No story is too big for Toronto Star reporting interns

 

                                                                                                            Photo by Lucas Oleniuk, TorontoStar
Toronto Star reporters Jesse McLean, Jennifer Yang and Jayme Poisson.

                    

By Aleysha Haniff

Jennifer Yang waited quietly in the shadows cast by bonfires and floodlights in the cool desert night.
She was riveted by the sight of men working to free Florencio Avalos, one of 33 miners trapped 700 metres underground in a devastating collapse of a gold and copper mine in northern Chile's Atacama Desert in August 2010.
By Yang's side was Violeta Avalos Silva. They waited as Silva's brother, Florencio Avalos, became the first miner hauled to safety.
The rescue at the San Jose mine had played out in the world spotlight for more than two months.
Camp Hope, the tent city that had sprung up during the rescue, was crammed with eager reporters and in the  twilight of the mid-October night they mobbed the Avalos family as the family waited for Florencio Avalos to be freed.
But not Yang.
The 27-year-old reporter, fresh from a year in the Toronto Star intern program, had bided her time and persuaded Silva to be interviewed away from the media storm.
Together in the shadows, the two women kept vigil, Silva holding her young daughter in her arms.
The mood was anxious, tense.
And then Silva turned to Yang, her eyes gleaming with tears as she saw her brother emerge from what could have been his grave.
“I don’t think I’ve ever experienced so much emotion while covering a story before,” Yang said.
Her story explaining how the rescue worked won a National Newspaper Award, May 13. The award is one of the most prestigious in Canadian journalism.
Foreign reporting is not that unusual for young reporters at the Toronto Star.
In February, one-year intern Jayme Poisson, 27, travelled to Cairo and chronicled a democratic uprising that would rock the Middle East.
Poisson remembers one emotionally charged scene in the crowd.
Wael Ghonim spent 12 days blindfolded in detention, unaware that Egyptians had died for the cause he had started on Facebook and Twitter. When he was released, supporters poured into Tahrir Square and Ghonim’s cousin grabbed Poisson by the arm, pulling her from the jumble of people onto a makeshift stage.
Poisson stood by Ghonim’s side as he addressed the roaring, jubilant crowd.
Cairo was Poisson's first foreign assignment and the stakes were high.
“It feels like incredible crushing pressure because it feels like you’re competing with the world.”
As Poisson returned from Egypt, 23-year-old Jesse McLean was off to Bahrain to cover that country's bloody revolt.
McLean walked among corpses peppered with shells at a hospital, looking through medical charts to learn the names of the dead.
At one point, Lucas Oleniuk, a Star photographer in Bahrain with McLean, had to dodge bullets powerful enough to pierce metal lampposts.
Oleniuk was a one-year photo department intern in 2003.
McLean, one of Yang's 'classmates' in the one-year intern program, was sent to Haiti to cover the earthquake that overwhelmed the island in January 2010. He was just four months into the one-year program at the time.
Yang and McLean are two of five reporters who completed the one-year internship in September 2010.
Both say the day-to-day grind of the program helped them get the job done when they covered history in the making.
Each September, the Toronto Star brings a fresh group of young journalists into the newsroom, where they spend time in a number of departments including city, business, living and photography. The program is open to journalists under 30 who have never held a  full-time, permanent staff position at a Canadian daily newspaper.
Yang said the Star’s emphasis on professional development drew her to the program. The interns would regularly have sessions on anything from filling out freedom of information requests to figuring out the  court system.
One of her favourites? Walking through the city with the Star’s Christopher Hume as he filled them in on the architecture and history of Toronto’s core.

Aleysha Haniff is a reporter in the Star's radio room. She recently finished her last year of journalism school at Ryerson University. Follow her on Twitter

Star intern named Loyalist College photographer of the year

                                                                 Galit Rodan

By Jenni Dunning

Suffering from a ‘Bambi’ complex, the last thing Galit Rodan wanted to see was a dead deer.

So naturally, she saw four.

The carcasses hung upside-down at the farmhouse of a family of hunting enthusiasts she was set to interview for a story that day.

Instead of bolting, the photojournalist – who is joining the Star as a radio room reporter later this month – pulled out her camera and started shooting.

Two nearby cows stared wide-eyed at the carcasses, as Rodan snapped their terrified photographs.

