Media
T h e c a n a d i a n a s s o c i at i o n o f j o u r n a l i s t s • W i n t e r 2 0 1 0 • v o l u m e 1 4 , N u m b e r t h r e e •
Exposing Montreal’s
“Dirty Little Secret”
Radio-Canada’s Alain Gravel and Marie-Maude Denis expose
allegations of corruption within the city’s construction industry
By Andrew King and Fiona Collienne
Media
W i n t e r 2 0 1 0 • v o l u m e 1 4 , N u m b e r tw o
w w w. c a j . c a / m e d i a m a g
columns
6 Writer’s
9
4 F i r s t W o r d by David McKie
t o o l b o x by Don Gibb • Creating an outline makes the writing easier.
J o u r n a l i s m n e t by Julian Sher • When looking for people online, think before you click.
F e at u r e s
11 EX P OSIN G
M ON T REAL’ S “ DIR T Y LI T T LE SECRE T ” by Andrew King and Fiona Collienne
Two reporters teamed up for one of the most explosive stories in recent memory.
13 HO W I T BE G AN by Andrew King and Fiona Collienne
Marie-Maude Denis and Alain Gravel explain how they connected the dots between
Montreal city hall and an alleged corruption construction ring.
Media
15 NO M ORE ANON Y M OUS SOURCES by Catharine Tunney
Saint John New Brunswick’s Telegraph-Journal will no longer quote people unless they are on the record.
18
S T RA P P ED FOR CASH by James Whitehead
Winter 2010 • volume 14, Number three
The Canadian Association of Journalists is broke. The question is, for how long?
a p u b l i c at i o n o f
20 ON T HE ROAD T O OBLIVION by Nick Fillmore
It’s time media outlets began searching for alternative models that can only live online.
T h e c a n a d i a n a s s o c i at i o n o f j o u r n a l i s t s
22 W HI T HER INVES T I G AT IVE JOURNALIS M by Nicole Feriancek
Former Toronto Star publisher John Honderich argues that future business models
of journalism must reserve a place for hard-hitting exposés.
1 1 0 6 W e l l i n gt o n St. P. O . B o x 3 6 0 3 0 Ottawa , ON K 1 Y 4 V 3
columns
24
LE G AL ADVISOR
AR T DIREC T ION a n d DESI G N
Pe t e r J a c o b s e n , B e r s e n a s
Jacobsen Chouest Thomson
B l a c k b u r n LL P
Rafia Mahli
c o py EDI T OR
T HE BAC K S T OR Y by Glen McGregor • Two reporters, computer-assisted reporting students
Anne Larrass
from Algonquin College, and a whole bunch of data.
26 T HE NE W K ID ON T HE BLOC K b y Peter Calamai • The Science Media Centre of Canada will help
journalists make sense of stories such as H1N1.
29 F e e d s a n d l e d e s by Mary Gazze • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) increases the odds
that more people will read your story online.
31 D i g i ta l J o u r n a l i s t by Sandra Ordonez • There are practical steps to learning SEO.
33 T h e F i n e P r i n t by Dean Jobb • Journalists are using social networking tools such as Twitter
to beef up their court coverage
34 L e g a l u p d at e by Dean Jobb • The Supreme Court of Canada recently handed journalists a huge victory.
36 Et h i c s by Stephen J.A. Ward • We should always remember that good journalism helps citizens deliberate.
38 C o mp u t e r - a s s i s t e d r e p o r t i n g by Fred Vallance-Jones • In an effort to stay relevant,
Microsoft is enhancing its features for Excel and Access.
39 i n s i d e t h e n u m b e r s by Kelly Toughill• Counting crowds at events is difficult, but there are ways to do it.
40 p o s t s c r i pt by Andrew Cohen • Remembering Michelle Lang, the first Canadian journalist
killed in Afghanistan.
42 t h e l a s t w o r d by Catherine Ford • The good old days at Canwest are gone—forever.
2
EDI T OR
David McKie
EDI T ORIAL BOARD
Chris Cobb
Catherine Ford
Michelle MacAfee
Lindsay Crysler
John Gushue
Rob Cribb
R o b Wa s h b u r n
advertising sales
John Dickins
AD M INIS T RAT IVE DIREC T OR
John Dickins
(613) 526-8061
Fax: (613) 521-3904
contributors
Peter Calamai, Andrew Cohen,
Fiona Collienne, Nicole
Feriancek, Nick Fillmore,
Catherine Ford, Mary Gazze, Don
Gibb, Dean Jobb, Andrew King,
Glen McGregor, David McKie,
Sandra Ordonez, Julian Sher,
Kelly Toughill, Catherine Tunney,
Fred Vallance-Jones, Stephen J,A,
Ward, James Whitehead
COVER P HO T O
Radio-Canada reporters Alain Gravel and Marie-Maude Denis. Photo by Andrew King.
M EDIA i s p u b l i s h e d b y t h e C a n a d i a n A s s o c i a t i o n o f J o u r n a l i s t s . I t i s m a n a g e d a n d e d i t e d i n d e p e n d e n t l y f r o m t h e CAJ
and its contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the Association.
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I n d e x e d i n t h e C a n a d i a n Pe r i o d i c a l I n d e x.
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media
Winter 2010
3
First Word
Where are we going?
As we head into a new decade the future may be uncertain,
but the possibilities are also limitless
David McKie
The past decade
has been a mixture of
fear and hope. Bosses
are tightening their
belts and cutting jobs.
Journalists are thinking
about new ways to earn
David McKie edits
money, perhaps by miMedia. He is an
grating online, perhaps
author and awardby getting out of the
winning journalist
business altogether. Unwith the CBC’s
certainty and potential
investigative unit.
are themes reflected in
David also teaches
this edition of Media.
at the schools
Our cover story feaof journalism at
tures
the brilliant work
Carleton Univerof two Montreal-based
sity and Algonquin
College.
reporters at RadioCanada, the CBC’s
French-language service. Alain Gravel host of
Enquête and Marie-Maude Denis, a crime
reporter turned full-time investigative journalist, combined on a story that has all the intrigue
of a crime novel. In their story about how the
journalists broke the story, Andrew King and
Fiona Collienne, write: “Known as the fabulous
14, the construction companies and the Italian
Mafia are said to have colluded while bidding
for road construction contracts. The investigation reported that the construction firms fixed
bids by establishing the lowest cost, inflating
it, and then distributing the work amongst
themselves.”
The story made news for months,
influenced the narrative, though not the
outcome, of Montreal’s municipal election,
and resonated in Quebec City’s National
Assembly. The voices demanding a public
inquiry will grow louder.
The story is also significant because it
comes at a time when traditional media
outlets are shrinking their news holes and
4
shortening their newscasts. These two journalists bucked that trend and were grateful
to their bosses. Gravel and Denis were given
the breathing room, the resources and the
necessary air time to pursue and tell an
important story. With time and space now
considered a luxury, it’s no wonder that
Toronto Star’s former publisher, the bow-tie
wearing John Honderich, used his platform
at an event sponsored by the University of
King’s College to ask for a continued commitment to investigative journalism.
Nicole Feriancek quotes Honderich, who
worries about the impact the web is having on
the quality of journalism, as the immediacy
of posting material online can become more
important than taking the time needed to get
it right. Though he concedes the web is fast
becoming a medium of choice, Honderich
cautions that “serious, thought-provoking,
investigative journalism must continue.”
It’s also significant to point out that both
stories, as are many others in this edition of
Media, are written by journalism students. In
universities and colleges across the country,
students such as Andrew and Nicole are in
the middle of this debate about our future.
Whether you’re talking about a piece that
is to be broadcasted, published in a newspaper, or posted online, journalists must
remember they’re storytellers. Our stellar
writing coach Don Gibb reminds us of the
importance of crafting an outline, which involves reviewing a checklist, just like a pilot
does before take-off. Though the task may
seem repetitive and boring, the checklist
helps journalists smoothly navigating readers, viewers or listeners through the contours
of the narrative, be it corruption within the
construction industry, or problems getting
the H1N1 vaccine to those who need it.
Attention to narrative is essential. But if
few people read the story, then the artistry
that went into spinning the yarn has been
wasted, especially since more of this material
ends up online, either in its original form, or
as a separate, value-added package of stories,
slide shows or graphs that use the web to
convey more content. Increasingly, writing for
the web is becoming part of the job description for journalists at media outlets both large
and small. This means in addition to following some of Don’s storytelling tips, we must
develop techniques that allow search engines
such as Google to locate our stories.
In her inaugural column, we’re calling
Feeds and Ledes, Mary Gazze introduces us
to something called, search engine optimization. SEO is a concept that is new for journalists who have traditionally limited their
storytelling to the traditional venues such as
newspapers. “In plain, nontechnical terms,”
she writes, “(SEO) is a technique where you
take popular keywords and put them into
the body of your story to help it climb to the
top of a search results page.”
In increasing the size of the audience for a
particular story, SEO also helps media outlets
entice advertisers, a factor of crucial importance as journalism tries to re-invent itself in
cyberspace. Like any other skill, mastering
SEO takes time. However, there are tips to get
you going quickly. And this is where the advice from Sandra Ordonez of OurBlook.com,
a U.S.-based website that focuses on changes
within the industry, comes into play.
“As more publications shift their attention
to establishing a stronger online presence,”
writes Sandra, “SEO is an intrinsic tool to
increasing traffic and, most importantly,
building an online community.”
In addition to OurBlook.com, other organizations have emerged to help journalists. One
of them is the Science Media Centre of Canada.
media
Based in Ottawa, SMCC promises to demystify
the science that forms the building blocks of
stories from H1N1 to possible life forms on
the Red Planet. Former Toronto Star science
columnist, Peter Calamai, explains that the centre will provide a number of services, including
media briefings on demand and workshops in
interpreting certain data. As we saw during the
H1N1 saga, media outlets struggled to find a
balance between warning Canadians about the
risks without scaring them to death, a charge
leveled by high-profile critics. The Centre
couldn’t come at a better time.
And there is also more good news for
journalists, this time from the country’s
highest court. In late December, the
Supreme Court of Canada brought down
a ruling that allows journalists to use the
“responsible journalism” defence, a topic
that our legal expert, Dean Jobb, has tackled
many times in his column. In dissecting
the ruling’s significance, Dean writes: “In
essence, it grants journalists reporting on
issues of public importance the right to be
wrong. Not completely wrong, of course, but
the defence will defeat a libel claim if, despite
the journalist’s best efforts, some facts or allegations turn out to be wrong or false.”
As the title of the defence suggests, responsible journalism is not a green light for
irresponsible journalism; nor does it lessen
the responsibility to bullet-proof stories
through proper legwork, documentation
and discussions with lawyers before going to
air, print or the web. However, the defence
makes it easier to pursue stories that take on
powerful interests such as the construction
industry or litigious politicians.
As well, the ruling includes bloggers, thus
recognizing their work as a legitimate form
of journalism.
The Supreme Court judges’ inclusion of
bloggers is timely, coming at a time when
our definition of news and who deserves
the right to call themselves a journalist has
sparked a legitimate debate, which is partially reflected in this edition of Media.
Happy New Year and continued good wishes for journalism, a profession which, to borrow
a phrase that made news during the turbulent
year we’ve just endured, “is too big to fail.” M
Winter 2010
THE CAJ PRESENTS:
JOURNALISM IN THE 21ST CENTURY CONFERENCE
Your newsroom’s depopulated. You’re doing video, blogging, Tweeting and
writing stories. You’re wondering what the future holds for good journalism.
This is the conference for you.
What:
When:
Where:
Who:
A one-day crash course on the skills you need transform your
reporting and reinvent your newsroom in the new digital age.
Learn about emerging techniques, technologies and models to
transform journalism for the 21st century.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
MaRS Centre, Toronto
Students, working journalist and managers; there are sessions
for every skill level.
Speakers include:
Jim Brady, president, digital strategy, Allbritton Communications
and former executive editor of WashingtonPost.com
Michael Lee, chief strategy officer, Rogers
Rachel Nixon, director of digital news, CBC News Online
Kenny Yum, editor, GlobeandMail.com
Sessions include:
Online videography
Photography crash course for print reporters
Making the most of social media
Visual storytelling
Searching the web: Getting beyond Google
The ethics of social media
Cost:
$119 for CAJ members. $299 for nonmembers. $50 for students
and unemployed journalists.
Register: Online at www.caj.ca
For further information:
CAJ president Mary Agnes Welch (204) 470.8862 or (204) 697.7590;
Chairman, Saleem Khan (416) 494.0908 or [email protected]
To join the CAJ, please visit: www.caj.ca/membership/index.html
5
Writer’s Toolbox
Make a plan before you write
of a story before moving into straight
chronology with this happened, then
this, followed by this, this and this…
It’s less work than you think
Don Gibb
I
had the pleasure (?)
of being the first victim to fly with my son
after he had earned
his small-plane pilot’s
licence.
At the time, I
Don Gibb retired in
didn’t know it would
2008 after teaching
prompt a comparison
reporting for 20
to writing.
years at Ryerson’s
I watched him go
School of Journalthrough
an extenism. He can be
sive
checklist
that
reached at dgibb1@
included pre-flight
cogeco.ca
(“got enough fuel?”),
takeoff, climb, cruise, descent and landing
(“are you sure you have the right runway?”). Each of these categories and more
come with a checklist of as many as 20
items. From the moment he pulled the
plane from the hangar to the moment he
returned it there, he followed a lengthy
script. Every pilot goes through the same
procedure on every flight.
So it brought to mind the extensive
checklist writers need to review every time
they write. Much of it seems basic—as do
the checks made by pilots—but we need
to remind ourselves often so we don’t fall
into bad routines or bad habits.
So here’s a primer on some of the basics
of writing—a checklist, if you will, that
always needs our attention.
Writing coach Don Murray (The
Boston Globe) says, “Most good stories say
one thing. They talk not of a battle, but of
a soldier.”
So before you begin to write, ask yourself: What’s my story? The answer should
be no more than a few words—preferably
one word.
Here’s an example. A couple who
lost their only son in a car accident were
interviewed a year after the ordeal. They
were working hard to save their marriage,
to overcome guilt and blame, to deal with
Focus
Stories with one well-developed focus
or theme work better than those that try
to tackle too much. Multi-focused stories
tend to be superficial because they flit
from one topic to another, never developing anything to its full extent.
Story outline
Few of us take time to think about
the story before we begin to write. Smart
writers build in time to sketch out a brief
outline—a road map to give them a sense
of direction. It helps set up your story in
terms of your theme and sub-themes. It
6
helps keep related material together.
You can decide: What’s my opening?
Where do I go from there? What individual issues or topics need to be addressed?
What’s my ending?
This is more efficient than fumbling
around in your notebook, replaying your
digital recording or dumping everything
onto the computer. By writing a brief
outline, you quickly determine what’s
important and what’s not, what you’re
using and what you’re not. I wish I could
convince writers this actually saves time.
Buildings have a basic structure.
Stories need the same...Structure is
about finding the right “form” through
which to tell your story.
friends who thought their grieving should
be over, to cope with highs and lows every
day, and to try to concentrate on their
jobs. The common thread throughout the
story revolved around one word—surviving. This was the focus.
Find the one word that best describes
the story you are about to tell and chances
are you will stay focused.
Structure
Buildings have a basic structure. Stories
need the same. Once the basic structure is
established, then you provide the creative
element that makes it different from
another building or another story.
Structure is about finding the right
“form” through which to tell your story.
Here are a few of the more common
forms:
• Chronological. This allows you to
tell the story beginning at the beginning and moving to the end in linear
fashion. It has a sense of order and
relies heavily on good storytelling
skills to keep it moving. You can also
open with a particularly dramatic part
media
• Block or chapter. This form allows
you to divide a story into specific
chapters. In a story about the death
of a pastry chef at the World Trade
Center on Sept. 11, 2001, the opening
“chapter” dealt with the details of his
death that day. The next chapter told
readers his life story—from growing
up in Puerto Rico to his arrival in
America. That was followed by preparations for his funeral.
This form forces you to decide what
goes into your story (and each chapter) and what gets left out.
• Classic feature. This form is probably the most common. It often
involves finding someone through
whom to tell the story and it often
opens with an anecdote that speaks
to the theme or focus. The story ends
by coming full circle, returning to the
central character in your lead. The
classic feature is most successful when
the person who opens your story
continues to be woven through the
story. If a person deserves to be the
lead, they likely deserve to be a more
significant part of the entire story
Leads
We agonize over the first sentence because we’ve been told that unless we hook
readers and listeners, they won’t stick with
us. So here’s my advice:
Shorter leads work better (under 30
words) because studies have shown that
reader comprehension drops off after 25
words. Broadcasters are better at this than
print people.
Leave lengthy job titles for later.
Deal with one item in your lead rather
than two or more. An opening sentence
that tackles two or more items is called a
double-barrelled lead.
Winter 2010
Use strong, active verbs. Try to avoid
“there is” leads.
Watch for clichés, too many numbers,
and jargon.
Backing up the lead
The idea here is to let your second
sentence flow from the first and your
third flow from the second. In other
words, allow yourself time to develop and
strengthen your lead (focus) before charging ahead with background.
The biggest weakness—after writing
the opening sentence—is moving directly
into background or jumping immediately
into a quote before readers fully understand what the story is about. Background
can wait until your nut graf. (paragraph),
which is usually paragraph three, or four,
or maybe even five.
Nut graf
This is the sentence or paragraph that
tells readers what the story is about and
why they should read it. It usually appears
by the fourth paragraph. And it can be as
simple as telling readers this (is a story
about) National Procrastinators Week.
Some of you hate the nut graf. because
you think it interferes with the rhythm or
flow of your story. But once you get used
to the fact that stories need this essential
element, your challenge is to make it fit
seamlessly into your story.
