Left: After enduring six years as editor of the militant newspaper Contrast, Lorna Simms launched Dawn, a much softer, reassuring publication the staff of Contrast had just put the most recent issue of the weekly newspaper to bed. Editor Lorna Simms and production manager Paulette Grant completed the art boards and packed them into a… Continue reading Reflections on the Black Press
Series: Summer 1993
Ten Years of Popping Off
Early last April, the Ryerson Review of Journalism hit the newsstands and the newsrooms of every major media company in Toronto. On the cover was a dramatic black-and-red illustration of a powerful hand squeezing blood out of a Maclean’s magazine. The headline read: “Strong-Arm Tactics: How the Life Gets Squeezed Out of Canada’s Weekly Newsmagazine.”… Continue reading Ten Years of Popping Off
The New Protocol of War
Someone had to take Peter Brysky’s camera home. Peter Brysky was from Toronto; he was a free-lance stills photographer who was killed at Karlovac in Croatia on October 6,1991. A team from “The Journal” was in Croatia covering the war at the same time, staying at the same hotel, the Intercontinental in Zagreb. The hotel… Continue reading The New Protocol of War
Hail and Farewell to the Whig
One day in September 1990 Neil Reynolds, the editor of The Whig~Standard of Kingston, Ontario, strode into the office of the publisher. Reynolds was an astute man and something had been bothering him for the last 10 days. Much as he had for 11 years as editor, he elected to share his concern with his… Continue reading Hail and Farewell to the Whig
Journalism Inc.
It’s impossible to serve two masters at once-we have no lesser authority than the Bible for that-yet the news media try to do it every day. Working journalists like to think their primary role is to serve the public by letting it know what’s really going on. But the higher-ups, the media managers, have a… Continue reading Journalism Inc.