All settled in and ready to get down to business
May 12, 2009 | Filed under The Real World
So, I’ve been working on this new blog here and there as I’ve had time over the past few weeks and it’s finally to the point where I can actually accept visitors to my new home. Thank you for joining me again. I promise I will start to write regularly again now that I’ve made my new corner of the Internet all homey.
I suppose I’ve done the same in real life, too. It was a month yesterday I moved out of the apartment in Toronto I shared with my (now ex-) boyfriend and back into my dad’s house in Cambridge. Here, I’ve painted, decorated and unpacked most of my things to make it feel more like home again. Unfortunately, I can’t wait to move back to Toronto.
I’m grateful I have the opportunity to take a breather, to catch up on my finances now that I’m done university, to be with family, etc. But after being independent for so long, moving back to my dad’s house in a town where the only way I can get around is awfully planned, infrequent bus routes feels like a prison some days.
I miss being steps from the subway. I miss having everything I need within walking distance. I miss having common space that was more or less just my own.
Things have changed here, too. My little brother has his own life. My dad’s girlfriend moved in two weeks after I did. Many of my high school friends have moved away or we’ve just lost touch over the past five years.
Time just seems to pass more slowly here and I’m going to have to get used to it. I really hope the money I’m saving on rent, groceries and bills is worth it.
Tags: blog, family, moving, Toronto, whining
On evaluating and acknowledging our biases
April 5, 2009 | Filed under Ethics, Journalism
There are few professions in which individuals are expected to be completely without bias. In most professions, our biases rarely interfere with the integrity of our work.
Yet, as a journalist, it’s a constant battle. Because we consume so much information on a daily basis, we probably have opinions on many more topics than the average person does. And since we’re natural communicators, we’re prone to spewing out our thoughts (on paper or otherwise) at any given time.
It’s something that is completely in conflict with the work we do, however.
Upon doing research on the very broad topic of rodents in Toronto earlier this week, I came across some information that wasn’t secret, but it hadn’t been published yet. Like a good little intern, I jumped on it, dug some more and made a real breaking news story out of it.
Rodent infestations continue to bedevil Chinatown and Kensington Market, with health authorities ordering five recent business closures in the span of a few blocks.
I was also lucky enough to have the chance to turn it into a larger, issue-based feature story the next day.
More than a third of the city’s 56 closures in the past year have taken place in this area, with most inspection records noting rodent or insect infestations, or both.
However, as I interviewed Toronto city councillor Adam Vaughan about the issue and some of the things he’s been doing to make those neighbourhoods, which are in his ward, he raised a very complicated, loaded issue: bias in the media.
Now, he never said, “You’re a racist.” It was never that direct. But as a member of the media breaking and covering a story, I was clearly among those who he thinks approach the issue with a “tinge of racism.”
This has the tinge of racism to it and it’s unacceptable.
At first, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Am I being racist for covering this story? I thought. At first I panicked a little because, you know, I’m white. I don’t know what it’s like to be not white. I’ve never lived in a foreign culture. I’ve never been a poor immigrant struggling to make it in a new country.
But then I looked at how I drew my conclusions about this story. To start, I used real data: the City of Toronto’s DineSafe website has inspection records for every restaurant in the city.
Based on my knowledge of city street names, I could already tell many of them were in the Chinatown/Kensington Market area and the rest were scattered throughout the city.
But I wanted to be sure, so I created a Google Map which showed the location of every food premises which had been closed in the past year. My assumption was correct and clearly illustrated on the map; there was a high concentration of closures within those side-by-side neighbourhoods.
I also spoke to leaders in both of the communities, giving them the opportunity to tell their side of the story:
Barbara Kwan, vice-chair of the Chinatown BIA, said business owners in the neighbourhood are doing everything they can to combat the problem.
…
Kensington Market Action Committee chairman Chris Devita agreed but said many local residents and business owners are not doing anything to eliminate pests.
The only thing I can’t account for is widespread systemic racism.
It’s entirely possible that the city’s public health inspectors target this area more than others and hold business owners there to a higher standard than others because of their race.
And it’s definitely true that many new immigrants, people of colour and non-English speakers face extremely challenging societal barriers for a number of reasons, only one of which is racism.
While I’m aware of those issues, they’re not something I could tackle in this article — and they’re issues that, perhaps, no journalist could hope to tackle in any news article.
The easiest question I can ask myself, as a journalist, is: Would I still cover this story if one third of the city’s closures had occurred in another neighbourhood, in hoity-toity Yorkville, or the artsy-fartsy Beaches, or Little Italy, or the Church-Wellesley Village, etc.?
The answer is yes, I would.
I would cover the story if it could be found in any of those neighbourhoods, or any other community, because not only is it my responsibility as a journalist, it’s also what I would expect as a consumer who frequents restaurants in this city and doesn’t check the DineSafe inspection history of each one before I go.
Could I have done more to acknowledge my biases in this case? How do you acknowledge your own biases in your work life?
