INEXPERIENCE CAN BE A GOOD THING (Published on September 9, 2009.)
This was my first editorial. It got generous praise from my editors and from two University of Toronto Mississauga (henceforth referred to as UTM) officials. It’s also my favourite editorial. Not because of the praise, but because, I suppose, writers tend to be fond of their first baby.
When renowned graphic designer Paula Scher was asked to incorporate elements of graphic design into the architecture of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Ballet—a job that neither she nor anyone she knew had ever done before—she started by revisiting these locations. “Why can’t the signage be on the floor?” she asked. “New Yorkers look at their feet.”
Ms. Scher later found out that the actors and actresses who worked in these institutions took their cues from the floor, and so her idea, far from being novel eye-candy, evolved into a system that many thought innovative as well as useful. The best way to accomplish serious design, concluded Ms. Scher, is to be totally and completely unqualified for the job.
To be sure, Ms. Scher did not mean to herald ignorance in and of itself. Neither did she mean to brush qualifications aside. She merely suggested that those who are new to the job—rookies, if you will—tend to have less restricted ways of thinking. They are more likely to think outside the box, to challenge conventions, to look at the floor and ask themselves a question that old hands never thought of asking: Why can’t the signage be on the floor?
The Medium this year is composed mostly of new staff. Amir Ahmed, our features editor, only began writing for us last year. Sports editor Andrew Tysiak, though inexperienced is as enthusiastic and hardworking. Su Lyn Liew may be new to copy editing for a newspaper, but her ability to prune prose and give it force and direction is unparalleled by some of her older and seasoned colleagues. And Saaliha Malik, formerly with the UTMSU, had never written a newspaper article before, but has already demonstrated a nose for news and the hunger to chase after it.
As for myself, Im perhaps the youngest person to ever assume the editor-in-chief position —alas, not that young in terms of age, but in terms of years worked at The Medium. Which, in my case, means exactly one.
I do not mean to discredit experience. Experience matters. Experience saves your ass. More importantly, experience tells you what other starry-eyed idealists have tried but didn’t succeed with.
Ali Kasim, my former editor-in-chief, current mentor and eternal friend, was an experienced writer and editor who improved this paper in ways I can only hope to emulate. Michael Di Leo, veteran arts and entertainment editor, puts his experience to good use—that is, without allowing it to kill his originality.
And Matthew Filipowich, composite editor, photo editor and webmaster, has been doing this stuff for years. His enthusiasm and creativity are second to none. These guys are in no danger of becoming fossils.
Some of you may suspect that I’m only trying to protect myself against any future screw-ups. “Oh,” I could say, “I was new. I didn’t know better.”
Others may conclude that in quoting a prestigious designer, and thereby comparing my team and myself to her, I’ve set too high a standard for us—that I will have dug our efforts into a hole the size of one of the ditches that now litter our construction-mad campus.
Perhaps.
I will also say that people don’t fail because they are inexperienced —at least not always. They fail because they are not willing to learn. People don’t succeed because they are experienced; they succeed because they work hard and because they are passionate and because they try to look where no one looked before. I can’t promise that we will become a pioneer campus newspaper, or even a better newspaper. But I can promise we will try.
We have already done a few new things. We’ve recently launched a Twitter account, @mediumonline, where we will post links to our articles. We’ve revamped our website by adding RSS feeds, a tip line section and a new multimedia content section where we will post pictures that didn’t make it to the printer. UTM students and staff are encouraged to submit their campus-related photos and videos to this new section (to my fellow iPhone users: fire ‘em up).
Lastly, we are also enhancing our news section by adding a column that will feature UTM– and U of T-related news snippets. And we will attempt to focus more on what happens within our campus. In this issue, we feature a map of the new construction sites, an article about said construction and another about the well-known, yet underused RAWC.
Overdue changes, perhaps, and even elementary ones. But other newspapers are still not doing any of it. Newspapers whose teams perhaps stopped looking.
We thereby hope to address the concern that furrows the brow of many a newspaperman: how to keep our readership. Given that we The Medium rely on students levies instead of income generated by sales, we may not have to worry about our finances, but thats not an excuse to run from the changes that afflict the industry. Steady funds or not, we must modernize.
In doing so, I hope that the many students who have never read these pages —students from places as diverse as Austria and Australia, Chile and China, and with interests as diverse as economics and biology —will decide to pick up every issue. In it, they will learn more about the one thing that unites us all: the University of Toronto Mississauga.
IT’S OUT JOB. (Published on September 29, 2009.)