It was one of the 28-year-old’s first photojournalism assignments – and the scared cows make it one of her favourites of her career so far.

“The cow in the back totally makes the photo for me, but she’s far off and pretty small ... so it’s not in my portfolio,” she said. “But it’s still a ‘cult favourite.’”

Rodan, a self-proclaimed photography addict, won the Loyalist College photographer of the year award last week. She credits her hard work and passion for the win. 

The award is based on overall work from entries made throughout the year.

“I shot often, not just for assignments, and tried to cover diverse subject matter. I got lucky with some great subjects and always tried to make my own luck,” said Rodan, a second-year Loyalist photojournalism student.

Yannick Tona was just four years old when the Rwandan genocide began in 1994. He has since dedicated himself to raising awareness about the Rwandan genocide and to eliminating hatred and advocating for human rights through organizations such as Aegis Students Rwanda. (Galit Rodan)

Editors and photojournalists, including the Star’s Steve Russell, judge the entrants’ work. Along with the title of year’s best photographer, winners get a camera vest or bag and a $120 gift card for Henry’s camera store.

Rodin took an unconventional step as a photojournalist by accepting a job in the Star’s radio room. She will not leave the newsroom – spending entire shifts in one room to write about breaking news.

“I will be developing a news gathering skill set that I haven’t really had the opportunity to work on yet ... making myself a more well-rounded photojournalist,” she said.

“I love telling stories and I think I can only benefit by working on my ability to do so in a number of different media. I think the Star will be a great place for me to grow.”


A protester is run over by a group of mounted police who were using their horses to help riot police clear a dwindling crowd out of Queen's Park. (Galit Rodan)

FAST FACTS: Galit Rodan

• Favourite photographer: Eugene Richards
• Place she learned to use a DSLR: Africa
• Hometown: Born in Montreal, grew up in Toronto, lives in Kingston
• Other education: Religious studies B.A. from Queen’s University
• Languages: Fluent in Hebrew
• A word on photography: “There are no limits on what you can capture and where you can take it. I also love how it’s brought me into the lives of other people.”

Kiteboarders on Lake Ontario take advantage of warm weather and strong winds on Oct. 8, 2010, as windmills on Wolfe Island loom in the background. (Galit Rodan)

Jenni Dunning is a web editor in the one-year intern program at the Star. Follow her on Twitter.

Those darn kids and their democratic rights

By Fabiola Carletti

"Are you all students?" said the blond woman with the clipboard, gawking at us as we waited in line.

 

On April 22nd, my peers and I were among the first citizens to show up outside St. Anselm's Anglican Church, the advanced polling site for Vancouver Quadra.

"Well," said the organizer in a huff, "this may take a while. You're an anomaly."
We furrowed our brows but nodded politely. The wait, the registration, the whole - uh, you know - democratic process was perfectly fine by us. We didn't just take a wrong turn on our way to the campus pub.

The woman walked in and out of the church, reminding us a few more times that this voting thing can take a while. She shooed us away from the door so that "the voters" would be able to get in and out. (Don't mind us obstacles!) She walked alongside us and checked our identification, making small comments that implied there might be a problem with this document or that oath.

I looked around for the hidden camera. Surely, this was some sort of joke. We were a group of young voters, not mutant octopi wearing top hats.

Although the woman eventually settled down and even smiled at us, I couldn't help but think of Rick Mercer's now-infamous rant.

“If you're between the ages of 18 and 25, and you want to scare the hell out of the people who run the country, do the unexpected, take 20 minutes out of your day and do what young people all over the world are dying to do -- Vote!"

  

Inside the church, another woman pulled a bit of a John Baird when I mentioned the concept of a vote mob - a contingent of young people who get together for a non-partisan celebration of our right and intention to vote. 

Vote mobs have been sprouting up on campuses across Canada. Young people have unfurled banners with messages like: "surprise! we're voting" or "apathy is too mainstream for me" or "impress us."

Many of the vote mob videos feature students running through campus with signs that showcase their issues, which include everything from climate change and queer rights to pension plans and arts & culture funding. Oh, yeah, affordable tuition is in there too -- but we're not one trick ponies.