Here’s an example of a seamless nut
graf—paragraphs three and four from a
New York Times story (Rick Bragg) about
a black washerwoman who donated her
life savings to the local university (nut
graf in italics):
She spent almost nothing, living
in her old family home, cutting
the toes out of shoes if they did
not fit right and binding her
ragged Bible with scotch tape to
keep Corinthians from falling out.
Over the decades, her pay—mostly
dollar bills and change—grew to
more than $150,000.
“More than I could ever use,” Miss
McCarty said the other day without a trace of self-pity. So she is
giving her money away, to finance
scholarships for black students at
the University of Southern Mississippi here in her hometown,
where tuition is $2,400 a year.
Context
Stories often need background. To understand your story, readers and listeners
need to know its history (the past), where
it stands today (present) and where it
goes from here (future). Without context,
readers and listeners are left to wonder
what the story is all about and why it is
important or relevant.
Use of quotes
Keep them short, make them lively, and
don’t overuse them. Long-winded quotes
are a problem, especially if you rely heavily
on digital recorders and insist on playing
back the entire interview or worse, dumping everything onto your computer screen.
The recorder is a wonderful tool, but
you need to show discipline in using it.
Notetaking should not be sacrificed in
favour of recording alone. Notetaking
should be your primary source in writing a story; the digital recorder is your
backup.
Here’s a guideline: Quotes should run
no longer than one or two sentences. It
better be fantastic to run three. And when
you have a quote where the interview subject has so garbled the language or takes
too long to make the point, paraphrase.
William Zinsser (On Writing Well) puts
it this way:
“People who you think have been
talking into the tape recorder with
linear precision turn out, when
your interview is transcribed, to
have been stumbling so aimlessly
over the sand of language that
they haven’t completed a decent
sentence.”
continued on page 8
7
Journalism.net
Think before you click
continued from page 7
If your interview is on tape you become
a listener, forever fussing with the machine,
running it backward to find the brilliant
remark you can never find, running it
forward, stopping, starting, driving yourself
crazy. Be a writer. Write things down.
Attribution
It can be overused. When it is obvious
who is speaking, writers need not use “he
said” or “she said.” Attribution can often
be deleted following a quote where you
have already introduced the speaker in a
previous sentence or paragraph.
“Said” or “says” are the most neutral
and serviceable attributives in your vocab-
Balance
Most writers know the importance of
getting all sides of a story. Sometimes that
means little more than a “no comment” or
telling readers and listeners that important sources were not available.
It’s fine for one side of the story to be
given prominence, but the other side (or
sides) should not be relegated to near the
bottom of the story. It’s important early
in the story to tell readers and listeners
there is another side—and the “other
side” should be flagged high in the story.
Then you can develop it in more detail
later in the story.
about getting beyond pat and rehearsed
answers. This isn’t to say you will get
your subject off message track, but you
stand a better chance of redirecting
an interview by asking questions that
challenge. Examples: What would you
say to those who think your idea won’t
work? How do you know that? Why
should people care? What do you gain
from this? As well, know why you are
asking your questions. If your subject
reacts angrily, you take the pressure off
yourself by explaining why you think
the question is important.
4) Ask story-ending questions. These
are questions that might give you a
It’s important early in the story to tell readers and listeners
there is another side—and the “other side” should be flagged
high in the story. Then you can develop it in more detail
later in the story.
ulary. Yet some of you strive to introduce
many variations in your stories to avoid—
what?—monotony. Often substitutions for
said or says are used incorrectly.
The Canadian Press Stylebook makes
this valid point: “Admit” implies confession, “affirm” states a fact, “assert” declares
strongly, “claim” and “maintain” hint of
doubt, “confide” implies a confidence,
“disclose” and “reveal” presume earlier
concealment.
All good reasons to stick to “said” or
“says.”
So how do you make stories appear less
formal or stodgy when you have to keep
saying he said, she said? Leave it out when
it’s obvious who’s doing the saying or
move attribution around—the beginning,
middle and end of sentences—so that
every paragraph doesn’t begin with he
said or she said.
8
Interviewing
This is an entire book, but here are four
key points.
1) Ask follow-up questions as a matter
of habit. Do not leave a topic until you
have explored it fully and understood it
fully. If you do this, your questions will
become sharper and more focused as the
interview progresses and you begin to better understand the story at hand.
2) Ask open-ended questions. The
“why,” “how,” and “what” questions will
generate more detailed answers. If you
find yourself sweating through a series of
“yes” or “no” responses, regroup and start
asking why and how.
3) Don’t be afraid to ask challenging
or tough questions. Writers often tell
me they have trouble “going for the jugular.” Well…when you put it that way!
It’s not about going for the jugular, it’s
natural ending to your story. Examples:
What have you learned from this experience? Where do you go from here?
What message would you give others?
Endings are just as important as your
openings.
Is this it? Are we finished? No. We’re
actually in mid-flight. This is the first
of two parts. In the next issue of Media
magazine, we’ll add to this checklist
with topics that include sentence length,
observation skills, tight writing/rewriting,
using numbers, eliminating jargon, and
developing good endings.
Both parts should give you a better
appreciation of how much we need to remember every time we begin the process
of gathering information and writing a
story for print or broadcast. Every story,
like every flight, requires a concentrated
review of the basics. M
media
It’s the best way to find everyone from experts to long-lost friends
Julian Sher
W
hat is the biggest mistake
people make in
trying to use the Internet to find people
or do research on
someone?
Not having a
Julian Sher, does
strategy. Instead of
Internet training in
blindly punching
newsrooms around
in keywords into
the world and can
be reached by email
your favorite search
at jsher@journalengine—and for most
ismnet.com. For
people, that means
more information,
Google—here’s a
check out his perpiece of advice: Besonal page at www.
fore your first click,
juliansher.com.
think.
I have been training people for ten years in mastering
the web as an investigative tool—from
the newsrooms of CNN and BBC to
librarians and law enforcement. And
what always surprises me is how people
throw out basic logic and common
sense when they plop themselves in
front of a computer.
Here’s a typical
scenario. Let’s say
someone in your company is trying to find
an expert on children
with attention-deficit
disorder (ADD) and
at the same time, you
are trying to locate
a long-lost friend from high school.
Inevitably, you both rush to Google and
start rifling through the results. And, if
you’re lucky you might get some decent
results. But why rely just on luck?
Now imagine you tried to do the
same searches 20 years ago before the
web existed. Would you run out to
the street and start asking anyone you
bumped into if they know an ADD
expert or heard of your long-lost friend?
No. But that’s what you’re doing by
relying on a blind search with Google.
In the real world, a seasoned investigator would plot a strategy and make
a list. Where am I likely to find this
person or information about them?
Should I consult the local library, the
newspaper archives, the yellow pages
or a private detective? Who can help
me narrow down my search? In other
words, you use special tools for specific
tasks.
Well, the Internet is not a virtual
world. It has become our real world.
So you should apply the same basic
strategy to finding people on the web.
Plot your strategy, figure out where the
person is likely to be found (or who
would know) and then use special web
tools for specific tasks.
next question is: is this person hiding
(or at least trying not to be found) or
just unknown to you? For some basic
clues to finding someone who is making
it hard, check www.reporter.org/desktop/tips/johndoe.htm
If the person is not hiding, you
can use the various phone directories
listed on JNet’s FIND PHONES page
[www.journalismnet.com/phones].
Whitespages.com in particular will often list other people living in the same
household. Next, move on the public
records and criminal records listed at
JNet’s FIND PEOPLE page www.journalismnet.com/people. Everything from
to boating licenses to court records can
help you find your target.
Here’s another trick. If someone
you are looking for had a personal or
business web page, but then removed
it, you can use the Wayback machine
at www.archive.org . It tries to archive cached version of millions of
sites—quite random, but useful when
you luck in. There is time lag time of
approximately six
months. So you won’t
be able to locate
archived versions
that may have been
recently pulled down.
Many people
have Facebook or
MySpace pages—or
their friends do. One
search engine called Yoname [www.
yoname.com] checks out many social
networking sites at once. Has somebody
on MySpace set their profile to private?
You can still get in through the back
door by doing a Google site search. Type
The Internet is not a virtual world.
It has become our real world. So you
should apply the same basic strategy
to finding people on the web.
Winter 2010
Find ordinary people
Who you are looking for determines
where you look. Is this person an expert
or a well-known personality (our ADD
specialist) or just an ordinary person
(your former high school sweetheart.)
Let’s start with ordinary people. The
continued on page 10
9
Feature: Cover Story
Construction Corruption
continued from page 9
in site:profile.myspace.com and the keywords you want. Often cached versions
of personal pages belonging to your
subject or his or he friends come up.
If you want to pay for complete
background searches—mainly only
for Americans—for everything from
criminal records to drivers licenses and
neighbours—you can try the various
data-mining companies such as www.
onlinepublicrecordssearch.com, www.
intelius.com, www.usseaach.com and
www.PeopleSearchPro.com.
For Canada, try www.efindoutthetruth.com/canada.htm, www.backcheck.
net and www.infocheckusa.com/canada-
York Times or CNN, that’s at least a first
indication of credibility. And chances are
if he or she doesn’t fit your bill, they will
know someone who does.
Next, use some of Google’s other,
lesser-known branches.
Google Scholar ( scholar.google.com)
gives you academic papers and higherlevel commentaries than you find on
the general web.
Google Books ( books.google.com ) allows you to search not just for authors
and titles but keywords – and you can
read large excerpts of the books to see
if the author is the kind of person you
need to talk to. (See below as well for
html) to use the more powerful tools
there. For starters, do a domain search
to narrow your search by country or
even to use the power of Google to
search one site. (See how at www.journalismnet.com/tips/domain.htm ) For
example, you want to search the entire
State Department website for the latest reports on Darfur or you want to
hunt through CNN’s website for an
obscure report on soccer equipment.
Use Google, not those web sites’ own
search tools.
Also change the “format” button to
find slideshows, spreadsheets and PDFs.
(See how at www.journalismnet.com/
Basic Google is fine when you already know what you’re looking
for—for example, you already know the name of the professor
and his university and you just want to find a web page with his
or her publications. Instead, move on to Advanced Google to use
the more powerful tools there.
background-check.htm.
For more such tools, see JNet’s
Canada and US crime database pages
which can easily be accessed from the
main JNet page.
Find experts
If it’s an expert you’re looking for,
there are plenty of specialized sites
to help you out. Start at JNet’s FIND
EXPERTS page (www.journalismnet.
com/experts)
Another good place to start is Google
News (news.google.com). You can search
45,000 newspapers. Use the advanced
search section (news.google.ca/news/advanced_news_search?pz=1&cf=all&ned=
ca&hl=en) to narrow it down by country,
state or city and date. Hey, if the expert
is good enough to be quoted by the New
a tip on how to change the ‘format”
result in your Google search to look
for slide shows and other reports by
Google.)
Mastering Google
Alright. After—and only after—you
have mapped out your strategy and you
have deployed the appropriate specialized tools above should you throw
yourself at the mercy of Google.
But even then, don’t waste much time
on the basic Google site. Basic Google is
fine when you already know what you’re
looking for—for example, you already
know the name of the professor and his
university and you just want to find a
web page with his or her publications.
Instead, move on to Advanced
Google ( google.com/ advanced_search.
tips/format.htm) This is an excellent
way to find expert: if someone has
bothered posting a slideshow on AIDS
in African women on the web, they’re
probably an expert on it.
And while you’re at it, try out some
of Google’s competitors.(See www.
journalismnet.com/search/best.htm)
Microsoft’s new Bing ( www.bing.com)
is trying to do a better job of sorting
results by suggesting connected people
or themes. Clusty ( www.clusty.com) was
one of the first to try to build “clusters” of your results and group them by
theme.
All these tricks and tools will not
guarantee that you’ll find the person
you’re looking for. But they will guarantee you won’t waste your time during
the hunt. M
How two journalists exposed Montréal’s dirty little secret
Andrew King
and Fiona Collienne
D
espite the layoffs,
spending cutbacks and the closing
of stations across the
country, investigative
journalism is thriving within Montréal,
and in particular, at
Radio-Canada, where a
reporting team has led
the way with a massive investigation into Montréal’s corrupt
construction industry.
Reports began airing last March about
the suspected collusion between 14 Montréal construction contractors. Known as
the “fabulous 14,” the construction companies and the Italian Mafia are said to have
colluded while bidding for road construction contracts. The investigation reported
that the construction firms fixed bids by
establishing the lowest cost, inflating it,
and then distributing the work amongst
themselves.
Former Quebec transport official, François Beaudry, was one of the many sources
who came forward. He alleged large-scale
corruption with the Mafia controlling 80
percent of the road construction contracts.
The stories showed the average price of
road work in Quebec was 37 percent higher
than the national average, costing Quebecers millions of dollars every year. These revelations have prompted calls—even from
the union representing provincial police of-
Andrew King is
completing the
final year of his
journalism degree
at Concordia
University. Fiona
Collienne recently
earned a master
of journalism
from IHECS in
Brussels.
YOUTH AND EXPERIENCE: Marie-Maude Denis and Alain Gravel teamed up to crack a sensational
case that will have people talking for years to come. Photo: Andrew King.
ficers—for a public inquiry. Municipal and
provincial governments are under pressure.
The two journalists behind the investigation, Radio-Canada’s Alain Gravel, host of
the public affairs program Enquête, and
Marie-Maude Denis, who recently left the
newsroom to join Radio-Canada’s investigative unit full time, sat down to explain
how the arrival of a document one year
ago allowed them to break one the biggest
scandals in recent Montréal history.
The day began like any other
Last November, Denis was working as
the newsroom’s crime beat reporter, a position she admitted was not envied by many
at Radio-Canada, but one she embraced.
She received some information from one of
her sources.
“We received a document showing that
many big construction companies were
talking to each other to fix the price of the
bids,” recalls Denis. Although the docu-
ment came from reputable source, she
admitted that it wasn’t enough on its own,
but it was something to build on. That
document, now profiled in their investigation, was evidence of covert language involving golf scores used between members
of organized crime and the construction
industry to discuss contract bids.
Although it seemed ridiculous to Gravel
and Denis at first, the document became
the catalyst for the investigation. Once
they began airing stories, and after they
appeared on the show Tout le Monde en
Parle, the tips poured in.
The partnership is formed
Gravel recalls the day he was asked to
team-up with Denis. She arrived up at his
office with the document in hand.
“She is young, not as experienced as
me and my boss asked me ‘do you want
to work with this young woman?’” says
Gravel. He said ‘yes,’ and the unlikely team
continued on page 12
10
media
Winter 2010
11
Feature: Interview
Cover story interview
continued from page 11
composed of experience and youth had the
full support of their bosses.
“The best thing is that we did not have
to convince [Radio-Canada] much, because
this story was always going forward and
there were always new elements coming
in,” says Denis, who was relieved of her
newsroom duties in order to devote all of
her time to the story.
Although the first few months were
mostly filled with background work,
meetings with sources and taking notes, it
didn’t take long for Radio-Canada executives to realize Gravel and Denis had an
important story of public interest. The
two received more resources, including
producers and researchers in the expanding investigative team.
“To let Marie-Maude work almost
full time with us, they asked me to work
full time on this piece and they put a lot
of means on that and a lot of support,
encouragement, everything; they pushed
us a lot,” says Gravel.
As the story grew and more prominent
names surfaced, a major challenge for
Gravel and Denis was keeping the story
quiet at the office. Protecting their sources was a concerted effort, forcing them
to develop creative ways to discuss the
story when they were in public. “We have
codes,” says Denis, about a system that
worked so well that Gravel had difficulty
remembering the sources real names.
“We have the ‘hunter,’ the ‘complainer’,
‘the crier ‘, ‘the chicken’, ‘the cleaner’, ‘the
queen,’ ‘the farmer,’ and I don’t remember
the real name of these people,” he says,
laughing. Aside from the fun they had
in creating the names, it was an essential
practice in order to keep their sources
safe, especially with a story involving
organized crime.
“We are always careful with sources of
course, but now there is a matter of danger,
we are getting into the Mafia and price fixing, it is not fun,” said Denis.
Even though protecting their sources
from harm was critical, they also had to
look out for their own safety after revealing
the Mafia connection.
“It is a question that everybody wants to
ask us and we chose to not be cocky and
say ‘we were not threatened,’” she says.
Though they received indirect threats
through messages, both still feel safe. It
also helped that their competitors were
also working on the story.
“It would be crazy to do something. It
would be the spark for a public inquiry,”
said Gravel, who was more concerned
with how his family dealt with the exposure than threats he might have received.
“It is more difficult for my wife because
Investigative Reporting Tips:
• Take time to build relationships with sources. It helps establish trust
and allows them to open up and share more.
• Communication ensures correct information is being shared among
team members and with sources.
• “Two heads work better than one.” When working on a large investigation, having another person helps share the work and allows for some
distance from the story to gain perspective.
• Distribute roles in the team according to strengths and weaknesses.
• Focus on moving the story forward. Keep it relevant.
12
she is not involved in that.” But despite the
long hours and the constant pressures of
the story and home life, Gravel, a journalist
of 30 years, has no regrets.
“I am in the middle of something really
important, I think it is one of the first times
of my career where I have a real feeling of
being able to change something, clearly,” he
says. “We are almost in the middle of a journalistic mission or something like that.”
Due to the immense size and success of
the story, Radio-Canada went even further
to back the investigation by creating a special
investigative unit within Enquête known
as the “construction taskforce.” A story that
began with two people now employs six fulltime members, allowing Gravel to continue
as host of Enquête while he produces pieces
for the news and work on the radio.
