Remembering to be sensitive covering a murder trial

A police officer assigned to security duty in the lobby of Toronto's Superior Court of Justice gave me a much needed reminder today that being a reporter also means being aware of how your behaviour at a scene when you are on the job covering a story, might affect other people.

I was waiting at 361 University Avenue today, covering the first degree murder trial of two men suspected of shooting a well-known Malvern resident, Colvis Meggoe in November of 2006.

In the lobby, during the lunch recess, I sat beside a group of high school students from CHAT, a Toronto school, who were there waiting for their teacher to turn up. I assume this was part of their law and justice courses. Some of the students were playing a silly game while they waited (the teachers had not arrived yet) -- the girls would call out "DAAA-AD" or "MO-MMM" in a voice like they would use at home to call their own parents, and then wait to see which lawyer, or Crown prosecutor, or court employee who was walking by, would hear it, and turn their heads, thinking they had heard their own children calling to them. When one of the unsuspecting adults fell for the trick, the teens burst into giggles all around.

Okay, teens are teens, and so the police officer who was in the lobby didn't come over to reprimand them.

But when their energetic teacher arrived just before 2 p.m. and announced to the students in a loud voice that "the second floor is murder murder murder" and proceeded to describe for the students some of the details of the charges in each case and which court rooms the students were to go to, that was too much for this sensitive policeman.

He came over, and right in front of the students, interrupted the teacher, and reminded him that some of the people walking through the lobby were victims of crime, or survivors of victims, or were otherwise in the court because of tragedies, so he should be more respectful and dignified in his attitude, and his behaviour. There was an embarassed silence, and the teacher, to his credit, apologized, and lowered his tone of voice.

After words, I talked with the policeman, who told me he was happy to have this new job of lobby duty. He prefers it, despite today's incident, because he told me he couldn't stand being inside the courtrooms anymore, where he had spent years as a security officer, listening to testimony about all sorts of crimes.

"I know what human beings are capable of, " he said.

It was a sobering lesson and one I needed. Earlier, during the morning session of the trial, we were in a Voir Dire situation, when the jury was out of the room while counsel discussed some point of the trial with the judge. It was boring, so I started whispering to the people sitting around me, even pretended to play Xs and Os with some of them. My whispering attracted the attention of the clerk, who came over and chided me for being disruptive in a courtroom. He was completely right, and I should have known better.

I forgot for a moment, that while for a journalist, covering a trial is a job -- for the victims, and relatives and lawyers and police in the courthouse, the proceedings are deadly serious. And it's not a time or place to be disrespectful.

Irony

This week, I'm teaching my students about covering police and fire stories at the journalism school of Centennial College/University of Toronto.

And today, our campus in East York gets locked down/evacuated because of a bomb threat, with 7 fire trucks and #332 Station responding to assist the police as they deal with this situation.

I am home, sick today, luckily, but I wish I was there with the students to show them how it's done in real life.

And now, the power goes out at the HP campus..where the other journalism courses are held. What is going on?

Centennial College student Brad Pritchard scoop gets picked up by Toronto Star

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/707234--a-man-his-van-and-the-worst-laid-plans

One of the things that is so satisfying about teaching journalism students is when one of them gets a big scoop, and they sell it to the mainstream media outlets. Or mainstream media outlets pick it up.

This week, Brad Pritchard, a student in his final semester at Centennial College, published a story in the campus newspaper The Courier, based on his exclusive interview with the student whose van contained a home-made alternative fuel source, and caused half of Scarborough to be evacuated earlier this fall, and who was arrested and detained by Toronto Police.

No one else in the mainstream media was able to get the interview from the horse's mouth. Which is why Brad's piece is so great. And is another example of why working for the campus student newspaper is often a ticket to success after you graduate. Kudos to Brad, and to Matt Yuill and the other staff and reporters at The Courier.

By the way, the fact that it was Brad is not surprising. He won best interviewer last spring in Advanced Interviewing class with a "man hug" from Cabral Richards of The Score. He was also able to score an interview with Conrad Black, from prison, a few months earlier for a different assignment.

http://bradpritchard.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/conradical-conversation/

J-Source.ca -- The Canadian Journalism Project

J-Source.ca -- The Canadian Journalism Project

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CFRB interviewed my Roller Coaster Rider....

An update to the Behemoth riding teenager story which I did that ran Aug 4 on CBC Radio across Canada.

Thanks to following the Twitter feeds of Tim Hill, the 12 year old who is riding Behemoth and posting his count online on CWMania, I discovered that he'd received a phone call from the producer of CFRB Radio's Ryan Carroll show, and they scheduled an interview with him for this past Thursday about his feat.

Copying is the sincerest form of flattery...eh?

As a journalist, this should make me upset --it's an enterprise journalism story which I worked hard on to break, and when another media outlet "steals" the same story for their own audience without doing any of the original work, it is often irritating for the originating reporter.

In this case, I am slightly annoyed but also pleased for Tim, because he deserves wide attention, and also for myself, that some other major media outlet heard the story, and agreed with me that it was a great story to pursue.

Two sides of the coin.

I'd be interested to hear what you readers think about this. Is it just an insider/industry professional courtesy ethical issue, or do non-journalists even care about which media outlet got the story first?

Roller coasters and the power of the Internet

This past week, I've been working on a short documentary for CBC Radio on folks who love roller coasters. From left to right: Chris Uzun, Tim Hill and Greg Hill about to ride Behemoth. July 17, 2009.

(Full disclosure here: I am a 'fraidy cat and only went on Dragon Fire once this summer at Canada's Wonderland to prove to my kids that I was not a 'wuss' -- never again! My neck hurt for two days after the ride.)

And thanks to the World Wide Web, I was able to find some amazing sources for my story about folks who love roller coasters.

Starting from a tip from my son who's friend heard online about some guy who'd been riding Behemoth for 11 hours so far at Canada's Wonderland in Vaughan, Ontario, I decided to Google to see if I could find this person.

I eventually landed on a site called CWMania, and so I did surf a little through the postings, until I found what I was looking for.

I joined the site, identified myself as a reporter, and asked the webmaster to help me track down folks who ride Behemoth a lot.

Behemoth, for those of you who don't know, is the fastest, tallest rollercoaster at Wonderland, and the fastest in Canada, since opening in 2008.

I also emailed the person I thought was my 11 hour guy.

I used my gmail account, and waited to see what would happen.

A day later, I got back emails from both the webmaster and the person I was looking for!

Both agreed to help me.

I also got emails from a half dozen other riders, with some useful anecdotes for the story.

As for my 11 hour rider, and his brother, who also rides, before interviewing thim in person, I did make sure they were who they said they were, first, by checking not only their Facebook accounts but their Twitter accounts, and that of their relatives. I did the same for an 18 year old rider who is doing the same thing.

Then I set up the interview and a date and time and place to meet the teens near Wonderland. I also followed it up with a telephone call before the actual interview meeting, to confirm it in person over the telephone.

The other amazing thing about the Internet, and crowdsourcing, was the help which I received from some other members of this CWMania website.

One email sent me some links to scholarly journal articles about roller coaster riders, and psychologists, the information from which I wound up using to find an interview with a Dr. Michael Otto, from Boston University, who is an expert in coasters and phobias.

I emailed him, and also telephoned his office in Boston, and left messages on a Sunday, and on the Monday, when I called his office and spoke to his publicist in person, she told me she had already passed on my request for an interview, and he did call me back! Bingo.

Also, his colleague, another psychologist from Harvard, Dr. Brian Newmark, also called me back, after I'd sent him a note via his wife's Facebook account, and had left a message on their home answering machine, after having looked up the telephone number on the white pages online.

I also am thankful for the Internet and CWMania's website, as it put me in touch with a terrific expert on coaster enthusiasts from Mississauga, Paul Schroeder, who I researched by first reading his blog, and Myspace account, then asked him to meet me for an interview. We did speak on the phone first, and then met at the CBC for an interview.

He's also sent me links to other coaster stories which I am grateful for.

So the moral of the story for journalism students is: act on tips from sources and people around you, and use the Internet to do your initial research for the journalism, but make sure you use old fashioned journalistic techniques: always check who you are interviewing, research using the Internet if you can, and then do follow up research (telephone due diligence) before meeting anyone for an interview. And ladies, do the interviews in a public place.

The Internet is also amazing to help you make your stories better and more thorough: as I learned with this rollercoaster story, your sources know more than you about their field of expertise, and can point you in directions that you would never have thought of on your own.

My piece on rollercoaster enthusiasts is supposed to air on the CBC's World at Six on Aug 3. I wrote a full online print story on the phenomenon, to accompany the radio piece, for CBC.ca.

Here are both stories.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/07/31/f-rollercoaster-behemoth.html

By the way, one of my rollercoaster interviewees gave me the surprise of the summer:

in emailing back and forth, to try to establish his credentials and whether he'd be a good interview, I asked him what he did for a living. He emailed back that he had a paper route.

I asked him how old he was.

He wrote back that he was 12.

I was stunned!

Then, I immediately worried that his parents might be upset about a reporter chatting with a 12 year old online.

So I asked him to ask his parents if it was okay for him to be chatting with me.

He suggested to have me send him some kind of waiver form that they could sign.

I don't actually have such a thing but I did eventually speak on the phone with his mother, and she felt relieved about this.

Maybe they Googled me and learned that I was who I said I was.

Again, the power of the Internet.

Here is some raw video I took showing the Behemoth station where riders enter and exit.

Harry Potter helps reporter cover a story about Facebook and privacy

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Shared via AddThis

Canada's Privacy Commissioner released a report about Facebook yesterday basically criticizing the social networking giant for not adequately protecting users' private information.

I was reporting for CBC National Radio News, out of Toronto, although the report was released at a news conference in Ottawa.

I was assigned to cover the story and had a little over 5 hours to get two radio news stories done: one for The World This Hour, and the longer piece for The World at Six.

Deadline for the first show was 4 but in my mind, I said 3 (to make sure I was ready). Deadline for the next was 5 (but I said 4 in my mind, same reason.)

Getting the tape of the press conference was easy -- CBC Newsworld broadcast it live, at 11 so we recorded it, and some colleagues dubbed the audio directly into CBC's editing software called Dalet Plus.

But how to put the story in context, and how to make it interesting for listeners?

We needed a tech expert --I thought of calling Jesse Hirsh, the CBC's in house tech expert, but also I knew him as my expert resource person in a recent Centennial College summit we had hosted in May about the future of journalism. I didn't have to call him myself, as it turns out he was on CBC Newsworld directly after the Privacy Commissioner's report came out. Again, audio was available.

Same thing with the tech lawyers from Ottawa, who had launched the original complaints. I wanted tape, and planned to call Michael Geist's technology watchdog organization at the University of Ottawa. I had interviewed him myself last year for a story on unlocking cellphones. But again, I didn't have to call him as CBC had already done an interview with one of their lawyers Jordan Plener, so there was tape available.

As for finding a spokesman for Facebook, I first surfed their corporate site and read announcements from their chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly.

Normally I don't like using other journalist's stuff in my work, if I can avoid it. I like to do my own interviews, and ask my own questions. But in this case, with the huge resources of the CBC at my disposal, there was no reason to do double interviews.

Still, I wanted to make the story my own. So as I always try to do, I knew we needed to start the story with real people, who use Facebook.

Where could I find these people? Well, at mid day in downtown Toronto, lots of people would be on the streets. But what theme would the story have? That's when I thought of going to the Cineplex movie complex in the Entertainment district to find folks going to see the Harry Potter film. The films have been coming out about as long as Facebook has been operating (2004)

So that's where I headed.

Didn't think to ask Cineplex head office in advance for permission to record audio and interview patrons inside. Didn't have time. Should have.

I could have just come in, turned on my tape recorder and gathered sound in the lobby, and they probably wouldn't have noticed me. But I was up front about it, representing the CBC as I did, so I acted responsibly, and asked permission.

The manager said no, and although she tried to ask her supervisor to let me do this, the answer from head office was "No."

No matter.

So I left the main lobby, and stood on the street right outside.

No permission needed on the street.

Got some great quotes from Harry Potter movie goers of all ages.

Raced back to the newsroom and filed my 2 stories.

Story 1

Story 2:

There are journalism jobs out there ..part 2

I proudly attended the graduation ceremonies this week for the Centennial College journalism students who I've had the fortune to teach over the last year and a half. Some came from the Fast Track program, some from the three-year program, and even one from the University of Toronto's joint program.

Not only was it great to see them all dressed up, (with their proud parents, grandparents, fiances, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, partners. One even brought her adorable toddler who was the best dressed boy in the whole rooml!), but it was so encouraging, in this terrible recession, to learn many of them are working as journalists, and using their talents and skills and energy around the world.

Most of them completed their 15-week internships in April, and some have stayed on at those media outlets: the National Post offered one Toronto grad a contract for the summer.

Another is full time with AOL, a third came all the way from her job at the Slave River newspaper in the Northwest Territories to be at graduation. Still another has parlayed a final semester magazine project into employment creating a website called Adorned. The site specializes in fashion and celebrities and covered the MMVA this weekend (see their photos of A-list celebs and Tweets.)

One grad spent his internship in Athens, with Associated Press, and is now working for Newsfix, a new hyper local Toronto online news site created and staffed by Centennial journalism grads. He's thinking about taking a job in Alberta as editor of a weekly. BTW - By midnight tonight, newsFix had Tweeted that picket lines were up in the strike by Toronto outside workers.

Another student had completed interning at the Toronto Sun, and was thrilled to see his stories were printed in papers all across the country and online.

Yet another student was heading to South Korea to teach English for a while, a venture I suggested she turn into freelance foreign correspondent gigs with Canadian media while she was there.

One was working for the Lanka Reporter, the largest English language Sri Lankan newspaper in North America.

I know others who didn't come to convocation are working, too.

Congratulations to all of you in the class of 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.

You make me proud!

New Journalism Tool Box for reporters

At a recent conference which I helped moderate in Toronto, we discussed how journalists need to expand their storytelling skills by capturing video and audio as they cover events. Now the CBC.ca has written a piece about this must-have skill, as Iphones and Blackberrys and point and shoot cameras are capturing news, albeit not always with the high quality traditional TV news videography standards.

See the part where they quoted me! It's near the end.

CTV was wrong airing Stephane Dion's interview false starts?

Last fall, in October 2008,I posted this entry in my blog discussing the Dion  interview.

It came about in class, when Centennial journalism students discussed this controversial interview done by ATV showing hiccups and false starts by then Liberal leader Stephane Dion. Our journalism students felt strongly that Stephane Dion should have known better, as a seasoned politician, and should have responded using his media training to be "on message" no matter how confusing or convoluted the question was.

Other students felt that CTV had broken an implied promise not to air the bloopers.

But most put the blame on Dion himself, because there are standards which journalists apply to public figures, and he should have handled himself better.

Now, it appears, CTV has had its knuckles rapped by the Canadian Broadcast Standards agency.

Here is the decision:

Read the j-source website take on this: 

The Future of Journalism is Agile. Small. Lethal.

Brave New(s) World, a conference held Thursday May 28, 2009 at Centennial College in Toronto gathered together some of the more forward thinking journalists, students, and educators to try to make some sense of the turmoil now bringing about many changes in the news business around the world.

The conference had a keynote speech via Skype by the author of "What Would Google Do?" Jeff Jarvis, from New York, and then 4 breakout sessions where the thinkers and experts tried to make sense of the changes affecting journalism, and where they saw the industry in the future.

I had the pleasure of moderating one of the afternoon panels, entitled "The New Journalism Toolbox" together with my industry expert, Jesse Hirsh.

Our job was to get the delegates to think about what "tools" a new journalist/cub reporter coming out of j-school will need to survive in the Brave New(s) World. But also, where we think the new journalist will go in the future.

Several weeks ago, preparing for my moderator job, I came up with my top 10 list of tools which I thought journalism students needed to have to succeed. 

My list included crowdsourcing (getting stories from ordinary "citizen" journalists), use of Twitter, Audioboo, qik.com, Audacity, RSS feeds, mindcasting (from Jay Rosen), photoskills and how to do slideshows and photogalleries, how to live blog using CoveritLive, etc.

I thought I needed to focus literally on the new tools and platforms which the modern journalist needs to be able to be familiar with, in order to tell their stories in the digital age of online journalism.

What a reassuring surprise for me to discover during the summit that the people who participated in my breakout session The New Journalism Toolbox, are convinced that the tools which young journalists need now are actually the same tried and true ones I learned are the most important when I began my career 27 years ago:

1) love journalism

2) see it as a public service/be a shit disturber/(Tim Knight/TV Trainer)

3) tell stories in a clear language

4) be ethical

5) use the new tools/technology to look for stories outside of the box, from ordinary people (Kris Reyes, Citytv)

6) Know your audience and what tools to use to tell the story. 

