Journalism

Cloudy Ways

Peter Stockland

February 11, 2019

Allegations of political interference in the prosecution of engineering giant SNC-Lavalin cast a shadow over the Trudeau cabinet’s ability to function in solidarity and confidence, argues Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland.

Well, I guess one thing Canadians can all agree on is that it’s not 2015 anymore.

Certainly, a certain Canadian prime minister knows it as a matter of fact. He doesn’t need to look at the calendar. He can just lick the serious wounds he suffered in o...

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Mere Journalism

Peter Stockland

February 8, 2019

The role of history is to remind us that the truth can only emerge from what has come before us. Where we were still matters, writes Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland, if only so we can more truly understand where we are.

My son is a professional historian. I, as he constantly reminded me during his undergraduate days, am a mere journalist.

I suspect, though, that his eagerness to pursue history as his life’s passion was nurtured by a childhood spent listening to the ...

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The Lost Art of Asking

Peter Stockland

October 2, 2018

Whatever happened to saying “I just don’t know”? Today Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland shares concerns, in light of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation debacle, about troubling changes to public dialogue and the growth of political tribalism. Words are used to impress others with a willingness to think as they think—rather than to express thought.

For the second time in two weeks, a veteran journalist friend has voiced to me deep disquiet about the observable damage being done by current media habits of mind.

It is not mere beaking off in the bar after the Daily Fishwrap has hit the streets, o...

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Post-Truth Possibilities

Peter Menzies

March 23, 2018

Reflecting on a paper he wrote almost 10 years ago ago as a Senior Fellow for Cardus, veteran Canadian journalist Peter Menzies concludes that trust is adrift on a sea of lies but, hey, it’s still better to light a candle than curse the dark.

A hint of new life was spotted this year within the list of nominees for this year’s National Newspaper Awards (NNA).

Toronto’s The Athletic, an online subscription-based service, received its first nomination, for Sunaya Sapurji in the Sports catego...

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Last Post For The Daily Bugle

Peter Stockland

February 26, 2018

Tomorrow’s federal budget will reportedly hand millions in tax subsidies to Canada’s newspaper companies. Convivium’s Peter Stockland contends that will be the day their music dies.

In Steven Spielberg’s newspaper nostalgia movie The Post, business side bosses confront Editor Ben Bradley with warnings the daily might cease to exist if it publishes the Pentagon Papers.

“If we don’t publish, the Washington Post w...

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The Justice of Unfairness

Raymond J. de Souza

February 1, 2018

Accusations of sexual misconduct might lead to seemingly unfair consequences but justice must err on the side of victims, Father Raymond de Souza argues.

The lightning-speed fall of Patrick Brown has no particular lessons for similar cases, but it does raise questions about how to deal with allegations of sexual misconduct.

Twenty years after President Bill Clinton – with the essential assistance of h...

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Rebel Engagement

Peter Stockland

September 5, 2017

Convivium publisher Peter Stockland knows the media world inside and out – knowledge he uses to dissect the latest bone-shaking controversy involving Ezra Levant and The Rebel, as well as the journalistic response to it.

Several years ago, a youthful pointed-prankster I know called one of the vile white supremacist Internet talk shows and feigned interest in the repulsive hosts to gain their confidence.

As they exuded rhapsodies about his great American patriotic int...

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Don’t Try This at Home

Rachel Feddema

August 1, 2017

From coliseums to Kardashians, watching questionable entertainment is nothing new. What is new is how little privacy we’ve come to expect from our stars – and ourselves.

Noise complaints don’t usually make international news, but a YouTuber by the name of Jake Paul has been making headlines this month for really ticking off his neighbours. The internet-famous 20-year-old consistently pulls stunts like burning furniture in h...

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The Rooted Wanderer

Josh Nadeau

August 1, 2017

The advent of digital nomadism, Josh Nadeau writes from experience, opens the door to home becoming pilgrimage, and roots becoming spirit to stretch instead of matter that restrains.

