Wordstock 2010: Back to the basics

By Emmanuel Samoglou 

Few people would envy me right now.

I'm sitting in a little room at 4 a.m., listening to police respond to various calls around Toronto. One eye on the computer screen, the other on the spoon that I'm using to shovel cold, leftover lentils and basmati into my mouth.

Fewer people would understand why I would forgo the opportunity to rest before this bout with nocturnality.  Instead, I attended a writers' workshop to learn how to more effectively administer this perceived torture. At this point, they might think I’m bordering on masochism.

In reality, I just really enjoy telling people stories, and want to learn how I can do it better.

Roughly 120 people joined me at Wordstock 2010.  This year’s theme, “Back to the Basics” was a departure from previous years which have dealt primarily with new journalism tools and styles.  We went back to the basics this time round, focusing on writing, editing, and effective story telling.

It began with a keynote from the Globe and Mail's Ian Brown. Being the fantastic storyteller he is, the award-winning writer had the auditorium in hysterics as he wove a wonderful medley of tales from the field with advice on how writers can step up their game.  Advice ranged from the basics (“write what actually happens”), to calling out the industry on preserving the role of the editor in the writing process.

From there, registrants went to workshops on a wide array of topics, among them:  Packing great writing into less than 1,000 words, (re)discovering the joy of creative writing, and a module designed to help writers overcome their fear of writing about sex. 

It was hard not to feel inspired as we listened to a host of dedicated individuals talk about their craft with a passion.  It became obvious through the day that, along with natural talent, this was a chief ingredient in their recipes for success - An overwhelming desire to tell readers a good story and keep their attention for more than nine seconds.

Caring about how the story is told as much as the story itself, find the human connection, connecting with the reader...

Writing can be torture.  But as those that attended Wordstock can attest, it can be loads of fun.

 Emmanuel Samoglou works in the Star radio room. He is in his final year of the post-graduate journalism program at Humber College. You can follow him on twitter.

Former Toronto Star radio room reporter wins fellowship

By Allison Cross

Ottawa-based journalist Laura Stone, a former Toronto Star radio room reporter, has been named the inaugural recipient of Postmedia’s Michelle Lang Fellowship.

The year-long fellowship was established in honour of Lang, an award-winning Calgary Herald reporter who was killed last year while on assignment for Canwest News Service in Afghanistan.

Known for her tenacious reporting on the healthcare system, Lang was the first Canadian journalist to die in Afghanistan during this conflict.

“The fellowship honours the ideals that Michelle held up in her journalistic life: telling the untold stories,” Stone said. “It may sound obvious, but the stories that lie below the radar are the most difficult to find and do.”

The fellowship was open to recent university graduates who have a passion for writing and current events, and will include up to $10,000 in funding for Stone to pursue a special news project.

“Laura is a wonderful choice for this inaugural fellowship,” said Scott Anderson, senior vice-president, content, Postmedia Network Inc, in a statement. “Laura carries with her many of the great qualities Michelle exhibited in her work every day, which include a passion for telling stories that have gone unreported or unnoticed on topics of social significance.”

Stone, who began her fellowship on Sept. 1, will spend six months at Postmedia News in Ottawa and six months at the Calgary Herald.

Stone is a graduate of Carleton University, where she earned a master of journalism degree.

She also has a faculty of Arts and Sciences joint degree from Dalhousie University and King’s College in Halifax, and a bachelor of arts in English and History from Dalhousie.

In addition to her time at the Star, Stone has worked at the Ottawa Citizen, National Post, The Province in Vancouver and Canwest News Service.

“This business is all about people taking a chance on you,” Stone said. “When I was hired by the radio room at the Star during the summer of 2008, I had zero daily news experience. But they saw something in me and took a chance.”

 Allison Cross is a reporter in the Toronto Star year-long intern program. Earlier this week she won an Emmy Award for outstanding investigative journalism for the documentary Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground.

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.

Something(s) new at the Star

By Roger Gillespie

Every September the Toronto Star newsroom buzzes as some of the best new faces in the business join us for our one-year intern program. Every year, newsroom veterans are gobsmacked by the skills and experience the new group brings.