7) develop a BRAND (become an expert in something) Intrapreneurship (Rahul Gupta, NewsFIX, and  Michael Brooke of Concrete Wave)

8) use technology to be FASTEST to tell the story. Be NIMBLE (Steve Humphrey, NewsFix)

9) Be able to cut through the clutter  of live chats, Tweets and blogs to find the story and tell it to your audience

10) Be Small, Agile. Lethal. (Jesse Hirsh)

All the basic things which make up a well rounded journalist of the old-school type. The twist is, they are able to harness the "new-fangled" technology to tell stories without having to rely soley on the mainstream news media outlets, or authority, as the limiting "box". Thanks to the power of the Internet, journalists can tell stories directly to an audience through blogs, Tweets, etc. This is a good thing. 

It makes me feel better about the future, and less panic stricken about the possible demise of mainstream news operations (closures of venerable newsprint papers, trimming of local TV supper hour news shows, layoffs at the CBC News organization). 

According to the discussions at Brave New(s) World, news and journalism will still be happening, just perhaps in a different form then we have grown up with. 

And the summit argues there is still a need for trained news journalists who -- unlike citizen journalists so in vogue these days -- do the critical thinking, the analysis, the digging for hidden stories, and who continue to carry out the honourable tradition of "afflicting the comfortable while comforting the afflicted. "

To see some of the blogs and thoughts of people who attended the summit, please check out Melissa Feeney's rendition here: 

and the live blog by Lara Willis here.

More on When Journalists Become News

The last blog entry I published concerned the conflict which journalists sometimes have to face – when to be a journalist, and when to not be. 

 The blog sparked a debate among some readers and I am pleased to report on some of the issues that came out of this discussion.

 But first, some clarification is in order.  The point of the blog was not to chastise current students for choosing to act in a certain way during this recent Victoria George Pazzano incident. This situation is, indeed, different then an event with another class of students, some time ago, involving a knife-carrying teen walking through the halls of the campus, and the apathy shown by some of those students to covering breaking news right under their noses.

 What I wanted the blog to explain was that I understood the conflict. And  I tried to show how I did what they did, when I was in a similar situation to the Victoria George Pazzano event (when I was working at CBC Halifax –covering the murder of a woman who turned out to be my friend’s sister.) 

 During that incident in the 1980s, I decided to remove myself from covering the story anymore, despite my ties to the family.  I knew I could not be objective. I chose friendship over journalism, and I too decided their privacy was worth more then me getting a scoop. I let someone else cover the story.

 I was never intending to do any reporting about the Victoria George Pazzano story myself using our ties to her family and Centennial College; i.e. interview our student who is her sister, for my own professional purposes.

 The blog was simply to point out that it's a tough call sometimes, and the public needs to understand this struggle between wanting to answer the professional requirements of a journalist's training and balancing that with good taste and someone's privacy.  That it's a struggle sometimes for a journalist NOT to tell a story, when we are trained to always try our best to tell the story, because that is our calling and our public trust.

 Another example.

 Years ago, when a close relative was doing a big legal contract in New Brunswick, and told me about it, and I was working for CBC in New Brunswick at the time, it would have been a big scoop for me to report it. Hundreds of new jobs were about to be announced in a depressed community. But this person’s career could have been destroyed if I reported it (same last names, d-uh).

 I realized that, and promised this person I would keep the tip private, and I never reported it. It wasn't worth ruining this person's life/or my relationship with this person. 

  This is still true.  Few stories ever are, except health hazards, nuclear war, and perhaps imminent destruction or terrorism. But those are rare events in a journalist's life.

  Did I want to report it with every fibre of my soul? Yes! It was killing me. But it wasn't worth it, so after some thought, I chose to stay silent.

 Did my journalism students now do right by not reporting and exploiting their friendship with Victoria George’s sister? Of course. Did their instincts as journalists make them WANT to write about the story? I hope so.

 And as a teacher, I hope this serves as a talking point in an ethics lesson. If someone has an "in" with a newsmaker, but is too close to this newsmaker to feel comfortable/ethical being the journalist, what are the steps that can be taken as an alternative?

 1) Wait and do it later?

2) Get someone not related or involved to do the story?

3) Not do the story?

 Feedback, as always, is welcome.

 

 

When Journalists become the news: Victoria George Pazzano

I went to the visitation for Victoria George-Pazzano yesterday, the young Toronto mother who died after suffering an asthma attack while on vacation in Mexico. The one who's family had so much trouble bringing her back to Toronto because of the swine flu fears.

Victoria's sister Caroline George is one of my students in the post-graduate journalism program at Centennial College in Toronto.

I wasn't aware of the connection right away between my own small world and the woman making headlines on the front page of the newspapers; it took about a week until my colleague Lindy Oughtred figured it out after learning about the flurry of emails from our students who are in Caroline's class. 

But once we discovered Victoria was our student's older sister, two things happened: I felt terrible for Caroline and the ordeal her family was going through. But I also wanted our students to be reporters, and use their connection to Caroline to tell another part of the big news story, from a perspective no one in the mainstream media could have possibly known about.

When I suggested this be done, some of the students looked uncomfortable. They were more concerned with sending flowers, organizing trips to the funeral home, and supporting Caroline.

I think even my colleague felt my suggestion of "Write a story about it" seemed a bit awkward and perhaps, even, in poor taste.

In the end, I don't think anyone has done a story yet about Caroline, despite our campus having a student newspaper, an online newspaper called the Toronto Observer, a radio station Observer Radio news, and many Twitter accounts and blogs.

This reminded me of an incident in the fall that happened at school: a young man was caught by the security guard with a 7 in long hunting knife. He'd been carrying it while casually walking through the halls of our campus, at the Centre for Creative Communications, where the Journalism school is located, at 951 Carlaw Avenue, in Toronto. I found out about it because I saw the knife at the front security desk, and asked what had happened, and found out the incident was still underway. The suspect had just been apprehended and was being escorted off campus.

So I ran back to the Observer Newsroom, and urged someone to get out to the lobby and cover the story. No one moved. They were working on other assignments, they had other things to do.

Finally, Paula Barreiros grabbed her notebook and tape recorder and went out to see what was going on.

Eventually, she got some quotes, and wrote the story for our online Observer edition.

The real story was that the mild-mannered security guard who we all see and love ever day, Ravi, had acted like a hero and saved the day.

It infuriated me that when the Journalism school became the centre of a news story right under its nose, all but one of the students (who I already consider journalists), showed they were really just students first, journalists second.

Which brings me to the point of this blog. 

For some reason, our journalism program has been privileged to have taught several students in the last two years who's personal lives have been played out on the front pages of Canada's newspapers: 

1) Caroline George, sister of Victoria George Pazzano.

2) Andrew Serba, brother of the late Michael Serba, a university student on a visit home who was killed by a drug addict in a laneway. Andrew kept up with his studies last fall all while the trial of the accused was before the courts, and in the newspapers. He's working at Inside Toronto.

3) Lera Thomas, who's brother was killed last fall, although I don't have many details.

She's now working at House and Home.

There is one more to tell you about: the murder happened more than 20 years ago, in Toronto, to a woman who was stabbed to death by a man who escaped from a half way house.

I first became personally connected to this story, and to the victim's family, while I was working for CBC in Halifax in the mid 1980s. The victim was Tema Conter, but she originally came from Halifax. I was assigned to cover the story, but because I was friends with her brother Howard, a physician, and his wife Karen, I decided it was too hard to remain objective. At the time, I remember choosing instead to throw away my mantle of journalistic objectivity, and I helped my friends field telephone calls from the media, and acted as a kind of gatekeeper for them, while the investigation was underway. Ironically, Howard and Karen's daughter Jenna is now studying for her post-graduate Journalism diploma with me, here at Centennial, and is a classmate of Caroline George.

Did I do right with the Conter murder? No one at work back then at the CBC penalized me or suspended me for my actions. At the time, I felt it was the right thing to do. Friendship over journalism.

But journalistic instincts will always kick in first, for me anyway. 

They did even yesterday at the visitation for Victoria George. 

I had a long chat with Victoria's mother, who is an incredibly gracious and spellbinding woman, mother of four, who shared with me her anxieties about her oldest daughter's life long battle with asthma (My oldest son is an asthmatic who has also been hospitalized many times and has come "close" twice so I understood her constant vigilance with Victoria and her sleepless nights and listening to her child breathe).

I asked Mrs. George if any politicians from Ontario had turned up, especially from the Health Ministry, which has some serious explaining to do about why there were no beds available for her dying oldest daughter Victoria.  She said that no one from the Health ministry had sent a card or flowers, but then she pointed to the front of the room at the Ogden Funeral Home. 

"Jack Layton sent those," she said.

And indeed, there was a delicate bouquet of white roses and about to bloom white tulips with a card from Jack Layton on the table.

So now with this blog about the visitation,  I've done it again. I've shared what I saw and heard, of someone's private life. I do it, because not only does it help me make sense of a tragic event, but perhaps it will shed some light for other people about the headlines they read but may not feel connected to.

And I hope it will reveal an example of the conflict which journalists often face as they live their lives: their struggle to balance what for me have always been roaring journalistic instincts, with the quest many people have for personal privacy. 

 

Blue Rodeo and Michael Kaeshammer and chewing gum

At a concert at the Glenn Gould Theatre in Toronto last night, my friend introduced me to the talents of an amazing young Canadian jazz musician named Michael Kaeshammer. It was a belated birthday present to me: she treated me to the show. 

For those of you in the know, I won't tell you how he used to open for Sophie Millman and Anne Murray, but now is big enough and famous enough to fill what MC Jaymz Bee called "soft seat" concert halls across Canada. 

So what does this have to do with Blue Rodeo and journalism?Interviewing?

Kaeshammer told the audience he was planning to come to the lobby after the show to sign autographs for World Vision, and to mingle, and that he even hoped to finagle an invitation to a party, since he said he wasn't doing anything after the show ended!

And it got me to thinking about what I would ask him, if I accidentally happened to bump into him while he was "schmoozing."

It reminded me of the time I was in this same predicament a couple of summers ago, while on vacation with my family in Prince Edward Island.

My husband and I had bought tickets to see Blue Rodeo play at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown. The event was going to be even more enticing because some friends of ours from Toronto knew the band, and had scored a backstage pass for us to meet the band after the show.

I remember spending the whole concert half listening to the music, and mostly wracking my brain for some inspiration about what I would ask Jim Cuddy so I wouldn't sound like a groupie or a bumbling awestruck fan.

And then it came to me while I was watching Cuddy and Greg Keelor chomping on chewing gum while they were performing. It struck me as odd, rude even, that such a big name band would be so disrespectful of their audience, that they wouldn't even spit out their gum before taking the stage.

So when the time came for us to crowd by the stage door, and jostle for photographs, I have to admit I was nervous. What if Cuddy thought I was an idiot for asking such a question?

When they came out, and the introductions were made, I went ahead and asked him about the gum issue. And I got a really interesting answer: he told me that at his age, he had to chew gum to keep his throat lubricated, so he doesn't lose his voice while he sings. 

A few months later, back home in Toronto, the Star and Globe both ran stories about Cuddy having problems with his vocal chords, even having to stop singing for a while to have surgery. 

So my question was bang on. Too bad I wasn't writing a story for CTV at the time. I didn't even have a blog then.

Nevertheless as far as I was concerned, gum or no gum, he still had -- and has-- a sweet voice.

I should've asked him what kind of gum works best-- and what his favourite flavour was, and how long did one piece last during a concert?

As for Kaeshammer, we left before I got myself into trouble. And I'd be glad to hear any suggestions on what you would have asked him.

Teaching Interviewing: My students teach me.

Ciaran Thompson, and Shawn Starr interview Olympic gold medallist in hockey Vicky Sunohara at Centennial College journalism program

I teach an Advanced Interviewing course at Centennial College school of Journalism every winter -- 15 weeks of teaching students that interviewing is an art.

And every year, during the first hour of class, I thank the students for the privilege of being their teacher for this course.

Teaching it helps ME be a better journalist; going over with THEM the techniques and tricks and skills and thought which is needed to conduct a satisfying and successful interview always helps ME do a better job in my own interviews.

And it has.

This month, I've had to interview some prominent Canadians, for my husband's new accounting textbook.

Today was the Auditor General of Canada Sheila Fraser. Last week was Ian Clarke, Vice President of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment. Next week it will be Mark Powell of Boston Pizza.

All have been interviewed a million times before.

So I've been even more diligent then usual preparing for these interviews because, as I tell my students, good sit down interviews of prominent guests need to be handled more carefully then an everyday scrum with the Mayor does.

The interviewer needs to find something to break the ice, to connect with the guest, to keep them engaged, and to try to get at "feeling level" responses (not the "If this is about my new movie, Press 1" kind of answer which movie stars have to give on press interview junkets).

So I practiced what I preached: I spent hours researching the guests. I read everything I could get my hands on, online - going back 10 years. I watched interviews they'd done on Strombo, or with trade magazines, and professional magazines. I even stalked their family members on Facebook, without making contact, of course. And on Twitter. Then I thought up questions which I hoped would be different then the usual ones they've answered a million times already. Or expand on an issue they'd talked about before.

And then I did the next steps -- steps my students have been learning to do: I wore a suit, I showed up super early at the locations. I checked my video camera and microphone and tape recorder to make sure they all worked, I scoped out the rooms where the interviews were to be conducted, and made friends with the receptionists.

While there, although I already had prepared a couple of icebreakers, I observed my surroundings to see if there were any cool things in their buildings which I could refer to as ice breakers or during the interview itself.

With Ian Clarke, of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, since he and I are about the same age, and we both are ex Montrealers who both have 2 boys who both play hockey, and since he went to university where my cousin was a professor, I thought that might be good to establish rapport.

I had also prepared a second ice breaker: about his kids. I told him that my father is a lawyer, but when we were growing up, he wasn't the coolest show-and-tell parent to bring to school -- being a lawyer wasn't nearly as cool as the father who owned the clothing factory with the most popular fashions at the time like Debbie Wexelman's father, who gave her all the latest sweaters and shirts from Razzle Dazzle and Jump for Charlie. So I asked him whether his kids thought their father's job was the best show-and-tell father at school, i.e. having access to the players on the Leafs, the Raptors, the Marlies, and free tickets to all the rock concerts at the ACC they could ever want.

Our chat went on for about 30 minutes. We talked about who the coolest person he'd met in his career was (Bobby Orr), how he'd like to meet President Barack Obama, how the only performer he went backstage to meet was Tina Turner, how going to build homes in New Orleans after the Hurricane was "life changing". And about leadership.

I tried to make it a conversation. It was intense. I gave him my best "George Strombo" intense eye contact and listening. When it was over, I felt privileged to have met him. Maybe I rambled too much.

With the Auditor General, it wasn't as easy to figure out how to break the ice. Although she's been interviewed a million times, there isn't much about her personal interests, or her non-work hobbies or interests, on line.

I canvassed my students this week to ask for their suggestions. One said I should play word games. Another said to bring a jar of jellybeans and ask her to audit how many are in the jar. I thought that was brilliant, but my husband kyboshed it as undignified.

So then I remembered my research and it came to me. Give her something she doesn't know. Kind of like a gift. I thought I could try the icebreaker by telling her about the Twitter messages I've seen about her, and give her the printed copy of it, which says she looks like she never has any fun. And also the website called Love.Com that has a fan page about her. And then ask her if she'd ever seen the You Tube cartoons by Nelvana (the folks who brought us Franklin the Turtle) about Harold Rosenbaum, Accountant Extraordinaire who fights crime with his audit bag and calculator.

So I did all this. I also admitted up front that, despite my 28 years in the business, I wasn't sure what would work with her to break the ice, and could she help me?

And it seemed to have worked. She was very gracious, and we then proceeded to talk for half an hour about her work, my kids, her kids, our travels, and her plans, as well as weaving questions in there about the job, how she got mono and strep throat at 17 and how that led her to become an accountant, and her feelings about being the "Mick Jagger" of the accounting profession, as one newspaper called her. We discussed bodyguards, favourite TV shows, divorce, and women's issues. It felt like a conversation. I hope it did for her too. I only looked at my questions twice, at the end of the interview, to make sure I'd covered everything I needed.

And I admit that once during the interview, while she was talking, I was thinking about the next question. And I blanked out. I couldn't remember what I wanted to ask her. Yikes! But then I started listening to her even more closely, and it came to me just in the nick of time, and I mirrored back to her some of her answer, and moved to what she could remember about her first audit job as an intern fresh out of accounting school.

At the end of the interview, my students helped me in yet another way. Yesterday they were watching the cool video of that British woman who sang Les Miserables on Britain's Got Talent and surprised Simon Cowell because she was so plain with a unibrow, but a voice to make goosebumps on anyone who listens to her. And so I watched it in class with them. And today, when we were discussing new technology, I asked her if she had seen this video. She hadn't. So later today, when I got home, I sent her a thank you note by email, with the link to watch that video of Susan Boyle.

So, once again, I thank my students for always teaching me more then I teach them.

Imagine - The new exhibit by Yoko Ono in Montreal

(Photos by Brenda Bessner. 1) Ellin listening to the interviews through a speaker on the famous Bed  2.) Ellin playing "Imagine" at the exhibit)

I used to hate Yoko Ono.

