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.

 

After the G20 smoke clears, what have we learned?

By Fabiola Carletti

 

In the aftermath of the G20 summit in Toronto, the outrage will blaze on for longer than any police cruiser ever could.

Ideology is highly flammable, you see.

Shakespeare famously wrote that all the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players. Indeed, this weekend, the international audience was introduced to a familiar cast of characters: heartless or noble police officers, righteous or savage protesters, watchdog or propaganda-spewing journalists, innocent or nosy bystanders.

Why are we so attached to these false dichotomies?

The conversation will not advance as long as we divide the world between “punks” and “pigs.”

Examples: Even if you think the community of dissent shouldn’t disown certain factions, it is never okay to hurl a brick at someone because they represent something you disagree with. Even if you think the police were just doing their job and controlling “bad guys,” it is never okay  for officers to beat peaceful protesters and threaten female detainees with rape. 

If we want to be critical people who navigate within a complex world, we have to acknowledge that people on our “side” can be wrong too. Regardless of where our sympathies lie, we must speak truth to power and to our peers.

Let’s lift the blankets – it’s not just about police maintaining security OR protestes maintaining solidarity. Neither side has a monopoly on virtue or vice.

I’m contrasting sides for effect, but I emphatically believe that we must not forget the spectrum.

It saddens me that more people know exactly how many police cruisers were burned on the street than the number of decisions that were made behind the fences. The political reverberations that come out of this conference are much more difficult and long term than the theatrics that took place in “Fortress Toronto.”

But they’re not either/or important. The streets became a caricature of the power dynamics that were also playing out amongst those inside THE room. It may be easier to have an opinion on the black block than fiscal consolidation, but that doesn’t make it more important.

I think  we need to start by admitting that our world is rapidly changing and in many ways deteriorating. We are facing increasingly complex social, environmental and economic crises, and the decisions made by our world leaders will affect the children of press, protesters, police and politicians. 

If the Toronto summit was a failure, which I would argue it was, it has less to do with what was destroyed and more to do with what was not built.

But that’s a whole other blog post.

Fabiola Carletti is a Toronto Star radio room reporter and graduate student at the UBC School of Journalism. She recently graduated summa cum laude from York University, having earned an honours double major in Professional Writing and Communication Studies. 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. 

No such thing as the dog days of summer

By Roger Gillespie

Every winter we scour the country looking for the best and the brightest to be part of one of our most challenging intern programs.

Every summer they join us at One Yonge Street. 

Every day from now until September you'll agree they are the cream of the crop.

Our summer reporting program is arguably our toughest intern program and the reporters we hire find there is no such thing as the dog days of summer.

Almost from the moment they arrive they are required to hit the streets to cover anything and everything as our full-time staff take well deserved summer vacations.

We are very pleased to introduce you to the six who have joined us for the summer. In a very short time they will be household names to readers of the Star and thestar.com.

Just remember, you read it here first.

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Liam Casey

Liam Casey is a graduate student in the Ryerson journalism program.

He studied biology at Queen's University and worked on a manuscript, which is currently collecting digital dust, with 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.

Liam writes a satirical blog, Buster Avenue, that gets so much traffic it periodically crashes the Internet. Liam also toils in a Thursday night old-timers hockey league, waiting to be discovered by NHL scouts.

He is also a fantasy hockey writer with Rotoworld—so if you want to win your office pool, talk to Liam. He is also a die-hard Senators fan, devoted re-reader of Confederacy of Dunces and cannot write without listening to Arcade Fire.

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Amy Dempsey

In the line of reporting duty Amy Dempsey has fallen off a motorcycle taxi, been peed on and once drove over her own notebook. Despite many minor mishaps — and in fact, perhaps because of them — journalism is exactly what she wants to be doing.

Amy is fresh out of Carleton University’s Master of Journalism program and has reported for the Ottawa Citizen, CBC Radio’s Mainstreet and The Canadian Press.

Last summer she interned at Contact FM in Kigali, Rwanda, through a program run by the Rwanda Initiative. On her days off she learned to dance like a cow and coherently pronounce the names of local brews. (And she met Edward Norton at a brochette joint.)

Last spring she spent several weeks in Ghana investigating child slavery in the fishing industry on Lake Volta and turned her findings into a multimedia project called Out of Nets.