Denis says the investigation is more
difficult to tell because some sources are
reluctant to come forward, afraid of the
consequences, and it’s a challenge keeping
the story relevant.
“The real challenge now is to keep the audience interested in those matters,” she says.
However, the story never would have
been possible if they weren’t given the most
important element needed for investigative
work: time.
“We could never have done this story if
we did not take a lot of time to go talking,
being very broad about the subject before
being more specific on stuff,” says Denis.
“We did not have the pressure that it had to
work on the first shot because it would not
have worked.”
Gravel attributed Radio-Canada’s
commitment to a renewed competition
among Montréal’s news culture, pointing
to investigative work being carried out
by La Presse, The Gazette, Le Devoir and
Rue Frontenac, an online publication run
by Le Journal de Montréal’s locked-out
reporters. But even though there is a renewed optimism in the city, Denis stresses
that more effort is needed. “The other
media have to invest in this.” M
media
Alain Gravel and Marie-Maude Denis explain how
they teamed up and made the combination work
Andrew King
AK: How did the idea originally come to
you ?
Marie-Maude: It started with a document
we obtained in November 2008, showing
that many big construction companies
were talking to each other to fix the price
of the bids. One of these businessmen was
more interesting than the others. And
investigating his case led us to Fédération
des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec
(FTQ,). Through meetings with contacts,
we dug up some things on him specifically
After we aired it for the first time, we
started receiving a lot of tips and anonymous tips… It is funny that our most recent
piece, the last one we did on collusion and
price fixing (it might be the one that had
the biggest impact because it became a
theme during the municipal elections) was
the original story of the document. It paved
the road.
AK: How did you balance that with your
other work and how did you convince
talk. We did not have the pressure that it
had to work on the first shot because it
would not have worked.
AG: At La Presse, they were on the same
story, but through other contacts and other
angles. We did share, we talked to each
other, which is really rare in this ‘milieu’ of
competition.
AK: You kept your legal department pretty
busy, right ?
MM: Without them, we would have said
“It took a long time before we started telling our colleagues
what we were working on. It had to remain confidential at the
beginning. We are always careful with sources, of course. But
now there is a matter of danger. We are getting into the Mafia
and price fixing. It is not fun.”
—Marie-Maude Denis, reporter, Radio-Canada
and we were told to look into the FTQ.
Then Alain and I started meeting with
people.
AK:What about this first document ?
MM : It is from a source that I’ve known
for many years.
Alain: One day, Marie-Maude came from
the newsroom, we did not know her. We
did check the document and it was a kind
of a start of something.
MM: Yes, it was not crystal clear.
AG: But everything was there.
MM: But at that time, we did not know
the exact meaning of that, because we were
not aware of all we discovered afterwards.
Winter 2010
Radio-Canada to support you?
MM : We did not have to convince them
much cause this story was always going
forward. There were always new elements.
I was in the newsroom so they had to
replace me.
AG: For two or three months, we only did
background work, meeting a lot of people,
just hearing, taking notes… and our bosses
saw very quickly the importance and the
impact of the story. They pushed us a lot.
MM: It is important to mention that we
could never have done this story if we did
not take a lot of time talk, being very broad
about the subject before being more specific. When you have a deadline, people don’t
a lot more but we would have been more
vulnerable. Everything that went on air was
double-checked by the law department and
our great lawyer. We had lot of arguments
with her.
AG: They were there but our bosses were
there too, they had the courage of saying
“We go”. In some part of the stories where
the lawyer or others said “it is a bit risky,”
Jean Pelletier, the boss here, analysed everything and said “okay, but we go, because it
is of public interest to go on air.”
AK: How quiet did you have to keep this
story, within this office ?
MM: It took a long time before we started
continued on page 14
13
Feature
No anonymous sources
continued from page 13
telling our colleagues what we were working on. It had to remain confidential at
the beginning. We are always careful with
sources, of course. But now there is a matter
of danger. We are getting into the Mafia and
price fixing. It is not fun. We are not very
scared for us, but our sources are more in the
shadow. So we learnt how to be very careful.
AK: Have you been threatened ?
MM: It is a question that everybody wants
to ask us. We had a couple of indirect messages
pieces for the news programmes. I can go
on radio and the ultimate goal is to work
together to share our experience… It happened from our work.
MM: We have to keep bringing some new
stuff.
AG: But at the same time, we need to take
some distance…
MM: It was quite strong what we put
on air. We don’t want to come back with
something very small.
AK:How did you distribute your roles ?
far as we can and to keep digging. We realise the financial impact, but we also realise
the social impact with all these people getting threatened because they just wanted to
do their job. It is a real risk nowadays and
the only way to fight that is to make the
facts public, and then it is up to the government to react.
AK: Is it kind of injecting new life in your
career ?
AG: “Enquête” has existed for three years.
We did nice reports, too. I worked on the
“What is very interesting is that from this investigation, [Radio-Canada] decided to form a unit around us and around the
magazine ‘Enquête.’ They sent us two other persons from the
TV newsroom, two from the radio. Now we all work together.”
—Alain Gravel, reporter, Radio-Canada
AG: We don’t want to think too much
about that. For me, it is more difficult for
my wife because she is not involved. (The
issue) is so public and we are so many
journalists (that) it could be crazy to do
something. It would be the spark for a
public inquiry. These people, they know
that they have to be careful, not to push
too much.
AK: Does the story keep growing? You are
still working on it?
AG: Now we have a big unit. At the beginning we were two, and then we were six..
What is very interesting is that from this
investigation, they (Radio-Canada) decided
to form a unit around us and around the
magazine “Enquête.” They sent us two
other persons from the TV newsroom, two
from the radio. Now we all work together.
We are a “construction taskforce” inside
the investigative unit. I am still attached to
“Enquête” as a host, but I can make short
AG: We shared our notes and talked to
each other.
MM: It is not easy to work as a team
because a journalist is by definition a bit
of a loner. And we are sharing sources and
contacts. It is hard. But for me it proved to
be a super positive experience to work as a
team on such a complicated thing because
we both gathered information and we
shared and organised everything.
AG: And our bosses saw that at the beginning: a young pretty woman with the old
guy. And it also diluted the pressure. I
think it was a good way of working. And
for the public, too. I am in the middle of
something really important, I think it is
one of the first times of my carreer (30
years of journalism) where I have a real
feeling of being able to change something,
clearly. I am a loner and a bit of a cynical
journalist. But on that, we are almost in the
middle of a journalistic mission.
MM: We have the responsibility to go as
piece about Genevieve Janson (to read that
piece, please see the page 18 of the Winter
2008 edition of Media). Here, it is something else. It is big. It gives a new sense of
the work.
MM: I was on the crime beat. I liked it a lot
and I took the job because nobody wanted
to do that. I had fun doing that and it led
me to here. But I feel now, after a year
working on this story, that I am welcomed
in the small community of investigative
journalists… I am really happy to take this
new challenge. You are never too young
or old to do investigative journalism. It is
about a kind of personality. Either you have
it in you, or you don’t. Without Alain’s
experience, I never could have done it.
AG: She is a very good journalist…
AK:Is it still possible to make investigative
journalism in a period of crisis ?
MM: We have to. Other media have to
investigate in this. M
The Telegraph-Journal has eliminated the practice.
But is it a good idea?
Catharine Tunney
A
n assassin squats
silently behind a
large bush. He scans
the field through his
viewfinder and focuses
on his target. He carries only his weapon
Catharine Tunney
and a longstanding
is a second-year
vendetta. It weighs
journalism stuheavily on his chest
dent at Carleton
as he slowly counts to
University.
ten. He closes his eyes,
breathes in deeply and, in one swift move,
pulls the trigger.
Police officers will never find a body.
There is no blood. No bullets. The victim
walks away without physical harm, but the
damage has been done.
The assassin uses words as his weapon.
He’s what some journalists would call an
anonymous source.
“They are basically sniping from cover,”
says David Tait, an assistant journalism
professor at Carleton University.
The use of anonymous sources has
played an important role in one of the
most spectacular mea culpas in the recent
history of Canadian newspapers.
Nearly a month after implying in a
front-page story that the Prime Minister
Stephen Harper had desecrated a Communion host at a state funeral in July, the
Telegraph-Journal printed a front-page
apology, admitting that editors had inserted
information into the original story. The
paper fired the editor and suspended the
publisher.
When Neil Reynolds was named editorat-large at the Saint John, New Brunswick,
paper in September, he used a front-page
commentary to state the paper’s intention
to avoid publishing “stories based on anon-
JUST SAYING NO TO
ANONYMOUS SOURCES:
“Implementing an idea
like this is not easy. It’s
not something I can
simply post on a wall.
It’s a collegial process,
it’s not antagonistic, it’s
not me versus them.”
—Neil Reynolds on the
Telegraph-Journal’s new
policy against the use of
anonymous sources.
ymous sources under any circumstance.”
“For the Telegraph-Journal,” says Tait, “it
was a case of you get burned once, you’re
cautious. You get burned several times you
basically don’t go near the stove.”
Still, the controversy goes much deeper
than the Telegraph-Journal. Back in the
days of Watergate and “Deep Throat,”
anonymous sources added an air of trenchcoat romance and respectability to the
profession. But in an era of bloggers, spin
and dwindling circulation, journalists face
a more troubling question: Is the increasing use of anonymous sources robbing
newspapers of their last trump card – their
credibility and authority?
New rules for the TelegraphJournal
The paper’s stories require a name and
a title for all sources before going to print.
Reynolds says stories printed in Novem-
ber by the paper about Hydro-Québec’s
proposal to buy NB Power before it was
announced were based on a government
document, not anonymous sources.
Reynolds hopes the no-anonymoussources rule will help the paper regain
credibility with its readers.
“Credibility is all that newspapers have
left really. The Internet, the television,
we’re at the end of the timeline on the
delivery of news. The one thing that we
can do better than anybody else, if we try
hard, is that we can be more accurate, more
fair and therefore more respected,” says
Reynolds.
“It’s something I believe in personally
as an editor, as a journalist. The use of
anonymous sources leads to error, and
frankly, lazy reporting. I believe in making
journalism harder. Newspapers should
set a high standard for reporters and set
constant challenges as a reminder that a
continued on page 16
14
media
Winter 2010
15
continued from page 15
good story is hard. There’s no easy day.”
Reynolds met with staff in Moncton,
Fredericton and Saint John to discuss the
ban. He says that he’s working on a formal
presentation on the rule and will have
more discussions about reporters and editors’ concerns.
“Implementing an idea like this is not
easy. It’s not something I can simply post on
a wall,” he says. “It’s a collegial process, it’s
not antagonistic, it’s not me versus them.”
Christopher Waddell, director of journalism and communications at Carleton University, says “This (ban) might mean that
you can’t get some stories without people
on the record. However, the principle they
are trying to establish is an important
principle for all journalists. An important
part of journalism is putting people on the
record and holding people accountable.”
Reynolds doesn’t seem worried about
losing stories.
“I think that in most cases if a reporter
says to the PR person that they are dealing
with ‘I need a name on this,’ generally
speaking they get it.”
Waddell says that it puts sources under
pressure since the reporters at the New
Brunswick paper can now tell their sources
that the story will not be published unless
they identify themselves.
“The bargaining relationship between
the anonymous source and the reporter
is an unbalanced one… we’ll see if it will
change,” he says sipping his hot chocolate
in his spacious corner office.
So far, Reynolds says, the papers have
received names whenever they’ve asked.
Whither anonymous sources?
The events at the Telegraph-Journal
have started a national discussion about the
use of anonymous sources in journalism.
For academics such as Carleton’s Dave
Tait, it amounts to “hiding behind a bush
and shooting at someone” by political
operatives. But to working journalists like
Jane Taber, it’s an essential to tool in political journalism.
On the Hill we’re very dependent on
anonymous sources,” says the senior politi-
16
cal writer for The Globe and Mail. “It’s one
of the frustrations of the job. It’s evolved
more and more that if you want the scoop
the only way you’re going to get it is if you
protect your sources.”
She’s confident she knows whom to trust
and makes sure to check her facts. “After
years of doing this, your gut will tell you
what makes sense and what doesn’t.”
Christopher Waddell says that they’re
acceptable in stories dealing with crime,
security and corruption, but feels that there
needs to be enough details to assure the
reader that the source knows what he’s
talking about.
Sometimes reporters write stories about
sex trade workers, drug addicts, alcoholics
and reformed criminals that can be touching. However, naming the source in print
can disrupt their lives. Tait thinks it’s fine
to omit their names in certain circumstances, as long as you can prove they’re telling
the truth.
Whistleblowers who come forward with
important information are also under pressure to remain anonymous. “In the movies
that person is going to be a hero. The
movie ends and everyone feels good,” says
Tait. “In real life the movie doesn’t end.
That person has a family, a mortgage and
kids in university.”
“Anonymous sources can enhance a story
and they can also take credibility away,”
says Waddell. “When someone makes an
allegation you want to know who they are
so you can assess the allegation.”
“I don’t think we should play into the
hands of people who have private motives, we should know who’s talking,” says
Reynolds.
Waddell believes that political reporting
has evolved to the point where reporters
give members of Parliament anonymity too
frequently.
“It’s their job to go on the record,” he
says. “There is a huge amount of leeway
given to people to not identify themselves
over things that are contentious.”
“Anonymous sources have been used
more to protect the powerful than the
vulnerable,” says Tait.
He points to the manipulation of the
U.S. government before the Iraq war to
illustrate his point. “They were inflaming
the public’s fear and selling the war.” He
believes people would have been more
skeptical if they had known who the
sources’ identity.
The New York Times’ policy on
anonymous sources has changed since
the Iraq war. Editors must know the
source’s identity in order to verify that
the information.
“The issue (of anonymous sources) is
something the news media in Canada
hasn’t really been concerned about,” says
Waddell pointing to the large stack of
newspapers on his desk. “But it undermines the public’s trust in the media.”
“People in Journalism sometimes
think it makes their stories sexier to have
anonymous sources in it,” says Craig
Silverman, a freelance journalist who
writes online for the Columbia Journalism Review about accuracy and errors and
edits the blog regrettheerror.com, which
catalogues the corrections and retractions
in the media.
“Rather than having that added sex appeal to the story (an anonymous source)
actually goes in the opposite direction. It
makes people incredibly skeptical.”
“Dealing with sources is one of the fundamental things we do as journalists, it’s
also fraught with difficulties and dangers,”
says Silverman. “Most of the time sources
lead reporters astray by accident, although
it can be for self-interest or retribution.
We make a lot of mistakes when we don’t
appreciate the self-interests that often drive
humans.”
Anonymous sources have a long history,
but it’s essentially dishonest in nature,”
says Reynolds. I think the (onus) should
be on the people who hide their identity to
explain why they do it.”
“If you don’t trust the source then don’t
use it,” says Taber. “As delicious as it might
be, don’t go there.”
“What we’re selling as a business is
trust,” counters Silverman. “If someone
can’t trust us, they don’t want anything to
media
do with us. It’s a killer to the journalists,
and it’s a killer to the business as whole.”
The roots
Joe Klein, New York Times writer, once
said “anonymous sources are a practice of
American journalism in the 20th and 21st
century, a relatively recent practice. The
literary tradition of anonymity goes back to
the Bible.”
The tradition of anonymous sources may
be ancient, but Reynolds and like-minded
thinkers believe that the days of anonymous sourced stories are nearing an end.
“We’re like Madonna; we’re forced to
reinvent ourselves,” says Taber who’s starting a new chapter of her job as the online
political writer for the Globe and Mail. She
will now be featured heavily online.
“The Internet is where the action is. It
Silverman says political blogs in the U.S.
have been willing to go with stuff that the
average daily newspaper would have sat on.
“I think it’s caused some mainstream
outlets to push further than they would
have. We seem to have a riskier culture
in terms of what gets published and what
doesn’t.”
Waddell says blogs have led papers to
believe that they have to participate in that
world, too.
Perhaps the newspapers in New Brunswick need a strict no-anonymous-sources
edict to pick themselves up from the dirt.
However, some critics argue that the use
of anonymous sources was not the paper’s
only problem.
“The fact that the Telegraph-Journal
put out something that become a major
national story that later turned out not
everyone’s blessing. Until they describe
what happened people are not going to
trust them,” says Silverman referring to
the wafer story that generated headlines
after the paper reported that the Prime
Minister put it in his pocket while attending the funeral of former governor
general, Romeo LeBlanc.
Taber says that the Telegraph-Journal’s
mistakes reflect poorly on the media as
a whole. “Anytime there is a front-page
retraction the cynics will say ‘oh there
they go again.’”
“Of course, the problem for the paper
is that the loss of the credibility goes to
the entire paper and not to the one person
who had the moment of bad judgment,”
says Reynolds. “That’s why the entire
paper has to try harder to set a higher
standard in order that it not be forever
“Credibility is all that newspapers have left really—the Internet,
the television, we’re at the end of the timeline on the delivery of
news. The one thing that we can do better than anybody else,
if we try hard, is that we can be more accurate, more fair and
therefore more respected.”
—Neil Reynolds, editor-at-large,
St John Telegraph-Journal
has changed things, it’s changed our jobs
dramatically but I think for the better.”
Reynolds says the idea of getting exclusive newspaper stories based in anonymously sourced stories just don’t work in
an electronic era.
“In the days when there was only print,
a government could pass on a tip and it
would remain a secret for 24 hours,” says
Reynolds. “That kind of announcement
is now ubiquitously being made. All that
kind of information is being made at the
same time. “(The Internet) has changed the
way reporters do their job in the sense that
exclusives are not really exclusives.”
Winter 2010
only to be not true, but that they never explained to this day I think is a critical flaw
to them,” says Silverman
Silverman says that Reynolds’s ban is a
good step, but the paper has to prove itself
by implementing it.