When I was growing up, we blamed her for breaking up the Beatles, and for being too out there, too weird, too avant garde.  

Now I know she and John Lennon were just ahead of their time. By about 40 years. 

I've just seen the exhibit in Montreal commemorating the 40th anniversary of the famous "Bed In" for peace put on by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

That's when they held court in a hotel bed for a week, inviting journalists, artists, religious leaders and other musicians to create music and share their vision of peace.

Now, after seeing exhibit, and marveling at who went to see it --- the young children with their parents, the older couples, the three generations,  the all kinds of colours and races of people who attended the free exhibit ---- I think people are now finally ready to listen to what John and Yoko were saying all those years ago. 

You walk in to the exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and you hear John and Yoko calling to each other. It is a bit weird, and I thought "Oh no. Here's more of that weird Yoko stuff which I used to hate when I was growing up." Performance art. Public participation art.

So I took a pass on hammering a nail into that white canvas. And I didn't climb the ladder to see the art that was on the ceiling (you get a different perspective on the art from up high). And seeing them naked posing for photos back when they were just newlyweds, seemed more of the same provocative art they always did, which to me, used to feel phony.

But when you move through to the next room, and see the BED, and they let you actually lie on it, I was able to stay there for a long time, quietly, tossing off my shoes, and I watched at length,  some of their famous bed-interviews with journalists, actors, spiritual leaders and other intelligentsia of the day. 

That's when I started to feet the bed-in maybe wasn't just another one of their self-promoting publicity stunts. They were just being like today's modern day stars, who throw their massive influence behind charities and causes they feel must be promoted.  Think of Brad Pitt (Make It Right foundation to rebuild New Orleans) or Bono, or Bob Geldof who put together Live Aid for Africa. 

The world of the 60's and early 70's just wasn't interested in what John and Yoko were trying to do, which is promote the end of the Vietnam war, promote tolerance, promote respect, and promote freedom.  

In the next room, exhibit goers can see the actual hand written lyrics to "Happy Christmas (The War is Over)" and see Lennon's hand drawn sketches, his anti-war videos, and documents showing his struggles with U.S. and Toronto immigration authorities who basically thought he was a terrorist. You can see John and Yoko declaring their Nutopia republic, a land with no passports, no borders, no flag.

The next room lets you sit down at a white piano and play Imagine (it has hard chords!). I watched a white mustache-sporting father try to teach his biracial daughter how to play the left hand chords while he played the right hand melody. The father was wiping away his tears when they were done.

Next room is where Yoko Ono has created new art pieces just for this show. One is a tree of wishes, where people can write a wish on a tag, then tie it to the tree. The trees were crammed with these beige tags fluttering as museum goers passed by. I wrote "Peace is Good" which is what my husband and I used to say to each other when we first met, after some tumultuous previous adventures we both had.

The next room had maps plastered all over the walls, and stamps attached to them with strings. You can stamp "Imagine Peace" anywhere you wish. It made me so happy to see the darkest areas with the most stamps were the Middle East.

I stamped there, too, and I stamped my own hand, to try to take a little of Yoko Ono and John Lennon's message out with me, to make it last. And to comfort me.

I've needed comfort. In recent weeks and months, it's been hard to cope with the barrage of constant violence in the world, the terrorism in Mumbai, the fighting in Gaza, the suicide bombers in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan, the growing anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment in Toronto, and the unbearable unending injustice in Darfur, to name a few.  The message of "Imagine"  takes on so much more relevance and power.

Take your kids and your parents to see it. Take your grandparents. You'll all end up leaving the exhibit humming "All we are saying, is give peace a chance". 

Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer and CTV Newsnet

Anyone seen last week's "The Daily Show" episode where Jon Stewart interviewed Jim Cramer from Mad Money about his responsibility to the viewers as a business commentator?

Watching it brought back memories of my days as a business anchor/editor and interviewer with CTV Newsnet from 1998 to 2005, and on Canada's Business Report, a syndicated daily radio show from Canada News Wire.

The job was hectic: I did a dozen half-hourly newscasts a day, plus interviews with business newsmakers. Sometimes I would be ad-libbing my reports from the floor of the TSX in Toronto. Other times, I'd be stool-to- stool on the TSX Mezzanine conducting 6 minute long interviews with CEOs, CFOs, analysts and economists. Or I'd be down at the Report on Business Television studio, (now called BNN) doing the business news as well as supper hour and late night business reports for CTV affiliate stations across the country.

Some of the criticism which I heard Jon Stewart levy against financial journalists in general, about this current economic recession, was that these big name prominent TV journalists somehow "knew" what was going on with the sub prime mortgages, Asset Backed Paper fiasco, and all the unsustainable growth in commodities stocks that it seemed could go on forever....but didn't report on any of this to their viewers, and somehow, were in "cahoots" with the Wall Street titans of industry.

Personally, I can say I only came under any kind of "pressure" not to report about a business story, ONCE, in all my time on the CTV Newsnet business desk.

It involved some "less then positive news" about BCE, the parent company that owned CTV and its media empire including Newsnet. I don't recall whether the news which I had wanted to report involved some disappointing quarterly financial results, or an unfavourable CRTC ruling, but I do know that the story would have painted BCE in a negative light. It was true. And on the wires. But I was told not to deliver the story that way, but rather, just state the numbers, and move on. Use 'neutral' words etc, since they own us.

I remember being piqued at this. Yes we always had to say on air in our stories about BCE that they were "the parent company of CTV Newsnet", or some form of disclaimer. But that was the only time when I actually came face to face with pressure from within about how to report a story about the folks who signed my paycheque. And yes, I did what I was told, for the record.

As for being "in cahoots" with the titans of industry, I can say from my vantage point that I never saw my colleagues at CTV Newsnet or BNN, including Linda Sims, Mike Eppel, Susan Ormiston, Howard Green, Martin Cej, the late Jim O'Connell and others, ever take bribes from corporate execs, or do potentially sleazy unethical journalistic practises when doing their jobs.

Amanda Lang was married to a big mover and shaker in the gold business, and Kevin O'Leary invested his own money in the markets while being a commentator on air. But that's hardly being "in cahoots".

What I did see were frantically busy business journalists trying to do as good a job as they could with impossible deadlines, as they had to fill the demands of a 24 hour news channel. So you do as much research and preparation as possible for your next hit, within the time that you have. And we certainly weren't "taking Wall Street/Bay Street's word for it", as Jon Stewart alleges.

I know my job required tons of reading and journalistic research (in off hours as well as during the 9 hour shift): here's just some of the research that I did during a usual day in order to try to put financial stories in context for myself and my viewers: check all the daily newspaper business pages (Globe, Star, FInancial Post, National Post, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal), and their online websites for updates, read endless corporate financial statements, analysts' reports, investment bank economic research, search news paper archives, check financial websites with analysis such as Morningstar, GlobeInvestorGold, Bloomberg's wire service, Hoovers, Dow Jones, Canada News Wire press releases, listen to web conferences of annual meetings, read economic indicator reports from the Canadian and U.S. governments, Bank of Canada reports, SEC filings, CEDAR and other Canadian regulatory agencies filings, reports from Statistics Canada, from European banks, the OECD, auto industry analysts, JD Powers, Retail Council of canada, the CRTC, court rulings on bankruptcies and restructuring, etc etc.

Whew. I'm sure I'm missing more.

There's more: our producers and researchers were business experts in their own right: Bruno Malta had passed the Canadian Securities Course, and eventually left to work as a financial advisor at BMO. If even more background or checking was needed, we did what all good journalists are supposed to do: we went directly to our sources, asked for clarification, and explanation. Then we checked with alternate sources -- policy wonks, brokers, consumers, politicians, professors, analysts.

And when I needed even more background, about a financial statement I thought was strange, I checked with my personal experts: this included the most experienced accounting expert I know -- my husband, a CA and PhD who has been teaching accounting for over 25 years and runs the Accounting program at UOIT now, and was with York's Schulich School of Business for many years before this, and has written 3 textbooks on Financial Accounting.

If it involved law, I checked with --a lawyer in Montreal specializing in corporate and intellectual property --practicing law for 47 years-- my Dad Morton Bessner! And also with a litigation lawyer in Toronto from Gowlings who is a sought after author and trains financial advisors how not to get sued --my cousin Ellen J. Bessner (she shares my name but spells it differently).

Some of you may say this all sounds like an excuse for justifying a serious failure: Jon Stewart's charge that some business journalists were so busy "feeding the goat" as it's called, churning out a dozen newscasts a day, entertaining the audience, that they are just too darn busy or lazy to really do a proper job digging up the dirt.

Still others may say that some business journalists don't have enough understanding of how the market really works in order to see dirt and scandal that former Wall Street insiders like Jim Cramer are accused of knowing.

From where I see it, Jon Stewart's allegations are really a sad indictment of modern day journalism -- especially investigative journalism in the 21st century.

Newsrooms who give their reporters time and money to carry out these vital checks and balances on authority, are few and far between. CBC Radio's I unit run by Suzane Reber is one of the few remaining spaces for this kind of work. W5 and the Fifth estate also do this. But for the rest, and their 24 hour news cycles, it's less about breaking exclusive stories and leading the pack with enterprise journalism, and more about "feeding the machine" and "matching" what other outlets have.
It's often more about "light, bright and tight" celebrity obsessed gossip/news, instead of valuable but perhaps less exciting and way more time consuming journalism on issues that impact millions of people.

Much has been said about how the U.S. media acted in a similar way under the previous Bush administration, buying into the Weapons of Mass Destruction propaganda that led to the war in Iraq.

It's a sad thing to see. And I am not optimistic that things will improve soon --despite Jon Stewart's outraged howling wakeup call to our industry -- with the current havoc this recession is causing in the traditional model of television news and newspapers.

Where are the Journalism Jobs?

Peter Mansbridge meeting Centennial TV students 2008. UTSC/Centennial grad Mahesh Abeywardene, reporter for The Lanka Reporter in Toronto.

It seems everywhere you turn these days, you hear more and more stories of station closures and cutbacks in local news programming, layoffs at newspapers, and hiring freezes at the CBC and other places. For members of the information industry, especially journalism students, this must be a scary time. For those colleagues who have already been laid off or bought out, ditto.
The issue -- let's call it a crisis -- is not just water-cooler talk. It permeates much of our daily conversation in the halls of the journalism school at Centennial College in Toronto, where I teach.

But with the dark clouds, there is, to be cliched, a silver lining at the (gulp) end of the rainbow for journalism jobs.

1) Young and cheap is a good thing.

When the free daily Metro laid off all it's paid media workers recently, including some of our former students, to let the paper be put out by interns only, we decided as a faculty not to send anymore students on placement there. One reason is to protest the "work for free" trend of papers relying on cheap but inexperienced newcomers who haven't got the life experience or journalism experience that more seasoned veterans bring to the product.

But the bad news this symbolized for what we hope will always be an attempt to strive towards excellence in journalism, is also a beacon of hope to those journalism students about to go out on the job market, and to those, like the bright young high school students I met yesterday at a recruiting session at the University of Toronto/Centennial College joint journalism program, who hope the market snaps back by the time four years from now, that they are ready to look for work.

Here's the bright light: a colleague of mine who used to work at the National Post says the layoffs and attrition now decimating jobs in that newspaper, mean journalists who are "of a certain age", let's say in their mid-50s, are being bought out or given early retirement, which will allow news companies to save those big salaries, and go out to hire young, inexperienced, but keen and cheaper recent journalism graduates.

At the Vaughan Today newspaper, run by Multimedia Nova corporation,which also publishes the Town Crier newspapers, and Corriere Canadese, a recent graduate of our program is now the city editor, after less then 2 years out of school, another grad is Online editor, same time frame, and a third with 3 years out of school is one of their staff. Granted, these are talented, passionate journalists, but it took me, aged 47 now, from 1983 to 1995 working in Fredericton, Moncton, Halifax, Ottawa, Montreal and overseas for several years in Italy, for CBC, before I made it as a reporter for CBC in Toronto (the big time!).

2) Talent will still rise to the top.

With newspaper advertising drying up again, and a broadcast advertising drought again prompting big media companies to retrench, as they did when I was in j-school in the early 1980s, during the last recession, it seems a bit like deja vu now. Back then, I was one of 6 journalism students hired straight out of university (Carleton B.J. 1983) by the CBC TV's wonderful training department to work in newsrooms for the summer across the country. Yes it was a recession. But not to blow my own horn too much, I was chosen along with these other students: (they are pretty famous) Howard Green (BNN), Tom Spears (CBC Calgary), Susan Bonner (CBC TV National reporter). If you are good, and keen, and job search with tenacity, you will get work.

As Rita Shelton Deverell, journalist, author, actor, voice coach, and storyteller in residence at Centennial, told a class of students two weeks ago, be the kind of reporter who, when you submit a story to the editor by deadline, gets this response: "I love you!" because the story needs very little editing, very little work. Make your editors' lives easier.

David Downey of CBC Radio (national news in Toronto) this week told my radio news students at Centennial (post grad program) that news managers will still hire the creme de la creme, when and how they can. So if you are talented, and work hard, are passionate about storytelling, and are willing to travel, then there is hope for finding work, even during these tough times.

3) Online is the new "black".

If you are going to be trying to get work, managing editors and hiring managers want students who can do more then just print reporting, or just photography. Be able to shoot a video, edit it, perform an on camera, do a radio news report, take a photo, and post a story on line...all in one day. More and more, all these forms of storytelling are moving online.

At Canadian Press in Toronto, Managing editor for Ontario Wendy McCann says her reporters, like Tamsyn Burgmann, have to do all those things when covering a big story. At Centennial, we are training our students to be multiplatform journalists:
they can write & take photos for their bi weekly community print newspaper, but they also can post daily stories and photos for TorontoObserver.ca, the college's online 24-7 news site. The site also publishes their audio interviews and radio reports, and has room for their their video stories which they do as well.

When post-grad student Laura Stanley, who finished her program this January and is now on internship, looked for freelance work with Durham's community newspapers earlier this year, (now run by Ian Caldwell former CTV Toronto assignment editor), not only was he impressed that she could take photos for the print editions, but that she could also shoot, edit and write and report TV News stories as well, for his website.

Our journalism school's online news site are run by Eric McMillan, managing editor of Town Crier and its online sites, Irene Thomaidis, who is an online editor for Sun media, and Phil Alvez, online editor at Vaughan Citizen, and also by by Ted Barris, a published author of military history books, and a blogger, and broadcaster, and by Neil Ward, formerly with the A-section and Sports at the National Post doing nightly editing and layout and an online editor, as well as page editor, for the Royal Gazette in Bermuda. Gary Graves of CBC.ca teaches online posting of all forms of content, and our students' work is prominently displayed on several online sites:

1. Toronto Observer.ca
2. CentennialJournalism
3. Centennial Journalism on You Tube
4. Observer Radio
5. Observer TV



For years, the course which required students to conceive, design, report, write, and publish their very own "niche" specialty magazine, only required them to print glossy hard copies. Now the course requires a strong online component.

The introduction to news reporting class now also requires proficiency in audio editing and field interviewing using a digital camera and a digital audio recorder.

The online imaging course requires students to create a website for their photos.

Our Radio and TV courses all product live to air newscasts for our online news channel over the Internet.

There is a lot more.

But it gives you an idea that journalism schools which make sure their students have the strong fundamentals combined with the knowledge of how to tell stories online, should be producing graduates who will either find work in existing media outlets, or, create their own news sites and start ups.

NOTE: Monday March 9 2009 the Ontario Association of Broadcasters is holding a Career Day in Toronto where 24 of my students and I will participate in their round tables, with hiring managers. It should be interesting to hear from the head honchos, what advice they are giving journalism students. I'll try to update this blog, afterwards.

4) Diversity and ethnic media are flourishing.

A recent report on CBC Radio in Toronto says if you want jobs in the news media, consider working for the ethnic news outlets. According to the report, they are flourishing, and ad revenue is strong. With students in journalism school increasingly from diverse backgrounds, ethnicity is now a plus to get work. If you speak another language, why not look for jobs with OMNI TV, the Chinese dailies, the Iranian and other webnews sites operating in the Greater Toronto area. Here is a link to the story, by CBC's Priya Sankaran.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/03/06/gta-ethnic-media.html?ref=rss

Wake Up Italian Style

Wake Up Italian Style -- in Canada!

If you find yourself back in Canada, like I did after 6 years living and working as a foreign correspondent in Italy, and desperately missing your regular dose of Italian music, Italian news, and even your favourite Italian slang, like I do, you can get your “fix”, …..at least on the radio.

For four hours every weekday on Toronto’s CHIN Radio, (1540AM) why not tune in to their fabulous morning show called “Wake Up Italian Style”. (I admit I flip back and forth with CBC's Metro Morning, and 680 News)

It’s four hours of news, traffic, weather, and all sprinkled with banter, jokes, and interviews by the cheery hosts Edoardo Monasterolo and Patrizia Di Vincenzo. Monasterolo is a recent import to Toronto, having grown up in the Cuneo area of Italy, in Bra (CN) just south of Turin. He was already a popular house DJ in clubs in the Piedmont area, and hosted a radio show there as well, before deciding to move to T.O in 2006.