My then-news editor and current editor-in-chief (EIC) Saaliha Malik loved this one. She even linked to it on her Facebook page, meaning it, I suspect, as a conciliatory sign to students who believed our paper was hellbent against them. Still, her reaction was most enthusiastic about my opening line. “You quoted Coco Chanel?!” gasped Saaliha. Yeah, I’m afraid I did.
Coco Chanel once said, “Friends, there are no friends.” She was probably referring to the fashion world, or perhaps about life in general. But from what I’ve seen at The Medium in the last year and half, she might as well have been talking about journalism.
Journalists have no friends. Neither do newspapers. We make friends, often, but the relationships tend to be short-lived. We also have quite a few enemies, as well as lots of people who are mildly displeased with us and a bit wary too.
Yet they all read our pages. This, ultimately, is what matters.
From the beginning of the academic year, the UTM administration has advertised its efforts to prepare against the swine flu. It put up ads throughout the campus and posted guidelines on its website. We talked about it in this paper and splashed it across the cover page, which I can only assume made everyone happy. Students were better informed, UTM appeared ready and caring, and we looked, well, informed and caring.
Contrast this with what is happening now. UTM has modified the library hours, killing them, if you will, thus turning us into the only U of T campus without a 24/5 library. Yet none of the students I spoke with had a clue about this. Could it be because no ads were placed on campus? Could it be because the changes were only mentioned, ever so discreetly, on the library website?
I can only presume, now that we are bringing this out into the open, onto our cover page, our website and our Twitter stream, that UTM officials won’t be happy with us.
Something similar happened last week with members of a certain UTM academic society, one that we have had certain scuffles with in the past. As I stood at the Get Experience Fair, flanked by two of our editors, two guys with ties and a girl in a dress snatched the latest issue of The Medium from our table and proceeded to read the article on page three, jabbing their finger at it and muttering things like, “That’s not true.” They never looked at my editors or me in the eye. They didn’t engage in a respectful debate. They just blabbered for a good two or three minutes before shaking their head in disgust and pacing away.
I thought the article that so angered them was pretty fair. Something tells me they didn’t agree.
To the UTM officials who might not be ecstatic with us, to those two guys with ties and to everyone whom we will upset this year, I say this: it’s our job.
It’s our job to talk about the things that happen on campus. Some things will make people look good. Others will make people look bad. More to the point, it will make the same people look good today and bad tomorrow. Or the other way around.
Our critics will say that we have an agenda and that we’re biased. If what they mean is that we have an opinion, they are right. The issue of objectivity in journalism is a tricky one. I have always maintained that journalists should be aware of their biases so that they can keep an eye on it. Pretending not have a bias will only result in it sticking its head out somewhere between the lines.
I prefer the concept of fairness. We strive to be fair, and that means being balanced. We strive to present both sides of an argument, to obtain quotes from all, to hear everyone involved before we write the story. That’s what we tried to do in the last issue, the one with the story that two guys with their ties didn’t like, and in this one when we covered the new library hours. Sure, we interviewed students who were upset and we interviewed UTMSU President Joey Santiago. But we also interviewed library representatives.
To be sure, I appreciate why some people wouldn’t want some things to be advertised or exposed. We at The Medium don’t walk around talking about our typos, of which there have been more than an accept able amount in the last two issues.
In the end it comes down to this: we have to write the story. Someone alerts us about underage drinking? We have to cover it. The library closes down earlier than most students find convenient? We have to cover it. The university prepares itself for swine flu? Guess what we have to do.
We won’t always please everyone, but then neither should we. For if we did, if we worried about the feelings of everyone, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs.
TAKING A CLOSER LOOK. (Published on October 19, 2009.)
I always thought it a shame many students didn’t seem to appreciate staff at their universities— from cleaning employees to professors. Here’s my little homage to them. The staff, not the students.
This newspaper aims to inform us about UTM. It’s right there in the nameplate —“ The Voice of University of Toronto Mississauga. That, more than ever before, is our focus this year. We’ve concentrated on campus news as opposed to national and international news. We’ve written about the RAWC.
We’ve published student prose, featured ECSPERT and the CCIT Council, and lent many students a space in these pages – just look at the amount of contributors in every weeks masthead.
We have, in other words, written plenty about students, for students. Unfortunately, thats not all we have done. Forgetting that UTM is not just about students, we’ve treated UTM staff as if it were composed of faceless, robotic bureaucrats. They are most certainly not.
