cocaine – Kateryna Barnes

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!

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.

Tag: cocaine

Goodbye, Radio Humber…

Rob Ford: “The Cat who came back”