Edo is the main announcer—he’s also the petulant member of the morning duo. It’s his schtick. He assumes characters in different Italian dialects, and although most of the show is in Italian, often he breaks out his best fractured Italian-English such as “beckayard” for “back yard” and “garbiccio” for “garbage”, and he loves to sprinkle his segues to the latest pop tunes from San Remo with his trademark “Beau-tee-fool!”

If Edo is the Don Cherry of the team, then Patrizia Di Vincenzo is his Ron McLean. She’s the more serious on air personality, and does the traffic updates, and brings in bits of news and gossip to discuss with Edo and the technician who operates the board.

For me, listening to Wake Up Italian Style helps in many ways: I feel as though I’m driving around the Grande Raccordo in Rome stuck in traffic, although instead of slowdowns on the via Appia, it’s the Don Valley Parkway. They even use the same theme music to do traffic that I used to hear in Rome on the radio frequency GR2 when I lived there.

I also like how I get to hear modern popular Italian language and slang, so I don’t forget my Italian, even though here in T.O. I get very little chance to use it. It helped tremendously this past summer as we spent six weeks with the kids traveling across Italy in June and July, and my Italian was fluent. It was like taking a crash Berlitz refresher, but Wake Up Italian Style is free!

When we were in Italy, this summer, my kids were often glued to MTV Italy watching the latest music videos, and we fell in love with the tunes that were on the summer play list of 2008: Giusy Ferreri, Jovanotti, Cesare Cremonini. Listening to Wake Up Italian Style keeps me in the loop about the newest entries in the Italian music charts. And they also play some oldies, which remind me of my “wild oats” during my years living in Italy 1988 to 1994.

The music ranges from Nek, and Ramazotti to Gianni Morandi’s most recent album, to an old Antonello Venditti classic, to Laura Pausini and Michael Buble’s duet singing “You’ll Never Find” – that's the Canadian content!

They also have news on the hour and half hour, both local and from Italy, including reports from RAI international, so I can keep abreast of the latest Berlusconian quip, the David Beckham will-he-or-won’t-he with Milan, and the national debate over Eluana.

Plus you get tips on which Italian entertainers are coming to perform in town. Zucchero came last fall. So did Massimo Ranieri, but if they play his song “Rose rosse” one more time, I think I will drive off the road in frustration.

Am I the typical listener? Probably not, since the target audience is between 40 and 70, according to a recent blog entry, and you can tell, when you listen to the people who call in for contests, that they are mainly older, first generation Italian Canadians who now live in Woodbridge. But for me, Wake Up Italian Style fills a need, sort of like a good piatto di pasta and a glass of wine on a warm summer Roman afternoon. “Bee-youti-fool!”

Here’s how to contact them: wakeup@chinradio.com or call at 416-531-9991 ex2410

CHIN radio is on in Toronto on 1540 A.M., 100.7 F.M., and in Ottawa as well on 97.9 FM.

Afghanada --not the CBC Radio's drama!

We have heard a lot from distinguished and courageous Canadian foreign correspondents about what the situation is like on the ground in Afghanistan: the suicide bombers, how Canadian soldiers are being targetted by IEDs, about dangerous patrols in forward bases, and the inevitable convoy down Toronto's Highway 401 when another Canadian is killed on the line of duty there. And all of this reporting has made a big impression on me, and on many Canadian readers.

But I have my own sources: a first hand first person view of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. From a former student of mine, an Afghan-Canadian journalist, who's been working in Kabul for several years for the largest independent newspaper in that country.

Ahmad Zia isn't your typical journalist: born in Afghanistan, he started as a trained lawyer, and speaks five languages.
But he fled Afghanistan about ten years ago when the Taliban came to power, and wound up moving with his family to Toronto, where he drove a cab at night so he could take a broadcasting degree at Seneca College during the day.

The plan was so he could return to Afghanistan and help his native country tell their stories better.

I was one of his teachers.

After graduation, he decided to return alone to Kabul, leaving his wife and two children safely in Toronto, and try to work in the rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts of nation building. He's since worked as a communications advisor to various Karzai government ministries, and for several western NGOs, all the while helping his brother Faheem Dashti run Kabul Weekly.

He's also assisted foreign correspondents from Canadian outlets, including CTV News's Steve Chao, and Tom Blackwell from the National Post, and others who do their stints in Afghanistan.

He spends most of the year working abroad, and returns to Toronto twice or three times a year to recharge, see his family, and vent.

That's when I get my first person account of life in Kabul.

He describes the city matter of factly: crowded streets, no traffic lights, and a suicide bomber today who blew up 20 people at the Ministry of Justice, right beside where he works.

When Zia first went back to Kabul he was full of optimism: lots of foreign NGOs and international donors were pouring money and effort into Afghanistan after 2001, the Taliban was out of power, and the future seemed brighter.

Afghan president Karzai may not have liked what the staff at his brother's newspaper, Kabul Weekly wrote about -- exposing government corruption and NGO scandals -- but Karzai has allowed the paper to continue to operate, although under dire financial problems.

It had to shut down for a while in 2007. UNESCO and others helped it get back in print.

When the U.S. recently offered money to help keep the paper alive, Zia says there would have been strings attached: censorship. So they refused. Instead, Zia and his brother and others do what they need to do: sometimes paying the journalists and other staff first, while they themselves go without a salary.

Kabul Weekly has the largest circulation in the country for an independent newspaper. Last year Zia helped develop the paper's new online news website. It's in English, and Dari as well.

Zia had always intended to move his family back to Afghanistan as soon as he could: but by last summer, after the failed assassination attempt against President Karzai, he still felt it was too dangerous to risk it. He still does. In fact, he told me if Karzai wins the next election, he will probably admit defeat, and leave.

Why?

Because he says the current government hasn't improved the lives of his countrymen, not even after nearly 8 years, and $18 billion spent by Canada alone on its military mission in Afghanistan, and billions from other sources on schools and development projects and army building. And the countless lives lost. People have no jobs, he says. That's why he says most of the "insurgents" are mainly the unemployed and others , including crooks, who have no other way to make a living. The average salary for an Afghani is $50 while Karzai's advisors get $10,000. Outside Kabul, he claims the government runs a big poppy growing operation.

But what is hardest to live with, he said this week on his latest visit, was what he perceives as the lack of a clear and sensible vision for how to nation build. He sees it as a failure of the Afghan government, and of the international community.

His hope?

A new leader get elected in the coming ballot in August.

He senses the Karzai regime already knows its days are numbered, although he thinks the current president will do anything to stay in power. Just recently, he says he tried to run a story in the paper about current officials making plans to feather their nests as much as possible before being voted out of office. After hearing a report that someone has already looted one of Karzai's two armoured cars from the palace, Zia asked for an interview. He says officials denied the story, but also refused them access to the palace to take photos to prove the vehicle wasn't indeed missing.

One final note:


Zia is currently the head of an international foundation trying to build a public library in Kabul. It's to honour a man known as the Afghan Lion, a popular anti-taliban commander and Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Masood, who was assassinated two days before September 11th 2001, by Al Queda terrorists posing as reporters.

He says the government has graciously granted them some land for the project: supporters from Germany and Japan are also on board. But they need to fundraise in earnest to get the library built. Anyone interested in this project here in Canada? You can contact me and I'll put you in touch with Ahmad.

Defiance, the Movie and Real Life Heroes

This past weekend, we went to see the new Daniel Craig movie "Defiance" about the Bielski brothers, who sheltered and helped 1,200 Belarus Jews survive the Holocaust by living in the forest for two years.

It is a true story brought to light only recently, about the Bielski brothers' selfless achievement that rivals the more famous one carried out by Oscar Schindler and made famous by Stephen Spielberg. We went to the movie during the same week that the Vatican and Pope Benedict angered some Jewish groups by revoking the excommunication of a Lefevrist priest who once stated that only a few hundred thousand Jews died in the Holocaust, and none in a gas chamber.

I wanted to see the "Defiance" movie for several reasons, one being because Daniel Craig was a great James Bond.

But mainly I wanted to see it because the story of how the Bielskis hid in the forests resonates close to home for me: my dear friend Lidiia Drinfeld, shown here with her husband Ilya at their recent 50th anniversary party, is a survivor of the Holocaust who spent two years hiding in the forests of Ukraine, when she was a pre-schooler, under the Nazi occupation.

Lidiia once told me about her ordeal. She is 72 now. She remembers being four years old, and fleeing from her home with her family to live in the forests. She remembers having lice. She remembers the men sneaking into nearby villages at night to get food and supplies. She remembers the danger. She remembers her grandmother becoming sick, and dying.

Lidiia and her family survived and went on the make a life for themselves in Ukraine, in Harkov, and once she was married, she became a principal of an elementary school where she was in charge of 300 pupils. Her husband was an officer in the Russian military, and they were posted to Nihzny Novgorod (where Andrei Sakharov was exiled to). Sakharov was the outspoken critic of the Soviet Union who spent nearly five years in exile there, until Gorbachov freed him. He went on hunger strikes to help win medical treatment for his wife. Again, the theme of "Defiance" runs through this story.

For Lidiia and her husband and family, as Jews, during the Cold War and in the 1980s and '90s, life in Russia became increasingly hard. The Drinfeld's twin daughters emigrated first to Israel and then to Canada, and Lidiia and Ilya soon followed, as pensionners. Their oldest son remained in Moscow until three years ago, when thanks to the help of Richmond Hill Liberal MP Byron Wilfert, he was granted permission to immigrate to Canada, where the family was reunited.

I first met Lidiia nearly nine years ago, when I was home on maternity leave with my youngest son and looking for a baby sitter. I had posted an ad on a mailbox in the park near my home. She and her husband were out walking one day, and she tore off the last remaining tab with my phone number on it. Ever since she first walked into my home, we agree that it was destiny that caused us to meet. Now those days of changing diapers and warming up bottles are long over for her and for me.

In fact, you might think that since coming to Canada 10 years ago, Lidiia and her husband would eventually want to retire to enjoy being with their daughters and son, and their five grandchildren. But Lidiia continues to work, to study English, she even learned to play hockey, while Ilya researches on his beloved computer and composes new inventions using his math background (he predicted weather patterns for the Russian military when he was an officer) which he patents, including one design of a propeller for parachutes which occurred to him while he was out for a walk watching the seeds of a maple tree twirl to the ground.

While Lidiia and her family were not one of the Bielski survivors, she is a product of "defiance", one of many Jews of Eastern Europe who's strength and courage and perhaps a lot of "destiny" as a forest survivor of the Holocaust, brought her to us, and I am privileged to know her.

Journalists and Objectivity: Is it OK to put an Obama bumper sticker on your office door?

Dislosure: I possess two Obama bumper stickers, one Obama lawn sign, and I did have an Obama campaign button, but I recently gave it to a former student of mine, Abbas Somji, who saw it hanging in my office at Centennial College and coveted it so badly I gave it to him.

Those of you who read this blog will know I got them all when we recently spent time visiting family in Massachussets, where I worked hard to collect these items. And no, I didn't bring home a single McCain-Palin sign, but honestly I didnt try very hard to find any.

I did put the haul up in my office at the journalism department at Centennial College in November, right on the walls along with my other collected memoribilia and media passes from my days as a foreign correspondent: there are press passes to the Vatican, a tag from a NATO Summit, a Royal Tour in New Brunswick, me on location in Africa and Sicily, my family pictures, calendar, and other mementos of my journalistic life.

One day in November, the Obama lawn sign which i'd pasted on the door, was covered over with white paper. I learned from the students it was done by my colleague Malcolm Kelly of CBC.ca (the coordinator of the new Sports Journalism program here at Centennial).

Yesterday, I asked him why he'd done it. He admonished me that reporters need to keep their personal lives separate from their public ones, so what I did with my Obama lawn sign somehow broke the "code".

Malcolm's warning got me to thinking. When I was in journalism school a hundred years ago at Carleton University, I remember clearly being taught that no journalists should be card carrying members of any political organization. That also extended to no posting lawn signs for any one party on your front lawn.

The thinking behind those ethics rules, I'm sure, was so that as a journalist, no one could then accuse you of being one-sided, or slanted in favour of, or against, any political party. Extending that argument, that also meant you could interview anyone from any party, and no one would accuse you of slanting your story to favour the party you were secretly a member of.

And I have really worked hard to keep to that rule professionally ever since. I've been able to interview Muslims and Israelis, Mozambique rebels and the government they were fighting, refugees and soldiers, aid workers and soccer stars, Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Greens, Rhino Party members, Joseph Blatter from FIFA, bureaucrats and submarine commanders, even Prince Philip (he grabbed my microphone once and interviewed me during a royal walkabout). No one's accused me of showing bias in my stories.

Why?

Because I still politely refuse to put up a political lawn sign whenever the candidate in my riding comes around.
I don't vote on line to add my name to Facebook accounts supporting or opposing anything,
I turn down survey phone calls from polling firms,
I don't attend rallies or protests, even though I'd really really like to. Especially these last few weeks.
I do swear in my kitchen when I hear CUPE's Sid Ryan on the radio calling Israel "Nazis". But I don't add my name to online petitions which are filling up my email box calling for his head.

So why did I put up my treasure trove of Obama in the office at work, and not at home?

Well, partly because I like to collect stuff.

Old typewriters for one thing. They are displayed in my office at work.
So are old pieces of CBC furniture --like the old radio I got, and the old phone operator booth, which is in my office.
It's hanging on to history.
The Obama material was I think there for similar reasons: wanting to be part of something historic and amazing: the phenomenon that was sweeping America with hope for change. Like anyone who collects ticket stubs or brochures to make a scrap book of their travels: you wanted to be able to have tangible evidence that you had been alive when this happened. That's also why I collect front pages of newspapers from when big things happened: 9-11, or when the Canadian constitution was repatriated. I keep them for my kids and for myself. Documenting history. Which I think is what --as a journalist --I've always been doing on air on on the screen.

So I won't take down the Obama memoribilia at work, but I will move them off the window, and I will put the bumper stickers in a less visible spot.

Because I still believe it is possible to be a responsible journalist, despite having personal biases and a certain upbringing, as long as you separate public and private as much as you honestly can, when called upon to do a story.

And just for the record, in my personal life I am: Canadian, Jewish, born in Montreal, Anglo, white, female, from the 60s, soccer mom, who is a fanatic viewer of the Tv show "LOST", is a Leafs fan, loves Juventus and Fiorentina, actually everything Italian, with an extra kidney, who nearly died being mugged in Johannesburg, am a great cook, loves Cheetos, and Luca Toni, and thinks being a journalist is the best calling in the world.

Jane Creba, and Giftland: a Small World in Journalism

What, you ask, does the murder of a 15-year old innocent bystander in downtown Toronto on Boxing Day 2005 have to do with Giftland?

Until this week, there was no connection. But now, here's a story of just how small a world this is.

In late November, I attended Superior Court in Toronto to cover the murder trial of a man known only as J.S.R. -- he can't be named because he was a youth when the Creba murder took place outside the Eaton's Centre.

While at the trial, I marveled at the cool hi-tech digital TV screens, white boards, and the use of laptops, overhead document cameras and other digital technology in the courtroom. I hadn't seen these things used in a trial before, and I resolved that when the trial was over, I would do a story for CBC Radio News about how technology is now making a difference in Ontario courts.

This week, I interviewed J.S.R.'s defence lawyer, Gary Grill, about those technological changes he experienced through during the Creba trial. 

At his Little Italy office, on Toronto's College Street, Grill had his framed law school and undergraduate degrees on his back wall, and I asked him about going to McGill University in Montreal. He said he did his undergrad there, because he  grew up in Montreal. I said I was from Montreal, too.  He said he was from St. Laurent (a suburb west of Decarie Boulevard).

I said I was from St. Laurent, too.

He's a few years younger then me, but I figured it was such a small place, I might have known someone he knew.

"Have you ever heard of Giftland?" he asked.

That's when the penny dropped! 

Giftland was an institution in our neighbourhood. Growing up in St. Laurent in the 1960s and '70s, the store was the go-to place in the St. Louis Shopping Centre for gifts, toys, school supplies. And the man who ran it, Allan Grill, was as famous to us kids and our parents, as the late actor Al Waxman was for Torontonians in the TV show "The King of Kensington".  He even looked like him, if you get my drift.

Then the penny dropped! Gary Grill was Allan Grill's son, and I must have seen him a million times working at Giftland when he was a little boy (and I wasn't much older!)

So we reminisced about the old neighbourhood, Steinbergs (it's now a Provigo, I think), the park across the street from the shopping centre where my folks wouldn't let me hang out because they thought bad kids played basketball there, and even Place Vertu, the big enclosed shopping plaza a couple of bus rides away (the #118 and perhaps another one or two down Cote Vertu) which Grill said is still a hole!