You can check out more of Amy’s work at her online portfolio or follow her babblings on Twitter.

During her undergraduate years in Halifax, Amy reported for the Dalhousie Gazette, nannied part-time and spent summers serving overpriced seafood to tourists at a Cape Breton resort. She also did a semester abroad at the University of Hull in England where she focused on European history — i.e. gallivanting across the continent.

Amy likes to brag about being from Canada’s east coast, having incredible culinary skills and the time she saved a raccoon’s life.

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Wendy Gillis

When Wendy Gillis’ parents attended her grade four parent-teacher interview, they glanced at the student work on the bulletin board and noticed that, while the rest of the kids had written a 1/2 page fairy tale, Wendy’s story was over three pages long.

Apparently, she enjoyed writing. Over the years she has learned concision, but her love of writing has remained. Throughout her History/English degree at the University of Saskatchewan, she worked at the student newspaper The Sheaf, where she was news editor and editor-in-chief.

She also freelanced for Saskatoon’s alt-weekly Planet S, was central bureau chief for Canadian University Press, and was an intern at The StarPhoenix.

Some of her most memorable stories include a miraculous fawn delivery, a two-part feature on the Saskatchewan forestry industry, and the death of a Saskatoon-born soldier in Afghanistan.  She won a national arts writing award for her feature on arts funding in Canada.

Because she is from Saskatoon, Wendy knows a fair amount about potash, wears a bunnyhug (not a hoodie), and will brag that Saskatchewan sunsets are the best in the world.

But she replanted her prairie roots in Toronto last August so she could attend Ryerson University’s master of journalism program. She can now be spotted maneuvering through downtown streets on her (t)rusty blue bike or training for her next half-marathon along the waterfront.

When she can afford it, she takes ballet classes since part of her still naively believes she will be a ballerina when she grows up. But she’ll settle for a gig writing features for The New Yorker or as the next host of This American Life.

Her semi-regular blogs are mostly about Sabbath the Cat.

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Jayme Poisson

Jayme Poisson was born and raised in Toronto and studied political science at McGill University. She became intimately familiar with the Queen’s extensive hat collection and the daily movements of Angelina Jolie while writing for Hello! Canada magazine.

More recently, she has been pursuing a masters of journalism at Carleton University, trying to wrap her head around the rapidly changing industry.

Social media? Check. Video? Coming along. HTML code? Super confusing. While there is nothing she loves more than writing, photography is a close second, so she feels quite lucky for the chance to turn both her hobbies into a career.

In April and May Jayme trekked through Nepal with the help of a grant from the International Development Research Centre. She filmed a documentary on ‘fallen womb’, a painful and debilitating maternal health problem affecting over 600,000 women in the country. Having accumulated countless cuts and bruises and made it through a  few precarious bouts of food poisoning, she would say the whole experience has been nothing short of incredibly awesome. She chronicled her trip in this blog.

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Jasmeet Sidhu

Jasmeet Sidhu is returning for a second summer at the Toronto Star. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto's Peace and Conflict Studies program. She was in Turkey in May for a month-long field trip with students in her program.

Jasmeet is the youngest of a Sikh family from Malaysia, and the only sibling who didn't do a Bachelors of Science, which she is ridiculed often for.

Her interests vary between social justice and environment issues such as climate change, domestic violence and global health, to being an admitted reality TV and celebrity news junkie.

She is the founder of the Peel Environmental Youth Alliance, a former member of the Toronto Star's Community Editorial Board, and has covered the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland and Denmark for the Star's website.

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Joanne Wong was born in Toronto but grew up in Hong Kong, where she learned to read Chinese menus and newspapers.

Some people may call her a banana (or Twinkie, depending on how many calories you can afford), given her "yellow" exterior and "white" interior.

Some of Joanne's hobbies include loitering and mumbling sarcastic comments. She is currently attending Harvard College in Massachusetts, where she is constantly made fun of for being Canadian.

She very much appreciates the crosswords and sudoku puzzles published in the Toronto Star.

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

Turkey, Canada, and the Armenian Genocide

By Jasmeet Sidhu

The first thing I immediately noticed when I arrived in Turkey, was the price to get into the country. While British and American VISAs were only about $20, Canadians had to pay a whopping $60 for a VISA to enter the country. I never really thought about why, until we met with members of the Turkish foreign ministry in Ankara, Turkey.

