Why Queen’s Park Today might not be journalism (yet)
Some thoughts regarding what counts as journalism particularly as it relates to Queen’s Park Today, and subscription news that arrives by email…
Toronto Star still getting the facts wrong about Pulitzer Prize winning Canadians
The Toronto Star continues to be wrong about “Canada’s only Pulitzer-prize winning journalist”. Yes, Paul Watson won a Pulitzer. But Barbara Davidson has two…
“Today in Three Panels” with Dean Mang-Wooley
In which I talk to Dean, an illustrator, and the creator of Today in Three Panels, and we discuss the thin membrane between private and public moments…
Art and the politics machine: Imagine Our Parks
In which Sherwin reflects on how artists allow us to question what is politics, what is shared space, and what is community…
The Evil Woman trope
In which the Evil Women trope is discussed. Women are over-represented as evil villains, murderers and criminal masterminds …
Harper, Mulcair, Trudeau all members of anti-gay churches
The leaders of the three major parties in our federal election are all members of anti-gay churches. That is to say, simply, that they officially and explicitly believe that gay behaviour is sinful…
Reframe: nobody has a right to be served by journalism
When critically considering a given piece of journalism, we might ask ourselves, was it informative? was it engaging? was it helpful? So it’s rather sad that others, when faced with criticism, are inclined to ask simply, was it legal?
Cognitive bias and the backwards bicycle test
The backwards bicycle is a hilarious and damning insight into the challenges of understanding and resisting deeply ingrained ways of thinking and doing…
“She’s my Rushmore, Max!”: masculinity and vulnerability in Rushmore
Rushmore is from 1998, and it’s very white, but Sabrina and Sherwin think it has some redeeming features. It’s an interesting meditation on class and masculinity…
Yes, journalists are* responsible for their headlines
Unfortunately, headlines are, often enough, hyperbolic, clickbaity, misleading, having secondary content, racist, priming, inappropriate or ill-judged. Engaged readers will complain to the author. The author, enraged with righteous indignation, will bark, “I didn’t write the headline…
The GI Joe Fallacy: knowing is not half the battle
When it comes to the cognitive biases that shape human and nonhuman animal behaviour, knowing about the fallacy is not always enough …
What are your priors?
Maybe Bayes theorem can help right wing commentators better understand, and respect, the language of privilege …
Cop show Blue Bloods makes me cringe
Blue Bloods is a story of a cop family, the Reagans, in New York. And it’s a reasonably well written family drama that suffers from deeply racist, and sexist, narratives…
fb is for activists / fb is not for activists
We believe in the power of public discourse. And this can happen in person. And it can happen online…
Holy hell, Batman; I’ve been wrong
There are known-knowns. And then there’s all the fucked up arbitrary shit we believe, and impose on others, for no really good reason, like for example the use of quotation marks …
Three and a half things I love about The Globe and Mail
In which I expound on reasons why I ache for the central, most important, news publisher in the Canadian media landscape…
Underpants are political
People underestimate the importance, politically, of underpants. Here I explain why this can be said of, well, anything you want …