Giftland closed a long time ago, although my mother tells me there is another giftware store in its place, but Gary's colourful father Allan, who used to wear his pants as low riders long before it became fashionable-- is not running it. And Gary didn't go into the family business-- he's a lawyer defending one of the men convicted of being in a gun fight that killed Jane Creba in a crime that shocked the city of Toronto.

~~~~~~~~

One more thing in the Small World Department: As I was researching this high tech court story for the Creba trial before Christmas, at CBC Radio News in Toronto, someone made a point to introduce himself to me.

It was Neil Herland, a reporter just back from New York City now working for National Radio News. He told me he was also from Montreal, and that his mother worked as a kindergarten teacher in St. Laurent many years ago. 

Turns out, she was MY kindergarden teacher at Talmud Torah Elementary School, the same school which was firebombed by anti-Israel suspects a few years ago. 

Journalism in Mexico

Squatters live beside luxury resorts
1)

(Photo of armed military police checking the main highway for drugs and illegal immigrants)

Just got back from a week at one of those all inclusive holiday resorts in Mexico, near Akumal, south of Cancun. You know the drill -- all you can eat, all you can drink, nightly shows, and the

myriads of Canadians and European tourists --strangely, we encountered very few Americans.

Whenever I travel, I love to get the local newspapers and try to learn all I can about local news.

So when I picked up the Novedades daily, which covers Cancun and the State of Quintana Roo, here's what I learned from reading about life in Mexico and also about that specific part of Mexico (I also learned it from observation.) 

1.  Extortionists operate in Playa del Carmen and the local authorities have called in extra help from the army to try to deal with it; 

2. Seven police officers were decapitated/executed in Guererro State (where Acapulco is and Ixtapa) by narco-traffickers--their bodies were found in a place called Chilpancingo.

3. A beautiful woman who won the country's popular Miss Sinaloa competition 2008 was arrested the other day with her boyfriend and their gang of narco-traffickers and paraded for the media with the haul of weapons, cellphones and money; 

4. Amongst the illegally dumped construction rubble from the holiday apartments and luxury resorts going up along the main highway from Cancun south to Akumal you can see incredibly poor squatters living behind wooden fences on the roads and side streets outside the heavily guarded and gated resorts--they live in huts with blue plastic roofs; 

5. Gun carrying uniformed soldiers from the Mexican federal army, as well as the local police and the navy have set up checkpoints along the main highway to stop cars as part of their much publicized holiday security operation (Dec 16 to Jan 6) to prevent accidents  by tourists as well as drugs or illegal immigration.  

6. Mexican newspapers publish much more lurid and sensational photos of dead and injured people then Canadian newspapers would -- we saw photos of victims of an assassination in Afghanistan printed in full colour in the taxi driver's newspaper, and we saw photos of traffic accident victims' bodies lying where they fell -- although one person's face had been pixelated out.

I realize what I saw was not the whole country of Mexico, nor was it representative of all of Mexico. But as my former managing editor at CTV News, Dennis McIntosh used to say, anecdotes turn into the best stories, oftentimes.

Plagiarism at Centennial College and Politicians

An article I wrote that's just been published on J-source.ca, the authoritative website for Canadian journalists and journalism educators. Can we win the fight to eliminate it in j-schools? We'll keep trying, although the latest U.S. and Canadian election campaigns make it a tough sell.

Obama and me

Being a journalist can help you in other parts of your life.
That's what I always tell my students at Centennial College Journalism.
Especially because we get very good at finding people and we know how to research, and how never to give up, and how to make cold calls, and how to talk to strangers about anything.
Which is what I did last weekend with Obama.
Now you might wonder, did I interview Obama? No, not exactly.
Here's the two stories.

We were visiting family in Longmeadow, Massachusetts for a celebration. I wanted an Obama lawn sign, and bumper sticker to take home with me to Canada. Now apparently, stealing one off the lawn of someone is a felony in the U.S. Or so they told me.
Someone at my table suggested contacting the Democratic party organization in Longmeadow, and asking for a sign.
So how does a visitor (me) staying in a hotel in a community I didn't know, find the DNP head honcho?

There was a free Internet point in the hotel lobby. So I Googled Longmeadow, Democrat and the search engine spit out a website belonging to the local Democrats. It had event announcements, photo galleries and the names and emails of two party big wigs.

Since I had just 5 hours on a Saturday afternoon to get this done, as we were leaving Sunday for Toronto, I jotted down the names, and plugged them into an American White Pages search engine. Lo and behold, the woman's name was listed, and a phone number. She has her own listing, as does her husband.

I called her, explained that I was a Canadian dying for an Obama lawn sign and bumper sticker, and although she must have thought I was crazy, she agreed to let me come over later that evening and pick a sticker up from her home. She also gave me the home telephone number of another man in the party who had lawn signs.

I called him too, and used her name (always name drop with cold calls if possible, I tell my interviewing classes). He agreed to let me come over later that evening, a pluck one of the two Obama lawn signs from his own lawn. He gave me driving directions, which i scribbled on a cocktail napkin in the hotel bar (no I wasn't drinking, honest).

On our way to the dinner and dance that night, we drove through the dark, rainy, leaf-strewn streets of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, to find John Fitzgerald's lawn sign. I rang the bell, and he came to the door, looking like a typical American with Land's End sweater, chino pants and an old car parked in his garage. But what a treasure the garage was! Old campaign signs from Mondale and Ferraro from the 1980s and 90s. Cool. And today, the bumper stickers, button, and plastic Obama lawn sign are prominent souvenirs in my office at Centennial College's Journalism school in Toronto, beside the photos of me interviewing refugees in Mozambique, veterans in Anzio, Italy, at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and my press passes from the Nato summit, World Cup of Soccer, and Royal Tours.

Story #2:

How talking to strangers gets you great leads on stories/anecdotes:

At that family function in Massachusetts, we sat beside a real estate agent, L.C., and her partner, K. S., a doctor, both living in Chicago. I had read an article in the Toronto papers recently about the security surrounding the Obama mansion in Chicago since the Senator began his run for the U.S. presidency. So I asked them about the story.

L. C. told me she drives by the security cordon to visit her partner at his U of Chicago area offices, and how you can't get near the Obama home now.

K. S. then revealed that his nurse lives across the street from the Obamas, and how she has since made friends with all the Secret Service guys who camp out in this van with heavy artillery in the back, and even set some of them up with her girlfriends, and how her little boy is now friends with those Men in Black. And he says Louis Farrakhan was seen entering the Obama home a long time ago. (He also told me that famous people go to his gym, including Oprah, who he says lets her flab hang out and doesn't talk to anyone!)

You never know what you will learn, unless you ask!

CTV's Controversial Interview with Stephane Dion

Journalism schools across Canada must be thanking CTV News and Stephane Dion this Thanksgiving.

We at the University of Toronto/Centennial College joint journalism program
have spent the first month and a half of this school semester immersing ourselves in techniques of interviewing: we've discussed research, how to make the telephone call to request an interview, what to do when you get there, and how to frame question and direct the flow of the interview. We've also discussed some tips and tricks to try to get a politician "off message", and reviewed some of the ways politicians are trained to handle media interviews. As an example, we watched Nardwuar do the hip-flip with then Prime Minister Paul Martin

So it was a bonus when we were able to watch this campaign moment that Prime Minister Stephen Harper deftly handled, after several moments when he was at a complete loss.

I'm talking about how a journalist nearly flummoxed Prime Minister Stephen Harper when he was asked a question no one had ever put in the PM's briefing book: what kind of vegetable he would be? Journalism student Lauren Hummel helped us out by providing that link to the Harper Vegetable moment.

Here's the story on cbc.ca

But Harper did what seasoned politicians are trained to do: he laughed. He bought himself time. And he answered a loaded/leading question with a cute quip that turned a sticky moment into a benign, positive spin for his campaign.

So when Liberal leader Stephane Dion had his moment in the same awkward position -- this time, during that now infamous interview with ATV News' Steve Murphy Thursday October 9, 2008, our class Intro to News Reporting spent a good hour in discussion the next morning, Friday, dissecting the interview, and its ramifications.

Out of 13 students, 8 thought the wording of the question was confusing. Five didn't. One student who's French is excellent, agreed it was very convoluted in how the first attempt was worded. Many thought the question was confusion, a combination of past and present tenses and awkwardly juxtaposed.

Here's a transcript courtesy of the Toronto Star:

CTV: Mr. Dion, the economy is now the issue on the campaign, and on that issue you've said that today that Harper has done nothing to put Canadians' mind at ease and offers no vision for the country. You have to act now, you say; doing nothing is not an option. If you were prime minister now, what would you have done about the economy and this crisis that Mr. Harper has not done.

SD: If I had been prime minister two-and-a-half years ago?

CTV: If you were the prime minister right now and not for the past two-and-a-half years.

SD: If I am elected next Tuesday, this Tuesday, it's what you are suggesting?

CTV: No, I am saying if you were hypothetically prime minister today ...

SD: Today.

CTV: ... What would you have done that Mr. Harper has not done?

SD: I would start the 30-50 plan that we want to start the moment we have a Liberal government. And the 30-50 plan, in fact the plan for the first 80 days, I should say, the plan for the first 80 days once you have a Liberal government. Can we start again?

CTV: Do you want to?

SD: Sure.

Most of the class agreed that after the question was asked a second time, the error was Dion's. Why? Because as a politician, he has been trained to be able to handle any question, no matter how confusing. If it had the words "economy" and "Prime Minister" he should have been able to spin it to his own message.

As in, "I'm glad you asked what I would do" and then go from there to his prepared message.

The class said it was a huge sign of weakness as a public figure, although one student said she felt sympathy and empathy towards Dion, because it showed he is human, and bumbles just like most people.

Eleven students out of 14 (one more had come in to class by then) agreed it was a bad redirect. We have watched David Letterman with Paris Hilton, and Larry King with Celine Dion and with Paris Hilton. Both did masterful redirects, which is when you ask the same question in a different way, in order to try to communicate better with the guest, and to get an answer to a question the guest either didn't or couldn't answer. One student said there was no reason to redirect, since the question was clear.

Are there different rules for interviewing politicians vs. ordinary people? Yes, we agreed, because public figures put themselves out in the public and invite scrutiny, and are trained with p.r. professionals how to handle any kind of interview situation: they know how to buy time, make a joke, to welcome dead air as the interviewer might jump in to save you, etc. Dion messed up.

As for the ethics of airing the uncut interview...

We read the CTV News Policy Guide. It says clearly that interviews are to be unrehearsed and spontaneous.

That all interviews can be edited. That no questions are to be given in advance, in detail, except in rare cases -- if it's a technical nature, or if the guest is so newsworthy (eg. Osama Bin Laden) that you won't get the interview unless they are not asked certain questions.

All the students agreed that if the Liberals, as rumour has it, threatened CTV if they showed the uncut version, they would have put the story on air as is, two seconds later.

Also, the students discussed the ethics of saying you would not air the fumbles, but then going back on your word.

So on this Thanksgiving weekend, thank you to Stephane Dion and CTV for giving us a great topic for discussion of real world interviewing techniques live from the campaign trail!

Thanks to Anthony Geremia for the notes about the class discussions.

Plagiarism and the Prime Minister

    The revelations about the Prime Minister's speechwriter and plagiarism this week come at a time of the academic year when I have been teaching and discussing this very issue with my students in the journalism programs at Centennial College and the University of Toronto.

    Every fall, for the past few years, I have been delivering a seminar/workshop on this: sort of like a "How Not to Dress" show, except instead of fashion tips and faux pas, I try to show students what plagiarism looks like, and how to avoid it, even accidentally.

  Why did this seminar get started? 

  Because several years ago, while correcting student stories, I came across too many quotes or paragraphs that had been "borrowed" or "lifted" from the Internet, from pamphlets handed out at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto, or even taken verbatim from other students' without their knowledge. 

  So now I teach tips and suggestions on how to make sure all their stories are written properly, by themselves, and that any research or background materiel which they didn't get by their own devices, is properly attributed according to the rules acceptable in the news industry. 

  At the same time, my colleagues and I helped revamp Centennial College's Academic Honesty and Plagiarism policy for the Journalism Program, which is now in effect in January 2008. Click here to see them.

  We also drew up a pledge sheet, based on an idea submitted to the Ontario Journalism Educators group, which we ask our students who take the workshop to sign, committing them to truth telling and honesty in their journalism both at school, and out in the real world when they graduate.

  The idea also came from something similar being done at Columbia Journalism School. 

  The bottom line in my seminars is this: journalists have to work hard to maintain the public trust that has been developed with readers/ viewers over the years, and the only way I know to do this is to be truthful and transparent in their storytelling and reporting. And besides, I say, plagiarizing -- can get you fired. Either directly -- if you are caught, or indirectly, because you didn't learn the skills in journalism school to help you be a truthful journalist.

  Then Obama did it. 

  He was accused of plagiarizing part of a campaign speech. 

  Then his vice presidential candidate, Joe Biden, did it.

  His own troubles with plagiarism were resurrected including a 1988 presidential bid which was scuttled because of it, and there are allegations of plagiarism while at Law School.

  And now the Liberals are accusing Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper of cribbing parts of a speech five years ago from Australian Prime Minister Howard's address. 

  His speechwriter's been fired.

  But checking the comments and blogs so far on my colleague Susan Ormiston's story on CBC.ca and elsewhere, I see there doesn't seem to be much outrage about any of the three cases: most folks say "No big deal." 

  So what message does this send to my journalism students? That it's OK to cheat because if Obama and Biden and Madonna, and Harper can do it, and there are no consequences, why can't we?

  Tough question.

  Here's my take. 

  It reminds me of what I said to my mother when I was in Grade 9 and someone in my school recopied and submitted her friend's older sister's essay (done three years earlier) and got an A-, while I slaved for three weeks in the school library pouring through encyclopedias (No we didn't have Internet in the 70s) and my essay got a B-. 

 At the time, I thought "Cheaters always win". 

 My mom said "She won't learn anything."

 I thought "This is not helpful." 

 Especially because all the cool boys liked her!

 Now I know Mom was partially right. 

 And it applies to Obama, and Biden, and Harper, too.

 While I acknowledge that no one is actually hurt in the physical sense when someone like Obama or Harper's speechwriters steal words without proper attribution, what does get hurt is the trust. That girl in Grade 9 became a lawyer. Would I hire her? Probably not.

 Why? Because I could never trust her again.

 What else are they stealing? What else are they not thinking up themselves?

 It's the same for politicians.

 While I accept that they are all too busy to write all their speeches themselves, plagiarism does erode trust. Even if it is accidental. 

 So if they are going to borrow something they admire for a speech, or adopt someone else's policy, coming clean and attributing it, is the best way. It won't cost them votes. Politicians can't be experts on everything. 

  Same with journalists. We aren't experts on everything. We can't be. The public knows that. But we know where to look and who to ask, and we let readers/viewers hear directly from the experts, without passing the cure for cancer or the latest discovery about Mars off as something we ourselves dreamed up on their own. Trust is everything.

 

A Mighty Heart

It's probably just a coincidence, but then, some people say there ARE no coincidences in life.


A week ago, at a faculty retreat in Toronto, some long time journalists and I (Ted Barris, Ted Fairhurst, and other colleagues) were sitting at a picnic table discussing a famous book about war correspondents called The First Casualty, by Phillip Knightley. And we recalled several journalists we had known who had been killed covering wars or conflicts, including a CTV TV reporter and others. At the time, I couldn't remember his name. More about this later.


Earlier this week, I read an article in the Canadian Jewish News that it was coming up to the anniversary of the Daniel Pearl Music Day in October, which his family had created after his murder, to work towards understanding and peace around the world, through music.

Today, the name of the reporter killed in Lebanon in the 80s, came to me: Clark Todd. I remember hearing about him when I was in Journalism school at Carleton University, and the class discussing the concept of "bang bang" i.e. how it was a no no for foreign correspondents to fake or re-enact scenes where crowds would riot on cue, or shoot weapons into the air, in order to make their Tv story more action packed. Bang bang was what the visuals were called, for obvious reasons.

Tonight, without any planning, at home, we watched the movie A Mighty Heart, starring Angelina Jolie, about the murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl. I hadn't actually picked that movie to watch tonight: months ago, someone in my family had checked off the box on ZIP's order forms, included in a bunch of other films we hoped they would send us over time. When it arrived in the mail last week, I was too busy getting my courses ready for journalism school next week, to spend the time watching it.

The movie was as powerful and depressing and shocking as the critics had said it was, at the time it came out. And although we all knew the ending before the movie even started playing, seeing the whole cruel end to an idealistic young western journalist has really made an impact on me tonight.

