Jenny Vaughan is no stranger to the hybrid role of journalist, leader, and advocate. She now occupies a unique position as the Accra, Ghana-based eyes and ears of Journalists for Human Rights, a media development organization with operations throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, her job ranges from ensuring the professional and personal well-being of a team […] More »
I’m sitting in a room surrounded by hundreds of people, kindred spirits, a number of whom would normally not cross paths. Chiselled-faced anchors sit side by side with journalists who have been exiled from their homes around the world. Then a series of startling images jolt me up in my seat. Footage of riot police […] More »
Flip through the pages of Shameless, a feminist magazine for teen girls, and you’ll find a debate about the value of corporate social responsibility titled “When Oppressive Corporations Do Progressive Things” alongside a first-person call for self-acceptance, “Shame, Beauty and Women of Colour.” It’s not exactly Seventeen, and that’s the whole point — or at […] More »
Three years ago, when Hamilton reporter Bilbo Poynter first mentioned his idea of starting a centre to support investigative journalism, I thought, Yes! Just what we need at a time when newsrooms are pole-axing in-depth reporting budgets and trying to outdo each other with reality-show guano. Now, don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed watching Josh […] More »
The CRTC’s in the news again, this time for proposing that journalists can lie, as long as no one gets hurt. Last week the CRTC asked the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council to review its ban of unedited version of the Dire Straits’ 1985 song “Money for Nothing.” The 25-year-old hit, which has since started climbing on iTunes, […] More »
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 »
Canada is no longer the Great White North—except at the boardroom table. Consider this: the population growth of racialized or non-white groups continues to outpace that of white Canadians. This has created a shift in the demographic balance of the Canadian mosaic, with our population on its way to becoming a “minority majority.” According to […] More »
Though you might reasonably condemn the modern internet for a variety of reasons—ruining attention spans, turning all public discourse into a shouting match, or insulting your sexual prowess with badly punctuated mass emails—one thing the medium could always reasonably claim was its potential for spreading truth. Decentralized and egalitarian, the web seemed to herald the […] More »
Shell Canada’s operations in Alberta’s oil sands are clean and green, and simply the victim of nasty rumours spread by environmentalists trying to tar the company’s reputation. That is, if you believe the “six-week Canwest special information feature on climate change, in partnership with Shell Canada.” Canada’s largest media company teamed up with the oil […] More »
When Google, citing concerns over security and censorship, pulled their operations out of China in March this year, they were widely praised for taking a stand for democracy. But Google’s move wasn’t the first time a Western entity had taken the moral high road in regard to China. In fact, almost 200 years ago, the […] More »
I suspect you already know why I think scrapping the long-form census is a terrible idea. Good data is good for society. Done right, statistical research keeps us all honest, forcing us to interact with the world as it actually is, rather than imagining ourselves as part of a reality that is personally or politically […] More »