Meeting at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara, Turkey.

Here in Turkey with my Peace and Conflict studies class to learn more about this dynamic and culturally rich country in the face of today's changing geopolitics, one topic that inevitably came up time and time again in our various meetings with Turkish officials was the Armenian genocide. And the discussions certainly took a more interesting turn when we revealed to people that we were Canadian.

Thus far, Canada's parliament is the only one in the world that has formally recognized the killing of Armenians in Turkey during the First World War as genocide.
At the time in 2004, the Turkish foreign ministry released a statement, declaring "Some narrow-minded Canadian politicians were not able to understand that such decisions based on ... prejudiced information, will awaken feelings of hatred among people of different [ethnic] roots and disturb social harmony."

So when we met with members of the Turkish foreign ministry in the capital, Ankara, we weren't sure what to expect. Though we hadn't told them that this was a topic that we specifically wanted to discuss, as if reading our minds, an Armenian historian who had once worked in Canada joined our meetings, and the discussion inevitably went towards the Armenian genocide for the majority of the meeting. It was a fairly amicable and pleasant meeting, however, with an obvious agenda on their side to get their story across to Canadian students who would inevitably be discussing their thoughts with other Canadians (like I am right now).

The narrative that the foreign ministry put forward was emphasizing a lack of intent, and relying on the legal definition of the genocide to put into question "the events of 1915" as they were referred to in the meeting. Indeed, "genocide" was not even a legal term back in 1915 and the convention on genocide did not exist until 1948, so how can one declare a genocide to have happened?

Also, genocide needs intent to eliminate an entire groups of people. This, one member of the Turkish foreign ministry declared, did not exist. As well, they argued, Turkey has always been open about this issue and has argued for a joint historical investigation with Armenia to discover what really happened in 1915, but Turkey claims that Armenia are not open to the process or willing to open its private records on the event. Probably the most fascinating part of the discussion was when the foreign ministry urged us to be "Canadian" and live up to "Canadian values" by having an open mind and listening to both sides of the story. They argued that they were being accused of the most heinous crime and urged a proper historical investigation before parliaments pass judgments on controversial aspects of history, for which they have no role.

I walked away from the meeting not necessarily sure what to believe, but feeling compelled to read and research more about this dark aspect of Turkish history. And I suppose that was the real purpose of this meeting, whether we had just heard propaganda or the "memory record of another people" as it was called -- to not depend on simply just one side of the story, and to be your own critic of events and issues by doing the research yourself and coming to the best possible conclusion you can.

Jasmeet Sidhu is a graduate of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto. She worked for the Star in the radio room last summer, and writes a blog for the Star on climate change, where she covered the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen. In mid-June she will join the Star's summer intern program. Follow Jasmeet on Twitter.

No comment: the hidden face of feedback

By Fabiola Carletti

There are many names for people who read blog posts but don't comment on them: internet introverts, digital wallflowers, the silent majority...

The CBC's Jim Lebans lists all of these nicknames in his short essay "In defense of lurking." In it, he explains why he doesn't chime in at the end of articles, despite having reasoned opinions.

Of the few comments following his piece, this was the most telling:

But I'd venture to guess that, unlike Lebans, most don't decide not to comment--they probably just don't think to. Others just don't want to: they may have something to say but, all things considered, it's way easier to scroll down and roll out.

The rarest kind of reader, in my experience, is the one who writes something thoughtful, attaches their real name to their statement, fills in their actual email address and maybe even checks back to see if the conversation has moved forward.

But what about the online conversations that happen because of, but outside of, the original blog post?

In my case, most of my feedback comes through Facebook. Sometimes the links I post spark long and complex debates. Often, the people participating don't even know one another and yet manage to engage in very critical yet respectful conversation.

Meanwhile, the original blog post is surrounded by singing crickets.

By way of example, I recently posed a question on this blog: Should reporters be allowed to protect whistleblowers?

If you check the post, you'd think only one person had thoughts on the matter. Well, today I am bolstering the numbers by ousting a few of my Facebook friends.

Their responses ranged from the curious to the impassioned, but they all took the time to think through the issue and engage with others. I think it's a shame that the resulting discussion should remain locked behind the gates of my Facebook privacy settings. (At least, in theory.)