Other voices are joining the conversation, creating videos for just about every disposition. Raffi, a singer-songwriter we grew up listening to, tells us that we are "grown up Belugas" now, and we should vote for the Canada we want to see. Mr. Lahey from the Trailer Park Boys mocks us, saying us "shit weasels" and "dick weeds" will probably stay home (just a bit of reverse psychology, followed by alcoholic bribes). The largely youth-run Leadnow.ca has a website dedicated to engaging an informed and respectful electorate. In their declaration for change, they state:

It's time to move beyond today's political division and short-term thinking, and get to work on the shared challenges of our time.

But alongside the playful and positive encouragement, there's also resistance and condescension.

 

Michael Taube, columnist and former speech writer for Stephen Harper, seems to think it's appropriate to call us circus clowns and holy terrors. In his article "Vote Mob Mentality" he argues that we should stay home, lest we jeopardize the prospect of a stable Conservative majority. He goes on to say:

Voting participation is way down in this country; in 2008, it hit a record low of 58.8 per cent. If more people, and especially more young people, were willing to vote on a more regular basis, the numbers would surely go up. But if vote mobs are ever considered to be a viable method of increasing political participation, I would much rather keep the numbers as low as they are.

Uh - what? What does Mr. Taube have against the joys of collective citizenship?

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but: (1) not all older folk favour the incumbent, and they're not all well-informed and mature. (2) There are many extremely articulate and thoughtful youth -- including the diplomatic Awish Aslam -- and not all the young voters* go for "fringe parties."

(*A note on that last link: its conclusion is based on a larger poll of 1000 Canadians, but does not indicate how many of them were young. Seems far too small a sample-within-a-sample to warrant such a bold headline.)

Anyway, despite the condescension at the polls that day, I had a great time with my peers.

We had respectful discussions about the kind of country we want to live in, and pass on to the "darn kids" of tomorrow.

Personally, I think everyone needs to remember that all Canadians -- regardless of age, gender, income, political stripe, etc -- are worth more than the sum of their votes.

Our destiny as a nation is a shared one. It's time we started acting like it.

In the meantime, all we're askin,' is for a little respect ...

Watch all the vote mob videos here.
Or check out some of my favourites below:

 

  

  

 

Fabiola Carletti is a former Toronto Star radio room reporter and a graduate student at the UBC School of Journalism. 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. 

Photo Credit: My lovely "votingent," friends who joined me at the polls on April 22nd. Shot on my iPhone.

 

 

From a single tweet . . .

By Sarah Millar

As they say, the times, they are a-changin'.

It used to be that as journalists, people would have to feed us information, make us privvy to something we didn't know. Sure, journalists still had to come up with story ideas and find stories on their own, but more often than not, journalists were given information — or pieces of information — and they had to follow up.

Nowadays, we live in an era of Facebook, Twitter and blogging where information is everywhere. It could be argued that nowadays we are inundated with information — there's so much of it coming at us at once. And, while social media can pose problems at times, it can also be a great place to find story ideas.

Sometimes as a journalist, you have to seek those ideas out by combing through the social web. But other times, the stories fall into your lap by happenstance.

For me, this could not have been more evident than this week when I broke a story because I follow John Stamos on Twitter. (Yes, I freely, and publicly, am admitting: I follow John Stamos on Twitter, but that's another blog post for another day.)

It was Monday and, as it always was, my Twitter feed was running in the background as I did my daily duties. I glanced at the pop ups when I could. But there was one tweet that caught my eye and I read it right away. It was a retweet from Stamos' account: some girl wanted tickets to his show this week in Niagara Falls. Stamos told her he'd give her two.

I read it a couple of times and at first came away with what a lucky girl this Natalie Léger was. But then my journalistic skills kicked in.

"I wonder who this girl is," I thought.

I clicked on her account, bringing up her profile. As it turns out, she goes to Ryerson.

Suddenly, this was no longer a decent deed done by a cool celebrity, this was a potential story.

I quickly informed my editor, who gave me the go ahead to write it. I contacted Léger via Facebook and Twitter, we set up an interview for that afternoon. Then I quickly tracked down Stamos' publicist to confirm what I was reading.

By 4 p.m., the story was posted on the website and the coolest thing happened: I got to watch as a story that I found — that I broke — made its way through the social web. And it was fascinating.

What really interests me about this story is how 10 years ago, Léger (or someone in the know) would have contacted the Star about her story. There's even a chance that no one would have contacted the press, and Léger would have gone to the concert as if it were just another show.

