Media Magazine columns

This is a slightly updated version of the column that originally appeared in the Winter 2013 edition of Media magazine. Oh, how times have changed. When I first started working with data in 1995, there were really just a few tools available for what was then the emerging field of computer-assisted [...]

Originally published in Media magazine, Spring 2014. Twenty years ago, I set off to Ottawa from Brandon, Manitoba, for a weekend workshop on computer-assisted reporting at Ottawa’s Carleton University. It was taught by some of the folks from what was then a rather young National Institute for [...]

Originally published in Media magazine, Winter 2014. If the government of Stephen Harper is to be known for one signature achievement, it may well be the iron grip it has placed on the flow of information. Harper has taken control to new heights with his clampdowns on federal scientists and the [...]

This judgement, discussed in detail in a recent Media Magazine piece republished on J-Source and in the Media Magazine columns section of CARinCanada, dealt a blow to access to electronic data in Ontario, if computer programs have to be written to extract [...]

An expanded version of the column published in Media Magazine, Winter 2008 The courts in Ontario are busy taking away with one hand, and giving with the other. The cause of computer-assisted reporting in the province has been dealt a blow by a decision from the Divisional Court that essentially [...]

Originally published in Media Magazine, Winter 2007 It’s a standard complaint among software users that subsequent versions of programs are often just incremental improvements over the last. At times, it seems they’re nothing more than thinly-veiled attempts to slip more money from our [...]

Originally published in Media Magazine, Winter 2006  I recently had one of those dreadful experiences that sometimes befall Canadian  reporters talking CAR with an American colleague. Brad Heath of the  Detroit News and I were sharing beer and a sandwich before our presentation at the Crossing [...]

Originally published in Media Magazine, Fall 2004  The last time I wrote in this space I was about a case in Ontario’s Divisional Court with important implications for data access in Canada. A Toronto collection agency was fighting with MPAC, the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, [...]