First of all, I have been a foreign correspondent too: I covered several wars in Africa in the 1990s -- Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique. While I was stationed overseas, I learned that a courageous British U.N. worker who I knew at the time, had been shot to death, for discussing with Reuters, the looting and corruption he had seen involving food distribution to the refugees and displaced persons. It's been too long, so I don't remember his name, but I do remember being horrified and shocked that someone who had dared to tell what he saw as the truth, was murdered for this by people who found his comments inconvenient, or possibly, threatening.

I walked through minefields in Mozambique, I met with rebel leaders, I saw starving children and displaced women, and amputees. Luckily, we were not attacked in the danger zone. After we had wrapped up our work, and were on the way back to Europe, I was mugged in Johannesburg after we left Mozambique for the flight out of Africa. The muggers grabbed by bag with notebooks, a week of photos, and precious tape recordings of my interviews, none of which I had had time to transcribe yet for the CBC. Needless to say, I was thinking at the time more about my work then about personal safety, but to make a long story short, the shopkeepers who pulled out their own guns and chased the muggers to a garage down the street where they held them until the police came, did manage to retrieve my journalist bag intact. I had cuts and bruises, and a swollen neck and tongue where they had choked me when they jumped on me and threw me to the street.

I called a colleague who had just moved to live and work in Johannesburg at the time, Joan Leishman of CBC, and she picked me up, cleaned my wounds, made me drink some strong red wine, and got me onto a plane to Italy. I remember her compound where she was living at the time, in 1992. It had a series of rape gates installed over most of the doors, and these were so that robbers could break in, but not attack her. The place had lots of German Shepherd dogs, and I thought at the time, how courageous she was to live and work under such dangerous conditions in such a dangerous place.

Then I flew home to Rome, where I was living, and the next day, Giovanni Falcone, a famous anti-Mafia magistrate was murdered by a car bomb, and so I went from one horror story in Africa, to cover another one in Italy. He had been getting too close to the powerful clans, arresting leaders and trying to break the Sicilian Mafia. The truth was threatening to the powerful, so it had to be attacked.

Tonight, as the Daniel Pearl story played on the screen, I remember all of this, and think about the coincidence of the timing: on Tuesday, I begin a new year of teaching students Journalism at Centennial College and the University of Toronto's joint program with Centennial. How many of these students will be courageous, and seek the truth, and try to find out what powerful forces wish to keep hidden? How many will toss out the safety and comfort of life in Toronto, and head to a foreign country as a freelancer, perhaps in harm's way, to report on things and places where no mainstream news media outlet can afford to post a full time correspondent?

How many will be still as full of idealism, and yes, naivete, and hope, as Daniel Pearl was in 2002, and in my own way, that I still am today, after 27 years as a journalist? Let's see what the new semester brings.

Something else that's a coincidence? Daniel Pearl's birthday is October 10, 1963, one day before mine, although he was just two years younger then me.

Schwarma leads to scoop for a multi platform journalist

Picking up dinner at Joe's Restaurant in Richmond Hill has always been a success: the falafel, lentil soup and chicken brochettes in pita are family favourites, and they save me from cooking once a month! Plus the owners, Joe and his wife, are so friendly, and they are always in the know about what's going on in the news. But last week, I got something extra with my order of three schwarmas and a falafel.

Another customer was paying for her meal at the cash and I was waiting to order, and, as usual, evesdropping on other people's conversations. That's just a professional deformation, I guess. She was telling Joe's wife (Sorry, I never did know your name!) about the fact she was back to school already (Aug.5) when most schools don't open until after Labour Day. She started telling the owner's wife (let's call her O.W.) about Bill Crothers Secondary School, a new high school that's opened in Markham that she is administrator at, where it's for athletes only, it's public, so it's open to any students who are either elite athletes, or just like house league and healthy living, and that they are opening a new facility with 3 double gyms, weight rooms, and amazing facilities.

Sounded like a great story. Plus, she said it was the only one of its kind in Canada. My nose started twitching, O.W. lent me some scraps of order paper to write on, and I dug a pen out of my purse to take down her name, and some notes.

The next day, when I went in to work, we had a story meeting at CBC Radio News, as usual, and it was all "PROPANE" "PROPANE", referring to how the newsroom was continuing to dig up stuff on the Aug 10th propane explosion. But folks were getting sick of this story, and the editor agreed to let me cover the sports school story.

I called the principal, researched the story on the 'Net, to see if indeed it WAS the only public all sports high school in Canada, and then we agreed I could come out to Markham and do some interviewing and see it for myself. Trouble was, we had only one CBC Van, and Markham is some 40 k away from the CBC offices on Front Street across from the Rogers Centre.
With the propane story requiring a van, we were stuck!

Then the assignment editor decided to reveal details of my "scoop" to the CBC TV news crew at the CBC News at 6, in exchange for them lending me a camera and driver to take me to do the radio story. The deal was: I do stories for radio and for tv, and it would be shared between the news services. I think:"Cripes, I'm not wearing any makeup today!" and "Thank God I wore a nice suit to work!" and we proceeded to get on the road.

Now I have worked for TV for many years as a reporter and anchor, so I wasn't worried about doing TV. I prepared my radio recorder and mics and earphones to be all set for my radio stories which I had to file. As we got into the van, I chit chatted with Neith MacDonald, the veteran cameraman, as we drove out to Markham on a beautiful sunny Friday.

Once we arrived, it was like riding a bicycle. You never forget how to work with a cameraman, and how to carry gear, how to ask where to stand during interviews for TV, and how to suggest shots (gently), how to make sure the sound check was done before asking important questions for TV, and also how to introduce the cameraman as an integral part of the story. And to let your camera operator get the shots he or she needs, once you've discussed the all important "Focus" of the story.

Remarkable how much longer it takes for a TV story to be gathered, then a story for radio. I did my radio interviews quietly, unobtrusively, and quickly, and folks didn't clown around, or jump up and down behind the interviewee screaming "Hi Mom!. And with radio, the students weren't mugging for the camera which required Neith to make folks re-do the shot, to make sure it looked natural. We got there about 11 30 a.m. I was done by 1 :15, for radio.

it took us until 2:30 to finish working for TV. Neith shot the hallways, the cafeteria, the lunchroom, the classes, teachers, playing field, gym, basketball games, and about 10 interviews with kids, faculty and school board staff. And my bridge. And it only took me 4 takes to get the on-camera bridge down right, which isn't bad, considering I hadn't done one since 2007, when I went back to work in radio. And he carried gear from downstairs to upstairs. And changed tapes once. And didn't take a break for bathroom, or food, or anything.

Luckily I didn't have to file on air for radio that afternoon, as the stories were for Monday or Tuesday. And the TV story would be rolled out that next week too, once I cut it. So I sat in the passenger seat of the CBC TV Van, apologized in advance for ignoring him on the ride back to the station, and shotlisted my interviews and sound for my radio stories. We returned to the station at 3:30 and I was finished writing, editing, and recording the 2 radio stories by 8 p.m. Here is one of those stories which aired on CBC on Wednesday Morning August 20, 2008.

That Friday night, I wrote my rough TV story script as well, while I was on the GO bus from Union Station to Richmond Hill. I wrote it out longhand, in my notebook.

On the Wednesday, I rewrote the TV script at home, sent it to the editor by e-mail, and then went in at 12:45 to screen the tapes (which I hadn't seen yet.) It would have been great to learn the CBC TV digital editing software DTV, which is an AVID application, I think. But the material had been erased from the system, so it was back to old fashioned time coding of the Beta SX tapes on their viewing station in the TV newsroom.

It took me about 40 minutes to shotlist the 2 tapes (we shot about 25 minutes of stuff I think) and then I was ready to go to the editor at 3 p.m. We did tape to tape editing, which is old school. Tony Martino and I had worked together when i was a reporter for CBLT's supper hour news show in the late 1990s ( I went to CTV after my first child was born in 1997).

We were organized, and we cut the piece in just over 1 hour, for a minute 39. It was actually going to be 1:45 but the lineup editor had stipulated 1:30 and so we cut out one final interview with the school board official, to get it as close to 1:30 as we could.

I am waiting to see the piece air sometime soon, but even if not, it was great to be a multiplatform journalist.

It's so important to be "talking the talk" as well as "walking the walk" when you are teaching journalism to students.

I think it's vital that teachers keep current, not only so they can have fresh current experiences to share with their classes, but also because they see what the industry is requiring journalists to do.

Visit to Nazi death camp in Italy, in Trieste

On the left: 17 prison cells for detainees. On the right: a German document showing calculation of Revenues and Expenses of a prisoner (Photos by John Friedlan) 

The Risiera di San Saba death camp in Italy.


The Italian city of Trieste is known for its important coffee importing port, its Austrian style palaces and piazzas, and the beautiful Adriatic Sea beaches. It is also known in Italian history as the site of the only Second World War Nazi extermination camp in that country, where an estimated 20, 000 people passed through, and 5,000 people were murdered, including Italian Jews.

I had planned to take the family to see the camp, called the Risiera di San Saba, because I had heard about it from an American Jewish journalist friend Ruth Ellen Gruber who lives in Italy. Today, is it a national monument set up by the Italian government in 1965. 

Here’s how we prepared for the trip: the Friday before, we spent Shabbat in Venice. We toured the synagogues, ate Kosher food at the local bakery, attended Friday night services at the Sephardic synagogue, and later, ate dinner along the canal together with some new friends from Australia, including a Rabbi and his wife, and sang with the Chabadniks who put on the spread.

On the Monday, we visited Trieste, just an hour’s drive away.

In all my years of learning about the Holocaust, I had visited Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek and Dachau, and I have seen plenty of documentaries, and I even worked as a video assistant on the Stephen Spielberg Shoah Foundation interviews in Toronto in the late 1990s. But the Risiera di San Saba was the most shocking place connected with the Holocaust that I have ever seen. Perhaps it was because of how my children reacted to it. But mainly, it was because of one haunting document. But first, some background.

The Risiera was actually built in 1898 as a rice-husking factory (riso means rice in Italian) and it’s located just east of the city centre, across the street from the soccer stadium. It began its life as a temporary prison camp for Italian captured soldiers in September 1943, called Stalag 339. But one month after it opened, in October 1943, it was converted to a combination transit camp, prison camp and death camp.

The Nazis picked highly experienced officers to run the place, including soldiers who had previously cut their teeth working in camps with Himmler to murder 2 million Jews in Poland. One man was especially well known for using large trucks to poison Jews.

You enter the Risiera from the street through a long stark cement tunnel. On the left is the main office (visits are free). Next door down is the “death cell”, which according to the brochure, was where prisoners who were going to be executed within a few hours were held, and also bodies to be cremated were stored there.

The next stop takes you out into the courtyard of the factory where you see on your left, a large three storey building. It housed dressmaking and shoemaking shops where prisoners worked for the SS, and also the quarters for the soldiers. These floors are not open to the public today. The main floor, however, has 17 tiny prison cells, with wooden doors, and two bunks each. According to the tour book, the Nazis forced up to 6 prisoners to be held in each one. The prisoners included Italian anti-Fascist partisans, political prisoners, and Jews who were set to be executed.

A survivor of these cells was interviewed for a film that is shown later in the Risiera’s museum theatre. He was Italian. He recalls being locked in the cell for 5 months, with no daylight, no change of clothes, and having so many lice he felt as though he was wearing a coat.

Two of the cells were used for prisoners who were being tortured for information. The museum guide details how the torture was carried out. It was usually at night, to hide the crimes from the surrounding neighbourhood buildings. Loud music was played to drown out the screams, and dogs were made to bark in order to cover up the cries.

Witnesses recount how the guards did the executions: some victims were placed in special vehicles that had gas exhausts connected to the inside, others were hit with a club at the base of their skulls, and there were also shootings.

Today, relatives and other organizations have placed flowers and memorial candles at each cell door and in the room.

Leaving the cell room, you walk back into the courtyard into the next building, this one four storeys high. It was where Jews, and other prisoners were kept until they were deported to Germany. Trieste during the Second World War has 5,000 Jewish residents. About 700 were rounded up and died either at San Saba or deported to other death camps. Only 8 returned after the war.

Outside, back in the courtyard, if you face west, you see a metal floor, and the markings on the complex’s outer back wall that are shaped like a small building. This is where the underground crematorium was located. The architects who designed the museum in the late 60s recreated the shape of the building’s floor only, using metal plates, to trace the outline, as well as the line where the smokestack shadow would have been. The rest of the courtyard is now an open-air non-denominational place for prayer, except for the metal plaques showing where the crematorium was.

Originally, there was no crematorium at the Risiera, but in March 1944, the Germans had one ordered from a local supplier in Italy (under false pretenses, according to later testimony from the builder) and had it installed. It operated for a year until April 29, 1945, when the Germans dynamited it to hide evidence before fleeing the Yugoslav troops who were the first to enter the site. The explosion damaged half the Risiera complex, but human ashes and bones were found and so was the infamous “club” used to kill prisoners.

Moving to the west, past memorial plaques placed by relatives and Jewish and other Italian official organizations, you enter the Risiera’s historic archive collection and museum. It has about 50 panels under glass, with photos of wartime news items, letters from prisoners, identity cards, and the usual examples of uniforms and even ashes of Jews murdered in Auschwitz. Most is in Italian, Slovenian, and English so it was easy to understand and learn about the importance the Nazis gave to the Trieste area as a strategic place between Europe and the Balkans.

But one panel was so chilling, so perverse, so mind boggling, that even today, it is hard to comprehend. 

My husband is an accountant and professor of accounting. So on this trip to Italy, we had earlier made a “pilgrimage” to see the hometown of Luca Pacioli, who is considered the founder of modern accounting. We saw Pacioli’s marble life sized statue, his street, and the palazzo where he lived. 

Here in the Risiera di San Saba, we encountered another kind of accounting: a document in German showed the expenses and revenue entries of a German official calculating how much money (in Reich marks) it cost the regime to house a prisoner in a concentration camp for nine months, including cost for the uniform, food etc. A lower entry showed it cost the camp 2 Reich marks for the gas to kill the prisoner. And underneath, it showed the calculation of revenues from the victim’s gold teeth, personal property etc. 

My children joined us after words in the small theatre to watch the half hour documentary about the Risiera. It showed the survivors, the guards, the officers, and old wartime footage. Both kids were very quiet absorbing their first experience up close and personal with the Holocaust (aside from meeting survivors in Toronto including their long standing babysitter). 

On the walk back to the car, my youngest said to me “Mummy, if I was alive then, I would try to kill Hitler.” They were full of questions such as why none of the Allies tried to bomb the tracks to the death camps, or why none of the Trieste citizens tried to help. We did explain how some of the Catholics in Italy did hide Jews and Italian partisans, but it was a bitter lesson for them in long ago racism and hatred.

By the way, the Nazis who ran this camp were eventually caught, tried, and punished by the Allied War Crimes courts. Most were sentenced to death. The senior commander committed suicide before his trial. 

Photos from the 2008 NHL awards

CBC Radio News Reporter for a week

This week, I have been thrilled to work as a reporter at CBC Radio News in Toronto's newsroom, on the afternoon shift, covering stories out and about in the city. 

On Monday June 9, I covered a controversy about the city of Toronto's latest efforts to clean up illegal garbage dumping in Toronto's Rouge Park. The story itself appears on the CBC.ca website so you can read it on CBC.ca /Toronto's homepage, as well as listen to what aired Tuesday morning June 10 on CBC  99.1 fm.

Here's how I did it. 

When Doug Earl, the CBC news director, gave me the address and telephone number of the first person I was supposed to interview, I was in a store buying a new cellphone. I asked the clerk to look up the directions to it on his computer -- on Google maps --as well as check the website of the company I was going to be talking about, Standard Auto Wreckers, in Toronto. I don't own a Blackberry and CBC wasn't supplying me with one of theirs.

It turns out, I knew where the place was, as for several years now, I have been driving in the area several times a week to teach journalism at Centennial College's HP Campus at Morningside and Ellesmere. Lately, the area of Rouge Park has become so developed and built up with new home construction and gas stations and Tim Hortons outlets, it has spoiled the greenspace that used to be the reserve of golf driving ranges, farms, and outdoor walkers and cyclists I saw on my commute.

My first interview was at Standard Auto Wreckers, at the corner of Steeles Avenue East and Sewells Road. The owners, Ken and David Gold, are upset about a plan by Toronto to put up "No Stopping Anytime" signs outside their sprawling auto wrecking and parts yard.  

I met with Ken Gold, the founder, and his son David in their back office inside the plant.  I did a little "ice-breaking" with them, discussed the steamy hot weather we were having, they offered me a nice cold bottle of water, and we chatted about people we knew in common, since Ken lives near me in Richmond Hill, and his son David, lives near a popular restaurant we both went to in Thornhill, called Yitz's, at Bathurst and Highway 7. It went out of business despite high hopes by the neighbourhood it would be as busy as its original site at Avenue Road and Eglinton.

Then I tested my equipment, making sure the room had proper sound quality, no humming computers or noisy lights to ruin the interview. I also did a quick mic check with Ken, and played it back to make sure everything was recording. When I was a student at Carleton University, I once interviewed the foreign minister, Flora MacDonald, and didn't check my batteries. Needless to say, the tape sounded WAW WAH WAH because the battery level was low.  I did ask her, in desperation, --fearing I'd fail the assignment  -- if she would re-do the 2 hour interview. I won't bother to tell you her answer. So I always always check my equipment. 