On Monday, we will be joined by the class of 2010/2011. You can easily see why we love them.

One is nominated for an Emmy, two Emmys actually, for documentary film work.

Another learned Swahili while working in television for a year in Africa.

They have experience at newspapers and websites and book publishers.

All of them are old hands at digital work, several have produced film documentaries or websites. Many of them have first-rate personal blogs and are great photographers.

It goes without saying they know Twitter is not just the sound Billy Pilgrim heard at the end of Slaughterhouse Five.

Many have reported from Africa or Asia. Most speak at least two languages.

They are still looking ahead to their 30th birthdays.

You can tell just by talking to them that newspapers have a promising future. Meet the class of 2010/2011.

Allison Cross spent the past year chasing breaking news and reporting from Parliament Hill at Canwest News Service in Ottawa. Before that she was an intern at the Vancouver Sun and a community news reporter and photographer at the Nanaimo Daily News. While doing her master of journalism at the University of B.C., Allison traveled to China and Hong Kong to help produce an Emmy-nominated documentary that aired on PBS Frontline/World. Born and raised in Vancouver, she is also a staunch Canucks fan.

Amy Dempsey is back for more after an intense 12 weeks as a Star summer reporting intern. She is a graduate of Carleton University’s master of journalism program and has reported for the Ottawa Citizen, CBC Radio’s Mainstreet and The Canadian Press. Amy has interned at Contact FM in Kigali, where she spent her off-hours learning how to dance like a cow and finding adventure in the Rwandan countryside. Last June, she trekked across Ghana to investigate child slavery in the country’s fishing industry for her multimedia master’s research project. Amy grew up in an oceanside Cape Breton village and studied literature at Dalhousie University, where she wrote for the Dal Gazette.

Chloe Fedio has worked as a journalist in four major Canadian cities and two African countries in the past two years, bouncing between television, radio and print.  She started reporting at the campus newspaper at the University of Alberta while completing a B.A. in political science. Since then she has worked as a news assistant at Global Edmonton, a chase producer at CBC Newsworld, a radio host for a current affairs program in Rwanda, and a reporter at the Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette. This spring, she produced a multimedia website about sustainable agricultural practices in sub-Saharan Africa as part of her master of journalism degree at Carleton University. In her spare time, she plays Scrabble and takes long runs through the park while listening to podcasts of RISK! and This American Life.

Cynthia Vukets is a Winnipegger who has lived in Kitchener, Ottawa, rural Quebec, Atlantic Canada, Europe, Rwanda and Kenya. A Carleton journalism grad, Cynthia worked in print and TV for three years before arriving at the Star. She enjoys cooking, yoga, and going to the cottage. Her most embarrassing journalism moment was nearly getting run over by a herd of goats while shooting a stand-up in Nairobi in
front of about 50 curious Kenyan onlookers.

Dan Robson returns after spending two summers with the Star, first in the radio room and then as a reporting intern. He holds a master of journalism degree from Carleton University, and did his undergrad and B. Ed at Queen's University. As a journalist and teacher has worked around the world, in places like Ireland, Guyana and Rwanda. Previously he has worked with CBC Sports and The Canadian Press.

Dominique Jarry-Shore comes to thestar.com from The Canadian Press where she spent the summer working as a reporter/editor on the Ontario desk. Before that, Dominique spent a year reporting on development issues from Mexico and Central America, contributing to The New York Times, The Canadian Press and CBC Radio's Dispatches. In her first career, Dominique worked as a social worker in the Yukon and Australia before switching gears and becoming a journalist. She has a graduate diploma in journalism from Concordia University.

Jayme Poisson is excited to be continuing as a reporter at the Star after this summer. Born and raised in Toronto she studied political science at McGill. Jayme has worked for a documentary film production company in New York and written for Hello! Canada magazine. Last fall she began a master of journalism at Carleton University where she had the chance to travel to Nepal to make a documentary film about fallen womb, a debilitating condition affecting 600,000 women in the fragile South Asian country. She also got to trek to Anapurna base camp. Jayme is currently trying to figure out what to do with 33 hours of footage.

