When a story like the Jian Ghomeshi saga gets as big as it has, it presents a challenge for media organizations: how to differentiate themselves. The Toronto Star is breaking the coverage, and everybody else is picking it up and often just repeating it. This week’s Alumni Essentials shows how important intelligent, contextual analysis is as a story unfolds like this.
Summer 2012 production editor Scaachi Koul’s “How Predator’s Get Away With It” uses her personal experiences as a student and working journalist as a call for the media to start speaking out against abusers. This is a reminder that this story is much bigger than Ghomeshi himself, as Koul details harassment from professors and her list of male media employees to avoid.
Focusing back on Ghomeshi, winter 2012 departments editor Carly Lewis analyzes the former Q host’s Facebook letter and the tactics he used in it to rally fans and admirers around him. Lewis—with the help of some experts—examines the careful crafting of each line in the letter and the science behind it to show how Ghomeshi set himself up as a victim.
As the story continues to unravel, journalists will need to find different ways to tell it—ways that add value to readers trying to make sense of this case.
It’s about to get bigger.
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About the author
Cormac was the blog editor for the 2014-15 issue of the Review. As a fourth year undergraduate at the School of Journalism, he had a keen interest in sports and business writing. He also hosted the Krates Collective hip hop podcast.