Theres Douglas Leeies at the Registrars office, who helps student after student with a patience and generosity that never fail to amaze me. Theres that polite grinning lady serving coffee in the CCT building, who once told me that I had something to do with horses in a previous life. Theres that gentleman of a shuttle bus driver – I wont mention his name – whom I overheard last week on the cell phone. He was talking to someone, possibly a relative who was ill, and his voice was full of concern. Yet many students who climbed onto that bus ignored his greeting. And theres Stephanie Sullivan with her charming accent out of a British movie, who accommodates professional writing students requests with ease, perfect manners and effectiveness.
Then, there are professors. Some, perhaps many, are boring. Others are just plain awful. (A certain Philosophy professor in the North Building was so rude and mean and produced such unfair tests that many of us dreaded that class, despite being seasoned third and fourth-year veterans.)
On the other hand, many UTM professors are excellent. Three of them changed my life. Others made me think, made me want to learn beyond what they offered in class. They all made me a better man.
I cant be alone in this. I know there must be students out there who admire and respect some of their professors. Yet we have never interviewed any of them at The Medium. Or rather, we never had. Not until two weeks ago, when we sat down with one professor to discuss his likes and dislikes, about what he wants to instil in students, about Dexter and Nazi Germany and jiu jitsu and how to teach kids to love broccoli.
There are quite a few reasons why we never did it before. First, we never thought it’d be possible to persuade a professor to share personal beliefs. Second, professors seem reluctant to approach us, let alone write for us—I still remember how surprised we were last year when Philosophy Professor Paul Franks sent a letter to the then-editor. (By the way, Professor Franks, thank you.)
I’ve often scratched my head, wondering what the reasons were behind this reluctance. A general bias against media? A mistrust toward a student (read, amateur) newspaper? A fear that students will take too many liberties with whichever professor decided to step forward into the spotlight?
Only one way to find out. This is why I sat at my desk two weeks ago and wrote Professor Dax Urbszat a lengthy email, one in which I tried to anticipate every possible reason why he might say no to an interview and countered it with assurances that wed be professional and wouldn’t compromise his private life and on and on.
His quick reply? A simple, “Why not?”
I first met Professor Urbszat in my first year, when I took PSY100. The course was fascinating, not just because the subject itself was fascinating, but because he made it alive and relevant and fun. So much fun, in fact, that I enrolled in a psychology as a major the next year.
My admiration and gratitude are not uncommon. Professor Urbszat is possibly the only professor ever to have a student-created Facebook group pronouncing him a superhero. (Seriously.) Ask any psychology student about him and they will tell you they love him. They will tell you he’s great. They will tell you he teaches in a practical way (he likes the term holistic ) and that he tries to make you see how you can apply it in your day-to-day life.
As for the interview itself, we decided to lay it out in a novel way, eliminating the questions themselves. Typical Q & A formats tend to bore readers. This way, I hope, will seem more interesting.
So, before you turn to page 8, let me ask you this: do you know any professor or cleaning person or UTM official or TA who, in your opinion, is doing an outstanding job? If you do, then let us know. We will do our best to profile him or her, much like we did with Professor Urbszat, so that we can all learn about staff and professors as human beings, about what drives them to come to work every day and make a difference.
Here’s hoping that this will be the first of a long series of professor profiles.
YOU ASKED FOR IT. (Published on October 26, 2009.)
It’s always bothered me when people cry once something that they never use is taken away from them.
The Library (I can never bring myself to call it the Hazel McCallion Academic Learning Centre) announced this Friday that it would resume the 24/5 schedule that it abandoned less than a month ago (see the article on the cover page). We can once again study in the library as late as we wish. (Not that I or anyone I know ever stayed there after 8 p.m.) More importantly, we don’t have to bow our heads in embarrassment when UTSC or St. George students boast about the hours of their libraries.
So, we got what we wanted. We’ll never know whether we got thanks to the UTMSU campaign, or The Medium’s coverage, or the students who told the Principal during the town hall event on October 2 that they were against the reduced hours, or to the Provosts Office suddenly coming up with the necessary cash. I like to think it was because of our coverage, but of course it was most likely a combination of all of the above.
Two conclusions can be drawn from this unexpected turnaround. Firstly, students have power—more than they think. There is, however, a caveat to this power: It needs to be used wisely. In the case of the Library’s new hours, students not only had a reasonable goal, but also fought for it in a mature way—never mind those who booed a fellow student when she dared wonder aloud whether maybe UTM had a point about cancelling the 24/5 service.
Other than that shameful bout, there were no T-shirts depicting a raised middle finger or inviting the library to screw itself. Such gimmicks may be good for publicity; they may stir up the masses, but they sure don’t invite respectful, intelligent debate.
