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.

Mexican journalist wins Massey Fellowship

"I’m very, very excited with a lot of hope in a better future"

 

                Luis Horacio Nájera winner of CJFE Journalism Fellowship at Massey College.

 

By Cynthia Vukets

It’s a step in the right direction for Luis Horacio Nájera.

The Mexican journalist who fled to Canada with his wife and children after receiving death threats from drug cartels has won this year’s Scotiabank/CJFE Journalism Fellowship at Massey College in Toronto. The bursary is given each year to a mid-career journalist from Latin America and the Caribbean. Luis said he is the first Mexican to receive it.

“I’m very, very excited with a lot of hope in a better future,” he tells me from Vancouver, where he is currently living with his wife and three kids. They have applied for permanent residency status.

I was disappointed in December when Luis won the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression International Journalism Award and in his acceptance speech mentioned how he has to work as a janitor to support his family because he can’t find a job in the media.

It felt wrong that after being honoured at a swanky dinner at Toronto’s Royal York Hotel in front of hundreds of major players in the Canadian journalism world, Luis would fly home to Vancouver and pick up a broom as if nothing had changed. Couldn’t someone in that vast and well-connected crowd have known of an entry-level opportunity? Or created one?

Hopefully the Massey program will help him hone his written English and get used to Canadian work culture, which seem to be the major barriers to him finding work as a journalist.
“It will be hard because there’s a bunch of Canadian citizens with perfect English,” looking for jobs in journalism, he said. “I hope I can build a strong network of contacts and friends.”

Before running for his life and ending up in Canada, Luis worked for Reforma, a Mexican daily. He covered corruption and the drug trade in and around Ciudad Juarez – one of the most notorious regions for drug violence in Mexico. He began practicing journalism in 1989, working for a few years in the sports department before beginning his coverage of the drug wars. About 20 years later he fled the country, but still has a wealth of knowledge of the region and the ongoing conflict over drugs bound for the States and Canada.

“I have experience, so I hope I can use that experience in Canada,” he said.
I hope so too, and look forward to seeing his byline in a Canadian paper or magazine.

Cynthia Vukets is a journalist in the Star's one-year intern program.

Mentorships matter, top editors agree

By Shauna Rempel

Mentor relationships are crucial in newsrooms, say top editors in three of Canada's major newspapers.

During a panel discussion at the recent CAJ conference, editors from the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail and Postmedia were asked about the role that mentorship plays in the newsroom.

The mentor-mentee relationship, while important, can get overlooked in the hustle and bustle of a newsroom ever striving to do more with less.

But the panel, made up of Globe editor-in-chief John Stackhouse, Star executive editor Murdoch Davis and Postmedia senior Vice-President Scott Anderson, agreed that the mentorship of younger journalists is vital to the continued development of not only the mentee but the mentor as well.

Davis noted that mentoring can work both ways in the newsroom. "The mentoring becomes a two-way thing. Certainly there are more  people coming in to newsrooms in the last handful of years who have the multimedia skills, already have the social media skills and can really demonstrate how to use that -- how to use Twitter or information gathering for source location, all kinds of things like that," Davis said. "There's a lot of interesting cross-pollination that goes on. "

Stackhouse agreed, adding, "It's critical and generally well-received to create mentors relationshipsin whatever structure works best in your newsroom so that more experienced reporters and as well as editors are able to guide the younger ones."

The Toronto Star's internship programs include mentorship opportunities for journalists joining the newsroom. Interns are paired with one or more experienced journalists who can share their knowledge over a coffee, beer or even via email. Interestingly enough, many interns find that in addition to their official mentor(s), they might develop a similar unofficial relationship with other journalists in the newsroom. These relationships, official or otherwise, can endure long after the contract ends.

Read more about the Star's internship programs.

Watch a raw video of the panel discussion, courtesy of Ellin Bessner from Centennial College.   

 

Shauna Rempel is a former Toronto Star one-year intern and currently helps co-ordinate the Star's internship programs. Follow her on Twitter.

Toronto Star honours future newshounds

 

 

The students gathered after the awards ceremony to show off their plaques. Photo by Kate Allen/TorontoStar

 

The future of Canadian journalism is in good hands, if the students singled out on Thursday are any indication. More than 100 budding reporters, photographers, and editors assembled at the Star's printing facilities in Vaughan for the Toronto Star High School Newspaper Awards, which have recognized the best in high school journalism since 1995.