“They have to embrace the idea of
a somewhat radical transparency to
show people how they work. Until they
describe what happened, people are not
going to trust them. What they haven’t
done is given a clear and transparent description of what actually happened. We
don’t know why they did it, or why the
story ended up on the front page with
associated with one person’s mistake.”
Carleton University’s Dave Tait says
anonymous sources weren’t really the problem with the Telegraph-Journal.
“It wasn’t the tool itself. It’s that they
dropped that tool on their foot.”
He says he would be surprised if
other papers followed the TelegraphJournal’s example. He believes anonymous sources can be a useful tool to
papers that haven’t had problems with
their sources.
“(Other papers) are happy to sit back and
watch,” says Waddell. “It would be hard to
make the changes and it’s easier not to.” M
17
Feature
Strapped for cash
Can the Canadian Association of Journalists bounce back?
James Whitehead
P
atricia Bell heard
her name ring
out over the loudspeakers. It was her
turn. She walked
across the hardwood
dance floor of the
James is a fourthhotel ballroom to an
year student
anthem of applause.
in the Bachelor
Most of the faces
of Journalism
were smiling, others
Honours degree
nodded approval
program at the
as she accepted the
University of
plaque declaring her
Kings College in
the winner of the
Halifax.
‘Scoop’ category in
the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) Awards. Bell’s piece, The
Nunavut Business Credit Corporation
Fiasco, had won the CAJ Scoop award
(a new category) and the admiration of
her peers, but something was missing.
The $500 cheque that was supposed to
accompany the award was gone—absconded by the CAJ’s strangled budget.
Bell was not the only award winner
the CAJ was unable to pay. All fourteen of the other award winners would
have to wait as well (You can read
their accounts of how they got their
stories in the special online edition of
Media www.caj.ca/mediamag/Cover_
page_09.htm).
Following the May 2009 CAJ annual
conference, executive director John
Dickins sent an email to the award winners apologizing for the delay in sending the prize money. He assured them
that the money was on its way. The
delay in delivering the $5,000 in award
money is a symptom of the financial
18
disarray in Canada’s biggest journalism
organization.
Staying Afloat
Mary Agnes Welch, the president of
the CAJ, admitted the process is slow.
“Every year we strive to pay the winners,
like, right on the spot, but I mean the
CAJ is an almost totally volunteer-run
organization,” she said, “We only have
one paid staff member and so sometimes
we just don’t have the cash to pay the
awards, like, right at that moment.”
According to Welch, 2009 has been the
leanest year in the history of the CAJ,
and the award winners are not the only
ones owed money.
“This summer has been one of those
summers where it was sort of a choice
between paying out our award winners
right on time, or paying our national
staffer or paying the lawyers who do
really, really cheap work for us when we
intervene in big court cases,” said Welch.
“We have had to make some unpleasant
decisions about who gets paid first.”
CAJ executive director John Dickins is
the only paid member of the organization’s staff. He’s now working part-time
because the CAJ’s cash flow is insufficient to support him full-time. Part
of his job is writing the cheques for the
award winners.
“People call me saying, ‘Have the
cheques gone out yet?’ and I have to say,
‘No, but they are coming, trust me, they
are coming,’” he said.
Dickins also said the CAJ lost a lot
of money on the 2009 conference in
Vancouver. Fundraising didn’t bring
in enough money, and attendance was
down. The last time the CAJ had a
conference in Vancouver was in 1999.
That conference drew more than 250
delegates. This year, the numbers
dropped almost in half, to 130. Running
a national conference costs more than
$45,000. The conference ended with
losses of roughly $10,000—not including the money still owed to the award
winners. The CAJ is still paying the
Hyatt Regency hotel in monthly installments.
“It’s a shell game,” said Dickins, “I
mean, we have to take from Peter to pay
Paul.”
Sinking membership
Welch and Dickins also said a decline
in membership is to blame for the lack
of finances.
“It’s always been kind of a struggle to
make sure that we’re relevant to journalists and to raise our profile and to raise
our memberships,” said Welch.
Currently the CAJ membership sits
at 1,272 journalists across Canada. The
highest number in 30 years was 1,499
members in 2006. Part of the problem
has been the economic difficulties facing the journalism industry. Melinda
Dalton won the 2009 award in the
Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR)
category along with Tamsin McMahon
for their piece ‘Impact (news.therecord.
com/specialsections/section/impact).’
Dalton was laid off from her position at
the Waterloo Record shortly after and
has since been rehired.
And she is not alone. In the last
year CTV laid off 105 employees, most
of them in Toronto. Canwest let 560
media
employees go, and CBC axed about 800
Jones was one member who publicly
the awards were handed out without the
positions.
walked away from the CAJ because of
actual monetary award.”
The economy is not the only reason
its condemnation of Cameron. Even
Alex Shprintsen and Frederic Zalac
the CAJ has a hard time keeping memthough she left, Jones still thinks an
had four others on their team. They
bers. Many past CAJ award winners
organization like the CAJ is desperately
won in the ‘Open Television’ (more
only joined the organization to enter
needed.
than 5 minutes) category for ‘The
something for the awards. They often
“There is no other organization that
Taser Test.’ (www.caj.ca/mediamag/
let their memberships lapse, renewing
brings journalists together from all straOpen_television_09.htm) Shprintsen
only occasionally. Sometimes it’s just
tas and media types in Canada,” she said.
said they were not concerned that they
because they forget. Other times, the
But she also expressed concern that the
have not yet received their award monfinances just aren’t there to pay the
CAJ is under-funded and understaffed.
ey. “It’s not an issue for me,” he said,
annual $75 membership fee. Robert
Andrew Mitrovica is a 12-time CAJ
“By the time we divided the money up
Washburn sat on the Board of Directors
award winner. He has also let his
between all of us there was so little, it
from 1991 to 1996, and served as chair
membership lapse. He agrees that the
wasn’t worth going after.” Zalac had a
for two of those years.
different perspecWashburn rememtive. “It’s not a big
bers the finances as
deal for me but it
being a constant issue.
would have been
Although he is still
appreciated if they
active within the CAJ,
had given us some
Washburn admits that
explanation,” he
he has let his membersaid, “especially if
ship status slip the
—Mary Agnes Welch, the CAJ intends to
past few years. He says
continue awarding
president
of
the
Canadian
Association
of
Journalists
part of the problem is
these prizes in the
that journalists are too
future.”
independent by nature.
Many other journalCAJ does not have the support it needs
ists, including Dickins, agree with him.
Trying to Turn the Tide
to function as effectively as it should.
“Journalists just aren’t joiners,” he said.
Welch says the future of the CAJ is
“There really isn’t an ethic in the country
Dickins also agrees that raising money
still up in the air, but there are some
to support the CAJ by major news orgahas always been a problem for the CAJ. changes being considered.
nizations,” he said.
He has been with the organization for 11
“We are maybe at the point now where
There is a general tolerance for the
years. He said finances have been getting
the twice-yearly mega conference at a
financial plight of the CAJ among the
tighter lately.
pricey hotel is kind of a thing of the
2009 award winners. Steve Buist won in
past,” she said, “so we’re thinking about
the ‘Open Newspaper/Wireless SerThe Stevie Cameron Affair
more innovative ways to try and bring all
vice’ category for his piece ‘A Pig’s Tail.’
Another major blow to the CAJ was
of our training right into newsrooms.”
(www.caj.ca/mediamag/Don_McGillithe Stevie Cameron Affair in 2003.
The plans are still in the discussion
vray_09.htm) The CAJ press release anWhen Cameron was accused of being
phase
and big conferences are still the
nouncing the award winners stated that,
too close to an RCMP investigation,
reality. Welch says she hopes things will
“The winning entries in each of the
the CAJ condemned her actions in a
pick up soon.
categories received $500.” Buist thought
news release. Many CAJ members were
Dickins is also optimistic. “It’s a
it was odd not to get the money right
outraged. Some journalists even left the
tough
time but I think we’re gonna
away.
organization out of loyalty to Cameron.
come through it,” he said. In the mean“I’ve been fortunate to have been nomOthers felt the CAJ had been too harsh.
time, the 2009 award winners will have
inated for a number of different things
‘Censorship’ was the term used by sevto satisfy themselves with promises that
and I’ve been to different ceremonies,” he
eral of Cameron’s supporters. Deborah
their money is on its way. M
said, “and it was a little bit unusual that
“It’s always been a struggle to make sure
that we’re relevant to journalists and to
raise our profile and memberships.”
Winter 2010
19
Opinion
On the road to oblivion
buyers. Included are the Calgary Herald,
the Edmonton Journal, the Montreal
Gazette, The Ottawa Citizen, the Regina
Leader-Post, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix,
the Vancouver Province, The Vancouver
Sun, the Victoria Times Colonist, and The
Windsor Star. No matter who acquires
the papers, the most important question
is whether the diminished economic realities will allow the new owners to restore
the papers’ editorial departments to their
previous levels of operation.
Will dedicated journalists and citizens groups
try to save the country’s news industry?
Nick Fillmore
T
he long-anticipated collapse
of the Asper family’s
Canwest Global media
empire—which included 11 daily newspapers, the Global TV
network of 11 staNick Fillmore is a
tions, 13 specialty TV
freelance journalchannels, and more
ist and media
than 80 websites—in
fundraiser based
in Toronto, He
October 2009 was the
can be reached
latest development in
at fillmore0274@
the shameful history
rogers.com
of corporate-owned
media in Canada.
Canwest and other media corporations claim to care about quality journalism, but they’ve deceived Canadians for
decades—censoring news to protect their
profits, pandering to the interests of the
corporate world, and neglecting to invest
adequately in their news operations.
The Canwest cuts are the largest ever
carried out by a corporate media company in Canada. While many people lost
their jobs or had their pensions reduced,
about 20 top executives received bonuses
of about $490,000 on average in addition
to their already substantial salaries www.
rabble.ca/news/2009/10/canwest.
For decades powerful media corporations like the Aspers have taken advantage of their privileged position by deciding what news Canadians should read,
hear, and see. Too often this involves filtering out and even censoring stories that
are critical of advertisers, that go against
generally accepted corporate values, or
that criticize the rich and powerful.
By reading just about any Canadian
daily newspaper it’s easy to see how the
20
Goodbye to all that: The future of the once-powerful media company remains uncertain. Photo: Nathan
Denette/THE CANADIAN PRESS.
values of corporate-owned media are
quite different from the values and interests of the majority of Canadians. Just one
example: During November, a number of
newspapers gave page after page over to
business experts chattering about the various burps of the financial markets, while a
landmark report that one-in-10 Canadian
children live in poverty was covered in one
story in most papers, with no follow-up.
When media outlets give little attention
to an issue such as child poverty, they’re
abandoning one of their vital roles—helping protect the rights of those in society
who are powerless to protect themselves.
Watching what they say
Self-censorship among journalists is a
serious problem that has become worse
in recent years and, to a large extent, can
be attributed to the conservative position
of corporate-owned media. In particular,
reporters who are fearful of being accused
of being left-wing or of blemishing their
reputation with managers, are careful not
to violate corporate media’s unwritten
code concerning what’s acceptable to pub-
lish or broadcast. Surprisingly, columnists
and commentators are more timid when
it comes to expressing their real opinions
on important issues. They spend a lot of
time speculating on what some politician
may, or may not, do, in terms of strategy,
instead of saying what’s important for the
public about a particular development.
The end days of corporateowned media
But times in the media world are changing. The stranglehold corporate media has
had on the news is changing, too! Corporate-owned media, particularly the newspaper sector, is struggling financially and
is losing readers. Because of severe budget
cutbacks, most newsrooms across the country are operating with far fewer resources,
and it’s showing. At the same time, the
Internet is becoming the preferred source
of news for a growing number of people.
Meanwhile, the fate of 10 former
Canwest daily papers—which could be
considered the backbone of daily journalism across much of the country—is in the
hands of creditors who are looking for
media
A decades-long drop
Of all our traditional media, we should
be most concerned about the future of
daily newspapers because they’re the source
of most of our news, even the news that’s
available from dozens of Internet sites. Unfortunately, the decline of daily newspapers
in Canada is mirrored in
their declining circulation. This falling off of
sales didn’t coincide with
the growth of Internet
use—as a matter of fact,
it began almost 60 years
ago. Research carried out
by Kenneth Goldstein
of Communications
Management Inc. of
Winnipeg shows that
during the 1950s the number of newspaper
subscriptions exceeded the number of Canadian households. Last year, the equivalent of only 35 per cent of households had
paid subscriptions www.journalismproject.
ca/en/attachments/KG-CMI-RemarksCNA-May2109.pdf.
Roger Parkinson, a former publisher
of The Globe and Mail, said in an e-mail
exchange that daily papers are in financial
trouble because the traditional for-profit
media model is broken. He said the costs of
newsprint, printing, and paper distribution
are too expensive in light of the reduced
revenue expectations. The papers with the
best chance of surviving, Parkinson said,
are “very high quality national papers with
a thin, high demographic, highly educated
audience who want and need specialized,
high quality news and analysis, like The
New York Times, The Wall Street Journal
and The Globe and Mail.”
An unpredictable future
Some of the world’s leading media
experts say they don’t know what the
future holds for traditional journalism.
Chris Elliott, managing editor of the U.K.
Guardian, which operates the world’s
most successful news website, said in an
e-mail message that he doesn’t know how
much quality journalism will be possible.
“I think we will just need to have a lower
cost base for many years while the revenue
models re-calibrate. When Woodward and
Bernstein broke Watergate in 74/75, the
[Washington] Post had 320 journalists. Two
years ago it had 90, now it has around 60 I
believe. I think that says it all.”
enough to support quality journalism.
If, as the economy picks up, traditional
media companies are unable to provide
Canadians with news and information of
high quality, what then? If corporate media
manage to develop a new model that allows them to make reasonable profits, will
they restore their news departments to the
levels of a year ago? The history of media
cutbacks in Canada shows that once journalists have been let go, they’re not usually
replaced, even when companies become
highly profitable.
The rise of citizen journalism
With media companies unable to provide the news we need, and not knowing if
they’ll rebuild their news services, I believe
that the time is ripe for journalists and
groups of people to explore setting up inexpensive, independent media outlets
that could provide
their communities
with quality news
and information.
Non-profit media
outlets could provide
an alternative to
corporate-owned
media and their
right-wing bias.
People from all backgrounds – universities, faith-based organizations,
labour organizations, community groups,
journalism schools—could work together
to create new, exciting media projects.
Several ideas—ranging from inexpensive
“mini-newspapers” to Internet-based
projects—will be discussed in my articles
at www.rabble.ca in January. They will
deal with the importance of news sites
being run by independent groups, how
inexpensive and effective news sites can be
established, and how groups can pay for
these sites.
Editor’s note: The first two full
articles upon which this piece is based
can be accessed on rabble.ca at: rabble.
ca/news/2009/12/canwest-latest-mediagiant-exploit-news-operations. M
The most important question is whether
the diminished economic realities will
allow the new owners to restore the
papers’ editorial departments to their
previous levels of operation.
Winter 2010
A huge unknown factor is whether
traditional media companies will be able to
obtain large amount of money from charging for website content. Various marketing
schemes are being developed that allow Internet users to get the first few stories free,
but then they’d have to pay per article at a
certain point. The editor of The Financial
Times in the U.K., Lionel Barber, predicts
that “almost all” news organizations will
be charging for online content in less than
a year.www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/
jul/16/financial-times-lionel-barber
If Barber is right, and if there aren’t
too many news outlets that continue to
give away information for free, traditional media companies will be able to
tap into additional revenues, but it’s still
too soon to say if those revenues will be
21
Feature
Whither investigative Journalism?
Experts gather at the University of King’s college to discuss
investigative journalism’s place in the new media universe
RECOGNIZE
Nicole Feriancek
T
he fate of traditional media and
the shape of media to
come has become THE
issue for the journalistic
community in Canada.
It’s being debated in
Nicole Feriancek
newsrooms,
classrooms,
is a second- year
and
increasingly
in large
journalism
gatherings called specifistudent at King`s.
cally for the purpose.
She originally
One such event was
wrote this as an
assignment for
held at the University of
her reporting
King’s College in Octoclass.
ber. Students, academics,
media managers, reporters and members of the public came together
for the seventh annual Joseph Howe Symposium, organized by King’s School of Journalism.
The crowd was treated to a lively day of debate and discussion about the very survival of
the news business. Perhaps the most sobering
message came from John Honderich, the former Toronto Star publisher who now chairs
the board of parent company Torstar Corp.
“The debate and discussion as to what
should be done in Canada must flourish
now,” he told more than 300 people. “If it
doesn’t, I believe the very quality of democracy could be at play.”
A changing industry
Since the height of newspaper journalism in the 1980s, the industry has faced
shrinking circulation and a plunge in
advertising revenue as key products such
as the classifieds have moved online. All of
this has been made worse by the recession.
“More and more people are switching to
the web, where websites and blogs flood the
space with up-to-date news and commentary,” Honderich said. “And they do it for free.”
Journalists are no longer the “gatekeepers
of information”. The next generation of media
is online, immediate and open to anyone. This
shift from print to online is having a profound
impact on the quality of journalism.
“Online sources rarely choose to dig
deep or launch in-depth investigations. As
newsrooms shrink, so too do the journalists
necessary to do journalism.”
Pushing to get at the truth
Fourth-year King’s journalism student
Kathleen Hunter says that serious journalism is incredibly important.
“Journalists act as the voice of the people
and they need to keep pushing and pushing
to get at the truth,” said Hunter. “We need to
protect investigative journalism because without it so much slips by and is never told.”