The second conclusion is not so easy to arrive at, perhaps because of its implications: that other UTM services may suffer because of funds that were allocated to the Library so that it would remain open. UTMSU President Joey Santiago assures us that this wont happen. But how can we be so sure?
After all, U of T President Naylor himself asked which services students were willing to sacrifice in order to keep the library open 24/5.
If indeed no services get cut, then one question arises: why did UTM change the library hours in the first place if money was not a problem? On the other hand, if money was a problem, how was the Provosts Office suddenly able to extend the hours back to what they were before? I find it hard to believe that the students’ protests had nothing to do with the old hours being reinstated.
All that matters for now is that the library is back to its regular hours. It would be foolish take it for granted. We cried when something was taken away. Let’s use it now that it is given back.
AN OBLIGATION TO DEMAND THE MOST OF OURSELVES. (Published on October 25, 2010.)
An appeal to get up and do something, rather than wait for others to do it.
Last week UTMSU representatives met with departing Vice-President Orchard to discuss what they wanted from the next president. (Predictably, the issue of tuition fees was chief on their list.) Vice-President Part-Time Affairs Ibrahim Hindy suggested a principal who will go out of their way to get to know students, meeting with them for two hours a month as a minimum requirement.
“This is the University of Toronto,” said Mr. Hindy. “You demand the most of us as students, and we have the right as students to demand the most of our principal.”
Sensible as Mr. Hindy’s suggestion was, it made me think about something apparently unrelated to the topic of tuition fees or even the topic of the next vice-president. It’s the basis of this editorial, and can be summed up as “We have the right to demand the most of ourselves.”
On second thought, make that “We have an obligation to demand the most of ourselves.”
The seed was for this idea was planted one afternoon, two or three years ago, in a Communication, Culture and Information Technology Advisory Board meeting, when a student complained that the CCIT program wasn’t well-known. This, he argued, meant that he would have a difficult time finding a job when he graduated. Other students nodded their agreement as CCIT professors dutifully scribbled notes on their notepads.
When I got home that night, I looked CCIT up in Wikipedia. By then the CCIT program had existed for at least a couple of years. Hundreds of students had learned elements of communication, from cyberlaw to web design to the history of radio. Yet none had thought of creating a Wikipedia entry for CCIT. So I did. (Someone has since deleted it. That’s beside the point, although I do plan on finding out why they did that.)
The idea blossomed further when I heard that Michael Di Leo, The Medium’s arts editor, had failed to find a summer job. Michael could have raged on against the economy and the depression and how bad students have it. Instead, he partnered with a friend to create his own a company—a yacht– and deck-cleaning business. Hard work, to be sure. But it made him some money.
The idea finally materialized into a draft for this editorial when I heard about the Erindale Filipino Students’ Association and its initiative to raise money for victims of Hurricane Ketsana. They didn’t just sit down and weep for the losses that their countrymen suffered. They did something about it.
I don’t mean to deny that some students may have a hard time paying their tuition fees, or making the most of UTM, or gathering the nerve to knock on the door of a UTM official.
What I am saying is that going through hard times is the point. It’s no picnic having two jobs while going to school full-time, like my sister did last year. It’s not easy to take four courses and a paid internship and work at The Medium, like Saaliha, our news editor. Neither is it pleasant to feel a knot in your stomach every time you get a letter from OSAP, like I do.
But tough times are part of the experience. Tough times come when you do your best, when you try and beat the odds. Tough times are something that all students should experience. They teach you what it’s like to work until midnight even though you have an exam next morning. They make you tougher and they make you a better student, and they will pay off when you get that job that you couldn’t have gotten otherwise and when you retain that job because you already know what it’s like to work your ass off.
Some students have legitimate reasons to complain about high tuition fees or about UTM being inaccessible to students. Whatever they are, I do not mean to discredit them—not as long as these students can look at their reflection in their mirror and tell themselves, I did my best and still couldn’t succeed. I applied for OSAP but was rejected. I tried — really tried — to find a job or two while I went to school part-time but was unable to. I graduated but couldn’t find a job—even though went to the Career Centre workshops and cold-called a bunch of companies and kept going door to door, no matter how many people had slammed them to my face.
OUR NEAR FUTURE. (Published on November 29, 2009.)
After mocking New Year’s resolutions, I proceed to list the paper’s.
One January afternoon of my first New Year in Canada, a little over five years ago, at around four o’clock, not the busiest time at most gyms and certainly not at mine, I stood in front of a dozen cardio machines and noticed that every single one of them was occupied by enthusiastic patrons. I hadn’t seen any of them before. I stepped into the weightlifting room. It too was full. A trainer I was friendly with brushed past me. I grabbed his arm.