Click to read the rest of the article by yearlong intern (and former HSNA winner) Kate Allen.

 

See below for a full list of the winners:

2011 TORONTO STAR HIGH SCHOOL NEWSPAPER AWARDS 

RECOGNIZING AND ENCOURAGING EXCELLENCE IN HIGH SCHOOL JOURNALISM

 

Brad Henderson Award

Sasha Hillman-Olmsted          Jarvis Collegiate Institute

 

Best Electronic Newspaper

1^st Place:                 Lancer Lines Online Staff, Elmira District Secondary School

2^nd Place:                Hazel Llanes, Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School

 

Best Newspaper (Credit Course and Volunteer)

1^st Place:                 Samantha Kellerman, Yeogai Choy & Staff, North Toronto Collegiate Institute

2^nd Place:                The Staff, Thornhill Secondary School

Comics

1^st Place:                 Cindy Pu, Glenforest Secondary School – (not in attendance)

2^nd Place:                Cindy Pu, Glenforest Secondary School – (not in attendance)

 

Critical Writing 

1^st Place:                 Ilan Tzitrin, Thornhill Secondary School

2^nd Place:                Emily Pringle, Oakville Trafalgar High School

 

Editorial Writing

1^st Place:                 Caroline Mei, Thornhill Secondary School

2^nd Place:                Haileigh Wilson, Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute

 

Feature Photography

1^st Place:                 Kailee Mandel, North Toronto Collegiate Institute

2^nd Place:                Kailee Mandel, North Toronto Collegiate Institute

 

Feature Writing – Long

1^st Place:                 Odesia Howlett, Holy Name of Mary Catholic Secondary School

2^nd Place:                George Wan, North Toronto Collegiate Institute

 

Feature Writing – Short

1^st Place:                 Chloe Li, North Toronto Collegiate Institute

2^nd Place:                Jenny Ge, Victoria Park Collegiate Institute

 

Humour

1^st Place:                 Jinglan (BerBer) Xue, Martingrove Collegiate Institute

2^nd Place:                Inbar Levona, North Toronto Collegiate Institute

 

Illustration

1^st Place:                 Kevin Mercado, Senator O’Connor College School

2^nd Place:                Isabel Ji, Victoria Park Collegiate Institute

 

Layout and Design, Page (Credit Course and Volunteer Newspapers) 

1^st Place:                 Susan Wang, Richmond Hill High School

2^nd Place:                Julia Schabas & Lily Ljubicic, North Toronto Collegiate Institute

 

News Photography

1^st Place:                 Trang Hoang, Riverdale Collegiate Institute

2^nd Place:                Tomer Michailov, Thornhill Secondary School – (not in attendance)

 

Opinion Writing

1^st Place:                 Hana Carrozza, Martingrove Collegiate Institute

2^nd Place:                Emilia Hunter, Riverdale Collegiate Institute

 

Reporting

1^st Place:                 Yasmin Ahmed, Jarvis Collegiate Institute

2^nd Place:                Megan Stephens, Jarvis Collegiate Institute

 

Sports Photography

1^st Place:                 Emily Yip, Victoria Park Collegiate Institute

2^nd Place:                Samantha Kellerman, North Toronto Collegiate Institute

 

Sports Writing, Column

1^st Place:                 Daniel Boltinsky, Academy for Gifted Children

2^nd Place:                Jason Luo, North Toronto Collegiate Institute

Sports Writing, Feature

1^st Place:                 Jon Reed, North Toronto Collegiate Institute

2^nd Place:                Catherine Gao, Martingrove Collegiate Institute

 

Sports Writing, Reporting

1^st Place:                 Alexis Allison, Trenton High School

2^nd Place:                Daniel Boltinsky, Academy for Gifted Children

 

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

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.

Why is a fearless journalist pushing a broom?

By Cynthia Vukets

Luis Horacio Nájera recently won a major international journalism award.
He was one of two (make that five because the awards were given out to two groups of journalists) recipients of this year’s Canadian Journalists for Free Expression International Journalism Award.
The prize was handed out at a swanky $150-a-plate dinner at the Fairmont Royal York where members of the media drank free booze and rubbed elbows with their well-dressed colleagues. Nájera was recognized and applauded, but he is not part of the cohort.