Honderich highlighted the Toronto
Star’s 2002 “racial profiling” investigation
as an example of the importance of quality
investigative newspaper journalism.
The three-year investigation cost millions and required a “significant allocation
of journalists and costs”, but resulted in the
exposure and ultimately decline of racial
profiling within the city of Toronto.
“Stories and reactions like this; it just
doesn’t get any better,” he said. “The impact
of this type of story never dies.”
Newspapers, unlike online blogs, still
have significantly more resources. With
more money and more journalists, newspapers can probe into the depths of society,
“providing the means for a population to
examine itself,” he said.
“The quality of public debate, if not the
very quality of life in any community, is in my
view a direct function of the quality of media.”
But many believe the future is going to be
online. “Newspapers have been hit the hard-
est. Newsrooms are shrinking every year,”
Honderich said. “Everyone is looking for that
elusive business model to move us forward.”
As if to echo what he said, two months
after the October event at King`s, the Star
announced that 166 staffers had accepted
buyouts and that nine more unionized
employees were being laid off.
Kevin Cox, managing editor of the online
business newspaper allnovascotia.com argued that the quality of journalism is more
important than the way it is delivered.
“Content is King!” he said. “There is no
general model to replace newspapers. We are
still fighting the battle. The information has
to be unique and has to be engaging.”
Honderich discussed a number of viable
options for the future direction of journalism including government funding, tax incentives and innovative organizations such
as ProPublica, a foundation-funded online
investigative newsroom in the U.S.
But the point he stressed was that
regardless of the future business model of
journalism, serious, thought-provoking,
investigative journalism must continue.
“We should be very demanding of what we
expect from our media,” he said.
“If the media don’t function well, a society can suffer.”
For Hunter and others about to enter the
battle as the newest generation of journalists, it’s a question of adapt or die. “I’d like
to think I could still practice old-school
journalism, but I feel like that’s not totally
an option,” she said.
The symposium, which also featured former New York Times futurist Michael Rogers
and Donna Logan of the Canadian Media
Research Consortium, came up with 10 ideas
for change for 2010, posted at futureofnews.
kingsjournalism.com/?page_id=101. M
2009 MICHENER AWARD
CALL FOR ENTRIES
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CALL FOR APPL
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The Michener-Dea
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February 19, 2010
The Michener Award
recognizes excellence in public
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believe your news organization
provided reporting and
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enter the awards today. Visit
online for deadlines on entry
submissions. Entry deadline
is February 19, 2010.
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22
media
Winter 2010
23
The Back Story
Who’s watching the federal stimulus?
The job fell to Glen McGregor, Steve Maher
and students from Algonquin College
Glen McGregor
I
f you pay taxes to
the United States
government, the
details of how your
money is spent on
economic stimulus is
easily accessible on the
Internet. The website
Glen McGregor is
recovery.gov (www.
a national affairs
reporter with the
recovery.gov/Pages/
Ottawa Citizen.
home.aspx) gives a
comprehensive accounting of every dollar of the billions the
Obama Administration is shoveling out the
door to boost the U.S. economy.
But in Canada, journalists, politicians
and the taxpayers are still waiting for
the same degree of disclosure about the
unprecedented wave of federal government
spending on stimulus projects such as
hockey rinks, sewer mains, road repairs or
college campuses.
The details the government has published so far are either vague or incomplete.
Even the parliamentary budget officer, the
federal spending watchdog, has been frustrated by the slow pace of details coming
from the government.
Opposition MPs says the Harper government has reason hide the information. The
Liberals either accuse the Conservatives of
using this stimulus money for pork-barrelling, enriching ridings held by its own MPs,
or starving Opposition ridings. The Tories
insist the money is distributed fairly in
consultation with provincial and municipal
governments.
In the absence of comprehensive government information, the job of finding out
exactly where the money is going falls to
journalists. In October, my Parliamentary
Press Gallery colleague, Stephen Maher
24
PLAYING POLITICS WITH STIMULUS: Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, John Baird,
fielded many questions in the House of Commons regarding stimulus money allocation. Photo: Adrian
Wyld/TCPI/The Canadian Press.
of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald followed
$322-million in stimulus spending in Nova
Scotia.
Maher pieced together press releases, data
from the provincial government and other
published information to determine which
ridings were receiving the benefits—a painstaking job that took him several weeks.
Maher’s analysis showed an uneven distribution of stimulus money: three Conservative ridings in the province, including one
held by Defence Minister Peter MacKay,
took in more money than the eight other
ridings held by Liberal and NDP MPs.
After his story ran, we discussed applying
his analysis to stimulus spending across the
country.
At first glance, the job seemed enormous.
Every single stimulus project would have to
be located and assigned to a federal riding.
Plowing through the list of thousands of
projects would take weeks—even months.
Looking for a shortcut, we turned to the
website the government created to promote
its federal budget or, its preferred label the
“Economic Action Plan” (actionplan.gc.ca).
The site featured an embedded Google
Map dotted with more than 6,000 stimulus
projects. We realized that the government
had done the hardest part of the work for
us by assigning a location to each stimulus
project and placing it on the map.
If we could extract the coordinates for
each project, it would be easy to figure out
which riding it fell in, and the government
couldn’t quibble with our analysis because
it would be based entirely on their data.
The challenge was to pull the stimulus
projects off the Google Map and into a database we could analyze. There was no way
we could manually click on every point on
the map and download each project listing.
Seeking advice, I posted a message on a
listserv run the U.S.-based National Institute
for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR).
The listserv is a great resource for anyone
doing computer-assisted reporting.
Several list members suggested using a
media
plug-in for the Firefox web browser called
Firebug which shows the stream of data
that flows between a browser and a server.
This allowed us to identify the file that
the Google Map was using to store all the
project points.
We downloaded this file and pulled from
it the list of project numbers with their exact latitude and longitude coordinates. This
data, however, did not include any detail
about the projects. That information was
stored in separate web pages that are called
up by clicking the Google Map.
Using a programming language called
Python, we wrote a simple computer script
to take each one of these project numbers
and robotically download the associated
web page off the government’s web site—a
process called “web scraping.”
Our script took several hours to scrape
every page and extract details about the
projects. We then had a file with a full list
of projects with their exact locations residing on our hard drive. Next, we had to put
each project into a riding.
A mapping program called ArcGIS allowed
us to overlay all the projects we had downloaded onto a map of Canada’s 308 electoral
districts provided by Elections Canada (www.
elections.ca/content.asp?section=cir&dir=ma
ps&document=index&lang=e). The software
figured out the rest and gave us a neat list of
projects, each placed in a federal riding with
the name and party of the MP.
This new data showed that Conservative
ridings were getting about 57 per cent of the
large value stimulus projects, even though
the Tories hold fewer than half the seats.
Maher and I spun out several more stories
based on these numbers we’d assembled,
published simultaneously in the Ottawa
Citizen and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.
Our results were limited by the data provided for each project on the Google Map.
Rather than give the exact dollar value of
every project, the so-called Economic Action Plan website offered only ranges for its
contributions projects on its maps: under
$100,000; between $100,000 and $1 million;
between $1 million and $5 million; and
more than $5 million.
Winter 2010
Why the government chose to provide
only ranges and not exact values is unclear.
But without the exact value of the federal
money flowing to each project, it was impossible to say which ridings were getting
the most stimulus money.
Following the money
The government does not publish a
detailed list of its stimulus projects. Some
information could be found in news releases used to trumpet individual projects.
In other instances, media relations units in
certain departments provided partial lists;
still, in other cases, there was virtually no
publicly-available records.
The Building Canada website contained
the most comprehensive data: Province-by
-province listings for about 4,000 infrastructure projects representing more than
about $8-billion in federal spending for
work such as upgrading sewer mains, paving highways, overhauling waterworks and
renovating buildings.
Although these lists gave exact amounts
of government spending and descriptions
of the projects, they had only the name of
the city or town to help us locate them.
These could be easily matched to ridings
in rural areas, but not in larger cities that
cover more than one riding.
We were left with one list of exact locations and approximate values and another of
exact values and approximate values. Without any common field between the two data
sets, the only way to link them was through
a tedious process of manual matching.
Algonquin to the rescue
Maher approached David McKie of
CBC’s investigative unit (and editor of
Media magazine), who teaches a class in
computer-assisted reporting at Algonquin
College in Ottawa. McKie quickly assembled a team of ten student volunteers.
We broke the list of 4,000 Building
Canada projects into smaller chunks and
divided the work among the students. They
matched the description of each project on
the list to a description of the projects we
pulled from Google Map.
When they found a match, they entered
a project ID code into a Microsoft Excel
spreadsheet so we could link the location to
the dollar value.
We also put our list from the Google
Map into a very rough online database for
the students to use (www.sushiboy.org/
search_old.php). The students could search
using distinctive keywords that appeared in
project descriptions to speed up the matching process.
Over two weeks, the students matched
projects one by one, based on descriptions
and approximate locations. It was an exacting and tedious job. When the students’
work was compiled, the final result was our
“Nirvana” list of more than 4,000 infrastructure projects. It contained the data
the government could not or would not
provide—the project descriptions, dollar
values, exact locations and party affiliations of the members of Parliament who
represented them.
These data showed that ridings held by
Conservative MPs received an average of
$32.8 million in infrastructure spending,
about $9 million more than in opposition ridings. We noted that the figure was
skewed because funding announcements in
Quebec, where most seats are held by Opposition MPs, were delayed by municipal
elections across the province. (“The Ottawa
Citizen_Dangling for Dollars.pdf”)
Outside of Quebec, the difference between Conservative and Opposition ridings
was about $3.3 million per riding. We left
it to readers to decide whether these differences indicated political pork-barreling or
mere happenstance.
The students are using the material
for their own stories. One student spent
several days photographing local infrastructure projects sites in the Ottawa area
to document their state of comparative
inaction.
Algonquin students are now working to
put the data we assembled online at http://
stimuluswatch.webcitybeat.com. The goal
is to make public the kind of information
that is freely available in the U.S. but still
hard to get in Canada. M
25
Science
Making sense of science
topics will be already prepared or issued
within 24 hours.
With issues such as H1N1 becoming more prominent in our coverage,
a new centre will help journalists put the pieces together
Experts on tap
The Centre is compiling a database of
researchers from each region of Canada
with hands-on expertise in all fields, a
willingness to respond quickly to media
inquiries and a demonstrated capacity for
plain-language explanations. Journalists
pursuing stories on their own initiative
can reach the Centre 24-7 with requests
for details about such
experts.
Peter Calamai
F
or journalists today the struggle
to get it right and
get it fast has never
been more desperate.
With less time and
fewer resources the
job is more difficult.
Peter Calamai
There is help on the
freelances magazine articles from
horizon. After two
his home in Otyear’s behind-thetawa and consults
scenes work, jouron communicanalists are soon to
tions strategy
receive practical help
for the Canada
covering stories in
Foundation for
which science plays
Innovation and
a part. This means
other institutions.
everything from stories where science is the story—such as
the discovery of a new Earth-like planet
—to stories where science provides the
crucial factual underpinning—such as
citizen opposition to wind turbines or
controversy over the H1N1 vaccine.
In this context “science” is shorthand
for the natural, social and biomedical
sciences and also encompasses stories
dealing with technology, engineering, environment and some aspects of
the humanities. And the help will be
geared to general-assignment reporters
and radio and TV producers more than
specialist science journalists.
That help will come from the Science
Media Centre of Canada (SMCC) (www.
sciencemediacentre.ca/smc/index.php
?Itemid=55&id=46&lang=en&option=
com_content&view=article ), an independent non-profit operation that is
federally incorporated. The SMCC was
launched publicly Oct. 2 at an event in
Ottawa which drew 100 attendees from
26
develop its own visual library, which
would include stock photos, B-roll and
digital animations and graphics, possibly done in co-operation with community college courses.
Journalism 101 for scientists
The Centre will offer scientists the
chance through workshops to understand how the media think and operate,
warts and all. Such workshops by the
U.K. science media centre have proven
endar of scientific meetings across Canada, sorted by date, location and topic,
with hot links for further information.
Also listed will be key international
meetings at which Canadian researchers
are presenting newsworthy findings.
This list of services arose from consultations in 2008 across Canada with
journalists and other stakeholders as
part of a feasibility study by Halifax
Global Management Consultants. That
report and a companion financial plan
are available at
PDF files under Documents
on the SMCC
website www.
sciencemediacentre.ca
Also identified on the website (under Our
Members) are
the more than
60 institutions
and individuals who have helped the Centre get to its current stage through $5,000
donations. Some have provided more.
The Centre will require an estimated
$1 million to $1.5 million in cash or inkind donations to outfit an office and
commence operations. Annual operating costs are estimated from $500,000 to
$600,000, based on the experience of the
science media centre in Australia which
is closest to the Canadian model. This
will support an initial full-time staff of
four or five. An executive director is due
to be in place by January 2010.
A Steering Committee has guided
the Centre’s development so far and its
nine members are listed on the website.
The Centre is now soliciting names for
a formal Board of Directors numbering
about 16 and drawn from the media,
academic, government and corporate
communities.
Further information is available from
[email protected] M
The goal of the Science Media Centre of
Canada is increased public engagement
with science through media coverage
of science issues that is more informed,
more accurate and more incisive.
OUCH! The H1N1 virus generated countless stories and photos of people like Karen Joly and her four-yearold son, Evan Tordorf, lining up for flu shots. Photo: Ryan Remiorz/THE CANADIAN PRESS
journalism, academia, government and
the corporate sector. Similar information events are now being planned for
other cities.
The goal of the Science Media Centre
of Canada is increased public engagement with science through media
coverage of science issues that is more
informed, more accurate and more
incisive. Initially based in Ottawa, but extending virtually across the country, the
Centre will provide services in French
and English, respond to regional concerns and take a pan-Canadian approach
to identifying and distributing the best
sources of expertise.
The concept of the SMCC is based
on similar science media centres already
operating in the U.K., Australia and New
Zealand. Like them, it will be funded by
contributions from the media, academia,
foundations and public and private sec-
tor bodies. To ensure independence, no
more than 10 per cent of the Centre’s
regular annual operating budget can
come from any one source.
The SMCC’s services will be available
without charge to all bona fide journalists, staff or freelance, without any
stipulation for financial support by their
media employers or from them individually. These services include:
A rapid-response service
This is aimed at a breaking hard news
story with a science dimension, such as
new research into the interactions of
different influenza vaccines. Within a
half-hour of the initial media inquiry,
the Centre will provide contact details
for key experts, URLs for reliable websites and possibly pointers to YouTube
channels or blogs of individual scientists.
Plain-language briefing notes on hot
media
Media briefings
on demand
When a significant
story with a science
dimension is scheduled to unfold, the
Centre will arrange
media briefings with
top experts. Usually
these will be presented via a service like Webex which allows
reporters in other locations to view any
slide presentations via the Internet, listen to an audio feed and ask questions.
Where feasible, the Centre may also use
videoconferencing facilities at universities and research institutions across the
country. A Centre moderator will keep
briefings on topic and concise.
Practical training
for journalists
An introductory workshop on handling
numbers and statistics will be the first
priority for the Centre. Follow-up workshops will provide tools for interpreting
more complex scientific data, especially
where competing claims exist. The workshops may be offered on a cost-recovery
basis depending on funding.
Photos, animations,
graphics and video
The Centre intends to serve as a clearing house for high-quality graphics already in the public domain. It will also
Winter 2010
immensely popular among researchers
in Britain.
Science 101 for journalists
As a corollary, the Centre intends to develop a workshop course that explains
the scientific method to non-scientists.
Why are researchers usually reluctant
to provide definitive answers and how
come science can’t say something has
been proven to be totally safe?
Getting the deeper story
Reporting on science is as much about
coverage of complex, continuing themes
as it is about rapid response to breaking news. The Centre will also provide
briefings and background material
to help decipher issues with differing scientific points of view, such as
using carbon sequestration to mitigate
climate change or the interpretation of
pharmaceutical trials.
A single science portal
The Centre’s website will feature a cal-
See page 28 for a tipsheet
on how to make sense of science
27
Feeds and Ledes
A tip sheet to make sense of science
H
ere are some examples where reporting
might have benefitted from the kinds
of services and programs that will be offered
by the Science Media Centre of Canada.
ers at meetings outside the country.
H1N1 underkill
Under the headline “H1N1: Is it all over?”
an article in the Nov. 21 Insight section of the
Toronto Star declared, without attribution,
that “H1N1 was a mild form of influenza, by
almost any measure. It will have killed just
200 to 300 Canadians by the time this largest
wave peters out in mid-December.”
The facts are that 373 deaths from H1N1
had been reported to the Public Health
Agency of Canada by Dec. 10, and the toll
was still rising. This is indeed small in comparison to the thousands who die each year
from seasonal flu varieties, but not as small
as the Star painted it. ( Check the current
total at www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/alert-alerte/
h1n1/surveillance-eng.php)
The already-developed SMCC workshop
on numbers and statistics will include an
epidemiology component with guidelines for
assessing projections such as deaths from a
virus. In addition, the Centre’s “experts on tap”
will include epidemiologists and immunologists who will independently assess trends.
Elementary, my dear doctor
One of Canada’s few “Big Science” facilities is the synchrotron at the University of
Saskatchewan. As it was being commissioned in 2002, Maclean’s magazine devoted
a multi-page feature to explaining the costly
machine and the wonders possible with the
intense beams of light it would generate.
Unfortunately the magazine’s writer and
editors dropped a major clanger in explaining
the physics phenomenon behind the brilliant
synchrotron light. The article said: “By this
point, the electrons are already travelling at
nearly the speed of light, but their velocity will
increase tenfold….” If this were the case, the
world would be beating a path to Saskatoon
since nowhere else on Earth can anything go
faster than the speed of light.