Jenni Dunning is a reporter at heart, loves multimedia journalism and working with the web. She joins the theStar.com after working at the Hamilton Spectator as a general assignment reporter. She also managed thespec.com website on weekends. Before that, Jenni worked at CBCSports.ca and The London Free Press. She has a blog at nowherewithyou.wordpress.com. Jenni has a master of journalism from Western.

Kate Allen is happy to be back home in Toronto after finishing her master of journalism at UBC. She also has a B.A. in Classics -- she spent 10 years studying Latin. She spent the summer as a national reporter for the Globe and Mail and previously worked for the Globe's B.C. Bureau. Recently, she travelled to Thailand to film a documentary for PBS Frontline about shrimp farming. She has also worked for Toronto Life, the Vancouver Sun, B.C. Business magazine, and the Tyee.

Nicki Thomas is a recent graduate of the master of journalism program at Carleton University. She moved east from Edmonton, where she worked as a general assignment reporter at the Sun. She spent this past summer at the Ottawa Citizen, where she was awarded the Diane King Stuemer Fellowship. She used the award to travel to Iqaluit and report on HIV/AIDS and sexual health among Inuit.

Sarah Millar joins the Star on the web team. Throughout her (short) career, Sarah has worked both in print and online at papers big (the National Post), medium (the Hamilton Spectator) and small (the Kincardine News a community weekly). She blogs, tweets and Facebooks, but can also carry on a conversation in real-life.

 

Jonathan Whitehead graduated from the graphic design program at Fanshawe College in  2004 then went into publishing with an educational book design house in North York. In 2005, he moved to an academic publisher based in downtown Toronto. He also maintained a strong and dedicated client base as a freelance graphic designer. He has a broad range of work experience that includes print, branding and web-based projects.

Roger Gillespie is the Star's senior editor, training and development. You can find him on Twitter or reach him at rgillespie@thestar.ca

Five things I learned this summer

 

By Jasmeet Sidhu

Alas, the summer has come to an end here for me at the Toronto Star. And as I’m about to willingly enter post-grad twenty-something limbo, I thought I would share 5 things I’ve learned during my chaotic yet exhilarating time working at the biggest newspaper in Canada, for current and potential Star interns.

1. Get comfortable with a camera

If you don’t already have your own point and shoot camera, get one. And practice taking photos for your stories. Basic photography skills are a must now for journalists. I found myself at various points in the summer awkwardly crawling around podiums for press conferences, creeping along Yonge St. trying to get strangers to pose for photos, and in general feeling extremely awkward with a camera in my hand, with plenty of bad photos to boot. But the photos had to get done, and they needed to get done right. I quickly learned from veteran photographers like Denis Cyr, Tim Finlan and Mike Kelly about things like negative space, angles, natural light, background noise, scene setters and more. Reporters are now expected to be equipped with basic multi-media skills – don’t get left behind.

2. Tape recorders – a useful reporting tool, but don’t depend on it

This tidbit of advice came from Kevin Scanlon, one of the nicest team editors in the place. I used to be a tape recorder junkie. I would come back from interviews, and spend an inordinate amount of time transcribing full-length interviews. Kevin told me it’s a huge time waster, and I now agree. What I do now (on the advice of Kevin), is to listen for the quotes during an interview --  you’ll know what you need just by listening. At first I didn’t believe him, but I soon realized what he was talking about. For most of the interview, you will probably end up using only one or two quotes from a source. Those are the ones you listen for in an interview, and jot down by hand in your notebook when you get them. Use the tape recorder only as a backup. When you head back to your computer to write the story, you have the quotes you need already written down, and don’t need to waste precious time transcribing lengthy interviews only to retrieve a quote or two.

