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Under Attack

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A woman in distress reading social media comments

Don’t Read the Comments

“Okay, ma’am,” a crackling voice interrupts the caller. “Ma’am, can I talk?” Minutes into her report to the Ottawa Police hotline, journalist Rachel Gilmore feels exasperated. She is reporting a violent email sent to The Hill Times’ Erica Ifill—a name-dropping salad of verbal abuse such as “woke,” “cunt,” and racial slurs—including death threats.
A man looks out at a sinking ship while on a rowboat

Lost at Sea

August 26, 2024, was one of the worst days of Pam Sword’s working life. The paper where she had been the web editor for over a decade—The Chronicle Herald, Halifax’s 150-year-old daily broadsheet—had been sold to Postmedia, Canada’s national news behemoth.
Blurry image of a police officer looking into the camera.

Barred from the Story

If Brandi Morin had to place a bet on where she might get arrested, her home Treaty Six territories in Edmonton, Alberta, wouldn’t even make her shortlist. The moment the Indigenous journalist later described as “one of the darkest chapters” of her career began while Morin was covering an Indigenous-led homeless encampment on a cold, harsh winter night.
A robot looms over a scared man and his keyboard

Paranoid of the Android

It’s early October 2024, and the Toronto Star’s conference room is abuzz with anticipation. Stephen Ghigliotty, a marketing strategist with expertise in artificial intelligence, is preparing to host a five-hour learning session on the impacts of AI on journalism. The space is warm and welcoming, but beneath the surface lurks an undeniable undercurrent of fear. Ghigliotty can feel it when he steps into the conference room.

Baseball, Birding, and Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Looking back, where did I get the audacity to do that?” asks Emma McIntosh, reflecting on her early days as a journalist in high school. “There was this quote that went along the lines of ‘Mr. V. declined to comment, stating a desire to keep his professional life and community work separate.’ I was crazy.”
Bar graph describing the gender and race identities of the Review of Journalism compared to Canadian Newsrooms. 65% of RoJ journalists identify as marginalized in their gender identity compared to 53% in Canadian Newsrooms. 48% of RoJ journalists identify as racialized compared to 25% in Canadian Newsrooms.

2025 Diversity Report

The Review of Journalism strives to create a workplace and publication that reflects the diversity of both our readers and the stories we tell. Every year, our masthead publishes an anonymous breakdown of the race, gender, sexuality, and disability representation of our staff. This annual summary allows us to track progress over time and compare our newsroom’s diversity with other Canadian journalism organizations, as tracked by the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ).