Feelin’ a little uneasy

I live in a high-rise apartment building with my boyfriend. There are eight apartments on each floor, and there are 24 floors (technically 23 because the building was constructed when they still skipped floor 13). Hundreds of people live here and there is a very high turnaround rate. At the same time, though, there are some people who have been here for decades.

Sometimes when I leave in the morning, there is a man sleeping on the couch in the lobby who makes everything smell like urine. People go through the building’s recycling bins in search of empties they can return to the beer store. In the darker, dingier parts of the building, like the stairwells and hallways of the parking garage, there is evidence of squatters.

It’s downtown Toronto, though, so it’s not very surprising.

What is surprising is that I’ve never felt unsafe. Until today.

We’re not anal about locking our door. We usually lock it at night, but it’s often unlocked during the day when we’re home. I’m going to start locking it all the time now, I think.

Last night at around 1 a.m., someone buzzed us from the lobby. We didn’t answer because we didn’t get to the phone in time, but it’s worth wondering who the hell is buzzing you at 1 a.m. on a Sunday night/Monday morning. They didn’t leave a message on our voicemail.

I thought I heard the elevator door open shortly after the phone rang, so I was paranoid that someone had gotten in and was going to start banging on the door. It was just neighbour coming or going, but it still had my heart beating a mile a minute.

Tonight, there was a quiet knock at the door shortly after we got out of the shower and we were still wearing our bathrobes. Ron went to answer the door, but he came back, closed the bedroom door and whispered, “I can’t see who it is. They have their back to the door.”

Also, the man was wearing a Santa hat.

He knocked quietly again, but we didn’t answer and stayed quiet until he left. It bears mentioning that, as far as I know, we’re not involved in any shady business. We don’t expect strangers or ill-intentioned acquaintences to show up at our apartment unannounced.

Ron wondered if it was a break-and-enter scheme where he gets people to open their doors and then barges in.

I haven’t had any concerns about this in the past. I’ve opened my door to census workers, political campaign volunteers and employees of companies taking consumer satisfaction surveys. Most of them have been men, and I didn’t find out their identity until the door was already open.

Ron left for his class about half an hour ago and I’m home alone, and while I’m not scared, I’m confused and concerned. Is this what people in the suburbs are afraid of? Is this random? Should I be afraid to open my door to strangers?

Digsby: All social media tools in one

I started using a new tool today. It’s called Digsby and it groups all your social media and means of communication in one application. It’s pretty neat, but I’m not sure if I’ll keep using it yet.

So far, I have my Gmail, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Facebook, Facebook chat and Twitter working within this one program.

There’s a “buddy list” for the chat programs, updates from Twitter and Facebook and notifications of new e-mails pop-up for a few seconds in the bottom left corner of my screen. And a little Gmail envelope stays in the tray to tell me how many unread e-mails I have in my inbox in case I’m away from my computer for a while. (I’m actually away sometimes, you know.)

I’ve been looking for a tool like this for a while because have multiple chat and social media applications open at once, along with multiple browser tabs for Facebook and e-mail, was getting a bit overwhelming.

But, it’s also overwhelming to have so much in such a small space.

With all the chat applications combined, there are more than 20 people online right now (most of them on Facebook).

Facebook updates alert me every few seconds whenever almost anyone updates anything. I can change the settings, but I will wait to see exactly what kind of content I want.

Hopefully this will save me some time and effort. Or maybe I’ll just end up wasting more time than ever seeing what other people are up to.

Learn something new

Two new articles have been posted in the Portfolio section of the site:

• Stacks of the future was co-written with my classmate, Clare Hill, as our major project in our advanced reporting class and published in The Ryersonian. The original version was quite a bit different and we weren’t notified of the changes before they went to print, but it turned out okay.
   
• The 3 W’s of new-grad jobs: What you’ve done, Who you know, and What they’ll say about you was written for the “Learn” section of TalentEgg.ca when I worked there in the summer. I’ll be taking on another role there starting at the beginning of December, so you can expect me to write more for the website and the blog in the coming months.

In other news, I’m sick again! I’ve lost my voice and I have a cough to end all coughs. My body couldn’t wait two weeks until I’m done school.