3. Double, Triple, Quadruple check your facts: The foolproof method.

In an early training session, Kathy English, the Star’s public editor, informed us that the Toronto Star’s core product is not news, but credibility, and accuracy is the core of credibility. It is essential to get your facts right, but of course some things can slip by. A useful method to prevent those mistakes is to print out a physical copy of your finished story, and go through it line by line, highlighting anything that you think could be doubled checked -- names, dates, titles, organizations, street names, quotes, everything. Once that’s done, I go through all the highlighted parts, and double and triple check that I got them right. I sometimes call up sources again to double check their names and titles, I Google and check in the Star archives any names of organizations or facts that may have been referenced in past stories, and so on. Essentially through this method, I’ve been able to catch mistakes (such as the potential embarrassment of misspelling of someone’s last name) before they were able to make it to print or web (Thanks Emily Mathieu for teaching me this tip!)

4. Story ideas come from not where you look, but how you look at your world

Coming up with fresh stories for the paper can be tough. But a good piece of advice I got from Daniel Dale, Edward Goff Penny award winner for best young journalist this year, is that sometimes it’s not about where you look for story ideas, but about training your mind to find them in your existing world. He explained that it’s about being aware of your thoughts as you commute from home for example, and noticing when you think something you’ve seen is amusing or funny. It was through this method that I was able to write a story about mosquitoes, a random thought occurred to me on the topic. I was able to harness that thought into a front page story.

5. Get to know your fellow colleagues and ask for advice

As you can see from the previous four tips, much of what I’ve learned here at the Star came from other journalists, both veterans and relative newcomers. Personally, I never attended journalism school so I knew that there were a lot of practical tips on journalism that I could learn from the other reporters here, many of whom I had read in the paper and admired long before I ever worked here. I reached out to many of them via email, in good morning chats in the elevator, and in cups of coffee during slow news days. After everything I experienced this summer, I sometimes feel the best advice I’ve ever received so far is this comforting one from departing Star legend, assignment editor Nick van Rijn: “Jasmeet, there’s nothing experience can’t fix.”

Jasmeet Sidhu is a recent graduate of University of Toronto in peace and conflict studies. She worked as a summer intern for the Star this year, a radio room intern last summer, and sat on the Star’s community editorial board the summer before that. Follow her on Twitter or email at jsidhu@thestar.ca

Doing journalism the June Callwood way

By Fabiola Carletti

Janet Malcolm was wrong.

In a famously cynical quotation, she decries journalists as people who prey on the vanity, loneliness or ignorance of others, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Every journalist knows this, she asserted, provided they aren't too stupid or full of themselves to notice what is going on.

And although Malcolm is herself a reporter, she calls the profession " morally indefensible" in her 1990 book The Journalist and the Murder.

Enter June Callwood: a decidedly empathetic and socially active journalist who lived her philosophy of kindness until her last days.

This was a woman who actually did all the things that sometimes sound contrived and trite in ethics classes: writing to change the world, speaking up for the vulnerable, afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.

She was interesting and humble, refusing performance makeup in her CBC television days, learning how to fly a plane as a side project, founding charitable and change-oriented organizations, bringing compassion to her work.

She was a professional human being.

I'm not saying Malcolm isn't talented and insightful. I devoured her book with great interest last summer and often felt convinced by her severe depiction of journalism.

Neither am I saying Callwood is the only exception.

The point, I think, is that there comes a time when a young journalist must ask herself what she really wants to achieve in this often amorphous profession and what kind of an agent she imagines herself to be.

Personally, I think it's far more rewarding to follow the June Callwood way.

Instead of the negative navel-gazing, why not focus on how to practice solutions-focused journalism? Malcolm's book is about the damage a writer can do ... but what about the difference a writer can make?

I leave you with a more positive quotation that Callwood spoke while receiving the Writers' Trust Award for Distinguished Contribution in the last year of her life:

If any of you happens to see an injustice, you are no longer a spectator. You are a participant. And you have an obligation to do something.

June in her own words
The last interview of her life

Photo: Naming of June Callwood Way. June pulls the cord to unveil the sign. CREDIT: Ron Bull Toronto Star.

