barnfeline In the Newsroom, News

Goodbye, Radio Humber…

After 35 live @Humber shows, one evening special, numerous newscasts and many more adventures, my tenure in Advanced Radio is over. As a recap of the semester, here’s some of the bigger moments.

Most fun story: Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary

Best Chase:  Toronto City Councillor James Pasternak, Ward 10, after Mayor Ford admitted earlier that day to using cocaine

Hardest story to cover: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Most nostalgic interview: Dave Feschuk on his and Michael Grange’s new book on Steve Nash

Most moving interview (tie): White Ribbon with Jeff Perara NWAC President Michele Audette after UN Special Rapporteur’s visit Remembrance Day interview with Anna Rijk (Dutch Embassy in Ottawa)

Best Indigenous Word of the Day:

Best reaction from my classmates:

Radio was fun, but I’m looking forward to TV next semester!

barnfeline In the Newsroom, News

Funeral of Constable John Zivcic: #RIP9284

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair speaking to officers in the processional at Const. John Zivcic's funeral. Photo by Kateryna Barnes
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair speaking to officers in the processional at Const. John Zivcic’s funeral. Photo by Kateryna Barnes

It was cold today, but thousands of officers still lined up in a processional and many marched to the Toronto Congress Centre for the funeral of Const. John Zivcic.

Zivcic was killed after his cruiser struck another car. He was 34 years old.

The funeral brought out all the dignitaries, including Chief Bill Blair, Premier Kathleen Wynne and Mayor Rob Ford.

Lynda Webb, a retired nurse came from Pickering, Ont. for the funeral, despite not knowing Zivcic or his family.

“My heart breaks for this young man; I just want to say thank you to all of the men and women in uniform.”

A couple of the officers from 14 Division I sat next to said it’s a hard part of their job to attend police funerals.

I called into @Humber, after running to my car (quieter) and nearly giving myself an asthma attack for this story.

barnfeline In the Newsroom, News

Goodbye, Advanced Online

For my final story in Advanced Online, I was very lucky– I got to host Humber News Express. HNE is a more casual and quick dose of the top headlines of the day. I was responsible for choosing the stories, writing them, lining them up, hosting, and cutting the video. I did have help from my friend, Justin Vasko, who was a fantastic videographer and human teleprompter.

Pro tip: make sure your human teleprompter holds your sheets of paper *just below* the camera lens. Or make sure you have a real teleprompter. Either way, I’m still pretty happy with how it turned out, -17 C and all.

For two minutes of Friday’s top headlines, check it out:

barnfeline In the Newsroom, News

Rob Ford: “The Cat who came back”

Rob Ford Nov. 11 2012
Rob Ford, Remembrance Day 2012, Old City Hall. Photo by Kateryna Barnes

There isn’t much commentary I can add to the Rob Ford saga– many Toronto-based columnists are owning this topic.

This saga is one that every newsroom is fascinated with and no one can’t look away.

In our newsroom, I was the one who saw the news break on Twitter. I was covering social media for my colleague who didn’t show up– this was the only reason why I was watching Twitter while @Humber was broadcasting. As soon as I shouted out “CBC NEWS HAS TWEETED THAT ROB FORD HAS ADMITTED TO SMOKING CRACK COCAINE!” our newsroom fell deadly quiet for a minute, then turned into sheer panic. Some quick rewriting of a Canadian Press wire and we threw it into our line-up for our host. Afterwards, we were ripping clips and running whole new segments in our show.

As a team, we killed it on our noon show on Tuesday. Judy Charles, our professor, informed us that we would have to do another show at 6 pm (when our show is normally a rerun). Five of us stayed until the bitter end: Charlotte Anketell (reporter/writer), Justin Vasko (writer/news reader), Hugh Smith (reporter/host), myself (reporter/studio director/producer) and Judy (professor/everything else).

We managed to get some great interviews, but one that took a lot of time on the phone, even if it meant I accidentally dialed a lot of fax numbers was a City Councillor: James Pasternak, Ward 10 York Centre.

I expect that everyone in news will be keeping a close eye on this story, as it keeps changing. Ford is like the cat that keeps coming back.

barnfeline In the Newsroom, News

Let’s talk about sports heroes…

Growing up in a mildly sports-crazed family, it’s only natural that my heroes were athletes.

Basketball players in particular. My dad coached basketball and I grew up loving and playing the game. It also might have helped that our family’s hockey team was playing less than optimally during the 90s, so we turned to our team, the Chicago Bulls, for hope.

And were we ever lucky to have Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan.

As I got a older, another player stood out to me. He was a point guard, like I was. He could sink a free throw with ease, drop a dime without seeing the shooter and he outfoxed just about any player on the court. I loved his play so much that I chose to wear his #13 for my varsity jersey.

 

Yeah, I love this unlikely star of professional basketball. It’s no wonder that I wanted to learn more about the new biography “Steve Nash: The Unlikely Ascent of a Superstar“, released today and penned by Toronto Star sports writer Dave Feschuk and Sportsnet reporter Michael Grange. I was able to have a quick chat with Feschuk for @Humber on the book and Steve Nash, and just in time for the start of the NBA regular season. Take a listen and find out why this book is next on my reading list.

barnfeline In the Newsroom, News

Looking back through the events: Data journalism and the Senate scandal

It’s been a while since I’ve had so many numbers, dates, bits of info and more to confirm. The story that Kiah Welsh and I worked on for Humber News Online needed it– a timeline of events of the Senate expense scandal.

At this point, there is a lot of the story that is still missing. Probably only the RCMP and parties directly involved have all the details, but we tried our best to make sense of what happened and is still happening.

We made a few editorial decisions. We decided to focus on the current major players– the three Conservative senators: Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau. While there are Liberal senators with questionable expenses, the stories don’t seem to be as tightly intertwined as these three. We also wanted lots of visuals– pictures, tweets, videos, reports and text galore.

To see the timeline, click here.

barnfeline In the Newsroom, News

John Greyson and Tarek Loubani return to Canada

John and Tarek
Photo credit Kateryna Barnes

It’s 11:00 pm and I just finished posting all coverage of the return of John Greyson and Tarek Loubani to Canada. After being detained in a Cairo prison since Aug. 16 without charges, the two were finally allowed to leave Egypt.

It was such a fantastic story to cover and I’m so glad I was there with Andrea Fernandes and Espe Currie— we made a great team!

Check out our article here!  Raw news conference video, photos, text and more.