“What’s going on? Are you guys giving away free passes?”
He shook his head. “New Years resolutions, he scoffed. Most of these people will work out like mad for a couple of weeks, then never come back. It’s the same every year.”
I wasn’t aware of New Year’s resolutions as a cultural phenomenon until that January evening. People in many other countries are not in the habit of publicly committing themselves to a new goal in December. It sounds like a good idea, one worth emulating, provided you choose a realistic goal, break it down to measurable steps, reward progress and announce the goal publicly.
Its not December yet, but this is our last issue for 2009, so I thought I’d list The Mediums goals for the New Year. Risky move, you might say, especially given my introduction. But like Einstein said, “Anyone who has never made a mistake is someone who has never tried anything new.”
Besides, we do owe it to our readers to share our vision for The Medium.
Here are our resolutions for 2010:
- to add more infographics to our print version
- to add more videos to our site
- to get more writers and photographers
- to get a cartoonist (alas, maybe our toughest goal)
- to write more about science
- to continue to feature opposing op-eds
- to improve layout by redesigning the masthead and the index box.
In addition to listing our goals, I’d like to thank our readers and contributors. Our readers, of course, justify our existence as writers. Whenever you learned something about UTM that you didn’t know, whenever you picked up a paper because a headline or photo grabbed your attention, whenever we made you smile, whenever we made you frown, whenever you praised us and whenever you criticized us —you made our day. You gave a purpose to our work. And for that, we thank you.
As for our contributors: you may not realize it, but this paper wouldn’t be possible without all of you. Thanks for all the hard work, the dedication, and the support. Lastly, I’d like to announce our new Assistant Editors. They became Assistant Editors by working hard almost every week. They proved they were reliable, not just by turning in their stories on time, but also by saying, when need be, that they wouldn’t be able to take on a specific assignment (word to the wise: editors will always prefer writers who refuse an assignment they wont be able to hand in to writers who promise, then fail to deliver).
And so it gives me great pleasure to welcome Katherine Luczynski and Stephanie Marotta, our Assistant News Editors; Patricia Figueiredo, Assistant Arts and Entertainment Editor; William Robertson and Sarah Malagerio-Bruno, Assistant Sports Editors; and Edward Cai, Assistant Photo Editor. We know you will help us make The Medium a better paper.
ARE STUDENT’S IDEALS NAIVE? (Published on January 4, 2010.)
Disgusted by the media’s treatment of its heretofore favourite, Tiger Woods, I wondered whether I would manage to hold on to my principles once the stakes will become higher.
That’s it. 2009 is over, and with it, the first decade of the millennium. We’re re all probably coming up with new resolutions. Some of us may even have a plan as to how to carry these out. This year will for sure be different, we tell ourselves, if nobody else, although it’d probably make a lot more sense to tell everybody else—shame and fear of failure are powerful motivators.
But it’s not 2010 I want to talk about. Neither do I want to talk about resolutions. I want to talk, if only in passing, about privacy, about media, and about marital infidelity. I want to talk, again in passing, about Tiger Woods, but mostly I want to talk about life after university and how it will transform us students.
The whole Tiger Woods episode revolted me. Not because he cheated on his wife. That’s between him and her. It revolted me because everyone wanted to know about it. Mostly, it revolted me because the media happily obliged. Or perhaps it was the other way around: Not too many people wanted to know about it, but the media still ran with it and inflated it and made everyone aware of it, including those of us who believe that even celebrities have a right to privacy. Either way, the media’s massive coverage of the Tiger Woods scandal upset me. Sure, I understand why they did it, especially in these days of dwindling newspaper sales and with a media revolution rumbling in the horizon: They did it because they want to sell. They did it because they want to survive. But in order to survive, they may have become whores.
I, on the other hand, don’t t have to worry about sales—at least not as much as your average paper does. This week, for example, we ran a story about Tiger Woods, and in it we mentioned, however briefly, the scandal that has afflicted him and his family. We had to, because the article dealt with the money he’s cost his investors. But we included no juicy details or allegations or irrelevant names.
It’s a fine line, to be sure, the one that divides your principles and real life. I think, though, this time, we managed to remain on the good side.
In the last day of my Journalistic Investigation class, just a few weeks ago, my professor held a newspaper cover page with a close-up of a man. He’d been attacked by a pit bull and was missing half his face. This man had gone to the newspaper and asked for his picture to be printed. He said he wanted everyone to be aware of what could happen to them. The professor asked us, “If you were professional newspapermen, would you have agreed?” I said I would, if only to honour the man’s courage, adding that I’d rather quit than print that picture without his consent. Other students disagreed, arguing that publishing the picture would likely disturb readers.