What follows is a comment thread you were never intended to see. Hopefully, its content inspire some more of you "eyeballs out there" to activate your fingers and get in on the conversation.

Here's an experiment for after the fact:  I (perhaps ironically) invite all you "lurkers" out there to respond to this post and let us know why you tend to pass through so quietly.

Feedback on "Should reporters be allowed to protect whistleblowers?"

Thanks to those named below for allowing me to re-post their comments along with their full names. Forgive the spelling errors. Facebook is the wild west of typos.  

Fabiola Carletti is a Toronto Star radio room reporter and graduate student at the UBC School of Journalism. She recently graduated summa cum laude from York University, having earned an honours double major in Professional Writing and Communication Studies. 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.

What's new in the Star's radio room?

By Roger Gillespie

Every year around this time we say goodbye to journalists who have worked in the Toronto Star radio room, some work here for a school year, others stay for a couple of years.

Then one spring day they scatter to jobs in newsrooms across the country. When they leave we start all over with a new group of aspiring young journalists.

Our radio room reporters are post secondary students, some from J-schools, others from university programs that range from psychology to politics to English. They work here part time, a couple of eight hour shifts a week, covering crime and breaking news.

They come to work here because they love journalism and many of them want to make it their life's work.

On Tuesday, we will welcome Alex Hering and Lauren O'Neil, two new radio roomers.

They will join Gloria Er-Chua and Fabiola Carletti who started work at the Star three weeks ago.

They are impressive and they are evidence there's life left in the business of being an ink stained wretch.

Meet our new radio room reporters.

Fabiola Carletti

Fabiola Carletti is studying journalism at the University of British Columbia with a specialization in Environmental Studies.

She is a Salvadoran-born Toronto-raised twenty-something with a wide assortment of interests and concerns, including famous and fringe theatre, cartooning, solutions-focused journalism, literary non-fiction, and the quirks that define her generation. 

Fabiola is all about trying new things and pushing limits, especially when it comes to borderline bad ideas. To this end, she has shaved her head, thrown herself a birthday party with strangers, and worked on a organic farm during a harsh Quebec winter. 

She spends a lot of time laying out her interests and experiences on her eclectic blog The Fab Files as well as tweeting the silly and serious as  fiercefab.

Fabiola is fluent in Spanish and amusing in French. She's also interested in learning Italian, if only to properly pronounce her own last name.

If you’re interested in the formalities, you’ll find them in the “About Fabiola” and “Resume” sections of her blog, where she straightens her tie and demonstrates that she's serious about this thing called journalism.

Gloria Er-Chua

Gloria Er-Chua got her political studies degree and street smarts from Queen's University. When she couldn't choose between law and journalism, she decide to plunge into the "real world" instead. On a semi-calculated whim, she applied for an internship with the Star.

A Malaysian-Chinese, Gloria immigrated to Toronto when she was 5. She credits her life experiences for sparking her interest in local anti-racism work.

Although she has come to terms with the fact that she's no longer a radical student activist, she’s still negotiating the journalistic code of neutrality -- if she were that Iraqi journalist, she thinks she might have thrown the shoe too.

She keeps busy by exploring the city one TTC station at a time and creating drama in the community theatre world. An actor by nature, she's often suckered into stage managing.

Gloria has been getting into bhangra/hip-hop collabs recently. She may occasionally need them to keep her awake on quiet overnight shifts.

Alex Hering

Alex Hering has just graduated from Texas State University in San Marcos, with a degree in Electronic Media. She came to Canada with aspirations of working with the best, kicking butt, then, hopefully, finding her first job in journalism.
 
In high school Alex developed a passion for journalism and has since grabbed every opportunity to get experience. This has taken her everywhere from the chasing stories in the "crime jeep" in San Antonio, to covering President Obama's inauguration for the Scripps Howard Foundation in Washington, to figuring out the wig hierarchy in the British Courts while at the Press Association in London. Journalism isn't glamorous or well paid but Alex loves everything else about it and is looking forward to her newest assignment at the Toronto Star. It must be the Washington Post-style newsroom which she toured just days ago that struck her the most. It is a family -- much like a cool club -- that everyone wants to join.   
 