But instead, because of one single tweet, the Star contacted her (the first in a long line of media requests she got because of the Star's story).

So while many working journalists use Twitter and Facebook to find sources for stories they are already working on, sometimes stories can be found on social media in a way you never expected or anticipated.

And sometimes those stories come when you follow John Stamos on Twitter.

(Photo: John Stamos poses with Natalie Léger, who got to meet the Star after he saw a tweet of hers on Twitter earlier this week. Photo courtesy of Natalie Léger)

Sarah Millar is a web editor in the one-year intern program at the Star. You can usually find her tweeting up a storm.

Former Star interns win NNA nominations

By Alexandra MacAulay Abdelwahab

When nominations for the Canada's coveted National Newspaper Awards were announced Monday, March 21 two of the The Star's 16 nominations were for former reporting interns.
Jennifer Yang and Raveena Aulakh helped win the Star top spot with more nominations this year than any other paper in the country.

Yang, who finished the one-year internship program in September, was nominated in the explanatory work category for her article on the effort to save 33 Chilean miners trapped underground for 69 days.

Aulakh, a one-year intern in 2008, was recognized in the international reporting category for her stories on the emigration of young men from Punjab villages  to the West.

Here is what they had to say about the nomination:

Jennifer Yang:

What were you nominated for?
An explanatory feature I wrote on the rescue of the 33 trapped Chilean miners.

How does it feel?
It feels great and a little surreal. I'm still getting over the fact that I got to go to Chile in the first place!

Do you think your time in the Star intern program helped you get this nomination?

Definitely. I learned so many skills, and gained so much confidence, during my year interning at the Star. I'm not sure I could've pulled off this assignment without that year under my belt.

Raveena Aulakh:

What were you nominated for?

The nomination is for International Reporting for a series of stories dealing with immigration issues. The lead story was about life of women and seniors in Punjab villages, which are bereft of young men -- they have left to seek a better life in the West.
The exodus of thousands of young men from Punjab villages was a story that had never been told. We have always written stories about the impact of immigration on Canada; what happens when immigrants arrive in a new country and how they cope. What no one had written about was what do they leave behind: empty villages, insecure women and seniors and dozens of social problems. I knew and understood the story because I was born and raised in India and I had seen it play out many times in villages in Punjab. I could ask probe and ask questions that others could not.

How does it feel?
It feels really good because a) it is my first such nomination in Canada, and b) it's a validation of the faith many, many editors have in me.

Do you think your time in the Star intern program helped you get this nomination?

The Star's intern program is the best possible training ground where interns are trusted with the biggest and best stories. Anyone who can pull off that one very, very busy year can do anything. Seriously.

 

Alexandra MacAulay Abdelwahab is an intern in the radio room. She is finishing up her fourth year of journalism at Ryerson. You can follow her on Twitter

What you need to learn from Social Media Week Toronto 2011

 By Marina Arnaout
 
“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.” – Erik Qualman

So how well do you do it?
This week, social media experts from all over the world gathered in nine cities connecting people, content, and conversation around emerging trends in social and mobile media. It was a fantastic event and definitely worthy of attendance. However, if your schedule didn’t allow you to sneak out of the office, don’t worry – this is why we’re here.  

Here are some of the summary points and what you need to know to stay ahead in 2011.

1. Online video

Online video is not a new phenomenon; however, what’s new about this avenue is that it is increasingly everywhere. The bar has been set high for the level of consumer interaction and this must include valuable interactive video. Video engagement is continuously increasing and in October alone, 5.4 billion videos were viewed - 2 billion of which were on Facebook. Brands and consumers rely on video to provide information that is not present elsewhere in social media, making it a critical component in shaping people’s perception about companies and each other.

2. Mobile Marketing

In 2010 infrastructure, technology and design finally intersected in the mobile world and for the first time smartphone sales overpowered the sales of desktops and laptops. Companies need an iphone application to keep up with their consumers and to be available when consumers need them. In 2010, iPhone and iPad applications were downloaded more than 7 billion times and that serves as a great indicator that consumers are willing to engage.  In 2011, mobile users will interact with content, companies and the Web more on their phones and iPads than on their computers. From shopping on the go, to paperless transactions, to watching (and creating) videos – mobile media is instant, portable and personalized.
 