Fabiola Carletti is a Toronto Star radio room reporter and graduate student at the UBC School of Journalism. She wishes she could do cool bike tricks and wasn't so afraid of getting boo-boos. Her digital footprints are all over the internet, but you can learn more about her by reading her blog, or chasing her around on twitter

Google Street View: The Boxer’s BFF

   

By Lauren O’Neil

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself bedridden with what was either the worst summer cold in the history of infectious diseases (take THAT Bubonic plague!) or, a more likely scenario, the after effects of eating one gloomy looking sandwich from a truck stop in Michigan. Word to the wise: it’s never safe to assume that a greenish tinge means 'wasabi mustard'.

Whatever it was that was ailing me, it was ailing me something fierce.

I desperately wanted to escape the confines of my bed to go outside and play, but I could barely get up to grab a can of ginger ale from the fridge without feeling dizzy. I was bored, miserable, and growing less fond of the day's epic Golden Girls marathon by the minute.

So I decided to take a walking tour of Hong Kong.

View Larger Map

 

If someone had told me 20 years ago that in 2010 I’d be able to go open up my laptop and drag a little orange pegman around a world map to view real, 360 degree street-level images of neighbourhoods from Stockholm to Saskatoon, I would have… well, I probably would have said “Neato!” because I was a very open-minded 3-year-old.

I’m sure, however, that many other people would have said “Pish Posh Applesauce!”

It’s crazy, when you think about it – it really is. The time, the planning, the technology, the resources … the brilliance of using vehicles mounted with specialized multi-camera GPS systems to photograph so much of the world around us and make it accessible for everyone with an internet connection to experience ...

Crazier still is how rarely I actually do stop to think about it.

It’s easy to take a technology for granted when it’s embedded into your daily routine. On that note, can we please take a moment to honour the hair straightener and the toothbrush?

*moment*

Back to Street View.

Sure, the service is cool – I can virtually walk down the Champs-Elysées without having to shell out for a plane ticket, I can look at my childhood home and creep on the neighbours (if they happened to be outside when the Google cars came along), and heck – it sure came in handy when I was looking for a place to live in Toronto. Being unfamiliar with the city’s many different boroughs, it was nice to be able to look at an apartment from the outside before driving three hours to find a shoebox wedged between a strip club and a fish market.

But for us in the radio room, and for many reporters in all sorts of roles, I’m sure, Google Street View is more than a handy little hood-scouter or sick day diversion – it’s a fabulous tool that allows us to do our jobs well.

Unfortunately, we don’t always have the luxury of teleporting to say, Markham, when a house explodes to get details from witnesses (not yet, anyways… come onnnn scientists! I believe in you!)

One of the many internet-powered things we CAN do to get the scoop is pull up Google Maps and digitally sniff around the area.

This is particularly useful for new Torontonians like yours truly.

When writing a news story, it’s extremely helpful to know if, say, a fire is raging in a tight residential community as opposed to a storage shed in an industrial area.

A little while back, we'd received word in the newsroom that a protest was taking place outside the Israeli Consulate in downtown Toronto.

One of my editors asked me to find out what was going on. How many people had shown up? Were things getting out of control? Why were they protesting?

The what, where, and why were easy to track down - but police officers I spoke with would give me little over the phone as far as "how many people?" and "how long have they been out there?" were concerned.

So, I took to Google Maps.

A little bit of street viewing revealed that the consulate was in direct view of a trendy hair salon with floor to ceiling glass windows across the front of it. I looked up the salon's phone number and moments later was speaking with a receptionist who was so kind as to actually get three separate opinions from her co-workers as to how many people were out protesting (collectively, they estimated that there were approximately 30 people outside).

She filled me in on when the protesting began and even provided us with some colourful details about creative flags and chants from the crowd.

The protest turned out to be little more than a short-lived peaceful demonstration, but it was nice to know that there were 30 people quietly waving flags instead of 300 people throwing eggs before getting ourselves into a tizzy.

Not everybody embraces Google Street View - there have been some issues raised concerning privacy in the past - but so is the nature of this increasingly connected world we live in.

For all of its faults, Street View has given back to society in spades.

Disagree? Check out one of the many websites dedicated specifically to archiving particularly weird, cool or hilarious Street View captures and I'm sure you'll see the electronically modulated light :)

Lauren O’Neil is a recent graduate of 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.

The importance of keeping contacts

  By Jasmeet Sidhu

  Photo by compujeramey on Flickr.       