All our reasons were altruistic. None had anything to do sales, which is probably the most determining factor that decides what ends up splashed across a front page of other newspapers.
At the end of the class, the professor said, that it would be nice if we could all maintain that integrity. I don’t know if she was optimistic. I know I’m not. At the time, I meant what I said about quitting my job, but would I really do it? If I was working for a big paper or a TV station, making decent money, making my way up, would I quit over a principle?
For that matter, would the students who now denounce corporate greed decline a job offer from, say, Nike? Would those who claim to protect the environment refuse to work for GM?
Being aware of the possibility of betraying my principles may seem to indicate I’m already willing to betray them. I like to think the opposite. Being aware of this possibility, I hope, means I’m ready to recognize the risks, the signs, and steer away from them.
Or not. We shall see.
PUBLISHERS BEWARE. (Published on February 8, 2010.)
My little reflection (some would say forlorn hope) about the potential of ebooks to change the textbook industry.
Growing up in a poor country was not a cool experience for me. But now that I live in a rich country, I am often intrigued by the perspective that my childhood gave me.
Take textbooks, which are pretty rare in many Cuban schools. Students often share them, passing them along as relics. (They can’t photocopy them, given the government’s dislike for all means of dissemination of information and its subsequent ban on the purchase of these devices.) In fact, many professors do without books altogether, relying on handouts, scribbling long tirades on the blackboard and demanding that students take page after page of notes.
This was a very different experience from the one I lived at UTM, where failure to buy a required textbook can be a bad idea. Professors expect all students to get them, and in fact, base their entire curriculum around a specific textbook, which can change from year to year.
This has, of course, created quite an important market, one that can force students to spend up to $900 per year on textbooks, the prices of which have increased four times the rate of inflation over the past decade, according to a 2005 Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) study.
Sadly for us students, the textbook market does not operate according to the same economic principles as a normal consumer market. The faculty chooses the product but do not buy it, while the students, who use the product, do not have the option of choosing it. The price is thus removed from the purchasing decision, which results in textbook publishers enjoying of a disproportionate market power to set prices in a market already affected by a serious lack of competition.
As for photocopying, students in Canada do have the machines at their disposal, but they too face restrictions to unrestrained photocopying of their books (albeit for different reasons than in Communist regimes). Thus, many of us came to rely on tusbe.com, that incredibly useful site that allows us to buy and resell textbooks without having to pay a commission.
Yet there is hope—and not too far down the road. A solution to the textbook problem may come in a few years, in the shape of Apple’s shiny new iPad and the flood of market-changing devices that it touts. There has been much talk about how these devices will change the publishing landscape, with readers foregoing printed magazines or books in favour of their electronic equivalents. Whether most consumers will actually pay for these books is a matter of debate—witness what happened with the music market. I know people who’ve listened to a lot of music over the last few years, but did not pay for any of it.
Publishing houses probably fear that the same will happen to them. On the other hand, they have probably learned the lesson that the music industry paid for so dearly: fighting technology and attempting to punish distributors of illegally downloaded material is sure to backfire on them, alienating consumers and diminishing their willingness to pay high prices for the same content they can get free elsewhere.
This is probably why software company ScrollMotion announced that it will develop iPad-friendly versions of textbooks for education publishers like McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin and Kaplan only a week after the iPad launched. Features that may make it into the iPad textbooks include video, interactive quizzes, the ability to record lectures, highlight and search text and take notes.
For those who doubt that the iPad will sell, thinking it just an overblown iPod, there are other options, such as the dual-screen enTourage eDge, which has also entered into deals with publishers to create digital textbooks. The eDge has a 9.7-inch e-ink screen on one side for reading and a 10.1-inch LCD screen that accepts stylus inputs for handwriting (something the iPad lacks).
Digital textbooks are admittedly nothing new. McGraw Hill, Pearson and other textbook publishers already support CourseSmart, a provider of college textbooks in eTextbook format on a common online platform. CourseSmart offers eTextbook versions of college textbooks at a cost of 50% less than the print versions of the same titles. The company currently sells more than a third of all college textbooks in online format.
