Series: Spring 2005

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’

When Stephen Shaw died on March 6, 2004, it wasn’t national news. It didn’t make The Globe and Mail, and was buried in the GTA section of The Toronto Star. But on March 10, the front-page headline of Oshawa This Week read, “We’ll miss you Stephen.” For weeks, Shaw’s newspaper was flooded with condolences and… Continue reading Death in the Community

In the middle of a cattle feedlot, an hour south of Calgary, Kevin Newman is sitting in a rental car. It’s 3:05 in the afternoon on May 20, 2003, and his show, Global National News with Kevin Newman (GN), is 25 minutes to air. Newman is thinking about mad cows and what he will do… Continue reading Newman’s Own

It’s 9:30 A.M. on a blue-sky Wednesday in December, and while most of Toronto’s urbanites are settling into desks and cubicles across the city, a zealous crowd is gathering at the Garment Factory Lofts in an industrial strip in the east end. Here, showcasing racks heavy with furs, satins, and leathers in a blur of… Continue reading Selling Out?

It was after noon on October 29, 1977, when the phone rang in The Toronto Star newsroom. Novice reporter Richard Brennan, working on the rewrite desk, picked up his line. “I want to speak to a reporter,” a woman said. “I was just taken hostage in Northtown Shopping Plaza.” Held captive for half an hour,… Continue reading Smooth Operators