Fairness and balance

If I could pick one idea, lesson or rule that has been taught and emphasized over and over in journalism school, it would be the idea that journalists should try to achieve fairness and balance in everything they do.

Telling the truth might seem like the most obvious rule, but it’s so obvious and the consequences so great that apprentice journalists don’t necessarily need to be beat over the head with it.

But fairness and balance are more abstract, more subjective. Publications and broadcasters often have identifiable biases, whether they are political, social or economic. Those biases are okay, but if the lessons we’ve been taught over the past four years are any indication, many journalists aren’t comfortable with the biases of their employer.

Our instructors, all current or former journalists themselves, have bent over backwards to emphasize the importance of journalists stepping outside their comfort zone to get the most fair and balanced stories, information and sources.

That means finding a “talking head” who is a member of a traditionally-excluded group (instead of one who is an old, rich white guy); interviewing an expert from within a certain community rather than an expert on that community (who is probably an old, rich white guy); and covering stories that may step outside well-established boundaries (which have been set by old, rich white guys).

But one aspect of fairness and balance we have never discussed is the difference between an average citizen and a journalist as subjects of a story.

It’s something that journalists are discussing among themselves and their audiences now, however.

The Toronto Star’s public editor, Kathy English, discusses the ethics of covering kidnapping cases involving regular people and journalists, like CBC reporter Melissa Fung. Maclean’s “Megapundit” Chris Selley takes it a step further by comparing the responsibility of coverage of journalists, regular Canadians and civilians in war zones who are abducted, tortured and/or killed.

Since the media has almost always held “the public’s right to know” ahead of any political or personal considerations, it’s a bit disturbing that Fung’s story was withheld for her protection while the stories of non-journalists have been reported.

There are often no rules governing why and how stories are covered. More often than not, ethical considerations are made on a case-by-case basis by reporters and their editors. Once the deadline hits and the story runs or airs, there’s nothing more than can be done. Or at least that’s how it used to work.

Now, the ethical errors made by the media are debated by the public on media websites in the comments section, by bloggers and media watchdogs, and even by journalists themselves outside the newsroom in public forums. That’s good. It’s democratic.

But in an era when every piece of information ever published is easily accessible by anyone, the mistakes of media are not as easily forgotten as they once were. Media is held accountable for what it produces more than ever before. Should we have hard rules about ethical issues like these? Maybe. Maybe not.

What we need to be aware of, however, is the hierarchy we sometimes unconsciously give to the subjects of our stories: people on the other side of the world, then average Canadians above them, and then our fellow journalists on top.

It’s not fair and it’s not balanced. It’s just proximity.

It doesn’t mean it’s right, though, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to change it.

Everything’s a piece of everyone

I fought a war to walk a gang plank
Into a life I left behind
Windows leading to the past
Think it’s time I broke some glass
Get this history off my mind

“Caves” by Jack’s Mannequin

Tonight I’m going with my brother and his girlfriend to see Jack’s Mannequin play at The Opera House. It has me thinking a lot about the past, and the past five years in particular.

The last time I was at The Opera House, it was November 28, 2003. Jess and I went to see Something Corporate there, which is the band that Jack’s Mannequin sort of came out of. It had rained all day and by the time the concert let out, the entire city was covered in about a foot of snow. The girl who was supposed to give us a ride home left early without telling us, and we missed the last bus out of Toronto.

I remember walking along a deserted and completely white Queen Street East to find a phone booth (this was before everyone had cell phones, I guess). We couldn’t reach my dad, Jess’ parents wouldn’t come get us, and my mom was in a lot of pain from what we thought were car accident injuries. (We would later find out it was cancer.)

But she told us to ask for a flat rate cab ride back to Cambridge, more than 100 km away from where we were. I can’t remember how much it cost, but it was definitely near $200, maybe more. We didn’t have any money on us, so my mom went out to the bank in a snowstorm in the middle of the night to get the money even though she was in a lot of pain. Even though it was after midnight and technically her 44th birthday.

I’ve been thinking about how much has changed since that day almost five years ago. Something Corporate was still playing together. We didn’t know my mom had cancer and would only survive exactly six more months. I was still in high school and I had no idea where I would go to school and what I would go for.

I love how circular life is. “Everything’s a piece of everyone.”