Although she's only been in Toronto for a short while, Alex already loves the differences between the United States and Canada. This wannabe tree hugger doesn't mind having three recycling bins in her kitchen, although she still prefers the Cowboys to the Maple Leafs. Alex can't handle more than two drinks (unlike most of her Texan peers), so paying $12 for a six pack is OK - she'll never get around to finishing the whole thing anyway. And she loves her food, so it's fantastic to find Caribbean, Thai and Kentucky Fried Chicken around the corner from her apartment. Culture Culture Culture.
 
Alex is a pint-size, two-stepping queen who can be found at her new apartment in Corso Italia with her British boyfriend and their new potted fern. She is a self proclaimed taco expert, so look for her Taco blog, where she will rate every taco she can get her hands on.
 
Alex was worked in a mix of newspapers, wire services and other community media in Texas and the United States.

Lauren O'Neil

Internet ninja, shameless nerd girl and ridiculous adventure seeker. Lauren O'Neil is one plucky little dame (or so she's been told.)

Before graduating from the University of Western Ontario's Master of Arts Journalism program in 2010, she earned a degree in Communication Studies/Computer Science from the University of Windsor while making ends meet as a web designer, freelance writer, campus TV news host and bartender. She makes a mean Mojito, but suggests you try the house red instead.

A true digital native, Lauren likes to spend her free time blogging, tweeting, tumbling, making silly youtube videos and moonlighting as a digital correspondent for MuchMusic.

She also enjoys rollerblading, running, reading, alliteration, internet culture, comedic television programs, annoying people with cute photos of her cats, pretending that she isn't a 'stupid hipster' so that she can make fun of 'stupid hipsters', meeting new people, lusting over gadgets, travelling this fine world and debunking the myth that "you don't make friends with salad."

In 2001, she met Roger Ebert at the Toronto International Film Festival and addressed him as "Mr. Siskel". She has since learned to thoroughly verify facts (and use her blackberry to Google the names and/or mortality of sources on the fly).

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This summer we are also lucky enough to have two returning radio roomers, Teri Pecoskie and Maddie White.

Teri Pecoskie

Teri Pecoski is back for her second stint in the radio room, where she began as an intern last September. Teri will graduate this spring from the Humber College post-grad journalism program, where she was editor-in-chief of Convergence magazine as well as the college's weekly newspaper, the Et Cetera.

She recently was embedded with the Canadian troops during a military exercise in the Mojave Desert, covering the Canadian Forces' preparations for the ongoing mission in Afghanistan.

Before journalism, Teri completed a master's degree in philosophy at the University of Waterloo, worked as a copy editor at Broadview Press and worked in the philosophy department at Trent University in her hometown of Peterborough.

Madeleine White

Madeleine White just celebrated her one year anniversary in the radio room.

In the fall, she will enter her second year in Ryerson's Master of Journalism program.

She'll be working on the Ryersonian during in the first term and completing her thesis - a multimedia project about women running in the Toronto municipal election -- by the end of the winter.

When she's not in the Box, Maddie is usually training for triathlons, teaching the Monday lunch-hour spin class at the Star's gym or hanging out with her Boston Terrier and her partner.

She is fluent in French.

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

Confessions of an ex-editor: newspapers do make a difference

By Alexandra Posadzki

It wasn't until the latest sexual assault at York University last month, after I had handed my office keys over to the new editor-in-chief, that I realized what a huge impact Excalibur, our little university newspaper, could have on the community.

Some people say that being a good journalist is about anticipating the news, and that's exactly what we managed to do with our final issue's front page story.

The story was about the start of the sentencing hearing for Daniel Katsnelson, the man who raped two female York students in their dorm three years ago. While we were planning the front page our production manager mentioned the safety audit that York had been promised following the assaults, and how, after a lot of publicity and chatter, the much-anticipated audit had disappeared off the radar.

"What happened to the METRAC safety audit?" she wondered aloud. (METRAC is an independent organization called the Metropolitan Action Committee  on Violence Against Women and Children.)

Taking the cue, I asked the writer, Yuni Kim, to broaden her story to: "Three years after the violent sexual assaults at the Vanier dorms, what has York done to increase security on campus?" with a focus on the METRAC audit.

