“Welcome home, Dawna Friesen.” Transmitted through television screens, printed in newspapers and plastered across public spaces, the phrase echoed across Canada as the summer of 2010 came to a close. Global Television and Canwest’s $1 million-plus promotional blitz for Friesen, its new national news anchor, was especially intense in Toronto. A tight shot of her… Continue reading Do Anchors Still Matter?
Category: The Magazine
Three Tales From the Trenches
Compilations. For Rolling Stone it means “The Most Annoying Songs of All Time,” forCosmopolitan it means “Funniest Sex Stories Ever Told,” for LIFE Magazine it means “Photos of the Year” and for New York Magazine it meant “Tales of New York.” For years, journalists have written, shown, spoken about or organized the stories of others… Continue reading Three Tales From the Trenches
Thumbs Down
Globe and Mail culture reporter Kate Taylor has a flair for the dramatic, which she proved again one evening when she made a rather perplexing analogy: a respectable film critic should possess the same omniscient authority as celebrity handyman Mike Holmes. She was speaking at the University of Toronto’s Innis Town Hall, where a group… Continue reading Thumbs Down
The Hampson Interview
Sarah Hampson switches on her small, black digital recorder and is greeted with the sound of her own voice. It’s scratchy and accompanied by static as it travels through the small speaker. She’s playing back an interview with Roméo Dallaire. She’d sat down with the retired Canadian lieutenant-general a few weeks prior to discuss the… Continue reading The Hampson Interview
The Right to Speak Out
With a pistol pressed hard into his ribcage, Aaron Berhane remained silent while one of his attackers, whose face was masked by a long, draping hat, muttered an unsettling threat—if he published one more article criticizing his country’s government, he would not live to have another byline. With that, Berhane’s visitors, who introduced themselves as… Continue reading The Right to Speak Out