The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper with a rich heritage dating back to 1844, launched a new era in its relationship with its readers today with the first in what will be a monthly "Ask the Editors" series of live on-line discussions with the senior editors of the newspaper and the Web site.
We're pleased that Edward Greenspon, editor-in-chief of The Globe, was our first guest. Mr. Greenspon, pictured here accepting the Michener Award for journalism from Governor General Michaelle Jean in April, was on-line earlier today, taking questions. The questions and answers are at the bottom of this page. Mr. Greenspon has been editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail since July, 2002.
He has an honours degree in journalism and political science from Carleton University and was a Commonwealth Scholar at the London School of Economics, earning a masters degree in politics and government with distinction in 1985.
Mr. Greenspon began his journalism career at The Lloydminster Times and also worked for The Regina Leader-Post and The Financial Post before joining The Globe in 1986 as a business reporter specializing in media industries. He has held various positions over the years, among them, European Correspondent, Managing Editor Report on Business, Executive News Editor, Founding Editor of globeandmail.com, and Ottawa Bureau Chief.
Since 2000, Mr. Greenspon has been closely involved in challenges facing all newspapers in an increasingly electronic world.
He is also co-author of Double Vision, The Inside Story of the Liberals in Power, for which he shared the 1996 Douglas Purvis Award for the best public policy book, and Searching for Certainty: Inside the New Canadian Mindset. He has also won the Hyman Solomon Award for Excellence in Public Policy Journalism.
Editor's Note: The same rules will apply to this live discussion as normally apply to the "reader comment" feature. Globeandmail.com editors will read and approve each comment/question. Not all comments/questions can be answered in the time available. Comments/questions will be checked for content only. Spelling and grammar errors will not be corrected. Comments/questions that include personal attacks, false or unsubstantiated allegations, vulgar language or libelous statements will be rejected. Preference will be given to those who ask questions under their full name, rather than pseudonyms.
Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Ed, thanks for joining us today. I know the readers of The Globe and globeandmail.com are looking forward to the opportunity to put questions to you. Let me start by asking you to outline how you see the newspaper and its Web site and the way it delivers its journalism evolving over the next few years.
Edward Greenspon: Many people in the newspaper industry seem to feel threatened by the Web. I'm not. I see it as a tremendous opportunity to tap into new story-telling techniques.
These are not rival platforms, but complementary ones. After all, journalism is about telling stories and, it seems to me, the more ways you can tell them, the better. Newspaper companies have advantages in this new world. We have journalistic cultures that put a premium on accuracy and reliability. We have people working for us who know how to find things out and interpret the meaning of events.
But the Web will not be merely an electronic version of the newspaper just as the paper will not be a print version of the Web. They each have their own attributes: the Web is immediate and interactive. It is without space limits and possesses tremendous computing power. It can display audio and video along with text. It can host a live discussion like this one. And it's still just an adolescent; so we're still only discovering its story-telling power.
David Ashton, Cloverdale, B.C.: Stephen Harper has claimed that the national press has been unfair towards him and that the national press has a strong liberal bias. Seeing as the editorial board of The Globe and Mail endorsed him and his party during the last election, what was the board's reaction to his recent comments. How do you think this spat can be resolved? Also, congratulations on your paper's four National Newspaper Awards.
Edward Greenspon: First off, thanks for the good wishes on last week's awards. As for Mr. Harper, we were a bit mystified by his comments. They betrayed an aggressive partisanship - if someone disagrees with me they must be an enemy - that doesn't serve any Prime Minister well.
Perhaps the Prime Minister's Office is working on some secret long-term strategy to try to marginalize the Ottawa-based press. If so, good luck. It won't work. But I'm more inclined to think these are rookie mistakes.
If the PMO's main interest is a more orderly process, I think a solution can be easily found. If the issue really is one of control, then it is going to be more difficult. Obviously, the media is going to be very reluctant to allow the government of the day to choose who can and, more importantly, cannot ask questions of the Prime Minister. And on what subjects these questions may be asked.
In our system of government, a Prime Minister is an extremely powerful person. I'm sure Mr. Harper understands in his heart of hearts the need for some checks and balances and the legitimate role in a democracy of an independent press.
Jim Whittier, Hamilton, Ont.: I do not regularly buy The Globe and Mail anymore because of the strong Liberal bias in recent years. Was the exceptional endorsement of the Conservatives in the January election an attempt to win back the many disgruntled readers like me?
Edward Greenspon: I'm glad that you are participating in our on-line discussions, Mr. Whittier. I'd like to convince you to return to the paper as well. Every day, I read e-mails from readers accusing us of some sort of bias or another. Often, they cancel each other out. So bias is in the eye of the beholder as much as the deliverer.