Getting such high school physics wrong
cast a pall over the entire Maclean’s article,
and indeed over that magazine’s reporting
on science generally, in the eyes of some
scientists.
The SMCC’s briefing notes will cover all
of Canada’s Big Science installations and
include plain-language explanations of how
they work, usually with infographics.
Missed a whale of a story
In October, the Society of Marine Mammalogy held its biennial conference in Quebec
City. Like the meetings of most scientific societies, it was open for media coverage but, also
like most society meetings, there was minimal
advance publicity. So no Canadian journalists
were apparently present to report the surprise
discovery that humpback whales will change
their songs if another whale sings along, a
phenomenon well known in songbirds.
The single science meeting portal
operated by the SMCC should ensure, at
a minimum, that journalists know in advance about potentially news-making science meetings. Once the Centre is running
at full throttle, the plans are also to check
the online abstracts of papers to be given
at scientific meetings for potential gems.
As well, the SMCC might eventually flag
newsy contributions by Canadian research-
Combating the urge to hype
The trials and tribulations of the Large
Hadron Collider in Europe, have been
legitimate news for almost a year after the
$6 billion proton-smasher fizzled on startup. But in mid-October the website of CBC
News descended from science to science
fiction with a story which proclaimed that
“intriguing new research suggests the project is doomed to fail.” Finding the Higgs
boson “might be so abhorrent to nature
that mysterious forces are traveling back
through time and sabotaging the experiment before it can succeed.”
Predictably, the item was titled “Large
Hadron Collider goes Back to the Future.”
But the supposed “news” had even less validity than that movie, since the evidence consisted of speculative mathematical models in
a non-peer-reviewed paper circulated online.
The U.K. SMC offers a “crap-busting”
28
service. When editors (or fellow reporters)
have the hots for dubious “science” stories,
the Centre offers up recognized experts who
pour cold water on inflated claims. In Canada, with stories like this on the CBC website,
there’s an obvious need for a similar service.
Not to even mention the Raelians claiming
to clone humans, and suckering most of the
media back in Christmas 2002.
Spaced-out mars rocket
On Oct. 19, the Ottawa Citizen splashed
a story on page 1 under the headline “New
rocket engine makes trip to Mars realistic.”
The nub of the piece was that a new electrically powered rocket engine that shoots out
charged particles (ions) would reduce return
travel time from Earth to our nearest planetary neighbour to less than three months
instead of a prohibitive two years. And this
marvel was designed “partly” in Canada. This
exclusive news was imparted to students
at a symposium in Ottawa by Canadian
astronaut Chris Hatfield, who was the only
person quoted in the story.
Persistent readers who turned to the
story continuation on an inside page
learned, however, that the supposedly
revolutionary ion propulsion engine hadn’t
yet been tested in the vacuum of space, an
essential step known to engineers as proof
of concept. Hatfield said that crucial test
wasn’t scheduled to take place until 2013
on the International Space Station.
Space agencies are adept at stage-managing news under circumstances where
reporters don’t have the time to check with
disinterested experts. This sort of development would probably prompt the SMCC
to arrange a media briefing that looked at
the cold realities of ion propulsion engines.
A valuable benefit to journalists also
arises from the growing network of science
media centres, with expertise now shared
among the operations in Britain, Australia
and New Zealand. In the case of H1N1, for
example, the pandemic peaked in Australia months ahead of Europe and North
America, so the Australian SMC was able
to amass considerable expert material
which it made available its sister agencies.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the key to getting you noticed online
Mary Gazze
O
ne of the first
things I saw
hanging on a wall
when I did an internship in the Toronto
Sun newsroom was
a framed copy of
Mary Gazze is a
the front page from
Toronto-based freeSeptember 12, 2001.
lance journalist.
In the aftermath of
9/11, The Sun chose a fiery photo of one
of the twin towers to grace the cover.
But the shocking photo wasn’t necessarily the focal point of the page. At the
bottom, a single word headline in yellow
block letters, cried out: “Bastards!”
Sure, a headline like that was an
attention-grabber eight years ago for
someone struggling with a coffee and a
briefcase while choosing
which paper to buy at a
newsstand, but with so
many people skipping the
print versions of newspapers and going straight
to the web, a story with
that headline would never
make it to the screens of
people typing “terror attack, New York City” into
a search engine such as Yahoo or Google.
This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in (for more
information on SEO, please see Sandra
Ordonez’s article on page 31). In plain,
nontechnical terms, this is a technique
where you take popular keywords and
put them into the body of your story to
help it climb to the top of a search results page. SEO applies to all search engines, but I’ll use Google as an example.
The word “news” is searched about 124
store on home turf.
CNet searched up and down for the
story, with keywords including “Green
Beans,” “coffee”, “military” and “soldiers”
but found no link to the story on WSJ’s
website. After separating a bunch of the
search terms, it was only able to come
up with a version of the story pasted
verbatim into a blog, but not the paper’s
own website. Even including the single
word “coffee” into the headline would’ve
helped bring the story into Google’s
search results, giving the searcher an
instant option to click on before they
get bored and close the window. “Google
uses a complex algorithm to order its
search results, but at least yours will be
somewhere in the list.”
And sure, writing a headline like
“Green Beans coffee to open
in U.S.” isn’t as punchy or
intriguing, but it drives
readers to your site where
you can then hook them
with a snappy lede and a
good story that will make
them want to come back to
your publication—without
being led there by a Google
search.
SEO can be especially important for
freelance writers. A writer with brilliantly written copy that gets 100 clicks
is probably less likely to get another
job versus the writer with okay writing
but brought in 1,000 clicks from Google
because they threw in some SEO terms.
Keywords aren’t as hard to include as
you might think. To me, SEO is linked
to good writing. In a story, you wouldn’t
just repeat “H1N1,” over and over until
your readers want to throw a thesaurus
So, dear copy editors… the clever
headline, your bread and butter,
doesn’t always cut it anymore.
Keywords are now king.
Peter Calamai
media
million times on Google each month by
people trying to get their fix. Many of
these end up on the Google news page.
There are no editors at Google news, it is
an “aggregator,” which means headlines
are automatically grouped together by
keyword and subject on the news page.
So, dear copy editors, this means that
unfortunately, the clever headline, your
bread and butter, doesn’t always cut it
anymore. Keywords are now king.
Here’s one example of clever headlines
bombing in the digital age, as picked
apart by the writers at the well-respected
technology website CNet (which incidentally, has been around for so long, its
domain name is www.news.com).
CNet looked at a headline in the Wall
Street Journal (WSJ) that read: “Green
Winter 2010
Beans Comes Marching Home.” Anyone
reading the headline might think there is
a grammatical error in this headline for a
story about vegetables or healthy eating.
I know I did. A print reader can look at
the accompanying photo and know what
the story is about. But someone searching online, or poking around Internet
headlines would never know that this
story is actually about a coffee brand
named “Green Beans” which served
coffee to American soldiers on overseas
military bases, and was now opening a
continued on page 30
29
Digital Journalist
continued from page 29
at you. You would use synonyms, refer to
it as a virus, sickness, or illness. By making your writing more interesting, you’re
also increasing your searchability.
So what are some heavily searched words
that you might want to include in your stories? In Google’s recent annual list, the top
three words searched by Canadians were
“Facebook,” “Youtube” and “lyrics.” The
only other words on the list
that were not about the Internet were “weather,” “games,”
“map” and “Canada.”
Yes, it is hard to put these
words into stories about something completely unrelated
like municipal politics. But you
don’t have to. A tool meant to
help Google advertisers choose
successful search terms could
help. Set your browser to Google Adwords’s
keyword tool (I’ve shortened the URL for
you: bit.ly/28xk3q). Make sure to change your
country to Canada from the default, U.S. if
you like.
The top of the page looks like this:
In this tool you can type in a word
and it will give you dozens of other
related search words, including a list of
how many times each variant has been
searched. Armed with this knowledge,
you’ll be better able to choose which
words are best for your story.
Considering the massive number of
stories on H1N1 out there, you can use
the tool to beef up your keyword content
to separate you from the rest. The tool
shows that “H1N1” is searched an average of almost 700,000 times a month
worldwide. But scroll down on the tool’s
results page and you’ll find that people
are almost nine times more likely to type
“swine flu” into Google, as that term gets
six million global searches a month.
When you scroll down, the page shows
you possible variants and looks like this:
I’ve circled the variant with the highest
search result compared to the others.
By adding a few words like “H1N1, also
known as swine flu...” to your story, you are
still using the technical terms set out by
the World Health Organization, providing more context to your readers, and also
pulling inmore possible hits from those
six million people searching for “swine
flu.”Throwing in the word “virus” could
land you 25 million more hits, while the
word “pandemic” will give you an extra
million. Clearly, the words aren’t“necessary”
but are easy to include, and bring more
search power to your story.
Another fun tool is www.google.com/
insights/search/, which charts the popularity of search terms by region and date. This
tool is only in beta testing, but here’s a
look at the word “recession” when searched
under “Canada” as the location:
SEO How-To guide
When you scroll further down the
page, it even breaks down results by
province and by most popular variant of
the word:
A cheat sheet for journalists interesting in using the technique
Sandra Ordonez
O
Now that you understand what SEO
means and how to use it, try it out and
see how it feels. But for heaven’s sake,
keep the terms relevant. Don’t be like
some of those people out there who try
to sneak in ridiculously unrelated keywords on their pages. “Michael Jackson”
probably doesn’t belong in that story
about microfinance.
And if you have any complaints, let
me know: www.facebook.com/marygazze
www.twitter.com/marygazze M
urBlook.com
is dedicated to
helping journalists
and journalist students
navigate through the
current changes taking
place in the industry.
Sandra Ordonez
As a result, when I
is the Interactive
was asked to write the
Communications
article about Search
Manager for ourbEngine Optimizalook.com. She has
tion
(SEO) for Media
more than 10 years
magazine,
I jumped at
of web experithe opportunity. This
ence and can be
is because SEO is the
reached at sandy@
most important skill
ourblook.com
journalists can acquire
in today’s market. (Please see Mary Gazza’s
article on SEO on page 29.)
Journalists find themselves having to
focus more and more on search engine
optimization (SEO). As more publications
shift their attention to establishing a stronger online presence, SEO is an intrinsic tool
to increasing traffic and, most importantly,
building an online community. The following are SEO tips and tricks that the OurBlook.com team has created for the journalism classes taking part in their University
Partnership Program. (www.ourblook.com/
University-Blooks.html)
Identify your Keywords
Before you begin writing, identify
the keywords that you would like to
optimize in your article. In other words,
identify words or phrases that give your
article a high ranking in a search-engine
query. A good technique is to imagine
that you are an Internet user searching
for the information your article provides.
What search terms or phrases would you
input in your search engine query that
could potentially allow you to discover
the article? Alternatively, as a writer, you
should also ask ‘what question or query
does my article best address?’
For example, if you are writing an article
on affordable restaurants in New York,
you might pick “cheap restaurants in New
York,” or “New York cheap eats.” Additionally, you could zone in on the specifics of
the article by focusing on the particular
neighborhood your article covers. As a
result, you might pick “cheap restaurants
in Union Square” or “Union Square cheap
eats.” Generally speaking, specific references produce the best results.
There are various tools available to help
you with this process, such as Google Keyword Selector. (adwords.google.com/select/
KeywordToolExternal). The tool helps
you brainstorm by suggesting alternatives
keywords, and provides you with the search
traffic for each keyword as well.
Depending on your SEO strategy, there
are two routes you can take. You can either
try to get a piece of the pie by focusing on
more competitive words (your chances
of being listed in the first page results
might be low but you can benefit from the
residual traffic that might venture to the
second page or beyond), or you could aim
to be one of the first websites listed for less
competitive keywords. Essentially, competitive words are those that have a high
percent of Internet traffic associated with
them, and thus are in high demand.
areas to get an understanding of what
a piece of content is about. Targeted
keywords should be included in titles,
bolded and/or italicized in the text, and
linked to related articles.
Essentially, by giving this type of “special
treatment” to keywords, you are basically
telling search engines that these keywords
are important and reflect the main theme
of your article. To see an example, just pick
the first website that appears in any search
result. For example, Google SEO, and one
of the first websites that appears is the
Wikipedia entry. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Search_engine_optimization) This is not
surprising, since wiki articles usually have
a lot of good content and links to various
related areas. Notice that it’s not only the
search term SEO that is linked, but words
that can be considered related such as meta
tags and spider.
Keyword density is also extremely
important. Your keywords should appear
at the beginning and end of an article, as
well as in various paragraphs in between.
However, beware of overstuffing your
article with keywords, as this will be seen
as spam. As a journalist, I really don’t
think you’ll be at risk of creating a “spam
article” because your number one priority
is to create a piece of good content. Usually, bad marketers are the number one
culprits in this area because their number
one priority is to have people land on a
particular page, and thus they pay little
attention to the actual content.
Repeat and Include your Keywords in Various “Key” Places
Search engines are not human beings.
They read articles differently. Their spiders are programmed to look in specific
Pay Attention to Meta Tags
Meta tags can be regarded as private
notes that you leave for search engines. It
is your opportunity to tell them what you
think your article is about. Your targeted
continued on page 32
30
media
Winter 2010
31
The Fine Print
continued from page 31
keywords should be included in the meta
title and meta description (both of which
will also be seen by the public, as it is the
text that appears in search results), and the
meta keywords. However, please note that
only lowercases should be used in the meta
keywords section.
factors to determine the weight of an article
—some which as a writer you can’t control
—such as the infrastructure of the site. Additionally, while it is important to implement
SEO techniques, the most important thing is
to create good, informative copy. That’s what
brings people to a website.
Your code matters
Besides the formatting you can give
certain keywords (bold, italics), your code
can either make or break your SEO efforts.
The back end
The first thing I notice is that the word
“geology” is part of the URL. This is a good
start. Google likes to see words that relate
causes a tsunami” is in the meta title as
well as the meta description. Additionally,
the keywords “tsunami” and “causes” are
listed in the meta keywords tag.
The front end
Now, let’s analyze the actual text you can
see on the page. The first thing I notice is
that the tile of the article is “Tsunami Geology —What Causes a Tsunami?,” and is in
a H1 tag. The H1 tag is used to tell Google
that these are the most important key-
While other factors contribute to determining how well your
page will rank in search engine results, such as the authority
of a website, the aforementioned tips will provide you with a
great start. The most important rule to remember is that
content is king.
First, titles should always be given a <h1> tag.
Second, the URL of the page should include
the targeted keywords. Finally, and most
importantly, your pages should have a high
context-to-code ratio, or a high signal-tonoise ratio. This is a fancy to way to say that
your page should have more text than code.
While other factors contribute to determining how well your page will rank in
search engine results, such as the authority
of a website, the aforementioned tips will
provide you with a great start. The most important rule to remember, however, is that
content is king. Great content will be shared
by Internet users and allow you to attract
and cultivate a vibrant online community.
A concrete example
SEO is sometimes best learned ‘in action’
through an example. As such, I will analyze
the following article, geology.com/articles/
tsunami-geology.shtml, which appears in
the first page of the Google organic search
result for the query, “what causes a tsunami.”
Keep in mind that the article may not utilize
all the SEO techniques mentioned above –
and that’s okay because not all websites are
the same. Google’s algorithm uses different
32
contextually to the particular phrase or word
you are querying. Additionally, the name
of the document containing the article is
tsunami-geology.shtml. Notice that this is
the first mention of the word tsunami.
I also notice the website has several
characteristics that Google likes: it was
born on January 28, 1998, and thus is considered old; and it has a page rank of 6 and
thus considered an authority website. As a
writer, there is little you can do about this.
The next step is to view the page source or
code (obtained by going to the “view” section
on the menu, and selecting the “source” option). I notice the following meta tags:
<META name=”description”
content=”What Causes a Tsunami - by
Geology.com”>
<META name=”keywords”
content=”tsunami causes facts geology”>
Additionally, the meta title of the page
(the name that appears on the top of the
browser), is “What Causes a Tsunami?—
Tsunami Geology—GEOLOGY.COM”
Notice that my entire query “what
words in your article, and thus reflect the
main idea or summary. Notice that in the
title, the word tsunami is mentioned twice,
and that the query phrase, what causes a
tsunami, is mentioned once.
Additionally, the author has created subtitles, tagged in H2, which also contain the
keyword tsunami. For example: ‘Subduction Zones are Potential Tsunami Locations’ or ‘Earthquake Causes Tsunami.’
The paragraph text itself has the mention of the word tsunami several times,
the mention of the phrase “What causes a
tsunami” once, and the mention of contextually related words and phrases such as
seismic energy and earthquake.
The results
In total, the keywords most repeated on
the page are tsunami (18 times), geology
(10 times), plate (10 times), ocean (9 times),
tsunamis (8 times), and causes (7 times).
The phrase ‘what causes a tsunami” is
mentioned 6 times. While the page lacks
a good, high context-to-code ration, ie,
there is more code than text on the page, I
imagine that this overlooked because of the
age and authority of the site. M
media
Social networking inside the court room
Who will follow the example set by
the London Free Press and the Ottawa Citizen?
Dean Jobb
C
apturing the
complexities and
nuances of a trial, 140
characters at a time—
that’s the challenge of
covering the courts via
Twitter. Two journalDean Jobb,
ists who have used the
an assistant
social networking and
professor of
micro-blogging service
journalism at
to provide running
the University
commentaries on highof King’s College
in Halifax, is
profile trials are conauthor of Media
vinced it will become a
Law for Canadiroutine reporting tool.
an Journalists.
