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September-October 2011

How a pioneering Globe reporter helped introduce Marshall McLuhan to the world

David HayesWebsite@TimesRoman

Kay Kritzwiser, a feature writer assigned to the Globe and Mail’s weekend supplement, The Globe Magazine, had never heard of Marshall McLuhan when, on a mid-November morning in 1963, her edior, Colin McCullough, asked her to write a profile of him. She visited the Globe’s library and took away a Who’s Who entry and a […] More »
September-October 2011

Interview: Nieman fellow David Skok on Canadian journalism’s digital future

Paul McLaughlinWebsite@paulmcl

David Skok, the managing editor of GlobalNews.ca, checked into Harvard University in September to begin a one-year Nieman Fellowship. The 33-year-old is the first Canadian digital journalist to receive the prestigious award. He’ll be studying “how to sustain Canadian journalism’s distinct presence in a world of stateless news organizations.” He spoke with This two weeks […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Christina Palassio on book futurist Hugh McGuire

Christina PalassioWebsite

Imagine Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness read by a woman with a girlish, high-pitched voice. How would it affect your interpretation of the text? What elements of the story would be heightened, and which ones muted? What effect can a reader have on a text? These are a few of the questions that arise when […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Mel Watkins on Straight Goods founder Ish Thielheimer

Mel Watkins

Once upon a time, there was born in Brooklyn a boy named Fred Theilheimer. When he started high school, asked his name by some young women in the schoolyard—and fearing that “Fred” would not sufficiently impress—in an act of spontaneous imagination, and with Moby Dick in his American DNA, he said, “Call me Ish.” And […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Navneet Alang on blogger-of-the-future Tim Maly

Navneet AlangWebsite

Tim Maly seems like he might be from the future. Since 2007, Maly has, like so many others, written a blog on subjects he cares about. His is called Quiet Babylon, where he writes about technology, architecture and urban spaces. But in 2010, Maly made the brave and unusual decision to quit his regular job, […] More »

How to save arts and culture in Canada: a Massey Commission 2.0

hilary beaumont

Their jobs sound like an oxymoron in Canada’s present political climate; arts professionals earn about half the average national income per year, a large chunk of which comes from grants. That public funding is in danger since Stephen Harper made it perfectly clear he doesn’t consider the arts a priority. Given that the main agenda […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Mason Wright on Susanna Haas Lyons

Mason WrightWebsite

They’re called social media for a reason, but for activists like Susanna Haas Lyons, tools such as Facebook and Twitter have much more to offer than funny cat videos and photos of your baby niece. “People spend an average of 14 minutes a day on Facebook,” says Vancouver-based Haas Lyons, a 33-year-old public engagement consultant […] More »
March-April 2011

On the internet, you’re not a citizen—you’re a consumer

Graham F. Scott@navalang

The United States’ decision to invade Afghanistan soon after 9/11 was misguided for many reasons, but one was purely practical: Al Qaeda is a stateless, decentralized network scattered across the globe. The spectral, international scope of the problem was no secret—so why wage a conventional war on one country? It was as if an outmoded […] More »

Everything you'll find in the March-April 2011 issue of This Magazine

Graham F. Scott

The March-April 2011 issue of This is now in subscribers’ mailboxes and on newsstands. As usual, you’ll be able to read all the articles here on the website as we post them over the next few weeks. But also as usual, we encourage you to subscribe to the magazine, which is the best way to support […] More »
November-December 2010

On a borderless internet, how will we nurture Canadian content?

Navneet AlangWebsite

In 1999, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission took a hard look at the then-burgeoning internet. They then did what many Canadians would consider a very un-CRTC-like thing: they decided not to regulate it. That may come as something of a surprise, as we tend to think that if the CRTC has a thing, it’s […] More »

Listen to This #020: Ottawa Citizen Parliament Hill reporter Glen McGregor

Graham F. Scott

In Listen to This #020, This Magazine associate editor Nick Taylor-Vaisey talks with Ottawa Citizen Parliament Hill reporter Glen McGregor about the effect that social media like Twitter and Facebook are having on the news cycle, for readers and consumers, reporters, and politicians alike — but why social media is still no way to attract […] More »