Digital books, however, have so far lacked the ideal medium. Reading a CourseSmart book on an iPhone screen will likely induce more headaches than just paying for a regular textbook would. The new tablets will change this with their bigger screens. And even if they didn’t hold the promise of lower textbook prices, they will still make things easier for students, allowing them to search for and bookmark text and highlight it in different colours. Students will also be able to write notes or use a built-in microphone to record audio notes, all while carrying dozens of textbooks into one slim tablet. They will also be able to take interactive quizzes and track their right and wrong answers on the device.
Pessimists will bet that publishing companies will refuse to significantly lower prices for electronic versions of textbooks. But textbooks companies would better tread carefully: students are a tech-savvy, irreverent lot, one that has only put up with the high costs of textbooks because they lacked the technological means to fight it. Once given access to an electronic version of a textbook, they will likely find a way to unlock whatever DRM protection is slapped to it. Alternately, it will only take one scanned copy of a textbook, saved as a PDF file, to spread from tablet to tablet with a vengeance.
So, ironically, the future of textbooks in North America may look a bit like the past in poorer countries: one student will get a hold of a copy and give it to all of his or her classmates. And they won’t have to transcribe it—pushing a button will do.
POLITICS IS ALWAYS THE SAME. (Published on February 22, 2010.)
All politicians are the same. Especially those who claim the opposite.
I always thought university campuses are a reflection of the country they are in. Take UTM. Like Canada, it has a small, yet diverse population. Its members like to grumble about things, yet are proud that they come here—how else can you explain their defensive reaction when others look down on UTM?
Moreover, UTM and Canada have their own police, their own newspapers and their own administrations. Lastly, both UTM and Canada have their own politicians—in our case, we have the UTMSU executives.
Of all the UTM segments I referred to, none tries so much to differentiate itself from its national counterpart as the UTMSU. The Union protests on the streets. The Union purports to strive for change rather than preserve the status quo. And rather than donning suits and ties, the Union’s executives make a point to dress in student-like attire—some even add a slanted baseball hat to their outfit.
But for all their efforts, some UTMSU executives behave remarkably like the very people they are trying to differentiate themselves from. This year alone, the Union has been featured prominently across these pages for donating student’s money toward the legal defense counsel of a colleague, for mismanaging proxy votes and for deregistering one student from a conference because of her affiliation with different campus organization (us) and the cost involved in sending her there. If you think it all sounds too much like your regular old scandal-ridden political party, you’re not alone.
The Union’s latest escapade involves interfering with the nomination process of candidates for next year’s ticket. Of course, if you listen to what the executives involved in this antic have to say, that’s not what they were doing. Not at all. When these executives secretly met with the presidents of the largest students clubs on campus, weeks before the nomination process began, in a room that no ordinary UTM student can access, it was not to get these presidents to persuade their club’s members to vote for a specific UTM executive. It was just to seek their input.
There are many reasons why the whole thing stinks. It stinks because the incumbent government is throwing its weight behind the candidate it favours, thereby reducing the chances of any other student winning, especially students who are currently not associated with UTMSU. It stinks because if the UTMSU really thought caucus meetings like the last few were open and fair, it would make them part of its elections procedure code, opening them for all students regardless of how close they are to the Union or how many members their club has. As it is now, your average UTM students only seems to stand a chance, elections-wise, if he or she runs a large club and if he’s privy to secret UTMSU-organized meetings.
VOTING DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE. (Published on March 15, 2010.)
A futile appeal for UTM students to get off their asses and vote (only 33 % ended up doing it, a record low).
Voting will take place this week at UTM. Not many students tend to bother with elections—in a campus that counts around 11,000 students, only 600 voted last year, when one ticket ran, and around 2,500 the year before, when two tickets ran. This year we have, once again, two tickets, which may mean a larger turnout. Moreover, both tickets are formed of UTMSU executives—the first in a quite a few years.
Add our coverage of controversial UTMSU-related events, and it’s tempting to believe that many more students will cast their ballot this year.
I’m not so optimistic, partly because for the longest time, I was one of those students who didn’t care much about campus politics. Like many others, I didn’t think it mattered who ran things at UTMSU—in fact, I wasn’t even sure what the UTMSU was or what it did.
The Medium taught me that it does matter who runs the UTMSU. The Student Union, after all, has a large budget (a million dollars last year), 60% of which goes for wages. The Student Union has grown considerably in the last few years, controlling the Student Centre and taking over the part-time students association and eliminating UTSU at UTM. Current UTMSU executives claim to represent us, and to an extent they do, whether we like or not—when a Union-organized rally swarms the streets of downtown Toronto, it’s UTM students that spectators see. Then they lump us together in their minds despite our different backgrounds and political opinions.