“Tweeting is an
and edits the
instant way to get the
law section of Jproceedings out there,”
source (www.jsays Kate Dubinski of
source.ca).
the London Free Press,
who covered the murder trial of six men
convicted in October of murdering eight
other members of the Bandidos biker gang.
“We were the first to get the verdicts out to
the public through Twitter .... Many people
have told me they felt like they were in the
courtroom with me throughout the trial.”
(To read Kate’s first-hand account, please
visit J-source.)
Ottawa Citizen national affairs reporter
Glen McGregor filed more than 2,000
tweets during the two-week trial of Ottawa
Mayor Larry O’Brien, who was acquitted
last August of criminal charges of influence peddling. At one point some 600
people were following his steady stream of
mini-reports. “You’re basically putting your
notebook online in real time.”
These appear to be the first Canadian
trials reported via Twitter. In the United
States, journalists in Kansas and Colorado
have been allowed to tweet trials, but a
judge in Georgia concluded that tweeting
Winter 2010
is tantamount to broadcasting a judicial
proceeding, which is prohibited under U.S.
federal court rules. Australia’s federal court
lets individual judges decide whether to
permit or prohibit Twitter coverage.
A case-by-case approach is being taken
in Canada. McGregor was surprised at
how readily the judge presiding over the
O’Brien trial accepted the Citizen’s request
to use BlackBerrys and laptops to file directly from the courtroom. Justice Douglas
Cunningham of the Ontario Superior
Court ruled in May that “instant text
transmission to the blogosphere … will be
permitted so long as any texting is done in
an unobtrusive way and does not affect the
running of the trial.”
In the Bandidos case, which took seven
months to complete, a court official gave
Dubinski the green light to blog the trial
and the judge did not make a formal ruling. Electronic devices were banned from
the courtroom due to security concerns,
but she was allowed to use her laptop to
file reports from an overflow room as she
watched the trial through a live video feed.
Bringing Twitter into Canadian courtrooms is a logical extension of the media’s
existing access rights. Many courts allow
journalists to take notes using audio recorders (as along as the recordings are not
broadcast) and on laptop computers, either
by policy or upon request.
Justice Cunningham stressed his ruling
was not “a broad policy statement” of his
court and applied only to the O’Brien trial.
O’Brien was not being tried by a jury, he
noted, and “jury trials may present a whole
set of different problems.” He did not
elaborate and Dubinski says no concerns
were raised about live-blogging the Bandidos trial, which was heard by a jury.
Dubinski describes the response to her
reports as “phenomenal.” She garnered
more than 1,000 followers, including
bikers from as far away as Australia and
New Zealand, and some lawyers in the
courtroom followed her tweets. While the
O’Brien case was less sensational, McGregor says he had a hard-core following
within the federal and municipal circles of
politics-obsessed Ottawa.
At key points of the trial, McGregor was
posting a tweet every minute or so, providing
an almost verbatim account of the evidence.
“It was something closer to stenography than
journalism at times,” he says. “I was trying to
transcribe as accurately as I could what was
being said.” Dubinski admits it was difficult
to sum up what was happening in 140 characters, but found she could add colour and
depth – when a witness mentioned a firearm,
for instance, she posted a hyperlink to an image of the weapon.
Both reporters relied mainly on their
laptops, finding them faster and easier to
use than held-held devices. Neither was
expected to cover the case alone. Dubinski
filed tweets while a colleague, Jane Sims,
filed updates to the Free Press website and
the daily print story. The Citizen’s Don
Butler concentrated on the print story but
McGregor filed three to four web updates a
day, using his tweets as the raw material.
McGregor says the O’Brien coverage was
an experiment, and he’s sold on Twitter.
With cameras barred from the courtroom,
he could report with the immediacy of live
television.
“It puts print journalism back on a level
footing, and gave us an advantage over
broadcast,” he notes. And while the CBC
also assigned a reporter to blog the trial for
its website, McGregor still had an edge.
“Twitter is essentially a print medium,” he
says. “This is my home turf … I type faster.” M
33
Legal Update
ing about many matters, ranging from
science and the arts to the environment,
religion, and morality.”
Journalists win one in court
The defense of “responsible journalism” can be used to head off libel suits
Dean Jobb
N
ew defences to
libel actions
don’t come along every
day, so what exactly do
the pair of Supreme
Court of Canada
rulings handed down
Dean Jobb,
December 22 mean for
an assistant
journalists?
professor of
In its rulings in
journalism at
Grant v. Torstar Corp.
the University
and Quan v. Cusson,
of King’s College
in Halifax, is
the court created the
author of Media
defence of responLaw for Canasible communication
dian Journalon matters of public
ists. For more
interest. It shifts the
information
focus away from what
about the book,
was published or
please visit
broadcast —Are the
www.emp.ca
facts true? Is opinion
fair comment? Were comments made
in the courtroom or other protected
forum?—and places it squarely on the
conduct of the reporters and editors who
produced the story.
In essence, it grants journalists reporting on issues of public importance the
right to be wrong. Not completely wrong,
of course, but the defence will defeat a
libel claim if, despite the journalist’s best
efforts, some facts or allegations turn out
to be wrong or false.
The defence reflects how the law
treats allegations of negligence against
doctors, lawyers and other professionals. They are expected to be skilled and
competent, but not perfect. Patients die
on the operating table, but not every
death is the result of malpractice. The
issue is how the operation was conducted
and whether the surgeon’s actions were
34
reasonable in the circumstances.
As Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin
noted in one of the landmark rulings,
the law of defamation protects the
reputations of individuals but cannot
trump the Charter-protected rights of
freedom of speech and freedom of the
press. In order to foster the free exchange
of information vital to our democracy,
the law must not “demand perfection
and the inevitable silencing of critical
comment that a standard of perfection
would impose.”
Public interest
First, the “matters of public interest”
part. The court offers a broad definition
of the kinds of stories protected under the
new defence and says judges must examine the story as a whole and not just the
defamatory statement. Public interest “is
not synonymous with what interests the
public,” the court cautioned, and would
not include “mere curiosity or prurient interest” in the private lives of public figures
or celebrities.
The subject need not be of national im-
The law of defamation protects the
reputations of individuals but cannot
trump the Charter-protected rights
of freedom of speech and freedom of
the press...[it] must not “demand perfection and the inevitable silencing of
critical comment that a standard of
perfection would impose.”
“Productive debate,” she added, “is dependent on the free flow of information.”
The defence is based on the “responsible journalism” defence developed in the
British courts over the past decade. The
Ontario courts adopted it in 2007 but the
Supreme Court’s rulings add refinements
that now apply across the country.
Let’s unwrap this post-Christmas
present for journalists and explore how
it works.
portance, or of interest to a wide audience.
A battle over development in a rural area
may be of local interest, for instance, but
it involves wider issues of land use and
environmental policy. In the court’s words,
“it is enough that some segment of the
community would have a genuine interest
in receiving information on the subject.”
And “public interest” is not confined
to stories about government and politics.
“The public has a genuine stake in know-
media
Responsible journalism
Now for the “responsible” part. The
court formulated a list of factors (based
on the British test) for judges or juries to
consider when assessing how the story
was produced:
• The seriousness of the allegation:
The more serious and damaging the
allegation, the more diligence the media
will have to show in researching and
verifying the story.
• The public importance of the matter:
Not all subjects of public interest have the
but the reporter must show an effort to be
fair and to get both sides of the story.
• Whether the inclusion of the defamatory statement was justifiable: The defamatory statement must be relevant to the
story, but “generous scope” should be given
to editorial choices made in the newsroom.
• Whether the defamatory statement’s
public interest lay in the fact that it was
made rather than its truth: Dubbed the “reportage” defence, this is perhaps the most
significant facet of the ruling. It recognizes
that the public may have an interest in the
assertions and counter-charges made in
debates over important issues, regardless of
whether the allegations are true.
While the law still punishes those who
solid sources, chasing important stories.
The court has simply taken many of the
elements of good journalism and recognized them in law.
The expanding definition of
journalism
Finally, the “communication” part. The
court has altered the term “responsible
journalism” and acknowledged the definition of “journalist” is expanding in the age
of the Internet. Anyone “publishing material of public interest in any medium”—
bloggers included—is covered. Established
journalistic practices will be used to assess
the conduct of “journalists and non-journalists alike,” the court says, and standards
In essence, it grants journalists reporting on issues of public
importance the right to be wrong. Not completely wrong, of
course, but the defence will defeat a libel claim if, despite the
journalist’s best efforts, some facts or allegations turn out to
be wrong or false.
same importance. Stories exploring “grave
matters of national security” will require
more diligence to investigate than those on
“the prosaic business of everyday politics.”
• The urgency of the matter: Consideration will be given to the need to file
timely reports on important events, but
mistakes made in the rush to score a
scoop might not be forgiven if a reasonable delay would have detected the error
before publication.
• The status and reliability of the
source: If sources are untrustworthy or
have an axe to grind, the reporter must
be more diligent in verifying information.
Confidential and unnamed sources can be
used, but the test remains whether it was
reasonable to do so.
• Whether the plaintiff’s side of the
story was sought and accurately reported:
It’s not always necessary or possible to contact the target of a defamatory comment,
Winter 2010
repeat a libel, in this context the messenger would have a defence if 1) the
statement is attributed, “preferably” to a
named source 2) the report indicates the
statement has not been verified 3) both
sides of the dispute are reported fairly 4)
the context in which the statement was
made is reported.
This may be a boon to political reporters covering heated exchanges between
politicians.
• Any other relevant circumstances: A
catch-all provision for other aspects of the
story, including the tone of the article. Sensationalism or a critical tone may be appropriate, the court noted, and writers should not
be held to “a standard of stylistic blandness
…. The best investigative reporting often
takes a trenchant or adversarial position on
pressing issues of the day.”
It all boils down to rewarding responsible, ethical reporting—being fair, using
will evolve “to keep pace with the norms of
new communications media.”
While defamation law and its defences
have always applied to the Internet, this is
significant. As mainstream media struggle
and publication shifts to the Internet,
more professional journalists are becoming bloggers. The court has recognized
this shift and its ruling also may encourage more high-quality, public interest
reporting by citizen journalists.
The new defence does not give journalists, bloggers or anyone else a licence to
sully someone’s reputation. The courts
will demand high standards of conduct
and establishing the defence could be
costly—just ask the newspapers headed
to trial a second time. But these decisions
lessen libel chill and modernize laws that,
for too long, have put reputations ahead
of our need for hard-hitting journalism
on important public issues. M
35
Ethics
A Free and Undemocratic press?
Good journalism helps citizens deliberate
Stephen J.A. Ward
T
he media revolution that engulfs
journalism creates a
new marketplace of
ideas. New media for
sharing and connecting encourage
Stephen J. A. Ward
a diversity of voices
is the director of
the Center for
and lower obstacles to
Journalism Ethics
publication. Presumat the Univerably, these developsity of Wisconsinments are good for
Madison’s School
democracy.
of Journalism and
I support freedom.
Mass CommuniI endorse diversity.
cation.
But I fear this optimism about the democratic potential
of new communication technology is
getting out of hand. Many new media
enthusiasts have become what I call
“libertarians
of the Net”.
They think
that a democratic public
sphere requires
primarily—or
only—a free
media available
to many citizens. A corollary is that, for
cyberspace, the restraints of ethics are
not relevant. Just let a thousand voices
bloom.
This view is implausible. A free press
(or a free online sphere) is a necessary
but not sufficient condition for democratic media and liberal democracy.
Consider the rancorous, ideological
media warfare—online and offline
—that has been mobilized to save or
sink health care reform in the USA.
Does this strike anyone as an exercise
in public deliberation? Is this how the
new marketplace of ideas creates public
opinion?
The idea that a free press necessarily
leads to a democratic press was discredited a century ago with the rise of a
mass commercial press. Throughout the
1800s, the growth of the newspaper was
hailed as a sign of liberal society and a
“self-correcting” marketplace of ideas.
The great liberal hope was this: Just
make the press free and it will be a
democratic press. An autonomous press
will use its freedom to be a serious and
independent informer for the public.
How disillusioned these liberals were
when the newspapers became dominated by press barons such as William
Randolph Hearst, when reporting
became sensational, when the public
of ideas today? It is wishful thinking. A
marketplace in any era can be distorted
and dominated.
Today’s dominators are not just Rupert Murdoch or Time-Warner but also
Google, Facebook, and media moguls
Steve Jobs of Apple and Microsoft’s Bill
Gates. The most popular news websites
in the USA and Canada belong to large
news organizations. Globally, a dozen
conglomerates dominate the world
of media, film, and similar cultural
products.
In a multi-media world, a “democratization” of the media is not identical with
the democratic use of media. The lovely
idea of many voices connected globally
ignores the plain fact that our world is
not Marshall McLuhan’s global village.
A media-linked world creates great tensions among
cultures. Also,
celebration of
a diversity of
voices online
has little to
say about who
these voices
are, and how
such voices have to interact to address
issues democratically. It says nothing
about the quality of information available. Online “conversation” may lead nowhere, or result in an ideological standoff, unless the dialogue is informed and
conducted respectfully according to
certain values and aims.
In a multi-media world, a “democratization”
of the media is not identical with the
democratic use of media.
36
came to suspect that a commercial press
could be more concerned about its own
interests than the interests of the public. So much for the hidden hand of the
marketplace.
What was the response? Journalists
in the early 1900s formed professional
associations and wrote codes of ethics to
guide their freedom to publish. Journalism ethics was born out of disillusionment with a marketplace approach to
mass media.
So why should libertarians believe
the Internet will save the marketplace
What else is needed?
To the idea of a free press, we need
to add the notion of a democratic press.
Journalism is democratic when it uses
media
its freedom to promote deliberation. In
sum, good journalism deliberates, and
helps citizens deliberate.
I agree with the philosopher John
Rawls that the future of pluralistic liberal democracies depends on whether
citizens with different conceptions
of life can live together in freedom
and justice. Since democracies do
not accept the
imposition of
one conception of life on
the entire body
politic, citizens
need to identify
an overlapping
consensus on
basic principles for running their
country, sharing benefits, protecting
basic rights, and operating institutions.
Therefore, inclusive and reasonable
deliberation is a fundamental quality
of liberal democracy. This means that
the quality of society’s communication
and its journalism is of special importance. Without means of deliberation,
discourse can be high-jacked by loud,
intolerant, and powerful voices.
Democratic citizens approach public
discussion in a distinct manner. The
aim is not to simply express a viewpoint; it is not about portraying those
who disagree as unpatriotic enemies
who must be crushed; it is not a winner-take-all affair. Deliberation is not a
monologue. It is social and cooperative.
It is about listening, learning. It expects
robust disagreement, but it also seeks
areas of compromise and new solution
Democratic journalism creates deliberative spaces in print, in broadcast, and
online that encourage this approach to
public discussion. How journalists talk
to their audience, frame their topics,
a reasonable public cannot come into
existence.
Given these trends in our media ecology what can we hope for, democratically
speaking? We can embrace a hope that is
more modest than the cocky enthusiasm
of libertarians today or yesterday. It is the
hope that, in the center of our chaotic,
expanding universe of media, we can
gather a core of
journalists willing to practice
democratic
journalism
across all media
platforms. In
such a world,
democratic
journalism acts as an ethical anchor amid
the red-faced shouting and edgy vitriol
that too often passes itself off as journalism in the public interest.
To be honest, I do not know whether
this modest hope will be realized. There
are encouraging and discouraging trends
in journalism. The picture is unclear. I
do believe, however, that the survival of
good journalism depends upon sustaining democratic journalism, and this will
require concerted action by many.
One alternative is to embrace a reassuring belief about the almost inevitable advance of democracy, given the new
marketplace of ideas.
This belief is not just implausible, it
is delusional. M
Without means of deliberation, discourse
can be high-jacked by loud, intolerant,
and powerful voices.
and structure discussion is paramount.
A non-deliberative approach can be
seen and heard on television and radio
every day. It is the tired format of talking heads screaming at each other. Or
it is the arrogant talk show host who
frames the topic in a simplistic and
provocative manner.
Democratic journalism swims against
our increasingly non-deliberative
media landscape, against the torrent
of hot talk and programs that blur the
difference between journalism and
entertainment. In our time, deliberative
spaces have become so scarce that they
are places of refuge for citizens who
have tired of the ideological or emptyheaded chatter. In a society where a
free and undemocratic press dominates,
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Winter 2010
37
Computer-Assisted Reporting
Inside the Numbers
Counting crowds
PowerPivot and other heavy duty tools
In an effort to stay relevant, Microsoft is beefing up
its features for Excel and Access
What’s the best way to estimate the number of people who attended that
conference, demonstration—or who were killed in the Rwandan genocide?
Fred Vallance-Jones
A
new decade is
dawning, and
with it yet another new
version of Microsoft
Office, this one dubbed
Office 2010. The actual
release date has not
Fred Vallancebeen announced, but I
Jones is an
downloaded the public
assistant profesbeta version (officesor of journalism
beta.microsoft.com/
at the University
en-us) to give Media
of King’s College
in Halifax.
readers a preview of
what to expect in the
latest versions of the most popular programs used for CAR.
The biggest treat is reserved for users of
the Excel spreadsheet. A new add-on called
PowerPivot significantly torques Excel’s
ability to analyze data.
Excel has long had a feature called
Microsoft Query that allows you to do
simple sorting and filtering of data from an
external source such as an Access database,
and then insert the results into an Excel
sheet for further analysis. But it has always
been clunky to use and limited.
PowerPivot is a different story.
For starters, it allows analysis of external
databases of almost limitless size, effectively eliminating Excel’s normal limit of
a million rows (or about 65,000 rows in
versions earlier than 2007).
