this is finally our chance to come together,” she said.

 

  

                                                                                                                                              Photo by Michael Gregory

                    Several people turned out wearing a Guy Fawke mask.  

 Among those carrying banners touting their cause, no one group stood out among the rest. Everyone mingled with each other, listening and sharing views with one another.On the park’s south side, a large crowd formed a circle around a microphone, as individuals lined up in orderly fashion to expound their reasons for being there.

“Brookfield stole our pensions,” said one former employee over the loudspeaker. 

Other shared stories of lost jobs, the tough economic times,  and a need for political change.
The people were mobilized, out-spoken, and as donations began to pour in it was clear they could very well be semi-permanent.
 The food tent wasn’t showing any shortages, and a shaggy-haired young man named Dustin moved happily through the crowd offering free peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
 Donated porto-poties and sanitation sinks sprang up later in the afternoon, at least solving the cleanliness issue for the time being. The Occupy Toronto media committee even happened to get their hands on a generator to provide a live 24-hour stream through their website.
 As dusk and wind rolled in, organizers re-appeared for a general assembly at 5 p.m. Several hundreds listened to instructions that the ensuing days would be “respectful...inclusive...and horizontal in thinking.” All this drew approving “twinkling” hands from listeners.
Now, many will watch to see how long, and to what end, Occupy Toronto activists will go.
Perhaps old man winter will have the answer for these urban campers.

. . .

Michael Gregory is a Toronto Star intern who works in the radio room. You can find him on twitter.

 

Toronto Star interns have covered the world

By Gustavo Vieira

Skim through the Toronto Star and you will find their bylines.

Browse the Star’s website and there they are too. Google their names, follow them on twitter and you’ll see they are much more than 'regular' interns.

In mid-September they wandered around the newsroom, trying to find the way to the nearest bathroom and shortcuts to the cafeteria.

But by early October they were covering Ontario’s election, chasing rare violins and tracking messages in bottles, using just to some of their skills.

But smarts and talent are not enough to land a spot in the Star’s one-year internship, they have plenty of experience, including a lot of mileage in Canada and abroad.

Beijing, Kigali and Kiev are just some of the places some have worked. Others  covered the G20 in Toronto, Parliament Hill in Ottawa or reported on Canadian women’s prisons.

In the age of multimedia they have written for newspapers and magazines, and produced for television and the web.

Eight are new faces to the Star. The other four worked so hard they got to stay.

This is the 2011-2012 crop of one-year interns at the Toronto Star:

 

CHANTAIE ALLICK is a political science graduate from the University of British Columbia. This spring she earned a masters in journalism degree from Carleton. She has worked as a reporter for The Globe and Mail, the National Post, Blink Magazine in Kigali, Rwanda and the Barents Observer in northern Norway. She has been a volunteer and English teacher in Lima, Peru. While studying at Carleton, she was one of two students to win the Carleton Norway Journalism Travel Award. You can follow her on twitter here.

 

STEPHANIE FINDLAY is a 22-year-old university drop-out from Kanata. She was news editor at the Ubyssey, UBC’s student newspaper, when she was hired as a summer intern at Maclean's. The following June, Maclean's hired her as a year-long intern. She wrote weekly feature stories and toured universities across Canada, contributing to the universities guide. She also covered the Toronto G20 and TIFF. This summer she was hired as a staff reporter at Maclean’s, but left to join the Star’s internship program. You can follow her on twitter here.

 

ALYSHAH HASHAM comes out of a whirlwind education this summer in Toronto, interning as a summer reporter at the Star and making the city her new home. Before that she graduated with a bachelor of journalism and English literature from Carleton University and was a student reporter at CTV Ottawa. In 2009, she also did a radio internship in Nairobi, where she grew up. Follow her on twitter here.

 

LIAM CASEY is a graduate of the MJ program at Ryerson. He has twice worked in the Star's summer reporting program as well as an eight-month stint in the box in between. He was the editor of the award-winning winter 2011 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism. Prior to that he interned at the Ottawa Citizen and Toronto Life. Before that he unsuccessfully tried to cure diabetes through monotonous work with transgenic mice and cloned cells. He is fluent in French and really funny. You can follow him on twitter here.

 

WENDY GILLIS enters the one-year program with two Star summer internships and one eight-month gig in the radio room under her belt. She is a graduate of Ryerson's master of journalism program, where she produced a radio documentary, studied long-form journalism, and wrote a thesis on publicly funded in-vitro fertilization. Previously, she studied English and history at the University of Saskatchewan. Wendy got her start in journalism as the editor-in-chief of the Sheaf, the U of S undergrad paper. You can follow her on twitter here.

 

EMILY JACKSON is a Toronto-based journalist from Calgary. After completing her bachelor of commerce at Queen's University, she moved to the west coast to get her master of journalism at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism. She just finished at The Globe's Report on Business and her work has been published in the Vancouver Sun, BC Business, and various other Postmedia newspapers. You can follow her on twitter here.

 

ANITA LI has a diverse background in journalism that spans print, broadcast and online media. Anita has previously worked as a research assistant for The New Yorker'sBeijing bureau, an on-air reporter for CTV Ottawa, an associate producer for CBC News and a blogger for thestar.com. Most recently, she was a reporter/editor for The Globe and Mail. Anita holds a master of journalism from Carleton and an honours bachelor of arts from the University of Toronto. You can follow her on twitter here.

 

 
NIAMH SCALLAN is a print and multimedia journalist who has written for The Globe and Mail, The Province, The Tyee, and others. A UBC master of journalism graduate, she also holds a bachelor's degree in international development from the University of Guelph. In 2010, Niamh (pronounced “Neeve”) travelled to Ukraine with a team of students to produce a documentary on global pain management that aired on Al Jazeera in July. Her interests range from municipal politics and urban affairs to global development issues. You can follow her on twitter here.

 

JOSH TAPPER is a 2010 graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York. As a student and freelancer, he has reported from North America, Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, NYTimes.com, the New York Daily News, the Jewish Daily Forward, Tablet magazine and Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab. An Ottawa native, Josh also holds a B.A. (Hons) in history and English from Dalhousie. You can follow him on twitter here.

 

JENNIFER PAGLIARO has regained her love of Toronto after moving to Ottawa for Carleton University's bachelor of journalism program. She's been an intern at The Ottawa Citizen, The Canadian Press and The Globe and Mail. At school, she was a news editor of The Charlatan and once survived an angry Ann Coulter mob for her Maclean's OnCampus blog. Jennifer will join the Star after working at a local radio station in Gulu, Uganda as part of The Rwanda Initiative. You can follow her on twitter here.

 

LAURA STONE comes to the Star from the Calgary Herald, where she was working on a series about women's prisons as part of the inaugural Michelle Lang fellowship. She covered breaking news and federal politics for a year and a half at Postmedia News in her hometown Ottawa. She got her first gig three years ago in the radio room. You can follow her on twitter here.

 

MICHAEL WOODS is excited to return to the Star as a year-long intern after completing the summer reporting program. He just graduated from Queen's University with a degree in history and political science. He was editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, The Journal, and spent a summer reporting for the Kingston Whig-Standard. Born and raised in Ottawa, he enjoys a good plate of nachos and playing music on various instruments. You can follow him on twitter here.

Gustavo Vieira is a journalism intern in the Toronto Star's radio room.