From left to right: Don Wilkinson (comics and graphics editor), Renata Valz (production manager), Alexandra Posadzki (outgoing editor-in-chief), Nicholas Maronese (incoming editor-in-chief) and Brent Rose (incoming managing editor) working on our final issue.

Just a few weeks later York was hit with another violent sexual assault, this time just off campus (in my building, nonetheless!), and representatives from the our student union, the York Federation of Students (YFS), as well as every major news outlet in the GTA, were talking about METRAC.

Coincidence? I don't think so, and neither did Renata Valz, our production manager, when I phoned her up to thank her for her idea.

Turns out the YFS put out a press statement following the assault that talked about the overdue safety audit, and chances are it was our front-page story that reminded them about it.

Now METRAC is back on the radar and it looks like York will finally get its safety audit soon, or else administration will face more heat from the media.

Not only that, but CP24's Cam Woolley held up a copy of Excalibur on air following the assault.

It certainly hasn't been an easy year for me. I worked, full time, around 50+ hours a week, as the editor-in-chief of Excalibur, part-time in the Toronto Star's radio room, took classes and wrote an undergraduate thesis in psychology on women in upper management positions (inspired, no doubt, by some of the challenges I faced over the last year).

I slept no more than three or four hours most nights. I faced a lot of criticism from colleagues about my poor management of stress (managing stress is no easy feat when you're chronically sleep deprived and overworked). I spent a lot of money on eating out as I -- often literally! -- ran from one job to the next, and our paper was sent to the presses past our 12-o'clock deadline almost every week (although that's not unusual for Excal).

But, I also managed to motivate and help lead our team to snatching fifth place (out of 50 college and university newspapers) for the best of show award at the Associated Collegiate Press newspaper convention in Phoenix, Arizona. I managed to score some really good clippings. I learned a lot about crime reporting, news judgment and managing people. And, as I recently learned, I made an impact on a diverse community of 50,000 students and faculty.

I think the past eight months have been well worth the sleep deprivation.

Alexandra Posadzki is just finishing up a hectic year as a radio room intern at the Toronto Star and the editor-in-chief of Excalibur Publications, York University’s community newspaper. Alex will be starting as the Ontario Bureau Chief for the Canadian University press in the fall.

What we learned at camp versatile journalist

By Liam Casey and Wendy Gillis

Producing slideshows and videos isn't exactly splicing DNA or understanding Lost. But we're not going to lie, it's labour intensive.

The take-home message from Camp Versatile Journalist 2010 is like the old Nike slogan: just do it. There's just no other way to learn how to edit video or put together a slideshow than by playing with the gadgets and software. So, we decided to follow the experts advice.

Camp VJ is all about learning the nuts and bolts of digital journalism, from shooting video to crunching numbers and posting them in a way the audience can easily digest.

Led by Robb Montgomery, the Chicago-based Johnny Appleseed of digital literacy, the three-day workshop at the Toronto Star was a huge success. More than 40 people came early and stayed late every day.

Below is our moving masterpiece, warts and all, about #CampVJ2010. For the record, we now know how to edit video, but we kept our bloopers in for educational purposes (we swear). Our biggest lesson: turn the microphone on, which is surprisingly easy to forget. Don't forget to press play when a video slides onto the screen.

Wendy Gillis and Liam Casey are Ryerson journalism students who will spend the summer reporting at the Toronto Star.

UBC J-school students win prestigious U.S. award

By Fabiola Carletti

It’s that other j-school in the west—at least, that’s how I used to refer to the UBC School of Journalism. 

Call me a self-centered Torontonian, but when considering graduates programs in journalism last year, I had my sights set on reputable Ryerson.

Nevertheless, I applied to the Vancouver program as a kind of flight of fancy, mostly wanting to contemplate the thought of skipping back three time zones and settling into that rainy city on the Pacific coast. (Okay, and maybe I thought it'd be pretty cool to report during the Olympics. Slight influence.)

Long story short: I ended up nixing my acceptance (and paid deposit) to Ryerson and making the last-minute switch.

After a wonderful first year at the school, I should really give the program some much-deserved kudos—especially given their students' most recent accomplishment.

Ten students from the school's International Reporting class, which is taught by former 60 Minutes producer and UBC Associate Professor Peter Klein, have won the Society for Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award, a top U.S. award in journalism.

