CASE STUDY 1: Journalism | 1991 - 1997 Images
Expertise: Investigative journalism, editing, start-ups, content and magazine design, digital content, digital strategy.
Locations: Toronto and Guelph, Ontario, Canada and London, UK 1991 to 1997
Investigative Journalist, Editor, Reporter, Writer: David South
In the 1990s, it was often the case the best journalism and the best investigative journalism in Canada could be found in the country's alternative media.
A small sample of published stories with links is below:
Investigative Journalism
Aid Organization Gives Overseas Hungry Diet Food
Artists Fear Indifference From Megacity
Casino Calamity: One Gambling Guru Thinks The Province Is Going Too Far
False Data Makes Border Screening Corruptible
New Student Group Seeks 30 Percent Tuition Hike
Peaceniks Questioning Air-raid Strategy in Bosnia
Somali Killings Reveal Ugly Side of Elite Regiment
Top Reporters Offer Military Media Handling Tips
Will the Megacity Mean Mega-privatization?
Will Niagara Falls Become the Northern Vegas?
This story was ahead of its time: revealing the introduction of a new computer border screening system, it found the system was open to abuse with false data being inputed.
In this story first, it revealed some of the country's top journalists were helping the military to better tell its story. This was in the wake of the First Gulf War and the 1990 Oka Crisis.
Health and Medical
In a context of healthcare funding cutbacks and an ongoing wider austerity crisis in Canada, this piece for Canadian Living magazine - one of the country's top magazines - discovered there were many innovative models that could both improve health outcomes and save precious resources.
This feature for The Toronto Star found a quiet curriculum revolution in the country's medical schools was underway to improve doctors' bedside manners.
Changing Health Care Careers a Sign of the Times
Critics Blast Government Long-Term Care Reforms
Cut Services to Elderly, Says Doctors’ Survey … But Leave Our Salaries Alone!
Feds Call for AIDS, Blood System Inquiry: Some Seniors Infected
Government Urged to Limit Free Drugs for Seniors
Health Care on the Cutting Block: Ministry Hopes for Efficiency with Search and Destroy Tactics
New Legislation Will Allow Control of Medical Treatment
New Seniors’ Group Boosts ‘Grey Power’: Grey Panthers Chapter Opens with a Canadian Touch
Philippine Conference Tackles Asia's AIDS Crisis
Private Firms Thrive as NDP ‘Reinvents’ Medicare
Psychiatric Care Lacking for Institutionalised Seniors
Seniors Falling Through the Health Care Cost Cracks
Specialists Want Cancer Treatments Universally Available
Take Two Big Doses of Humanity and Call Me in the Morning
Taking Medicine to the People: Four Innovators In Community Health
US Health Care Businesses Chasing Profits into Canada
Magazine Stories and Features
The Ethics of Soup: Grading Supermarket Shelves - For Profit
Freaky - The 70s Meant Something
Land of the Free, Home of the Bored
Oasis Has Arrogance, A Pile of Attitude and the Best Album of 1994
Porn Again: More Ways to Get Off, But Should We Regulate the Sex Industry?
Redneck Renaissance: A Coterie of Journalists Turn Cracker Culture into a Leisure Lifestyle
Swing Shift: Sexual Liberation is Back in Style
Media
The 1990s were a turbulent time for the wider media, as expanding channels and the arrival of the Internet shook up old formats.
The Big Dump: CP's New Operational Plan Leaves Critics with Questions Aplenty
Channel Regulation: Swedes will Fight Children’s Advertising all the Way
Do TV Porn Channels Degrade and Humiliate?
Is the UK Rushing to Watch TV Porn?
Playboy ‘is not for sad and lonely single men’
TV's Moral Guide in Question - Again
UK Laws on Satellite Porn Among Toughest in Europe
Undercurrents: A Cancellation at CBC TV Raises a Host of Issues for the Future
Special Reports
United Nations
Starting from Scratch: The Challenge of Transition
Freedom of Expression: Introducing Investigative Journalism to Local Media in Mongolia
State of Decay: Haiti Turns to Free-market Economics and the UN to Save Itself
Traffic Signs Bring Safety to the Streets
Magazines
Watch Magazine
Id Magazine
Newsletters
Prior to widespread access to the Internet and mobile communications, newsletters were the best and often only way to reach a niche audience. Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine
New Media Markets
Screen Finance
Blue Sky Bulletin
Other Resources
Mongolia's first online magazine, Ger pioneered online journalism in the country, winning many awards and a global audience of readers.
In Their Own Words: Selected Writings by Journalists on Mongolia, 1997-1999 (ISBN 99929-5-043-9)
Cover of Mongolian Rock and Pop book, published in 1999.
Mongolian Rock and Pop Book (ISBN 99929-5-018-8)
Cover of Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia, published in 2000. It documented a turbulent time in the country.
Wild East: Travels in the New Mongolia (ISBN 1-55022-434-4)
Timeline
1991: Begin career as investigative journalist and editor.
1992: Work as a Medical and Health Reporter for Today’s Seniors and as an Investigative Journalist for Now Magazine. Work as Editor and Writer for the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine’s newsletter.
1993: Published in many publications, including The Toronto Star, Canadian Living and This Magazine.
1994: Work on re-launch of Watch Magazine 2.0 and its expansion (see Case Study 2).
1995: Work as reporter for two Financial Times newsletters in London, UK.
1996: Work on re-launch of Watch Magazine 3.0 and its expansion. Begin work at Id Magazine as its Features Editor (see Case Study 3).
1997: Begin two-year assignment with the United Nations mission in Mongolia (see Case Study 4).
Testimonials
“David South … proved himself to be a penetrating, thorough and hard-working journalist. He produced a lot of very good stories …” Neil McCartney, Editor, Screen Finance, Telecom Markets and Mobile Communications, London, UK
Reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti for Id Magazine in 1996. Former colleague from Canada's Id Magazine, photographer Phillip Smith (now an epic web guru/Digital Product Developer based in Palo Alto, California), was going through his archive of photo journalism and dug up these two photographs from our Haiti assignment in 1996.