I wouldn't agree that we had a big-L Liberal bias to start with. Certainly, the Martin government didn't seem to think so. Certainly, those Liberals harmed by our leadership on the sponsorship scandal story, which The Globe first broke and pursued aggressively, didn't think so.
It is true that we endorsed the Liberals, reluctantly, in the 2004 election. In 1997, we endorsed the Conservatives. We are an independent paper in that regard, looking for the best government for the time and place. In the past election, we felt that it really was a time for change, that a tired party needed to be replaced for the good of democracy as well as the country.
Brian Dell, Ottawa: If I was a reporter who wrote a raw story, by the time it finally went to print, would it likely end up looking almost the same if I worked for the Toronto Star, Globe&Mail, National Post, Macleans, or The Canadian Press, or would it likely end up looking very different given the different editors involved?
Edward Greenspon: Even before we get to the editors, different reporters have different writing styles. And good editors want to work with the particular voice of a writer, but help make it stronger. So the tone and style of stories might well differ, although the facts of the story may be the same.
On news stories, we at The Globe are always trying to look forward - what is the context, what are the consequences, what's likely to come next. Asking those kinds of questions changes the story.
On feature stories, our editors work intimately with the writers both in the conception and execution of the stories. At the National Newspaper Awards in Halifax last week, feature writer Ian Brown, who won for a magnificent series on the evangelical Christian movement, went out of his way to thank Focus editors Jerry Johnson and Carl Wilson. Every good writer understands that without good editors with whom to debate the approach to the story and its structure, their journalism would be poorer. So editors do make a difference, a big one.
Diana Pereira, Toronto (a former globeandmail.com staffer): Hi Eddie, What is your opinion of the "citizen journalism" concept? Is it fair to call it "journalism?" Do you think it is a new kind of media that will evolve into one with its own audience, style and techniques? Will it ever compete with the traditional forms of media? Thanks.
Edward Greenspon: Nice to hear from you, Diana. Some Web sites are doing very interesting things with citizen journalism.
One paper in Norway has become a leader in posting photos and videos from readers, a practice that evolved accidentally with the tsunami. The Globe's coverage of last July's London bombing was aided immeasurably by photos from a cellphone taken by a Canadian stuck in an underground tunnel. A Web site in Korea has essentially licensed a huge group of citizen journalists, who must abide by a code of conduct in filing their reports.
I think that anyone reporting faithfully on facts and events is engaged in journalism.
I'm not sure that would extend to many blogs, which often constitute little more than a contemporary version of London's famous Speaker's Corner. They depend on journalism for their raw material, but they are often about feeding one's prejudices.
That said, I think all of these developments are welcome. Nobody owns the right of people to communicate with one another.
As this new world of information evolves, there will still be an important role for classic, professional journalism. People are going to want to know that the information they are receiving comes from an organization with the bona fides of The Globe and Mail. They are going to want full-time journalists digging out stories of importance for them. They are going to want editors to help them sort through the clutter for what is truly significant.
T. Melville, Peterborough, Ont.: Mr. Greenspon: First, let me say that I enjoy reading both the printed and on-line versions of The Globe and Mail very much. It is truly the best choice in Canada for news. My concern I was hoping you could address today is about the amount of advertising that one currently sees when reading news on theglobeandmail.com. I count no less than 6 distracting and annoying ads on the opening page alone. Furthermore, while exploring the site recently, a java ad ran some kind of video stream when I expected to get a news article. I hope this trend reverses and we see less of the ads and more of The Globe we all enjoy.
Edward Greenspon: I must say that sounds like a lot of ads, more than I am accustomed to seeing on the site.
But let me deal with the principle behind your question. As I'm sure you will accept, this is an expensive organization to run. We employ more journalists than almost any other newsroom in Canada.
And we have two ways of paying the freight: subscription revenue and advertising revenue. Now many people consider advertising as a form of content itself. Certainly, that goes for birth and death notices. Or announcements of major sales or car rebate plans and the like. Advertisers come to The Globe because they appreciate its credibility and are looking to reach an intelligent audience.
As for Web advertising, it, like the medium itself, is still in its infancy. It may be that over time designers will figure out better ways to present the ads, so that readers like yourself will find them less-distracting. It is an issue about which we are conscious and I expect we have not yet achieved the perfect balance.
But I hope when you come across those ads, you can do so in the spirit of "this is what finances our journalism."
Embee Kay, Toronto: Please tell me why The Globe and Mail lacked the courage to publish the innocuous Danish cartoons and would it be true to suggest it was entirely a fear of retribution by the offended parties? Also why is it that no one in the Canadian media will call Hamas and Fatah "terrorists" when they kill and main innocents.
