Critical Approach: Slave of the system

The reason I’m in the Masters of Journalism program at Ryerson is because of an unpaid internship.

Damn you, Scumbag Employer.

I came out of an undergrad in theatre studies, my focus on playwriting, with a passion for the arts and writing, but disillusioned about the kind of nepotism and compromise I saw a career in theatre would take. I was working three part time jobs (retail, food service and customer service, the unholy-freaking-trinity) with a whole lot of student debt and very little creative fulfillment.

Then a saw an ad in, the now defunct, Fab Magazine: “Looking for kickass interns!” I sent in my resumé, and started at Fab shortly afterwards. As one of a half dozen interns I tackled a weekly slog of event listings with the promise that I would eventually be able to start (paid) writing for the magazine, which I eventually did. From this I built up a career as an arts and culture writer, blogger and columnist for Fab and its sister publication, Xtra. Now I’m back at school, inevitably accruing even more student debt, to ostensibly become a journalist.

Critical Approach: Lying in the grey area

After the discussion on the ethical implications of Ken Silverstein’s work for “Their men in Washington,” in turn discussing Mark Lisheron’s “Lying to Get the Truth,” I really wish I had the chance to ask the class’s opinion on a real life news gathering scenario that we all learned about at the beginning of our degrees.

The Grey Area is a real place. In Amsterdam, of course.

In September, a few weeks into the program, the two sections of our “Covering the City” course, which teaches on urban, city hall and court room reporting—readings centered around Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel’s The Elements of Journalism, focusing on monolithic professional standards and objectivity—converged for a discussion with a well-known local star reporter.

Looking: Hell is other people’s weddings

I was struck watching this week’s excellent episode of Looking how many queer people, especially those I’m close with, experience complete consonance going about their wildly differing day-to-day activities.

Imagine that, a TV show where people do different things every episode… really groundbreaking stuff. But what I mean is our protagonist Patrick goes from awkward date, to video game developer, to leather-clad partier, to resentful son. I think as a queer person I just find this all the more poignant, since I often feel like a different part of my wonderfully weird personality is in play every other hour.

Journalist… boyfriend… gay drag queen nun… skeptic… angry queer… gamer… writer… student… resentful son…

I could go on.