Series: Summer 2003

Michael Sifton strolls out the front door of his Markham office carrying a Tim Hortons coffee. It’s before 7 a.m. and Sifton’s Cadillac SUV is the only car in the lot. I am joining Osprey Media Group’s president and CEO for a drive to one of his newspapers, The Barrie Examiner. Today is not a… Continue reading Lord Sifton Of Fleet?

It’s 11 p.m. on a Sunday and four women are gossiping around a coffee table on the set of Mary Walsh: Open Book, a half-hour show launched in July 2002.Walsh and her guests, poet Susan Musgrave, columnist Jan Wong, and singer/songwriter Jann Arden, are having a hard time focusing on Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club:… Continue reading Hard Covers, Soft Coverage

The editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail is on his hands and knees in the boardroom. His navy suit wrinkles as his tie dangles down toward the herringbone rug. We trade glances. Mine is a look of bewilderment, his a look of mock fright. Suddenly, he ducks his head under the edge of the table… Continue reading The Scoop on Ed

For two weeks in March 2000, Vian Ewart woke early each morning and headed for the Toronto subway system, not to get anywhere in particular, but to observe. Starting at 6 a.m., he rode the Bloor-Danforth line from the west end of the city to the east end and back again, moving from car to… Continue reading Free for All

“Perfect timing,” exclaims The Globe and Mail‘s boyish foreign editor as he whisks me up to the second-floor newsroom. “You’re here just in time for a crisis.” John Stackhouse seems frazzled-wide eyes and nervous laughter belie his usually cool demeanor. The headlining feature for the weekend foreign section, just 36 hours from deadline, has lost… Continue reading World Domination