Tags: bias, National Post, story
Realities collide
March 26, 2009 | Filed under The Real World
Before we started our internships, we were given an overview of what to expect. Number one on the list of Top 5 Things to Know Before You Start Your Internship is
You will cry on at least one occasion.
I haven’t cried in the newsroom yet, but I had tears in my eyes in the cab on the way back to from covering this story.
I’ve always known I’m not cut out for that type of reporting, but a number of people treated me like I was a monster today for trying to find out what happened. I get it. Reporters are intrusive, but it’s our job. We can’t just not do it.
I called the soon-to-be ex-boyfriend a few times to vent in my downtime and inadvertently made myself even more upset by thinking about relationship things at the same time.
When I got back to the newsroom, there was a message waiting from the financial consultant who worked with my mom before she died. He said her remembered her well and I could hear something in his voice, maybe caution or sympathy, I’m not sure. But I heard it.
To get my mind off all of these things so I could calm down a little, I logged into my TalentEgg email and started answering emails.
For some reason, my responsibilities at TalentEgg had the power to take me away from that painful moment where everything that hurts my heart and mind — work, love, life — had intersected at once. I knew I made the right choice.
I just hope it wasn’t the Tylenol I washed down with a bottle of Pepsi talking.
Tags: emotional breakdown, internship, TalentEgg
The triumphant university grad moves back home
March 21, 2009 | Filed under Post-grad
In about three weeks when my internship at the National Post is complete, I will move back home to live in my dad’s house.
It feels so weird to say move back home for many reasons: I haven’t lived there in years. I’ve barely visited. I no longer have my own room there. Toronto feels much more like home than Cambridge. My lifestyle has been totally different since moving out.
I moved out in the fall of 2005 when I started university and, although I had to move back home the following summer for a few months due to unforseen circumstances, I’ve lived in Toronto ever since.
I always disliked Cambridge and when I moved to Toronto I definitely felt like I was moving up in the world, so I’m still trying to decide if moving back there is a step up or a step down or neither. Maybe it’s just a step.
The major difference between then and now is that my granny moved into my empty room a year or two ago so I no longer have my own space. It’s a pretty small house and the only space for me is in the unfinished basement which has been my family’s dumping ground for unwanted or underused things.
I have my work cut out for me.
But I am truly looking forward to it. I can become close friends with my little brother again. I can help my dad with all the things he’s too busy to do. I can garden, sit outdoors and still have privacy, sleep in silence and pitch black. I will be losing a lot by moving away from Toronto, but I’ll be gaining some too.
And then there’s that other nagging thought: that moving back home as an adult is somehow a failure on my part.
The truth is I’m swallowing my pride to move back home. I’m doing the smart thing. I have a lot of debt from school and my first post-grad job is awesome, but it’s not going to make me rich.
And in my family, I’m not the sort of child a parent has to survive. I will definitely accept any financial help my dad will offer to help pay down my debt, but I’m willing to do a lot of work in return.
At my dad’s house, I’m the boss – and not in a Pay my bills, Dad or Do my laundry, Dad sort of way. I take charge of the chores and the big projects and, if anything, I’m something of a bossy annoyance because I’m trying to get everyone to do more to make their own lives easier.
The future is still a bit foggy, though. How long will I live there? Will I be happy there? Will I end up dying to get out because I hate the town and I’m used to living on my own?
I honestly have no idea. But it’s an opportunity I’m going to take and hope for the best. Wish me luck.
Tags: Cambridge, moving, Toronto
My life in the Twilight Zone
March 17, 2009 | Filed under Randomness
Today was one of those absolutely bizarre days when nothing really bad happened to me, but I saw certain things that made me wonder if I was a character in some kind of sci-fi or psychological thriller.
I woke up late. Left the apartment late. OK, that’s not so stange, but I forgot my glasses and didn’t realize until I was already on the subway.
I was sitting across from a well-dressed, well-groomed man probably in his late 20s or early 30s. He looked professional, wearing a pea coat, dress pants and black leather dress shoes.
But he was laughing. He was alone, reading Metro and laughing hysterically. It started under his breath, then it grew into quiet snickers and then he was full-out laughing at whatever he was reading. I didn’t grab a copy of Metro today, but I can’t imagine what was so funny.
The weirdest thing was nobody else seemed to notice he was laughing. I found it hard to keep a straight face while watching him, yet no one else was even looking his way.
Then I got on the bus. I sat facing the back doors, which were open. Then this three-legged dog hops toward the bus and gets on ahead of her owner, who’s a young woman about the same age as me.
How often do you see a three-legged dog?
And then Clare and I went to the bank at lunch to pull out some cash for food, and there was a creepy doll sitting in the window which had either been left behind by a child or, judging by the water trapped inside her plastic body, found in a snowbank which had recently melted.
She was almost like a Barbie, but she was South Asian, wore a blue sari and definitely didn’t share Barbie’s horrifying body shape.
Almost out of instinct I picked it up and looked at her more closely (maybe because I wasn’t wearing my glasses).
I feel like somehow all of these things are tied together, but that it’s going to take me weeks or even months to figure out what it all means.
Probably not, but that’s how it happens in the movies anyway.
Tags: commute, observations
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