But even better, you can join tables to
other tables or to data within Excel itself,
based on common linking fields, the same
way you can in a relational database. So
now if you have a table of government contracts and a table of political donations—
with the names spelled the same way, of
course—you can use Excel to find matches
between the two.
The analysis is done by way of pivot
tables, themselves one of Excel’s most
38
Kelly Toughill
powerful features for journalists because of
their ability to quickly summarize data.
My preliminary look at PowerPivot suggests it is going to be a powerful addition
to the familiar suite of tools in Excel. It
requires that your computer come with at
least a couple of gigabytes of memory, but
even the cheapest laptops and desktops
usually come with that these days. An older
computer with less memory or without a
dual-core processor might be overwhelmed
by the new feature, which is probably one
reason it comes as an add-on.
Of course, this is not the only change in
the new version of Excel.
The most noticeable thing when you
first open Excel (or any of the Office applications that were first given the “ribbon”
user interface in the 2007 version) is the
disappearance of the big Office button at
the top left. Used to access file management functions such as opening, saving and
printing, it has been replaced by a file tab
on the ribbon that opens what Microsoft is
now calling the “backstage view.” It’s pretty
much the same thing you got when you
clicked on the Office button, but it should
make it easier for users to find the most
basic features, as well as basic information
about the file itself.
Another change that you will likely
find useful is the ability to customize the
ribbon, in much the same way that users
could customize toolbars in pre-2007 versions of Excel. You can now create your
own ribbon with the commands you use
most frequently.
Of course, there are myriad other modifications and tweaks, but these are the ones
that stood out during my first look at the
beta version. A newer and better version of
Access, too
The 2010 version of Office also brings
changes to Access, still a popular desktop
database among journalists. One of the most
useful changes streamlines the creation of
new tables if you are building a database from
scratch. If you choose to create tables directly
in table-datasheet view, rather than open
design view to create the table structure first,
you can now choose the data type for each
field as you create it. And if you don’t choose
a data type, Access will do it for you based on
the information you put into that field for the
first record. So if you type in a number, Access
chooses a number data type. Similarly, if you
type in some text, Access makes it a text field.
If you don’t like what Access chooses, you can
go to design view and change it.
There’s also a new “fields” tab on the
ribbon, allowing you to change settings for
fields within a table without having to go
to design view.
Many other features remain the same,
but the new Access allows the creation of
databases designed to be published to the
web, via a Microsoft SharePoint server. It
will be interesting to see if that becomes
a useful option for journalists wanting to
drive data out to the audience.
The debut of Office 2010 will bring with
it Microsoft’s new online versions of core
Office applications such as Word and Excel.
These web-based versions of the program
will be free, as are other online, browserbased office applications such as Google
Docs. Microsoft is coming late to this
growing market, but has one big advantage,
and that’s the Office brand. I expect that
Microsoft will use the online versions as a
way to promote purchases of the full versions by people who might otherwise have
never considered an expensive, desktop office suite. I hope to devote a future column
to a head-to-head comparison of Microsoft’s new online apps and Google docs. It
should prove an interesting new chapter in
the battle between these modern titans. M
media
T
he footage is
grainy but clear,
shot from a rooftop
so far away that
for years the world
thought the famous
bit of film showed the
Kelly Toughill
murder of two womteaches journalen. But only one was
ism at the Unia woman. The person
versity of King’s
kneeling, waving his
College.
arms and clasping his
hands in prayer was her father.
These were the only deaths captured on film by reporters during the
1994 Rwandan genocide. Researchers,
politicians and court officials have been
arguing ever since about exactly how
many Tutsis and moderate Hutus were
killed between April and July 1994. Was
it 500,000, as Human Rights Watch estimated in 1999? Was it 800,000, the figure
now used by most media? The Rwanda
government puts the figure at 1,174,100.
One author alleged two years ago that
1.7 million people died in the horror.
People estimates are some of the most
difficult numbers to calculate. Estimating civilian war casualties is just an
extreme example of a problem faced by
journalists who cover protests, natural
disasters or even rock concerts. How
many people were there? How many
were injured, sickened, forced to flee?
Many media organizations take the
safe but wrong approach: They require
reporters cite authorities for estimates of
crowd size, the number of people homeless, injured or dead. But often authorities are wrong.
Anyone who has covered a protest
march knows this. Some police officers
will vastly underestimate the size of a
SEEING WAS NOT BELIEVING: That is why some shrugged off the early warning by Doctors
Without Borders that Rwanda was slipping into a genocide. The report seemed unbelievable, so many dismissed it as do-gooder propaganda. Now we know better. These skulls
belonging to the victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide are shown in a display case at the
Nyamata church, Nov. 24, 2006, outside of Kigali, Rwanda. Photo: AP/Jody Kurash.
continued on page 40
Winter 2010
39
Postscript
continued from page 39
crowd because they don’t know how to
estimate, they don’t care or they want
to discourage future protests.
Protest organizers tend to exaggerate
their numbers, sometimes from sheer
enthusiasm and sometimes to boost
their cause.
Estimating a crowd in a confined space
is pretty easy. Imagine a grid hovers
over the crowd. The grid is made up of
squares as wide as you are tall. Count the
people in one square and then multiply
that by the number of squares in your
imaginary grid. If the crowd is dense in
front and loose in back, use two grids. If
the crowd is in a place with a known capacity, estimate whether the place is half
or three-quarters full, and then multiply
your estimate by the known capacity. In
a meeting hall, sometimes all you have
to do is count the chairs. If there are 15
chairs in a row, 10 rows are full and 20
rows are half full, there are 300 people in
the room.
If you
know the
number
will be
challenged,
sometimes it
is worth the
trouble to
count every
head. That’s
what the
Toronto Star’s Tom Walkom did when
Ontario unions marched against thenPremier Bob Rae at an NDP retreat.
Walkom stood at the driveway to the
conference grounds and counted every
protester who marched by.
The trouble comes when you can’t see
the people you must count. They are
buried, hiding, in hospitals or shelters.
What do you do then?
Ask government agencies? Ask helping agencies? Maybe. The important
thing is not whom you ask, but what
you ask.
Governments are often motivated to
minimize disaster figures. Even when
governments are well meaning, they
may not have the information.
Helping agencies are motivated to exaggerate figures. Even when their reports
are scrupulously honest and meticulously researched, non-profit agencies often
suffer an appearance of bias.
That is why some shrugged off the
early warning by Doctors Without Borders that Rwanda was slipping into a
genocide. The report seemed unbelievable, so many dismissed it as do-gooder
propaganda. The right question was:
How did they know that?
It is always the right question when
weighing the validity of people estimates. How did the police officer estimate the size of a crowd? Did he count?
How did the medical officer of health
calculate H1N1 infection rates? Did she
consider only confirmed cases?
Doctors Without Borders was one of
the only helping agencies that remained
They are still battling over the truth
in Rwanda.
The first estimate of the genocide’s
death toll was 500,000 mostly Tutsi victims. The figure was struck by counting
the number of Tutsis who remained alive
after the genocide—roughly 130,000—
and subtracting it from those who lived
in Rwanda before the violence began.
But how many Tutsis lived in Rwanda in
1994? A census put the number of Tutsis
in Rwanda at 596,000 in 1991. With normal
population growth, that means there were
675,000 Tutsis by 1994. Some argued that
the census grossly underestimated the
number of Tutsis because the Hutu government wanted to minimize their place in
society and because some Tutsis claimed to
be Hutu to avoid discrimination.
It took almost 10 years before the census
was tested. Researcher Marijke Verpoorten
compared municipal records to the census
records of one district. She found the two
documents
agreed on
all points
except
ethnicity. The
municipal
records
showed
40 per
cent more
Tutsis in Rwanda than the census showed.
That means there were 911,260 Tutsis in
Rwanda when the genocide began. If there
were 130,000 left, that means that almost
800,000 died.
That isn’t the final word. There
are still arguments about the crucial
estimate of how many Tutsis survived,
and there are various estimates of how
many Hutu died as well.
The lesson for journalists is how
well hidden the people numbers can
be. Hundreds of thousands of people
were killed in Rwanda, but reporters
captured only two of those deaths on
camera. M
Helping agencies are motivated to exaggerate
figures. Even when their reports are scrupulously
honest and meticulously researched, non-profit
agencies often suffer an appearance of bias.
40
in Rwanda when the genocide exploded.
The group’s early estimate started with
rare eyewitness accounts.
Sometimes reporters do their own
estimates by traveling to hospitals, mass
burial sites and refugee camps to collect
body counts and eyewitness accounts.
Others use a variation of the grid method. They interview everyone on a street
or a neighborhood or in a corner of a
refugee camp and ask how many of their
relatives are missing or killed. That figure is then multiplied by the number of
neighborhoods affected, or the size of the
total refugee camp. It is crude, but often
better than simply relying on authorities
for their version of the truth.
media
For the sake of the story
Michelle Lang had that feverish impulse to understand
and it took her to Afghanistan, where she wrote about war
Andrew Cohen
I
t isn’t hard to know
why journalists are
journalists. It is their
impulse to see, their
appetite to know and
their passion to tell.
It begins with a conAndrew Cohen
suming
curiosity, what
is a professor of
essayist
Stuart
Adam
journalism and
called that “rushing
international
sense of wonder.” A
affairs at Carleton
sense of discovery is
University. He
can be reached at
the sine qua non of
andrewzcohen@
journalism; without
yahoo.ca.
it, you will never see,
know or tell.
The incurious won’t get very far; better
they sell shoes or drive a cab. But if you see
things as they are and ask why, if you have
an inclination to doubt, this may be the
thing for you.
There will always be gifted journalists who
will see more, know more and say more than
their colleagues. But understand this: without
a deep and honest skepticism, someone who
aspires to be a journalist will be as miscast in
the role as the celebrated son of the Passover
Seder who “wits not to ask.”
Michelle Lang always asked. She had
that feverish impulse to understand and
it took her from Alberta, where she wrote
commendably about medicine for the
Calgary Herald, to Afghanistan, where she
wrote about war.
Curiosity drove her to learn what
Canada is doing there besides fighting the
Taliban. Shortly into her tour, it drew her
to a provincial reconstruction team, where,
she told her editor in the vernacular of the
trade, there should be some good stories.
Of course there would be. Of course she
would go. Don’t we always go?
Winter 2010
And so in Fate’s unsentimental way, it put
her in the belly of a light-armoured transport, cheek-by-jowl with Canadian soldiers,
careering along the “safe” roads outside
Kandahar City. It also put her in the path of
a roadside bomb. And it killed her.
She came home with the other dead, her
flag-draped casket met at Trenton by the
Governor General, the defence minister and
her fiancé. She was treated with the same
respect as the soldiers, which was gracious of
the military, though they were soldiers and
she was a journalist and there is a difference.
Yes, she knew the risks. But she was there
as an observer, not a combatant, and it appears that she wasn’t unduly worried about
how the assignment could end for her.
After all, Canadian journalists have been
in and out of Afghanistan since 2001. None
has died.
Some, like my old friend, the redoubtable Matthew Fisher, are in Afghanistan
—or other war zones—most of the time.
Others come and go on rotation from
Canada, as Lang did. They think of the
danger less than they think of the story,
which, like Fisher, they cover with integrity,
imagination and courage.
No one becomes a Canadian war correspondent, even if only for a moment,
for fame or fortune. You live in constant
danger or in constant boredom, usually in
trying physical conditions. For this, there is
little applause at home, especially in Canada, where the Afghan war is unpopular.
Ernest Hemingway was decorated by the
United States in 1947 for his role in covering
the Second World War. He was awarded
a Bronze Star Medal for having circulated
“freely under fire in combat areas in order to
obtain an accurate picture of conditions...”
Do you think such recognition would be
Remembering Michelle Lang: Eventually, someone else will take her place in Afghanistan. Like
Michelle Lang, he or she will be drawn—inexorably, irresistibly, even tragically—by that rushing
sense of wonder, unfazed by where it may lead.
Photo: AFP.
conferred today? Your editors may (or may
not) appreciate your work in the field and
some of your readers, too, but society really
doesn’t care about what you do—until the
day you’re killed.
She was a reporter’s reporter, on assignment for one of the country’s largest
newspapers. To get there, she had done
real work and earned real awards. She
deserved her success. Her colleagues called
her “guileless,” “gentle” and “earnest.” By all
accounts, she was committed to writing the
other story of the war, the one supporters
of Canada’s Afghan mission often complain
reporters don’t cover.
Eventually, someone else will take her
place in Afghanistan. Like Michelle Lang,
he or she will be drawn—inexorably, irresistibly, even tragically—by that rushing
sense of wonder, unfazed by where it may
lead.
This article initially appeared in The Ottawa Citizen on Jan. 4. M
41
The Last Word
CanWest does the dance of death
But will it take its newspapers down with it?
Catherine Ford
W
hat does one
say when the
only business she has
ever been involved
in is in danger of
becoming irrelevant?
Worse, what does one
Catherine Ford is
say to the company
a retired Calgary
that is overseeing
Herald columthe last gasp of its
nist and editor
newspapers even as it
and now amuses
fends off creditors?
herself with her
blog caford.wordIs there a worst
press.com
aspect to the story?
Maybe if you are,
like me, a retired CanWest employee
receiving a company pension. At least,
unlike retirees from the television arm
of the conglomerate, newspaper pensions have so far (fingers crossed) not
been threatened.
That’s my version of full disclosure.
It’s also helpful to know I retired from
the Calgary Herald five years ago, so
whatever I hear about the state of editorial newsrooms across Canada today is
second-hand. Like all rumour, it needs
to be taken with an eye to who’s talking.
The opinion of the editorial unions at
various papers and the opinion of management have been and are still at odds.
As both sides have their own particular
axes to grind, the truth of cuts, layoffs,
miser-like behaviour and suffering standards of journalism are just opinion.
CanWest may be (and forgive the
analogy) the Barack Obama of newspaper owners. It’s not that they killed the
newspaper business single-handedly,
they didn’t. It’s not that newspapers
are dead. Not quite yet. But, much like
the president of the United States, the
42
BLEEDING MONEY AT THE NATIONAL POST: One doesn’t have to be an insider to know that when a
newspaper’s ad-to-editorial percentage is topsy-turvy, about 30 per cent to 70 per cent, instead of the
other way around, it’s losing money hand over fist. Photo:
company inherited a situation that was
worse than they believed when they
handed over $3.2-billion to Conrad
Black to gain control of the former
Southam newspaper chain. As Matthew
McClearn wrote in Canadian Business,
analysts now believe “publishing assets
might be worth somewhere between
$750 million and $1 billion, far short of
the debt outstanding.
“But then, it’s hardly a seller’s market. Newspapers must endure more
than simply a recessionary drop in advertising. Circulation is falling by about
two per cent each year, and advertisers
are abandoning papers in increasing
numbers for online and other media.”
It would be foolish to blame CanWest
for “killing” the newspaper business
as it would be to blame Obama for
the state of the U.S. economy, or the
expense of the Iraqi war, or indeed, any
of the legacies left behind for Obama to
own and try to clean up.
I used to tell a joke when giving speeches—one that went “you know it’s time to
retire when you’ve sat in the same office
for 25 years and you’ve worked for three
different companies…one of which doesn’t
exist any more, the second of which was
being sued while its owner wanted his
media
Winter 2010
Canadian citizenship back, although not
fast enough to keep him from an American jail, and the third never owned or ran
any newspapers until, like the television
ads for Rolaids or Tums, they can’t believe
they ate “the whole thing.”
“Well, at least the newspaper owners
now are Canadian,” I would tell audiences.
Regardless of one’s status or position
in the newsrooms of Canadian newspapers, very few journalists are really
aware of the machinations in the upper
levels of corporate Canada. I don’t know
why CanWest finds itself in a precarious
position these days, I can only speculate.
If the company is eventually broken
apart, sent off for the financial wolves to
devour, and its newspapers like the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun sold off
piecemeal, it might be the death of the
CanWest brand, but that’s not what will
kill the newspaper business.
For newspapers, it has been the perfect
storm—a generation that doesn’t choose
to read newspapers, a climate in which
news has become entertainment and
a society that demands something the
print medium cannot deliver—news in
an instant.
Some journalists want to blame the
National Post for bleeding the other
papers dry.
As Chris Cobb wrote in his 2004 book,
Ego and Ink, which looked at the birth
of the National Post in particular and at
Canada’s newspapers in general: “The Post
had been a journalistic phenomenon that
strode, well prepared and guns blazing, onto
the Canadian daily newspaper battlefield...
Within weeks, if not days, it was as if the
Post had been around forever. That alone
was a monumental achievement.” But the
reality was that the Post was bleeding money.
One doesn’t have to be an insider to know
that when a newspaper’s ad-to-editorial percentage is topsy-turvey, about 30 per cent to
70 per cent, instead of the other way around,
it’s losing money hand over fist.
So when it was sold to CanWest, the
Aspers had few choices. Writes Cobb:
“CanWest was going to cut the excesses… attempt to turn a profit and give
the National Post a future.”
Journalists have predicted the demise
of the Post since its first issue. But in reality, unless the entire chain of papers is
uncoupled, the Post will remain. It gives
national advertisers an outlet in Toronto
and through the chain, the country.
The secret of newspaper profits is that
people pay to receive them and advertisers pay for those eyes. The daily newspaper is a habit. It dies with my generation.
Only a few young people in any
crowd read newspapers, fewer still want
to pay for them. And a plugged-in generation gets its news online.
But here’s the challenge: Without
newspapers, who pays for journalism?
Without journalists being paid to find
out stories the government and other
special interests want to keep quiet,
what happens to democracy?
And the real threat: Without journalists who work for paying organizations providing the information to the
Internet, where does real information,
come from?
So-called “citizen journalists?” Don’t
make me laugh. M
43