Then I plugged my earphones back in, put them on again, and sat close to Ken's chair so I'd have the mic close enough to his mouth. And we were off.

Ken pulled out a copy of his speech he was preparing for Scarborough Community Council the next day, and the official documents from the Toronto traffic department, suggesting his company was mostly to blame for a lot of the garbage being dumped in and around the plant inside Rouge Park.

Ken is an energetic businessman who preferred to stand near an easel containing photographs he had taken in recent weeks showing the garbage in the park -- roofing tiles, sod,  you name it -- on Sewells Road and the neighbouring Littles Road. Then he showed me photos of their company's  home made "No dumping" signs he himself had erected around his property. One said "Pigs Litter People Don't". There are also signs up from the City and Environment ministry warning violators will be fined $10,000 or $50,000.

Next, he gestured to the parking area on the shoulders of the road outside his yard entrance: spotless.  Standard Auto Wreckers clean it up every day, he insists. Gold felt the city was trying to pull a backdoor move on his company, trying to force them to get out of the Rouge Park, by killing his business with street signs. I suggested it was like getting mobster Al Capone through his income tax evasion.

What bothered son David Gold about this whole thing, is, they pride themselves on being environmentalists. The company was operating in Rouge Park since 1979, before the Park was created (1995). They've won awards for being environmentally friendly in the way the business recycles automobiles. They drain all the fluids from the wrecks before they are crushed. They've been collecting and recycling mercury switches, even though it's not mandatory. They won recycler of the year from a U.S. recycling organization for their "green" habits. And now they find themselves in the ironic spot of opposing an effort to protect Toronto's largest urban park.

After our interview, I asked permission to record some sound of the wrecking yard for my story. Radio needs sound, I always teach my own students at Centennial College. So I got a treat. Ken and David popped me into their special golf cart, and whizzed us around the dusty noisy compound for a tour. 

First stop, the fluid recycling shop -- with my earphones still in, and long skirt pinned down with my other hand so my skirt wouldn't pull a Marilyn Monroe!

But I needed better sound. So we careened through the rows and rows of hulks and wrecks until we arrived at the crushing machine.

I'd only seen one of these in the movies -- when bad Superman tries to kill the good Superman in a wrecking yard! This real one makes a lot of noise, and splinters the glass!

After I'd collected about 2 minutes of pure sound, I was done.

 

Next stop, a drive down Sewells Road to see for myself if there was any garbage on the side of the road. Sure enough, 30 seconds later, piles of trash: broken toilet, purple shag bathroom rug, and 2 benches from a mini van. There were more piles as I went along: cans of paint, a Toronto telephone directory from 2008-2010 still encased in plastic. Sod.

I took some photos for the cbc.ca website and recorded some outdoor sound --again about two minutes worth. Then I thought, I need other opinions of neighbours. So I searched for a farm entrance, found the driveway and pulled up to the parking area.

The place looked a little dodgy I have to admit. I also was worried about guard dogs. I am afraid of big scary dogs. So I got out gingerly, yelled "Anyone home?" and as soon as the barking started and the hound came over, I jumped back in my car and rolled up the windows, hoping the owner might come out and settle the german shepherd down.

He did come out, a big man in a white undershirt and beard. With a second big dog. 

I stayed in my car, rolled down the window, identified myself and what I was doing a story on, and he agreed to talk to me, albeit he told me to stay inside the van. It's the first time I have ever done an interview with me sitting in the driver's seat and the source outside the car.

But those dogs made me nervous!

Next stop, an interview with Councillor Raymond Cho, who represents the area. Now I know of Councillor Cho from my other job teaching journalism at Centennial College. My students have had their share of run ins with him, reporting for the Toronto Observer newspaper. I didn't tell him any of this when we met in the Scarborough Community Council office. 

I taped our whole interview, but I didn't need to. I needed only one clip. Still better safe then sorry.  His English is heavily accented, and I was thinking "I hope it's clear enough to use on air."

He told me why he was trying to use parking signs to clean up the Park, but said he'd try to get the order delayed to give the city and the Golds time to work out a solution.

Driving back to CBC to file the stories, the heavens opened up, plus I had to pee so badly. Rush hour traffic from Scarborough to Front Street is never fun, but this Monday was particularly bad because there were fire trucks at the corner of Simcoe and Front and construction outside the East Side Mario's restaurant so it took me an hour to make it back to the parking lot.

The best part of the day was over -- after 27 years in the business, I admit I enjoy the field reporting best, meeting new people, getting in to see new things (like a junk yard) and being on my own with my tape recorder, my own ideas, and my long reporting experience to guide me.

But the only way anyone will hear my work is to put a story together. That's tougher. I had written the story in my head while driving back to the station..actually talking the lead out loud, and then "voicing" the story  out loud -- roughly, the way I would tell it to a friend.

That's what I teach my students to do and it works to focus your mind, and get rid of all the reams of interviews and material and research which you won't be able to use anyway in a story that runs 75 seconds!

As a reporter, I eagerly hoped there would be room for 2 voicers to run the next morning -- but it was a busy news week: the apology for native residential schools, a series was running on speed racing, and the desk just wouldn't be able to fit in two voicers of mine on a marginal story. Bummer! 

So I shotlisted the tape, pulling audio clips that I thought I could use, including the sounds of the crusher, the sound of the garbage strewn road, interviews with the farmer, the autowrecker and the politician. And put it together in what I felt was a really nice package that brought the listener to the scene. I also filed a long script and clip- alternate version and squeezed in two clips! I always feel badly that I interview people and they don't get on so I try to give the morning desk more then they can use, and then let them edit it down! 

The next morning, my husband and I turned on the radio at 7:30 and 8:30 to listen to the news, and when my stories ran, I did a mental "fist pump" in the air - YESSSSSS. My husband said I was a good storyteller, and that I like these kind of offbeat feature stories. That's what my boss said later Tuesday afternoon when I arrived for my shift. " It had your name written all over it," said Doug Earl, the news director.

All in all a good start to the first reporting week.

Tomorrow, a surreptitious visit to Woodbine Racetrack with a hidden microphone.

Chipmunks and Jewish Soul Food

For the last two years, my neighbours to the south and north of us have hosted some cute, but unwelcome stowaways under their garages: chipmunks. 

Every so often,  I would see one scurry out from under Deji's garage foundation, or the drainpipe from his roof, and across our driveway and disappear who knows where. Alternatively, the chipmunk would come from Joe's side, perhaps from under his living room window. 

Last summer, something started chewing tiny bites out of the black rubber sealing strip under OUR garage doors. Even when they'd torn a hole big enough, and left shredded rubber pellets on the ground outside the garage, I thought "How cute!" The chipmunks were just teething, I said. No harm done. Right? 

Well this summer, it's gone too far. All four corners of the garage door are bitten through, and so are the white rubber stripping pieces. Plus, they started to shred the drywall, they bit right through the insulation near the wiring to the driveway lights, and, to add insult to injury, they kept knocking over the frog lawn ornaments my cousin Judy gave me to put in our brand new landscaped garden. Now the poor ceramic frogs were missing legs and arms!

So I decided enough was enough. I called an exterminator GTA Wildlife Removal and Pest Control, and asked them to come get rid of the chipmunks. The man said they didn't handle chipmunks. Even though it's on their website. He suggested I go to Home Depot and get some traps, and handle it myself.

After extensive research on the 'Net, I discovered there are three kinds of people: those who think chipmunks are cute and should be left alone, those who drown them or shoot them with pellet guns, and those who trap them humanely and relocate them far, far away.

I decided to go for option number three. At Canadian Tire,  I found the Hav a Heart small animal trap, and bought it. There was a couple in the same isle who asked "You aren't going to kill chipmunks are you?"  I told them to mind their own business. 

The instructions were easy enough to follow. Open the trap, put it near where you think the chipmunks are burrowing in your garden or garage foundation, and wait a few days until the animals are used to the shiny metal box. Then, set the trap for real, with  some peanuts and wait for the chipmunk to be caught.  Well, I did everything the instructions said. After a few days, I put some peanuts inside. 

Nothing happened. I checked the garage every couple of hours. For two days. Nada. Niente. Zero. 

Then a friend Graham McWaters was over on a Wednesday afternoon, and suggested crackers and peanut butter might work better. Well, I was getting fed up, so I decided to try it. But I didn't have any crackers. 

I did have plenty of MATZA, the Jewish unleavened bread left over from the recent Passover holidays in late April. So I schmeared the peanut butter (Kosher, Organic Nuts Only) onto the Matza and placed it inside the trap. And went inside to make dinner.

Less then an hour later, BINGO! I trapped my first chipmunk.

Must've been the MATZA that did the trick. 

So I covered up the cage with a big beach towel, waited until it was dark, placed the cage in my van, and put on the heat so the chipmunk didn't get cold. Oh, and I had a bag of walnuts with me, too. 

At 10 p.m.,  I drove my chippie to the forested ravine area at Bathurst and Ilan Ramon Boulevard, in Vaughan. That's the site where the Toronto Jewish community is building a new series of schools, synagogues, supportive housing, theatres, banquet halls etc. I checked to make sure no one was there. I got out of my car, under the lights on the deserted strip of ravine, and waited until the woman walking her large black dog had passed by safely. Then I emptied the bag of walnuts into the grass, put on my gardening gloves, unwrapped the towel, and let the chipmunk free.

I think it's fitting that the MATZA loving chipmunk now lives on the Lebovic Campus land, far, far away from my garage.

The next morning, I refilled the trap, and waited. Two hours later, fresh MATZA and Kosher Peanut butter had a second chipmunk!

This time, we drove it to Twickenham Park, in Richmond Hill to let it free, with a bag of pine nuts to keep it alive out there. It's also a fitting spot: for as long as I have lived in the town, hundreds  of Jewish people walk through the park in the fall to attend High Holiday Services at the Elgin West Community Centre.  Oh, by the way, the park is also used by the St. Theresa Lisieux High School students, just in case the chipmunk was ecumenical.

It's been a week now, and my trap has been ready with TWO pieces of MATZA and Kosher Peanut Butter. But either the chipmunks are wising up to me, or, hope upon hope, I've got them all. The garage guy is coming Saturday to repair the damaged doors and rubber seals. I guess that's not cool to have him work on the Sabbath. I'll be in Beit Rayim Synagogue that morning. I think I'll leave the trap out anyway, just in case.

Using Video IPods in Radio reporting

This post is to accompany an article published recently on the Centennial College website by a current student of mine, Bre Walt, about how our journalism program is using Video Ipods and Belkin Talk Tunes microphones in the curriculum this year, for the first time.

The recordings made for their interviews, voicers, and podcasts are 44 hz which is the quality we broadcast over at Centennial College's Internet radio station, CCRN ondemand.centennialcollege.ca. The main drawbacks are that you get the whirring noise of the IPod hard drive when you record sometimes, which can't be easily equalized away. But otherwise, they are pretty decent recording devices.

They are a lot cheaper then the $700 Marantzes which are in use across the city by professional radio news stations. And while professional radio station managers like David Downey at CBC in Toronto say they can't use video IPods on air because the transmitters make the sound thin on CBC national airwaves, he says, in a pinch, Video IPods would be find equipment for a reporter.

Editing is easy -- transferring the files to Sound forge or Garage band is easy, and the only thing that users need to be aware of is losing their sound files when they plug in to a Mac somewhere to listen to them. The next time they sit down at a different computer to edit, they can't locate the files. Know that the files are there: they just have to be transferred to a Mac using a min-to-mini cable, in real time. Which is a pain.

We used Video Ipods all semester for radio and it worked fine. Next big test? TV news classes in the fall of 08. Will they be big enough to store Video files ?

Here's the article:

CCC Embraces iPod Technology in Journalism


iPod technology applied in Journalism education
By BRE WALT

Centennial College's Centre for Creative Communications now has many students carrying around Apple iPods. Students are not just using the devices for music - they are using them as part of Toronto's first iPod-based curriculum.

First year fast-track journalism student Dave Bowden already owned an iPod but is thrilled to get more use out of it.

"I found out how to use my iPod to conduct interviews, store photos and save files," Bowden said. "So it has been great to get even more value out of the device."

While journalism has traditionally meant taking extensive notes while interviewing, to ensure accuracy and depth, this is no longer necessary. Students are excited to have their iPods and iTalk devices to make interviewing easier. Journalism student Drew
Berner is thrilled to have the assistance.

"It helps me get the quotes a lot more accurately without sort of ruining the pace of an interview," Berner said.

And while students find the iPod useful during interviews, they point out that its capabilities do not stop when the recorder stops.

"You can just plug it into your computer and arrange it on Garage Band," says journalism student Sara Koonar. "Then you have the choice of doing a podcast or a print story."

Students are able to upload audio from the device onto a computer and edit it using programs available in computer labs at The Centre for Creative Communications (CCC). This assists them in creating their own podcasts and radio segments.

Faculty at the CCC say it is helpful to have students with access to iPods. They help students with their schoolwork, and as a supplemental learning tool.

Imaging professor Jim Babbage says they have proved invaluable as storage devices. He tells his students about free podcasts available on iTunes, so they can download and listen to them. Radio professor Ellin Bessner is using iPods in her radio class for the first time, and is pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

"I think it's amazing quality. I'm used to professional broadcast quality machines at the CBC," Bessner said. "The quality we get is really good - we've been airing them on our CCRN (Centennial College Radio News) station and I'm really, really happy with how it sounds - clear as a bell."

- Bre Walt is a Centennial College Journalism student

Learn more about:

Journalism Program
Journalism (Fast Track)
Sports Journalism
For more information please contact:

Paul Koidis, Manager, Communications, Marketing and Development pkoidis@centennialcollege.ca / 416.289.5000 ext. 8609

Celebrity Newsmakers at Centennial College Advanced Interviewing Class

Lieutenant Governor David C. Onley, Mrs. Onley, greet Ann Buller, president of Centennial College, with security officer Rose Arsenault in the background.

Photo by Matt Mitchell.

I am adding an article here by student journalism Annesha Hutchinson, from the joint Centennial College/ University of Toronto Scarborough Journalism program, on a visit to our class by Ontario's Lieutenant Governor  David Onley March 19, 2008. 

The article was published by The Vine, Centennial's employee newspaper. 

Kudos to Annesha and all the other students in the class who interviewed him, Sharmin Hassaniani, Karen Ho, and Muzna Siddiqui. It was nerve wracking enough for them to have to interview such a prominent person, in front of the whole class, not to mention to O.P.P. officers, protocol staff, and the president of Centennial College Ann Buller, who also attended. 

-------

Lt.Gov. David Onley submits to students' questions

By Annesha Hutchinson

Thursday, March 27, 2008
Ontario Lieutenant-Governor David Onley took some time out of his busy schedule to visit a class of Centennial Journalism students on Mar. 19 and submit to their questions as part of their reporting assignment, a special visit arranged by faculty member Ellin Bessner. Here is student Annesha Hutchinson's account of His Honour's life story.


Ontario Lieutenant-Governor David Onley and his wife stop for a photo at the Centennial HP Science and Technology Centre on Mar. 19 2008


Almost 50 years ago, Lt.Gov. David Onley wrote a school assignment on what he wanted to be when he grew up.

“When I grow up, I would like to be a TV announcer. Not just any kind, but the kind that covers space shuttles. It would be fun to watch the rockets go up. Besides, the money's good.”

Onley, now 57, has accomplished his childhood dream, as well as many others. He admits his achievements weren't easy.

Onley wasn't like other kids: he hasn't been able to walk on his own or make full use of his arms since he had polio at the age of three. Having polio has fundamentally shaped who he is.

“We are all products of what we come from and that's what we are as individuals,” Onley said, sitting on his navy-coloured scooter, his hands rest in front of him. “I do believe that coping with adversity can and does bring out the best in individuals - if you choose to let it do so.”

As a youth, Onley felt he couldn't pursue many of his dreams because of his disability. He couldn't go into electoral politics because his disability required conserving his energy and maintaining a particular diet. A career in journalism also seemed bleak.

“With no role model as I went through my teens and into my twenties, I just thought, well, what's the point?” Onley said. “Why should I pursue television? There's nobody on television with a disability.”

Onley leaned towards other careers and did not pursue journalism until the 1980s. By this time, he had become an expert on the U.S. Space Shuttle program after writing his novel, Shuttle.

“If I made myself an expert in a new field . . . then I could be a person who was in demand and an expert,” Onley said. “I thought I could get myself into broadcast media that way.”

And that's exactly what happened.

Onley sat as the co-anchor of CTV news when the space shuttle rocketed into space for the first time in 1981. Later on, he would be the host of Breakfast Television on Citytv, as well as other hosting duties. A long-time resident of Scarborough, the popular broadcaster was inducted into the Scarborough Walk of Fame in 2006, becoming a role model for all disabled people.

He has been actively involved in the Government of Ontario's Accessibility Standards Advisory Council, the SkyDome Accessibility Council, and the Air Canada Centre Accessibility Committee. He has also received the Clancy Award for Disabled Persons.

Onley hopes to change the face of accessibility while serving as Ontario's Lieutenant Governor, an honour he was named to last July.

