Toronto Star Tent

 

Host:  Dan Smith is the editor of the Toronto Star’s weekend Insight sections and author of The Seventh Fire: The Struggle for Aboriginal Government (1993).
 

Click on a segment below to learn more. 

• 12:00 - 1:00 PM :: The Year In Politics at City Hall

  
  Join urban affairs bureau chief David Rider and urban affairs reporter Robyn Doolittle as they evaluate Toronto City Hall politics two years into Mayor Rob Ford’s administration.

  David Rider has been the Toronto Star’s urban affairs bureau chief since February 2010. Over more than 20 years as a journalist, Rider has been a reporter and editor at several Canadian newspapers, Reuters News Service and CBC online and radio, as well as an Asia-based freelancer and high school teacher.

  Robyn Doolittle covers city hall for the Toronto Star. She made the jump from the crime beat during the 2010 municipal election. You can follow her on twitter at: @robyndoolittle.

• 1:00 - 2:00 PM ::  Life of a Columnist

  
  The inside story on how newspaper columnists work. How do they are they different from a regular reporter? How do they come up with their ideas? The pros and cons of being a columnist are shared by city columnist Joe Fiorito and architecture critic and urban issues columnist Christopher Hume.

  Joe Fiorito is a city columnist for the Toronto Star newspaper. He won Canada’s National Newspaper Award for Columns in 1995. He is the author of five books, including a best-selling memoir, The Closer We Are To Dying. His novel, The Song Beneath The Ice, won the City of Toronto Book Award in 2003. His most recent book, Union Station is an appreciation of the City of Toronto, based on his newspaper column.

  Christopher Hume is the architecture critic and urban issues columnist of the Toronto Star. In 2009, he won a National Newspaper Award, Canada’s highest award in print journalism, for his columns about architecture and urban affairs. Since the 1980s, when he began working for the Star, he has received five NNA nominations. He appears frequently on radio and television as a commentator on city issues.

• 2:00 - 3:00 PM :: Bleeding Blue: The year ahead for the Toronto Maple Leafs

  
  Hockey columnist Damien Cox and sports reporter Kevin McGran from the Toronto Star’s Sports section discuss the Toronto Maple Leafs and the coming NHL hockey season.

  Damien Cox has covered hockey around the world for a quarter-century, and the ups and downs of the Maple Leafs for just as long. He's been to four Winter Olympics and also covered baseball, football and basketball. He's written books on the '67 Leafs, Martin Brodeur and Alexander Ovechkin, is a featured commentator on Sportsnet and publishes his blog, called The Spin, four times weekly on anything that tickles his fancy, and has more than 28,000 followers on his Twitter account @damospin. He's been with the Toronto Star since 1985.

  Kevin McGran has covered the hockey and the NHL for the Toronto Star since 2006, focusing on the Toronto Maple Leafs. He's covered the 2010 Winter Olympics, seven Stanley Cups, one world championship and led the local and national coverage of the 2009 bankruptcy filing of the Phoenix Coyotes. McGran has been a sports writer for most of his career, starting with The Canadian Press in 1989.

• 3:00 - 4:00 PM :: The Future of News

  
  Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank, Ryerson University School of Journalism associate chair Suanne Kelman and Toronto Star Vice President of Digital Media Ali Rahnema explore how newspapers, television networks and new media institutions are responding to the deepening digital era.

  John Cruickshank is the Publisher of the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper, and President of Star Media Group. He is the 9th publisher in the newspaper’s 120-year history.  John has enjoyed a distinguished career in newspapers and television in both Canada and the United States, including stints at CBC News, Chicago Sun-Times, The Globe and Mail and The Vancouver Sun.

  Suanne Kelman is the Associate Chair of the School of Journalism at Ryerson University, having served (for the second time) as Acting Chair last year. She’s been with the School since 1993, teaching broadcast – mostly radio. Suanne has worked for the CBC, at the radio show Sunday Morning and then at The Journal, and also done freelance work for Ideas and other programs over the years, as well as a lot of work for magazines and newspapers (including the Toronto Star). In her spare time, she lectures on fiction to book clubs. She tries not to tweet.

  Ali Rahnema is the Vice President of Digital Media for Star Media Group (thestar.com, toronto.com, wheels.ca, etc), with nearly two decades of experience in print and digital media in Canada and Europe, working as a senior executive for Torstar Corporation, The Globe and Mail and Bell Canada, The Dublin-based Irish Times Group and the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers, as well as co-founding themarknews.com.