3. Location

Although location falls into the mobile marketing avenue, it deserves its own mention. Advertisers are able to take advantage of mobile platforms that let them reach consumers at critical points (eg. moments just before they make an in-store purchase). Being able to reach a customer on the go or near the point of sale can be a very powerful mechanism for brands looking to connect with potential audience. Location will increase in popularity as people get more comfortable checking in to a business and when brands offer more enticing offers. Again, you must offer value to your consumers so that they feel comfortable enough to associate themselves with your brand through their social media profiles. This includes in depth analysis of market trends, monitoring behavior and coming up with creative ways in establishing that connection. This “mobile meets loyalty” approach enhances the social experiences, and inspires new audiences.

4. Deal Hunting

As consumer expectations rise, you must be able to offer them something different while still making a profit. Services like Groupon provide an instant ability to share deals. Expect this to continue over the next couple of years with copy cat services and the big players rolling in to more territories and rolling out better and more extensive deals. This yet again serves as an opportunity to both reward your most loyal customers as well as attract new clientele who may discover you through a daily deal. Expect to see special sales, tickets, and discounts as well as combinations of promotions with similar services (dinner and a movie anyone?). However, if you do decide to go down the deal hunting avenue, make sure you don’t over exhaust the consumer. 
 

5. Monitoring conversations

The internet breaks barriers between brands and people, as well as people and people. It is a fact that 78% of consumers trust peer reviews and only 14% trust advertisements this is why it’s crucial to be involved in your community and have a good reputation. What are people saying about your brand? About 25% of search results for the top 20 brands linked to user generated content – the control you have over what people say saying is limited so it is up to you to nourish these relationships. The number one way to get people saying positive things is through over delivering on your product or service. However, you must also encourage the conversation through social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, industry publications and media. Monitor the conversation, join in on the conversation, help and show your customers that you care. In return, this will only increase loyalty.
 
The social media trends that arise are unlimited and we as people influence their success and failures. So while everyone is waiting for Twitter to monetize, Google to fail with another platform, or for an explanation of what augmented reality really does – we need to ask ourselves what enables our success, jeopardizes our performance and how we want to shape the years to come.
 
 
Marina Arnaout comes from a marketing communications background with expertise in variety of mediums ranging from TV to out-of-home advertising. Finding her niche in the digital realm, she is a frequent contributor to industry publications often covering social marketing and media trends. For more, follow Marina on Twitter @marinarn.

Does this make me the worst web editor in the world?

 

Last week at a journalist outing, a colleague relayed how it wasn't too long ago that journalism students and interns were hesitant to do online-only work.

As far as they were concerned, it wasn't "really" published if it didn't appear in the paper.

That's when I got a twinge in my stomach.

As a web editor, I pride myself on working online. Live-blogging, tweeting, Googling, I can do it all and bring it together in a nice package. I love working in the digital world and think I'd find print a very different place to navigate now — even though I've just been working online for four months.

But when a story I've written gets published in the paper, I get really excited.

I don't want to say it's because my stories are "really" published when they're in the paper, because I know they're "really" published once they appear on thestar.com. But having them in the paper means I can bring them to show my nana, who doesn't have the Internet.

It's just a small minority of the stories I've written so far that have appeared in print, which is likely a good thing. After all, my hope chest is only so big, and it already contains dozens of newspapers from over the years that I've had some small part in creating — whether it be an article I wrote, a picture I took, a headline I crafted or a page I designed.

After I came home with my second article published in the newspaper, my boyfriend looked at me and then to the two copies of the entire Toronto Star from that day I held in my hand.

"Are you going to do that everytime this happens?" he asked.

"What if I just keep the section?" I bargained.

He agreed and hasn't brought it up since. (Though, truth be told, I haven't shown him what I've brought home since.)

When I saw my latest story published in the paper this week, before doing a little happy dance inside, I wondered if getting excited really did make the worst web editor in the world.

But here's the thing: I don't think it does.

If anything, I think my reaction to getting published in the paper illustrates why newspapers won't vanish completely, no matter what the Internet throws their way.

Not only because of people like me that like to read them, but because newspapers offer something the Internet can't. Keeping hold of a moment in time.

For example, I have the a copy of the Ottawa Citizen from the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 — before the World Trade Center was hit. I bought the paper that day because I happened to have an article in it. Now, I have a piece of time of what the world was like pre-9/11. It's really neat to leaf through and see what was "news" before the tragedy. (Remember Chandra Levy? The shark attacks?)