Onley admits that he was “blissfully unaware” of any discrimination towards his disability. His many achievements show that his disability hasn't held him back from achieving his goals.

“Sometimes the biggest setbacks that you can experience in life are the ones that really grab your attention,” Onley said. “They really force you to sit back and take notice and be honest with yourself.”

The Dalai Lama and me

All the news this past few weeks about the recent uprising in Tibet and the Chinese handling of the protests has made me remember my own encounter as a reporter and foreign correspondent with his Holiness the Dalai Lama. But he wasn't in exile in India at the time- he was on an official visit to Rome, Italy, or to be specific, the the Vatican, to meet the late Pope John Paul II.
I was a foreign correspondent living and working in Italy for CBC, Canadian Press, Deutsche Welle and other radio stations..and I had a press pass as a member of the Vatican Foreign Press Association. It was called the Sala Stampa Vaticana.
In order to get accredited in the late 1980's and early '90s, you had to be approved by a very stern nun named Suora Giovanna, who worked for Joaquin Navarro Valls, the Spaniard in charge of the Pope's public affairs office. if they didn't like the news articles you had written, you wouldn't get approved, and access to any official Vatican events was difficult.
Luckily, I passed muster and was invited, along with the rest of the foreign press corps and the Italian domestic reporters, to a news conference by the Dalai Lama in a palazzo one Friday afternoon, after he had met with the Pope. It was August. It was hot. A friend of mine from CBC Radio, Peter Leo, was visiting Rome and we decided to go for a nice long Italian lunch in the Ghetto area, before heading over to cover the news conference at 4 p.m.. Needless to say, after a lunch of pasta and fish and wine, having to cram into a non-air conditioned room in the Renaissance era palazzo to wait for the spiritual leader of all the world's Tibetans was a daunting task.
The room was crowded with people: journalists, hangers-on, monks, followers, and me. And I had a deadline. The Dalai Lama arrived, and began a few remarks in his language that would preface the news conference. Well, the remarks stretched on for 30 minutes, and I was beginning to feel faint. It was stifling in that room, plus I had a deadline to file my story for CBC Radio and I thought "If he keeps on going, we'll never make a deadline". I thought it was supposed to be a news conference: that's what the press release said on it that invited us all.
So I started to get an idea.
It took me about 15 more minutes to get up enough courage to carry out my plan. I was going to interrupt him, and ask him if it would be alright to soon ask our questions, in English.
I think if it hadn't been so late on a Friday, and so hot, and the glass of wine I'd had several hours earlier at lunch was probably partly at work too....I probably would not have done this. But at 45 minutes into his remarks in Tibetan, I raised my hand, and said in a clear loud voice" Excuse me, Your Holiness. Would it be alright to ask you some questions? We thought this was a news conference and we have deadlines."
Well, from the shocked looks on his followers faces, to the hissing from the monks standing along the side and back walls, i thought the floor might need to open and swallow me up right then and there. In fact, I still recall to this day how hot my face felt, and how flushed my cheeks must have looked to everyone. I was embarrassed.
But what did the Dalai Lama do? He was as gracious and gentle as could be. He looked at me, and replied " Certainly", and finished his remarks within record time, and then opened the floor to questions all in a span of a minute or two later.
The other reporters standing with me had mixed reactions: those on deadline were relieved and whispered their thanks later, as we filed down the steps and out onto the street.
I got my clips and a story too, and the Dalai Lama's quotes on his morning meeting with the Pope. And I too, raced back to the Foreign Press building to file my stories.
Later, I would dub this day a life-changing experience: it would be remembered as The Day I Interrupted the Dalai Lama.
And to this day, in 2008, whenever I run into my old friend Peter Leo, that's what he remembers, too.

My students at Ontario Association Broadcasters Career Day

March 3, 2008 - Toronto - I feel like a proud parent today, although I know that my students all have their own parents to feel proud of them.
Nevertheless, today about two dozen Centennial College Journalism students (from the East York and the joint University of Toronto programs) attended the annual Career Day held at the Rogers Media building in Toronto. The event is put on by private broadcasters and journalism programs around Ontario, to bring together the top hiring managers, news directors, on air talent, and recent graduates who are now working in the field, with final year students in j-schools around the province.
It's set up like "speed dating". A dozen tables where the big-wigs sit, and the students get to meet them for a half hour "date" and learn how to get jobs, what's going on in the industry, and basically seek advice, and contacts. Then they rotate to the next table. And so on.Some of the "big" names that attracted a lot of student attention included Mark Dailey of CITYtv, Ron Waksman, head of Global News in Toronto, Scott Metcalfe, of 680 News, Christina Chernesky of CFRB and Glenn Williams of Corus in Kingston.
I know that my students were keen because it's reading week but nevertheless they donned business suits and skirts and came prepared with resumes and even business cards. That's the way to make a good impression, and important contacts for internships and possible careers after graduation.
I sat in at one table, with the radio news veterans from CFRB, the new All News Radio station in Vancouver, and a newcomer to 680 News who started doing traffic. The students were from Fanshawe, Ryerson, Humber and others. Some had amazing voices, one wanted to do sports play-by-play and was already calling games for his school varsity teams. One wants to intern at CBC and said she knew Carol Off, which was in my view, a good place to start, although i told her to go to Kate Pemberton, the woman at CBC Radio in charge of interns, to apply formally. Then I joked that I shouldn't help her, since she might be competition for my own Centennial students! Ha ha.
The news director from the All News Radio station in Vancouver, Jacquie Donaldson, gave some sage advice about resumes etc: she throws them in the garbage if there is even one spelling mistake on them. Students: there is a message here!
She also says don't stalk news directors, by calling them every day. Slejana Taminsic (?) of 680 News says contact once every few weeks is enough to be persistent without stalking. The highlight of the event was the award ceremony to Centennial Student Adam Bemma. He won the first ever Ontario Association of Broadcasters' Michael Monty Award, named after a former educator and broadcaster who died after a 3 decades long career. Adam is currently on placement at CBC in Toronto, and also very involved in Darfur, Journalists for Human Rights and other community social action groups. Not only is he a great student in radio and television at school, but an all around great fellow. Congratulations Adam. We are proud to have nominated you and you deserve it!
I'd love to hear feedback from my students who attended. Was it valuable? Make lots of 

 contacts? Was it useful?

CP Style Guide anxiety

This entry is for those of you who have ever used, or still use, the CP Stylebook, or what I like to refer to, with my students at Centennial College's School of Journalism, in Toronto, as "The Bible".
Last fall, during a mock court room trial that we put on in class to prepare students to cover a criminal court case in Superior Court, I had the "clerk" swear witnesses in using the CP Style Guide, and they swore to tell the truth the whole truth etc etc etc by placing their hands on the blue "Bible".
Why so much reverence for the Stylebook? In fact, come to think of it, I don't remember having to use one when I was in Journalism School at Carleton University all those years ago ( 1983 graduate!). And in my 27 year (so far) career at CBC, CTV, and as a foreign correspondent in Europe, and for Vatican Radio, I don't think I ever picked one up. But since I began teaching journalism at Centennial College (2005), I've had to adopt it as part of the required course texts and learn its contents in order to teach print and radio and television journalism.
I know my students fret about the proper way to spell Mafia-- is it with a capital M or a small m? How about Hells Angels? Does Hell's have an apostrophe? What about police chief? These and other questions have become extremely important because we have a policy of deducting 10% for misspelled proper names, and that includes places, names, or things in the CP Stylebook.
Last fall, lots of students lost marks for not writing Mafia with a capital M. This was a result of a guest lecture by Toronto Star crime reporter Peter Edwards, who spoke about various cases he has covered, including organized crime.
The 18th edition of the CP caps and spelling book, page 122, lists Mafia with a capital M. Mafia; Mafioso; Mafiosi, including members, singular and plural.
How interesting that in the last couple of weeks, the exact issue has made its way onto the pages of the Canadian Association of Journalists' list-serve, and a discussion has been going on about why Mafia should or should not be capitalized. One academic says it should not be, since there is no one single entity called the Mafia, especially not in Sicily. Rather, it is a phenomenon and part of a larger social reality. He argues that the media elevates the mafia to Mafia when it adds a capital letter.
The editor of the CP Stylebooks, Patti Tasko, got a lot of publicity a few years ago for putting the F word into the guide. page 82 18th edition Caps and Spelling, fuck. No capitals. Small f. Avoid, it says, with few exceptions.
When the word spread about the F-word being in the latest guide, Tasko told audiences that the word made it into the Stylebook because it's being used so much more routinely now, and that her Canadian Press Stylebooks evolve just as language usage does. Hyphens come and go.
While other news organizations in North American may use different style guides, and overseas newsrooms use still others, by sticking with CP we at least have a standard or a basis to learn from. Using the CP guide trains journalism students to work harder at their writing, to be accurate, and to be careful, and to understand rules of grammar and spelling.
Perhaps the discussion about Mafia or mafia will prompt changes in the 19th edition in the future. Until then, I am sticking with the 18th edition of the CP guide on this one.
If you would like to comment or contact me: http://www.centennialcollege.ca/thecentre

Facebook and the Art of Teaching in 2008

Facebook or the Art of teaching in the Social Networking Era


I first learned about Facebook from my very cool niece who showed us all at a family gathering at my house last summer exactly what Facebook was. At first, I wasn’t the least bit intrigued.

But last fall, when my journalism students started pitching story ideas to me that they’d found on Facebook, I decided I needed to check out this place where young people felt they could use the site instead of the old fashioned ways of finding out about story ideas: such as reading fliers on billboards, perusing a “What’s On” column in the newspaper, meeting friends in a café, or seeing an impromptu rally in the local piazza!

So I signed up, opened an account, and found that not only were there events listed for cities all over the country, but also, that folks were organizing groups like “If you Raise Your Hand in Class you are an @$$%^^”, or “Find 1,000,000 people who hate George Bush”.

There were also actual story ideas, too. Like “National Skip School Day” and other events, such as on-line tributes to young people who had been murdered or died in other tragic ways.

In fact, the shooter from Virginia Tech had been identified through Facebook by researchers, faster then police were letting out information through official channels.

At first, it was fun asking my mother and other family members to be my friend. I didn’t ask any students to be my friends, because that would be like stalking, but some eventually found me, and that’s actually cool.

It worked to the detriment of one student though. She was supposed to be in my class, advised me by telephone an hour before that she had to make an emergency trip to the hospital instead, but when I signed on to Facebook that night, I saw this student had had time, while she was supposed to be at the hospital, to go onto Facebook and post a quiz about herself, and also posted that she was sick of school. BUSTED.

But now the issue of Facebook in classroom management has become something that many teachers including myself have to confront on a daily basis. Not as a research tool, but as my competition for a student’s attention.

Many of the labs I teach in are computer labs. If for 20 seconds, the lesson isn’t as interesting as what a student might find on Facebook, then they are clicking away, the classroom rules forgotten.

I have to admit that if I was a student, and had a desk with a computer in front of me, I too would be hard pressed to stop myself from ignoring the teacher, and clicking on my e-mail and checking out the latest news from CBC.ca or CTV.ca when the mood struck me. In fact, I probably would be a Blackberry Crackberry addict if I had one of them. You know, they are the kind of person who checks their e-mail during their child’s holiday pageant at school! I was a student too, and get bored easily myself.

All this to say that I very much understand the siren call of Facebook: if I wanted to, I could find out which of my students has a new boyfriend, which of my cousins is now single, and what my niece wore to her play rehearsal or a cast party. But it’s a whole different perspective when I am on the receiving end of the click-click-click, while I am giving my all up there, teaching. And so, I’ve discovered the Facebook generation requires a whole new set of classroom management skills, and some old ones too.

First of all, we have to set ground rules from Day 1. No Facebook or MSN or E-Mail during class. (except when they are on breaks).

This is tough to forbid when students are waiting for answers from sources, or callbacks or email backs from interview sources. But this is not real life: it’s a simulated newsroom environment in university/college. So they have to learn to juggle assignments, and deal with missed calls. In the real world, they will be able to be on standby for a source to call back.

I do allow laptop students to use their laptops to take notes. But even those students have multiple screens going on. I’ve seen it.

So, second, a teacher needs to be mobile. Walking around the class. In their faces. I’ve seen students click off their Facebook page and toggle to a page of their lecture notes as I walk by. They know they aren’t supposed to be on Facebook and at least when you walk by and stare at their screens, they cut if out for a moment or two. You can’t stay at the front of the classroom anymore and blather on. It just invites students to ignore you. I’ve climbed up on a chair and opened and closed the room lights sometimes, to get their attention. Yelling is one option, but after a while, it doesn’t work. They ignore that, too.


Third, I make students move their chairs away from their desks towards the front of the classroom, especially when we have guest speakers in class. It works for some, especially those students who are also doing critiques or otherwise have to pay attention to what the speaker is saying. But the layout of the room does allow at least some of the hangers-back to access their screens and mouse, when no one is looking.

Fourth, I’ve actually used Facebook in class myself, as part of the show. I screened with them a whole 60 Minutes story about the founder of Facebook this semester, during Advanced Interviewing class. They were riveted to that, as they learned stuff about the young CEO they didn’t know before. And it was part of the course materiel on how well Leslie Stahl asked questions. That was a successful class.
My husband who is a professor at another institution, wisely suggested calmly asking students who are on Facebook to leave the room. I did try that once, saying to the student to go work in another lab.

But, the Facebook/Internet/Social Networking addiction isn’t going away. And not even peer-to-peer pressure from other students seems to be able to cure the behaviour.

And it’s not just Facebook that they are looking at. It’s other course work, e-mails to sources and friends, You Tube clips.

I’ve had a student watch a clip of a dancing monkey while I am trying to teach! Hard to feel you are getting through to the students when that happens!

So now, I’ve decided if you can’t beat ‘em, move them. I should have figured this out a long time ago, and prevented the aggravation. I have asked the administration to find me a new classroom where there are no computers. (Just one for me at the teaching station.)

We shall see how the students react. It might backfire, and they may all fall asleep, or skip the class entirely, (although they lose 10% if they do that during a guest speaker visit).

But it all comes down to this: I shall do my best to make class entertaining, fun, and content full, so the students are getting the best I can give.

BTW, I sometimes give out cookies! And prizes. And we play games like Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, or Hangman. I’ve read them children’s stories, I’ve had them work in groups to make presentations, I’ve had them perform skits, and I’ve had them do treasure hunts around the building to find clues.

But the only Face I want the students to be searching for during my class is mine.

I’ll keep you posted on how it works.

Stolen Cellphone at Centennial College in Toronto

 My personal cellphone went missing Wednesday Feb 13 2007 as I was leaving work at Centennial College's HP campus in Scarborough, Ontario. I teach journalism in one of the classrooms on the third floor. 

I lost it about 6 p.m. 

The next day when I called my cellphone company to say I couldn't find my telephone, they checked to see if any calls had been made, and sure enough, tons of them, starting at about 6:30 p.m. were on the list of outgoing calls. Dozens of calls every minute to several telephone numbers in and around Toronto.

The cellphone finder/thief simply decided to benefit from my cellphone and call all their friends and chat. 

How do I know all this?  The cellphone company gave me some of the numbers that this person had called, and I called them. I said I was from Centennial College. Said I would like them to tell whoever called them on my stolen cellphone last night, to return it to Security, as I was going to the police about it. All the callers I spoke to knew what I was talking about, knew what the caller in question had done, and yet no one had suggested to this person at the time to DO THE RIGHT THING, and turn the phone in to campus security. Instead, they all had a lot of fun with it. 

One of the other people who answered the numbers this person had called last night, wanted to know if her friend would have to PAY for the calls she'd made. Why, I asked? Because, the caller said, the girl who had found my phone and used it, apparently thought that it would be okay to use my phone since it was AFTER 6 p.m.  Well, guess what? I don't have free evenings or weekends on my plan.  So you did cost me. And I have no way of finding out who you are to pay me back.

But that's not the only point.

I do have is personal information stored on that phone, including photos of my family, and other info. I felt extremely violated and my personal space intruded on.

As a professor at Centennial College, I strive to make my classrooms a supportive safe place for students to learn and develop and grow. I guess it's not a two way street, right? It's OK that we professors are there for you students, but you, student-who-used-my-phone, didn't it occur to you to show the same kind of honesty, and consideration back? Not until I OUTED you to your friends, and threatened to call the police, after 24 hours, did you do the honest thing and return the phone to Security. 

  One of your friends told me your name is Christina, that you go to Progress Campus and also take a Gen-Ed course at HP on Wednesday evenings. 

As for me,  I'm buying a big purse with a big ol' zipper. 

As for you, it might be time that you start learning that honesty pays off in life. It's called the Golden Rule, young lady. Even if no one has taught it to you before. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.