When one speaks of the omnipresent Millennial, a number of well-formed stereotypes come to mind. You have your vinyl-laden cultural connoisseurs, for example, or your selfie mavens (complete with seasonal latte) or experts in ‘90s nostalgia. While it’s ulti...

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Revisiting 'I Kissed Dating Goodbye'

Hannah Marazzi, with Joshua Harris, Jessica Van Der Wyngaard

July 21, 2017

Author Joshua Harris influenced how a generation of young Christians approached relationships. He and filmmaker Jessica Van Der Wyngaard talk to Convivium's Hannah Marazzi about their new documentary on whether Harris was too hasty in bidding dating adieu.

Convivium: Originally published in 2003, I Kissed Dating Goodbye became something of a generational “bible” for young evangelicals. Take us through your decision to publish it.

Joshua Harris:...

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Accounting for Khadr

Peter Stockland

July 20, 2017

Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland argues Canadians deserve better from the Khadr case than sketches of fact becoming caricatures of truth.

One remarkable aspect of the eruption over Omar Khadr was how it instantly became about one man standing in for our preferred images of good versus evil.

The debate over the federal government’s $10.5 million payment to him for breaches of his Charte...

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Renewing Faith in News

Tony Carnes

May 2, 2017

Practicing what Tony Carnes calls “sympathetic objectivity,” reporters with the Journey through NYC Religions project find stories in every church, synagogue, mosque and place of worship in New York City. His article below is part of Cardus’ Religion and the Good of the City publication released this week.

Practicing what Tony Carnes calls “sympathetic objectivity,” reporters with the Journey through NYC Religions project find stories in every church, synagogue, mosque and place of worship in New York City. His article below is part of Cardus’ ...

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The Industry of Ideas

Peter Stockland

March 7, 2017

Publisher Peter Stockland contests the idea that the age in which we dwell is one marked entirely by misinformation and the mediocre. Rather, he points us towards the rich tradition of several publications upon which to delve and enjoy a taste of "the good, the true, and the beautiful."

Most of us know the game where a simple message is passed among a number of people to test how unrecognizably shredded it is when it reaches the last person.

The game teaches, or reminds us, of the vagaries of individual witness.

It’s curious,...

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Launching Questions

Raymond J. de Souza

February 10, 2017

Editor in Chief Father Raymond J de Souza reflects on the launch of Convivium as an online publication and examines the matter of multiple answers, and questions.

When we planned our launch for the new digital Convivium at our Cardus office in Ottawa, we sought a conversation about how faith plays its part in various aspects of our common life: the arts, the press, politics and the relations between faiths t...

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Re-evaluating Russia

Raymond J. de Souza

January 12, 2017

Father Raymond J de Souza delivers an analysis of Prime Minister Trudeau's promotion of Chrystia Freeland to foreign minister and Russia's position on the world stage.

The Cold War rom-com starring Robin Williams was called Moscow on the Hudson. The main character, a circus musician, defects from the Soviet Union at the perfume counter of Bloomingdale’s. This week, the media circus was a few blocks away at Trump ...

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Elections are About the Electorate

Peter Stockland

September 28, 2016

For 90 minutes, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump engaged the world from video split screen boxes. They were impeded, it appeared, from seeing each other much less encountering anything resembling an electorate. Indeed, the “studio audience” present as off screen props were sternly admonished to keep their agreement to remain silent. As the essayist Gene Seymour points out in a finely written piece for the fall issue of Bookforum, the Trump-Clinton horror show is the predictable effect of a political media culture – or mediatized political culture – that began more than 50 years ago. In the ensuing half-century, Seymour argues, it has become obsessively compulsively disordered about reporting the minutiae of leaders’ lives and images. The offsetting syndrome has been a perverse journalistic amnesia that elections are actually about the electorate, and the electorate comprises millions of individual voters.

Viewers of this week’s presidential debate might well have wondered where the voters went.

For 90 minutes, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump engaged the world from video split screen boxes. They were impeded, it appeared, from seeing each other much l...