He has been a practicing journalist for several decades. Just not for the past two years.
He’s been living in Vancouver for those two years, because he had to flee Mexico with his wife and three children in tow after receiving death threats from members of Mexican drug cartels.
His daring coverage of those cartels, and of President Felipe Calderon’s war on drugs, is why he won the CJFE award. It’s also why he’s currently working as a janitor. He came to Canada, applied for refugee status, had to find a job to survive, and hasn’t been able to get work as a reporter.
Surely, someone at that swanky media dinner – attended by most of the big wigs of Canadian media – could have offered Nájera a job. Arguably, it would have been a bit more valuable than the award he graciously accepted. (Disclaimer: I do hope to myself be hired by one or several of said bigwigs over the course of my career. So, no offense, all you editors and executive producers. I’m just pointing out an interesting aspect of Canadian work culture.)
It struck home a bit abrasively when the evening’s host, Anne-Marie Mediwake, told Nájera: “I hope soon you’ll be able to trade in that broom for a real Blackberry and a notebook. You’re in the right room for that.” She meant it compassionately, but it came off a little cringe-worthy.
Especially so when I asked Nájera the next day if anyone in that ballroom had offered him a job and he said “nothing formal.” Maybe people may have been too busy guarding their silent auction bids to actually speak with him.
I understand Mexico may have different journalistic policies/standards than we do. And Luis’ English might not be as good as a Canadian-trained journalist’s. But I’d wager the time it would take to bring him up to scratch on the way we do things here would be more than paid off by the value he could bring to a newsroom.
“In terms of hireability at this point, I think I’d be more useful writing about Mexico and the drug wars,” he told me.
More useful than writing about Canada, is what he meant. But I’d say, a sight more useful that a Canadian journalist writing about the drug wars.
So I urge one of you bigwigs out there to take a chance on this guy. Hire him. Get him some writing classes or English tutoring.
He may actually teach you more than he learns in your newsroom. Canada is multicultural. That means people from different countries live here. We are all better for it.
Time to step up to the plate, mainstream media. We like to talk about diversifying our newsrooms. Here’s a big chance.

Cynthia Vukets is a reporter in the Star's one year program. She has also worked in print and television in New Brunswick, Quebec, Kenya and Rwanda. She hopes to one day work in Mexico, but plans to steer clear of drug cartels.

The secret life of a 21st century journalist

By Sarah Millar

A blog post by former Star radio roomer Alex Posadzki got me thinking about what it means to be a journalist in the digital age.

In her post, Posadzki muses about her so-called "double life" — her professional one and her personal. She's so concerned about the two that she has two separate Facebook accounts, two email addresses, two different circles of friends.

And never the twain shall meet.

It got me thinking about how different being a journalist is today than it was even just 10 years ago.

While the Internet has made our jobs infinitely easier (for better or for worse), it also has made our lives a lot harder.

After all, journalists tend to be held to a higher accord than other people — they're supposed to appear unbiased, report the facts, keep their opinions in check. Sure, that was easy before the Internet — and social media — reared its ugly head, but now journalists are in trouble.

They're being disciplined or fired for things they say on Twitter. They're trying to decide murky, ethical issues (like should a source be friended on Facebook?). And on top of all of this, they're trying to create a personal brand in order to better market themselves in these tough economic times.

So what's a 21st century journalist to do?

There are no concrete answers. News organizations and employers have yet to figure all this stuff out for themselves — social media policies are almost non-existent or incredibly vague.

Is Posadzki right? Do we need two accounts everywhere in order to keep the personal, personal and the professional, professional? I'd wager no.

All these social media platforms come with privacy settings — Facebook can be customized any way a user wants. My advice is to get to know them and use them however you see fit. Personally, I keep my Facebook private, but my Twitter is open to all.

Is being a journalist harder in the digital age? It may just be, but that doesn't mean you should ever feel you have to hide who you really are for fear of being found out. It's who we really are deep down inside that makes us great journalists.

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.

Gawk-20: Citizen Journalists, moths to a flame…

... A flaming police car, in this case.

Are you rolling your eyes at me behind this computer screen for writing about something “stale”?

Yes, I know  this “G20” stuff is totally old news. I mean, it’s been a full two weeks now since the last dignitary-filled motorcade left the city. Downtown Toronto is finally free from those unsightly security fences and the only people wearing fume masks these days are acrylic-huffing nail artists at your local mani-pedi joint. 

