I was just one letter among many, but its contents stuck with me. “Mr. MacKinnon,” the reader wrote, “still cannot find within himself the intestinal fortitude to call those who took hundreds of women and children hostages in Beslan, and proceeded to shoot them in the backs, their proper name – terrorists and cowards.” Journalists… Continue reading The War on ‘Terrorist’
Category: The Magazine
Fear Factor
I’ve known foreign correspondents who confess to becoming so addicted to war, they feel lost without a new one to cover. Although I spent a decade in and out of conflict zones, I never had that problem. The Fear Factor, as well as aging, saw to that. It never caused me to flee a war… Continue reading Fear Factor
His Country
“I’ve been in journalism for 30 years and this past spring I had my first story rejected,” Roy MacGregor says in Kelsey’s restaurant in Kanata, the suburb just outside of Ottawa where he lives. The Western Alumni Gazette, the alumni magazine of the University of Western Ontario (where he attended journalism school) requested MacGregor write… Continue reading His Country
Banana Split
t’s a late November afternoon in 2002 and Banana magazine managing editor Kuan Foo is in Toronto to meet entertainment editor Christine Miguel and other contributors. It’s going to be a depressing meeting – the day before, Foo received a disturbing phone call from editor-in-chief Mark Simon in Vancouver. Simon delivered the bad news: Banana’s… Continue reading Banana Split
Dumb and dumber
Allan Gregg dumps a thick file folder on an oval-shaped coffee table and seats himself in a cushy blue chair. It’s an October Monday and Gregg has taken time away from his money-making market-research business to talk about his “very, very serious hobby” – interviewing authors for “Gregg and Company,” his segment of Studio 2,… Continue reading Dumb and dumber