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Just Bring in the Skin

Peter Stockland

April 6, 2016

At the recent Broadbent Institute conference in Ottawa, progressive icon Gloria Steinem dropped a clanger that rates high among the fatuous pensées of this addled decade. “The power of the State,” Steinem opined, “stops at the skin.” Even in this moment of ...

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Battle Facts

Peter Stockland

December 5, 2014

Despite the reticence of military communicators to actually reveal much of anything about our participation in Operation Impact, a large truth emerged out of the flannel-mouthing and evading. Whatever else it may be, war is mystifyingly complex and paradoxically cooperative. Yet one tiny detail, a virtual footnote, allowed to emerge at yesterday's DND briefing was reference to a recent meeting at an air force base in Florida where 200 military planners representing 30-plus countries gathered to gauge and wage the war against the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL).

A Department of National Defence briefing on Canada's role in Iraq yesterday was almost comically short on fresh facts.

Despite the reticence of military communicators ...

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Inside the Islamic State

Doug Sikkema

August 14, 2014

Since ISIS is presumably allowing the filming to take place, you can be sure there are some tight controls over just what gets projected beyond the tenuous borders (a.k.a. fronts) of the newly resurrected Islamic Caliphate. So it's even more shocking that with such filters, there is almost no attempt to hide beheadings and crucifixions and gun-wielding children threatening death to all infidels outside Islam and apostates within it. Of course, ISIS is not likely going to cater to what they see as our "soft sensibilities," yet one still gets the distinct feeling that there's something not being said, something lurking between the lines.

If you haven't been following the five-part series The Islamic State put out by VICE News, you might consider it if you're interested in the shocking parade of stories coming out of Iraq and Syria. (You can get caught up ...

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3 Things to Consider About the Don Sterling Debacle

Doug Sikkema

May 2, 2014

Earlier this week Adam Silver dropped the full weight of his NBA-commissioner hammer down on Don Sterling for the hateful, racist comments he made in what Sterling most...

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Yada Yada Yada: What Was That?

Doug Sikkema

February 21, 2014

Every now and again someone scoops up a nice handful of mud-slinging rhetoric in order to splatter some earthy common sense all over the ivory tower. This past week it was Nicholas Kristof's turn. In his op-ed for the New York Times,...

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Journalistic Ambiguity Not Worth A Tweet

Peter Stockland

January 16, 2014

What remains is for the overnight clean-up crew to trash the media mischief that set everyone a-twitter in the first place. Screeches of commentary, howls of editorial indignation and loon calls of impending apocalypse have sounded because of reportage based entirely on a single, anonymous individual making one private request for religious accommodation that he then withdrew in order to accommodate the existing order.

Cardus Daily blogger Albertos Polizogopoulos did a majestic job yesterday of knocking the stuffing out of the pseudo-legal folderol surrounding York University's purported reasonable accommod...

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The Cardus Travelling Circus

Dan Postma

December 27, 2013

Sure, sure. Cardus believes cities can be much better than they are now. We believe a more cooperative labour environment would seriously raise the dignity and fairness of our workplaces. We think private education is good for everyone. Ideas matter when they get legs.

"How and where ideas have consequence is as much a matter of who uses them, as what they say." —Michael Van Pelt and Robert Joustra, in Comment (2008)...

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Rob Ford, the Media, and the Three Cs

Ray Pennings

November 29, 2013

Using my criteria, there is some evidence that Mayor Ford is a competent leader. However, the evidence is overwhelming that his character is wanting and his anti-institutional populism has never been my cup of tea. It seems clear that Mayor Ford should have resigned some time ago. His private-life behaviours morally disqualify him from earning the present respect of the citizenry and hence, will ultimately make him ineffective as a mayor. If he still believes political leadership remains an act of service, not an entitlement, then the right thing to do in the present cloud is to resign for the greater good.

If asked for advice in evaluating candidates for political leadership, I usually reference three Cs—competence, character, and conviction—as useful criteria. Of late, though, it would seem that crack, cocaine, and cannabis are the more common focus of polit...

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