After nearly four weeks on my internship at the Toronto Star, I had been keeping all documents of my past stories in my drawer, everything from drafts of stories, to business cards, to crumpled press releases and driving directions.

However, although I am glad I did that, it was only last week did I realize the importance of keeping such documentation of your past stories, and more importantly, how valuable it is organizing your contacts for a past story so that they are easily accessible.

I learned this lesson, not when I needed to retrieve my own contacts, but when I needed some from others. Here are two examples from this past week. I was tasked to cover the Pride Parade this month and instead of wasting precious time googling names and getting generic office numbers for contacts needed for the story such as the head of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, the director of Pride Toronto and so on, I asked fellow reporter and intern Jayme Poisson if she had any contacts from her earlier story when she initially reported on the reversal of the ban to allow QuAIA to participate in the parade. Not only did she give me a complete list of contacts that would be relevant for the story that she had researched, but in most cases, she was able to provide me direct cell phone numbers – extremely valuable in the case of covering a parade.

Another similar case was when I had to write a story about a tree clear-cutting case in Aurora. The story was assembled with contacts from Phinjo Gombu, a reporter here, who had kept contacts for this story from two years ago, and was able to provide me with cell phone numbers of lawyers and others involved in the case. 

Basically, in these two stories and I am sure more to come this summer, a lot of it wouldn’t have come together if it weren’t for the help, and the organization of other reporters to catalogue their past contacts for a story. You’ll never know when you might be required to do a follow-up for a story, when another reporter is working on something similar and needs some contacts, or down the line you would like to give them a call to receive updates or to search for new story ideas.

That’s why now this morning I’ve opened up an excel sheet, and have begun tracking all my contacts for all the stories that I’ve done since starting at the Star: everything from the junior pilot who died at a Buttonville airport, numbers for the family of the fallen Canadian soldier from Nova Scotia, Pride Parade, the mayoral campaign and so on. Perhaps doing this seems obvious to other reporters, and I am late to the game. But it was an important lesson for me as a young journalist, and I really recommend others to do the same as well.  

 Jasmeet Sidhu is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto’s Peace and Conflict Studies program. She is a summer reporter at the Toronto Star. Follow her on Twitteror phone her at the office - 416-945-8604 or drop her an email at jsidhu@thestar.ca

Caught with the G20 protesters as the cops close in

By Joanne Wong

“Trapped between a rock and a hard place, eh?”

So mused a fellow journalist.

I was backed up against the Novotel window, holding up my press pass in one hand, feeling the top of my noggin with the other, facing an unmoving and unsympathetic police line.

And here I was thinking that Saturday nights were supposed to be filled with frivolity and friends.

Silly me. As an 18-year-old who lives with her loving parents and can’t cover stories involving alcohol, June 26 was one of the most blood-pumping days of my life. (Granted, I don’t get out that much.)

I got caught up with the protesters when I was heading back to One Yonge on June 26 after yet another peaceful anti-G20 protest ended in Queen’s Park.

When I saw that the Eaton Centre went into a state of emergency lockdown, I stepped back out onto Dundas, and saw them, clad in black, rushing up Yonge Street.

Then I heard windows being smashed, people hollering, and thought: this just got real. I followed the anarchists up Yonge (along with hundreds of onlookers and journalists), where they took bricks off the sidewalk plantations and threw them at store windows. Trying to snap some pictures, I closed in on the action.

A stray projectile hit my foot as a Good Samaritan pulled me back. (Thank you, kind sir.) Hmm … where was the police?

After that, I stuck around as the protesters congregated near Queen’s Park, where they were met with mounted officers, and others in riot gear.

While I wait for something to happen during the standoff, I snacked on some almonds I bought along the way, saying to myself, wait till my friends hear about how cool my job is.

And man, my amateur photography has really gotten marginally better! I observed as the police and the protesters engaged in some mutual screaming and pushing, which eventually evolved into a cat-and-mouse game, whereby the protesters decided to continue their march along Bloor, then headed south on Yonge again.