More importantly, whatever the Union decides to do, it does so with our money. This is not unlike the government, which never generates money—it merely redistributes what it taxes from of us. Yet many forget this fact, thinking a government—or union—generous when it does something that benefits us, and tight-fisted when it doesn’t.
We have little control over how much of our money is taken away and distributed back to us, but we do have more of a say in how this money is distributed back to us. In UTMSU’s case, do we want our hard-earned money to represent us as if we are one voice, or do we want our voice to renew our Student Union?
We’ve done our part. We’ve covered the Union and the election process as best we could. At the request of a reader, we whipped together a brief description of what each UTMSU executive does. Lastly, we encourage you to attend today’s all candidates’ debate in the Blind Duck at 2 p.m., where both Vickita Bhatt and Henry Ssali will answer your questions.
Whatever happens, whether you cast a ballot or not, you have a say in this. Why not say it out loud?
Sounds just like what many an ordinary citizen has to say about the way their nation is run.
A SALES PITCH. (Published on March 29, 2010.)
My last editorial.
Like many of you, I’m graduating in June. This is therefore the last editorial I’ll ever write for The Medium. Knowing this, I’m tempted to write with a vengeance and to touch on many topics. I’m tempted, for example, to introduce next year’s terrific team, to reminisce about my experience at our newspaper, to thank the countless people who contributed to The Medium this year, and to reflect on what it’s been like to work in what many would consider a dying industry. But I can’t do a decent job if I focus on so many different issues—not in the space of one column, and not unless I want to bore you to death.
So, after much consideration, I decided to make my last editorial a sales pitch for The Medium. Before I do that, however, I do have to thank Amir, Michael, Su Lyn, Andrew, Saaliha, Matt, Heather, and Romano, among many others, for helping make us a better paper, one that saw twice the amount of online hits than in the previous year. I also have to wish Saaliha Malik, my successor, the best of luck, and to publicly state my faith that both the new team and her will do an amazing job.
Working as Editor-in-Chief of this newspaper has been one of the most fruitful experiences of my life. Ali Kasim, previous EIC, wrote in his last editorial that he had learned more on the job than he ever did as a student at UTM. I won’t go as far, but I will say this: in the one year that I worked as EIC, I learned what I would’ve needed two years to learn at UTM. There are many reasons for this, but I can best sum it up with the following old saying: “Tell someone how to do something and they’ll forget. Show them, and they may not remember. Involve them, and they’ll understand.”
UTM has no journalism program, so other than a handful of Professional Writing professors, we have no one to tell or show us how to make a newspaper. This leaves us with no choice but to get involved and to understand. We come to the office every day, and since we don’t have anyone to teach us, we simply sit down and do it. We don’t do a perfect job—far from it. We pay for our mistakes dearly, more so than in any university course—every time we make one, an upwards of 5,000 readers notice, be it a misquote or typo splashed across the cover page.
But far from discouraging us, this limitation encourages us. In the process of working (and making mistakes), we learn about interviewing and writing and editing. We learn about time management and about Robert’s rules of order. We learn about ourselves and our fellow students and our profs. More to the point, we learn about UTM, the one thing we all have in common, and the one thing we will all remember for our entire lives.
Look at this issue alone. Reading it, you will learn about an interesting experiment that involves a toonie and well-meaning management students, about UTM’s soon-to-happen prescribed burn and about the best secret on-campus locations to hook up. You will learn about all this and more, but you won’t learn as much as the students who wrote and edited these stories—these students had to go out, meet the person they profiled face to face and visit new locations. They had to think and focus. They had to get involved. They had to understand.
Many UTM students seem to think its hard to work for us. Stefanie Marotta, former assistant news editor, told me last week that in her first year, she stood in the main floor of the Student Centre, twisting her hands and eyeing our office upstairs with apprehension. She eventually knocked on our office door, but I wonder how many other lost the nerve and left.
Yet it’s not hard to work for us. Almost all UTM students have publishable writing skills. And they all have skills that they can improve, with our help and their own perseverance. So please take a deep breath, go up the stairs and knock on our door. I promise you this: if you ever wanted to do it, but end up not, you will regret it.
As I find myself nearing the end of my days at UTM, I know I will miss many things. I will miss this dusty office, and the friends that I made, and the late night Psychology classes and the CCIT labs and the anticipation of reading a story aloud in a PWC class. But most of all, I will miss not doing the things that I always wanted to do, like enrolling in the debate club or going to the Olympic weightlifting seminars. Even if joining The Medium does not rank high on your personal list of things to do at UTM, you can bet your bottom dollar that working for our newspaper will allow you add new things to that list.
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