So, why the heck am I writing about “Gee-Twentityness” (my own etymological device, thank you very much) when there are more pressing issues at hand? Like LeBron James and his controversial move in the NBA draft? Or whatever the heck is going on in the World Cup? Or for the love of all things newsy, the fact that LINDSAY LOHAN is going to PRISON!

Personal observations (and many a juicy American news lineup) have shown me that the public’s attention tends to shift towards where the action is. It’s only human nature. Like the magpie, who is inexplicably attracted to sparkly things, contemporary publics tend to gravitate naturally towards the flashier side of life -- towards scandals, spectacles and drama.

Am I coming across as cynical?  

I don’t actually view the average news consumer as a vapid, starry-eyed drone, I’m just being melodramatic and snarky towards said “average news consumers” because, well… I feel a little bit threatened right now.

Much like those feisty Canadian Geese who chase you across the golf course if you get too close to their nests, when I feel threatened I tend to lash out.

Which brings us back to the G20 summit and related melee.

Allow me to explain.

On Saturday, June 26^th, I woke up feeling relaxed and happy, confident that getting downtown for my radio room shift would be a breeze.

Word around the city was that Toronto had turned into a ghost town thanks to all of this G20 hype. I was loving the peace and quiet.

Little did I know that “peace and quiet” would soon give way to “burn-smashity chaos”.

My roommate burst out of his room around 2 p.m. telling me to turn on the TV. As soon as I caught a glimpse of those big crazy crowds I rounded up my gear and jumped into action mode.

Hustling my way over to the Queen and Spadina, I couldn’t help but imagine myself scoring some outstanding protest footage. What a treat, my first summer as a working journalist in the big city and all hell breaks loose! I was psyched thinking that just maybe, if I got there early enough and played my cards right, I’d be able to blend right in with the crowd and get some wild exclusive videos.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with this thought.

I could go on for hours about the throngs of digi-cam wielding soccer dads and iPhone photographer hipsters flooding the city’s core, but I’ll let my video footage speak for itself.

Notice, if you will, that the number of gawkers (myself being one of them) outnumber the actual protesters and rabble-rousing “anarchists” by at least 8 to 1, on average.

 

 

What disturbs me most about all of the G20 riot footage on Youtube isn’t the black bloc window smashing or police cars being set on fire, but the sheer volume of people gathered around taking pictures of it all.

In J-school, there was many a rousing debate about citizen journalism and the implications of this kind of reporting on the future of our profession.

The way I see it, we’re living in a post-Web 2.0 world that’s filled with increasingly user friendly and inexpensive media production technologies. In 2010, anybody can purchase a top-of-the-line camera, start up a blog and get their message out.

Personally, I’ve come to the conclusion that while, yes, anybody can go through the motions of reporting, not everybody can be a reporter.

Your chiropractor’s secretary can tweet photos from the scene of a crime with her Blackberry along with hundreds of other bystanders. She can even take some fabulous high-quality photos with her brand new Canon Digital Rebel T1i. But she doesn’t have the years of experience, training and raw talent that someone who does this for a living does. Point in case.

Likewise, anybody can express their opinions in a letter to the editor, on a blog, a tweet or a good ol’ fashioned handmade zine. It may be well articulated, but it’s still rare to find a citizen-journo with as much impact behind their words as a an experienced veteran journalist.

No amount of fancy equipment or technical prowess can replace a well trained reporter who understands the importance of truth, fairness, accuracy, balance and all of those other things they teach us to value both in j-school and in the newsroom.

So, thank you to everybody who called in news tips and emailed us photos during the ever-so-busy G20 weekend. Your support and input was much appreciated, but please don't be upset if your iPhone photo of a burning police car didn't make it onto the front page of the paper.

There are already so many talented professionals working in the industry - people who continue to dig for the full story, long after the flaming cop cars have been extinguished.

The aftermath stories may not be as glamorous as those about rioters looting coffee shops in the financial district, but they're still important stories about things that impact the lives of every Torontonian.

I guess that’s what differentiates a journalist from a citizen journalist - the ability to see beyond the flash and dazzle, into the heart of a story. The willingness to report not only on what's exciting, but what's important.

 

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.