At the end of the 20th century, a promising new phenomenon appeared—amateur reporters and commentators who came to be known as “citizen journalists.” They presented their writing on the internet, called web diaries, weblogs or simply blogs. The people maintaining these sites were writers unhindered by conventional journalism practices who wanted to tell stories from… Continue reading Much ado about Precious Little
Category: Summer 2010
Lost
By 8 a.m. most days, Mir Mahdavi is walking his customary 15-minute route from his home in western Kabul, greeting the same friendly faces and stopping in the same grocery store for cigarettes before arriving at the three-storey apartment building that houses Aftab (“The Sun”), the weekly newspaper of which he is founder and editor-in-chief. There he makes… Continue reading Lost
Highway of Tears Revisited
Travelling west on Yellowhead Highway 16, Vancouver Sun reporter Neal Hall took in the loneliness of the road, especially desolate in 23-below December weather. The isolated landscape was beautiful as the sun climbed and dipped, blushing the tips of the mountains in pink hues. After driving for an hour or more and not glimpsing a house, he… Continue reading Highway of Tears Revisited
Full Moon
In the summer of 1994, David Macfarlane was among eight journalists at the Banff Centre in Alberta for the prestigious, month-long literary arts journalism program. A freelancer since the late 1970s, and, he jokes, notorious for missing deadlines, Macfarlane had managed to get his draft in on time after warnings from Barbara Moon, his editor.… Continue reading Full Moon
State of Disarray
“This job is really boring,” the reporter sighs soon after she begins transcribing an interview for a weekly news show in one of Fairchild TV’s editing suites in Richmond Hill, Ontario. The elevator-sized room is walled by a file cabinet, a ceiling-high shelf of Beta tapes and a sticker-infested desk with an analogue editing system… Continue reading State of Disarray