Every year the Ryerson J-school puts out two issues of this review of journalism in Canada with, predictably, mixed results. Basically, it’s a magazine with an identity problem because it’s just not sure who it wants to be for. Is it a testing ground for J-school students to try out their main- stream feature writing talents in the hopes that they will be noticed by Saturday Night? (Many campus newspapers in Canada have slowly evolved to being nothing more than similar ciphers).Or is it a hard-hitting magazine of criticism aimed at shaking up the establishment and challenging journalistic assumptions? What we do know is the Review’s weird mixture of sarcasm, People-style interviews and industry specific commentaries (ie. articles that would only be of interest to journalists working in Toronto I mean oops Canada) makes for a fun if uneven read. By the time you reach, say, the last funny article on The Feng Shui (ancient art of object placement) of the National’s referendum coverage set, you decide there’s way more good than bad in this issue of the review, but the bad stuff seems to linger longer, like a bitter taste, while the good stuff just washes away in the saliva of prose these young writers spit out on the page.
magazine / Summer 1996, 80 pages / publisher: The Ryerson School of Journalism / main creator: Allan Britnell (editor) / $3.95, $16.50 for three years / 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3