Edward Greenspon: The decision about what to do about the Danish cartoons was a very difficult one for us. I wrote a column Self-censorship vs. editing on Feb. 11 about how and why we decided not to re-publish them, even while reporting aggressively about them and decrying in our editorials the unacceptable violence attributed to them.
We dispatched London correspondent Doug Saunders to Denmark. He tracked down the young Imam who first brought the attention of the Muslim world to these cartoons. Doug's story - and his later on-line discussion on the issue - showed how certain interested parties used the cartoons to further their political agendas.
But we chose not to publish the cartoons ourselves for a variety of reasons. For one, the editors of Jyllands-Posten had already expressed regret over their decision to publish. So publishing as an act of solidarity seemed hollow. And the timing was such that the offence that many mainstream Muslims were taking to the cartoons was already apparent by the time we could have published.
To us, it seemed more a gratuitious act of provocation than a statement about press freedom. It didn't seem a matter of publish and be damned, but one of "damn you" and publish.
I wouldn't say that was the easiest call in the world. Most decisions are not black and white, but some shade of gray. But editors make editorial decisions every day: We decide whether to show pictures of dead babies or body parts sprayed across a restaurant. We must balance the public's right to know and understand with a certain sensivitity to our readers. That's what we were trying to do in this instance.
As for the word terrorism, we do not fear it. Nor do we want to cheapen it through overuse. Here's what our Style Guide says:
Use this term to describe groups or individuals who use violence against the innocent public, or the threat of it, to achieve political ends. This would include such groups as Black September, certain other Palestinian factions, the Irish Republican Army, the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Japanese Red Army. The hijacking or bombing of planes, buses, public buildings etc. is terrorism, but for clarity we do not use this term to describe raids on military and police personnel or installations. They should simply be called guerrilla activity or some such, and government statements equating them with terrorism should be attributed. However, any group that commits terrorist acts, even if it also engages in guerrilla activity, may be called terrorist .
Peter Hambly, Hanover, Ont.: Mr. Greenspon, I very much prefer being able to read The Globe and Mail in hard copy over a cup of coffee in the morning. I worry, however, that the print version of all newspapers may sooner or later die a natural death in this increasingly electronic age with so many options available to access news & other stories. What's your view on this?
Edward Greenspon: Happy to hear you're enjoying the paper. I suspect that newspapers will outlast coffee.
The pattern of new media technologies is that the old ones survive, although sometimes they must adapt. Films survived the advent of television. So did radio. Newspapers have held their own in the face of a century of new communications media. But radio needed to adjust. It became more of an information medium and less of an entertainment one. George Burns and Gracie Allen and the other stars of the day moved from radio to TV.
Newspapers are already adapting, and I think it will make us better. By the time people pick up their paper in the morning, they already know the score of last night's game. So we have to add value to the news. This can be done by producing exclusive stories or through intelligent analysis or by beautiful presentation or any of a variety of means. I suspect as the years go on, we are going to be spending more time answering not just "what happened yesterday?" but "what does it mean?"
Richard and Juliet Janes, West Vancouver: We subscribe to the G&M and I am interested in how is your editorial policy set. Who decides the fine line between the conservative and liberal points of view? Do you have a strong editorial board, fierce owners or lots of backroom arguing? Tell us, please, what goes on behind the scenes to find the fine balance. Many thanks.
Edward Greenspon: One of the great pleasures of editing The Globe and Mail is the amazing support we get from the owners in terms of their belief in editorial independence. Unlike with some other publications, our owners keep their political beliefs to themselves and allow the journalists to do their job.
We have a fine editorial board composed of about half-a-dozen people. They spend their time thinking about and debating the great issues of the day. As Editor-in-chief, I am part of that board and write some editorials myself. But the paper has general predispositions that are known to all members of the board: It is fiscally conservative, socially liberal, a campaigner for human rights, a believer in enterprise and an advocate of an activist Canadian foreign policy. That still leaves a lot of room for some great arguments.
Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Thanks, Ed. I'm sorry but we're out of time. Any final thoughts?
Edward Greenspon: Thanks everyone for all the great questions. I guess that speaks well for citizen journalism. Our main marketing slogan for this site asks you to "Join the Conversation." We are determined that those of us at The Globe responsible for its content will be regular participants in this conversation as well. Till the next time . . .
Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: To our readers: As always, we simply did not have time to answer all the questions you submitted today. Thank you for your strong interest in this discussion. If you have any comments to make on this discussion, you can submit them here . If you have any comments on the format of these discussions, or want to suggest other guests for future "Ask the Editor" or other on-line discussions, please feel free to e-mail me your views