Then the world changed. When the afternoon extra edition of the Citizen came out, I grabbed one of those. I still have that copy, too. I also have the Star from the one-year anniversary of the attacks.

I just can't see keeping a website favourited or in my bookmarks to remember an event that happened in the world that I lived through. It's not the same as keeping a copy of a newspaper, seeing it age and remembering how you felt the first time you heard about what happened, or read the words in the paper.

The web may be able to allow me to do almost whatever I want it to, but it can't do that. And I don't think it ever will.

Thinking that doesn't make me a bad web editor, it makes me a hopeful journalist.

Sarah Millar is a web editor in the one-year intern program at the Star. You can usually find her tweeting up a storm.

How not to break news: Lessons from Giffords' momentary death

I had just sat down at the lone computer in a busy hostel in Zagreb, Croatia when a young man in the lobby got a shocking text from a friend. "Michael Jackson is dead," he announced to the room full of fellow travelers, staring in disbelief at his phone.

United in our curiosity, a group of strangers gathered around me as I hurriedly typed the singer's name into Google. Together, we pored over each detail as I clicked on story after story, constantly refreshing the search page. We wanted every single bit of information, and we wanted it instantly.

I can't help but recall this scene every time there's major breaking news, like Saturday's shooting of U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. After such an event, people rush to computers, scroll through Twitter and news sites on smartphones, and crank up TVs and radios, eager for the very latest.

We're in an age where it's not only possible to know breaking news moments after it occurred, it's expected. But as technology and social media change how people get news, the journalist's ever-present balancing act between accuracy and speed has become increasingly difficult.

This is far from a new observation, yet we continue to see grave errors made by supposedly reliable media. Erroneous reports of Giffords' death are just the latest examples of media jumping on a story without verifying the facts: CNN, Reuters and NPR were all claiming the congresswoman had been killed, when in fact she is expected to recover.

To its credit, NPR issued a swift and earnest explanation. "Already all of us at NPR News have been reminded of the challenges and professional responsibilities of reporting on fast-breaking news at a time and in an environment where information and misinformation move at light speed," wrote Dick Meyer, executive editor of NPR News. "We learn, we redouble our efforts and dedication and move forward with our best efforts for the millions who rely on us every day."

Here Meyer speaks to the irony of mainstream media trying to keep up with instant communication the Internet allows. Social media like Twitter can be fantastic sources of news, but they can also be echo chambers of misinformation. It is precisely these scenarios that allow outlets like CNN and NPR to prove their true worth as verifiers of information, and capitalize on the fact that many people still won't believe it until they hear from a trusted news source.

Instead, news outlets are trying to win the speed game, even though they don't stand a chance against everyone on scene taking photos, tweeting and updating statuses - then everyone circulating this information. The sooner journalists and editors understand that their currency has become truth and analysis - not necessarily being first on the story - the sooner talk of the death of traditional media will itself die. There will always be a demand for verified information, not in spite of advancements in technology and social media, but increasingly, because of them.

Media should always aim to get news out in a timely manner. But if it comes at the expense of accuracy, everyone huddled around computers from Arizona to Zagreb won't soon forget it.

Wendy Gillis is in her final year of study in the master of journalism program at Ryerson University. Follow her (hopefully truthful tweets) on Twitter.

Five New Year's resolutions for journalists

By Sarah Millar

I'll be the first to tell you no one in my profession is perfect. Journalists are only human after all, and as such are prone to making mistakes.

However, that doesn't give us a free pass to make them. Nor do I see any reason why, as journalists, we cannot better ourselves. So, for those who have yet to make them, here are five New Year's resolutions journalists should make in 2011.

1. You are what you tweet
Twitter can be used for many wonderful things, but it can also sadly be a career-killer. For some, it's tweeting an opinion that can get them into trouble (like CNN's Octavia Nasr who was canned after tweeting she was "sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot."). Journalists must remember what you say on Twitter is public. Then there are the premature death reports: Like Gordon Lightfoot or Pat Burns' premature death. In today's media-saturated world, we all want to be first. But it's better to be right than first.