Oh great, it started raining. Things came to a head on the Esplanade at around 10 p.m. as the crowd, now considerably smaller, sat in front of the Novotel, where the French G20 delegation was said to be staying.

At this point, I’ve been out for eight hours sans food, and the glowing Old Spaghetti Factory neon sign looked as welcoming as ever.

Some French-speaking, suit-wearing individuals came outside to see what the excitement was all about. And they all whipped out their cigarettes.

The delegation was smoking, the protesters were smoking -- I tried to get away from the carcinogens by maneuvering myself toward the building.

Then the police line closed in. People from the crowd were being grabbed, one-by-one, by police officers. “They’re going to arrest everyone” seems to be the general consensus among those gathered.

Wait, what? But I’m with the media …

My colleague Jenny Yang called to give me the digits of editors to call in case I got arrested. I wrote them on my arm.

“Are we really going to arrest everyone?” asked a neighbouring officer to his comrade in (literal) arms.

As I held up my press pass toward the police, an officer grabbed said laminated piece of paper and called the office to confirm that I was indeed a reporter with the Toronto Star.

Thank you, Maddy in the radio room, for guesstimating my height and hairstyle correctly.

“You’re a summer intern?” asked my interrogator. “It’s my third week there, yeah.” I replied.

At the end, I was told that I didn’t have the appropriate clearance to be there, and they were kicking me out. I couldn’t get out fast enough.

When I got back to the haven that is One Yonge Street, the only thing anyone said was, “You didn’t get detained?”. Or “I thought you were in prison.” Thanks, guys.

Joanne Wong is indeed a summer intern at the Toronto Star. And yes, that was how her third week ended.

A reporter's life is a lot of hurry up and wait

By Jasmeet Sidhu

I have never driven in downtown Toronto.

Yes, I have a license and have roamed the wide-open streets in my parents' car in Mississauga since I was 16, but until Sunday, I had never driven in the city centre with its one-way streets, no left turn at certain hours, jay-walking pedestrians, construction and other maniacal drivers squeezed onto the roads of Toronto.

But that’s what I had to do when I was sent on assignment Sunday to drive to Woodbine beach to cover mayoral candidate George Smitherman’s news conference on a new waterfront policy. And I am not going to lie -- I was nervous. Not about the reporting part, but the driving part.

Did I mention I’ve never been on the Gardiner Expressway? Ever?

So taking the “Star car” as they are known, vehicles on loan for reporters to drive to stories, I drove for the first time onto the streets of Toronto while profusely sweating (though I’m pretty sure that was in part to the 30+ degree weather outside and not just nerves). I made it to Woodbine beach (which from the Star building is pretty straightforward), thanking my lucky stars, when I realized that I had given my thanks too early.

The Woodbine beach parking lot was full.

The news conference started at 3 p.m. It was 2:45. Panicking, I drove to a nearby parking lot. That was full. I drove through some residential streets. All street parking was full.

2:50 p.m.

Finally, I saw a guy on a bike with a sign that said “parking”. He said that he would let me park in his driveway for $10. I only had $5. He swore at me and biked away.

2:56 p.m.

In sheer desperation and colossal fear that I would miss the news conference and face the wrath of my assignment editors, I raced into a parking lot and created my own parking spot, so to speak. I would surely get a ticket. But at least I wouldn’t miss Smitherman.

Running to Woodbine beach with my tape recorder in hand, I arrived and see no one official looking, no cameras, just regular beach dwellers taking a dip. I panicked some more. Did I already miss it? A volunteer wearing a George Smitherman purple campaign button flagged me down. Apparently George was running late, and the news conference had been moved to 4 p.m.

Great.

But at least that gave me time to find a legal parking spot. And maybe an ice-cream.

A story on the press conference did make it to page 2 of the Greater Toronto section on Monday. But reading the story, I laughed about how many readers won’t know the terror of the reporter in navigating the streets and physically getting to the story in the end.

Jasmeet Sidhu is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto’s Peace and Conflict Studies program. She is a summer reporter at the Toronto Star. Follow her on Twitter or phone her at the office - 416-945-8604 or drop her an email at jsidhu@thestar.ca