The international reporting team put together an impressive news documentary called "Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground" on the global crumb trail of electronic waste. It aired on the PBS documentary series FRONTLINE/World last year.

The documentary is also nominated for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in the International Category.

Our director and Associate Professor Mary Lynn Young has called the recognition "a tremendous honour for a new, innovative Canadian journalism program."

And Peter Klein is proud of his students as well:

“People work their entire careers to get either of these awards," he said, "so it’s pretty special that our students achieved this recognition for the great work they’ve done.”

But before this all seems way too self-congratulating, I really have to encourage you all to see for yourselves:

Not only did the international reporting team make me rethink all the e-waste I've created in my time, they've also challenged me to see the word "student" as a mere modifier--and not a blight--on the word "journalist." 

Fabiola Carletti is a Toronto Star radio room reporter and graduate student at the UBC School of Journalism. She recently graduated summa cum laude from York University, having earned an honours double major in Professional Writing and Communication Studies. 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: Lewis Kelly, a first year student at the UBC School of Journalism, shoots some b-roll at the UBC farm.

Turkey diary: Looking beyond the stereotypes

Photo: Turkey's founding father Atatürk's face is prominently displayed all over Turkey.

By Jasmeet Sidhu

On the third or fourth day of our journey here in Turkey, four of us met with reporters and the editors of Hürriyet newspaper, one of Turkey's largest circulating English-language papers. 

Having worked at the Toronto Star, I was very interested to learn about the inner-workings of a newspaper in Turkey. The offices are fairly modest, located in a several-story building outside downtown Istanbul, with a few tables and computers lined up in a ceiling-to-floor tiled room. Much to my surprise, the editor-in-chief of one of the Hürriyet's sub-papers, the Daily News & Economic Review, was actually an American ex-pat by the name of David Judson, who, having now lived in Turkey for several years, was fluent in Turkish.

In a conversation over Turkish tea and coffee (which is constantly offered to us everywhere we go, in line with the famous hospitality that the Turkish are known for), Judson greeted our questions with the knowledge of someone who has been both an outsider and arguably an insider, identifying the way that we, and many other outsiders, tend to look at Turkey. 

He described Turkey, particularly in the international news media, being trapped into "five narratives" - Honour killings, the Armenian genocide, the Kurdish issue, Secular Islam, and EU membership. It was certainly enlightening to hear this framing and pigeonholing of the country into these five issues, because they were indeed, the five issues that my classmates and I in the Peace and Conflict studies program had approached and around which designed our research trip here in Turkey.

It made me think about how we in the media may tend to pigeonhole or frame certain issues, a city, an event in Toronto along the same narratives that don't necessarily provide originality, creativity and a fresh angle to a story. Existing narratives are easy to fall back on, are easy for audiences to absorb and make sense in everyone's current framing of the world - yet we all do ourselves a disservice by not pushing the button to see the hundreds of other stories that could be told. 

   Photo: Meeting with a LGBTQ organization in Istanbul.

For example, in our meetings, both with the LGBTQ organization that we met in Istanbul, and with the Canadian embassy in Ankara, gay and lesbian rights issues were brought up, and the seriousness of abuse cases that may be occurring amongst Turkish citizens, especially with regards to the mandatory service in Turkey's military. There is also the story of Turkey's rising economic force, and from what we heard from academics and others, of Turkey's strong desire to be included in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) as a rising economic power, rather than simply a strategic regional power that dominates many American news stories about the country. As well, often overlooked in discussions but that permeated every discussion we had in Turkey, was the idea that everyone is a minority - there is a deep sense amongst many in the country that they are not necessarily represented, tied to certain long historical memories of who has power and ownership over this storied land.

There were many, many other stories that emanated during our meetings and during our interactions with the Turkish people that I hope to be able to communicate to my fellow Canadians one way or the other, through this blog or through other means. But perhaps one of the biggest lessons that I will take away from this trip: to be consciously aware of how a certain country, person, event, issue is framed, and to be always aware that there is always another story to be told.

Jasmeet Sidhu is a graduate of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto. She worked for the Star in the radio room last summer, and writes a blog for the Star on climate change, where she covered the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen. In mid-June she will join the Star's summer intern program. Follow Jasmeet on Twitter.