2. I will spell check before I post
Another thing that can be filed under the "better to be right than first." Everyone makes typos, and they're especially easy to make when you're banging away on a story that's breaking that your web editor wants like right now! and you're typing like a madman. Do us all a favour, if you don't have time for someone else to edit it, at least let your spell checker do its job. There's no need for foolish mistakes.

3. I will talk to real people
Social media is a wonderful invention. It's given journalists an unprecedented way to find sources. However, too many use it as their only source. Social-media sourcing can never replace leaving the newsroom and talking to people on the street (sometimes you stumble into a story you never expected when you report it the old-fashioned way). Sure, there are the online reaction stories that call for Twitter and Facebook quoting, but if it's about a murder, go talk to the neighbours face-to-face.

4. I will find something to do that's not work
It's not just journalists bringing their work home with them, people in every profession are finding it hard to leave it behind. A New York Times article from last August said multitasking is causing more journalists to burn out younger than ever before. So in 2011, turn off the BlackBerry and do something outside of the office. It could be joining a sports league, or starting a class in a subject that interests you. Whatever it is, it's three hours a week that you can make just yours. Three hours where you aren't on your email and on call. You'll be a better journalist if you're refreshed.

5. Join the conversation
Are you on Twitter? Facebook? Tumblr? Do you blog? If not, why not make 2011 the year you start? The web is the future of our industry, so you better catch on if you want to hang on. Older journos, this applies to you as much as to the young journalists out there. Think it's too much to grasp? Have someone who gets it and already does it walk you through it. We web-types are quite friendly, if I do say so myself. As for younger journalists? If you don't have a full-time writing gig yet, blogging is a great way to keep writing while you work away at your day job. And keep it up even after you get that coveted full-time job — writing for yourself can be a great escape from the deadline pressures of work.

Sarah Millar is a web editor in the one-year intern program at the Star. While she won't friend you on Facebook, her Twitter account is open to the public.

You can't misspell DUMBBELL and come out feeling good

(Please note: Instead of correcting the mistakes detected in this blog post, I'm bolding everything that the wordpress proofreader underlines. Believe me, it'll take all of my willpower to avoid correcting the errors, but I need to know if this exercise will result in rehabilitation or public shaming.)

 

"Of course I can spell -- I'm a goddamn journalist."

Those sound like famous last words, don't they?

Well, either way, it's what I said to myself before the phone-administered spelling test I took today (the second part of an interview process for a summer reporting job at the Star). In hindsight, the comment was a perfect example of delusionary self-aggrandizing.

Alright, I'm being somewhat melodramatic. I did okay (got about 70%) - but that's not the crappy part. What sucks is that (a) I thought I'd do really well and (b) I misspelled relatively simple words like "dumbbell" and "ingenious." (I know. I know.) 

To be honest, I didn't even think to peruse the dictionary, nor did I google "commonly misspelled words." I figured the lexical litmus test would be both accurate and favourable. (<---But proofreader, I'm Canadian! We're in favour of the 'u'! )

Now, I kind of feel like a chef's apprentice who burned the souffle (<---phew! I was unsure about that one as I typed!)

The point: I guess I never really stopped to think about how much of my grammatical prowess is computer-generated.

  Those squiggly red lines and check-marked buttons are trusted allies that I'm sure many of us take for granted.  I frequently google things that I'm certain I'm messing up, but I don't worry because a friendly "Did you mean ...?" will link me to my properly-spelled destination.

Not too long ago, I started to hand-write a letter and then decided to type it up and print it out instead. Why? Because it's easier to click "accept change" than it is to track down that ancient substance called white-out. Also "does that look right?" is probably not something you should be asking yourself every three sentences.

(As you've probably noticed, this exercise isn't getting me anywhere. It is, after all, a self-administered test ... and I'm [sub]consciously shying away from things I can't spell.)

Dang it.

Well, I guess I can find solace in the fact that proofreaders aren't always helpful (See the blog: DAMN YOU, AUTO CORRECT!) and that I will be filing my stories on a trusty computer.

Still, if I ever get stranded on a remote island and I put my memoirs in a bottle for posterity, please have someone look them over -- lest I be remembered as a sub-par speller.

In closing, if these kids can recover from their mishaps, so can I!

 

 

 

Fabiola Carletti is a former Toronto Star radio room reporter and graduate student at the UBC School of Journalism. 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. 

Photo Credit: Contemplating the dumbbells. Photo by Jen and Tony Bot on Flickr