Visual Editors

By Robb Montgomery
Winnipeg, Canada

At the Canadian Newspaper Association’s international conference last week in Winnipeg, Manitoba, TorStar Editor-in-Chief, Fred Kuntz told me the Ontario paper’s redesign will launch in two weeks on 28 May.

Kuntz, 49, has been the editor since last fall and was formerly the publisher of Grand River Valley Newspapers, which owns the Record of Waterloo Region and the Guelph Mercury.

The Toronto Star is Canada’s largest newspaper and the redesign is promising to feature larger body text for stories, color-coded sections, clearer headlines and more breathing space for articles. Stay tuned as Fred promised to send us pages to post in the Visual Editors Redesign blog.

CNA 2007 was a really top-notch event, I felt so lucky and humbled to have the chance to chat and share with many talented journalists from Nova Scotia, Hamilton, Newfoundland, Winnipeg, Alberta, Calgary, New Brunswick, Ottawa, Saskatoon, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver . . .
Seemingly every corner of Canada was represented.

Having worked with so many talented Candian-trained editors over the last six years (John Cruickshank, Michael Cooke, Murdoch Davis, Malcom Kirk, and Vivienne Sosnowski to name a few) I was truly glad to see the community from which they sprang. After the NNA awards banquet - I got the chance to mingle until dawn with more of this newspaper nation’s bright lights and award-winners.

The CanWest party thrown on Thursday night will ranks as one of the most impressively themed parties put on for a gathering like this. The music, the mix of industry people (HINT: Inviting the business side too and not just editorial types . . .) the menu, even the costumed details in the servers uniforms and the giant news pages hung on the walls - wow.
Take a bow and take a look at some of the videos.

Purity, a band of 14-year-old musicians fronted by Michael Minema, opened the party at ALIVE nightclub in Winnipeg on May 11 during the Canadian Newspaper Association’s annual meeting. They opened with one cover song and then shredded through an impressive set list of original alterna-songcraft.
Impressive.

The CNA swag bag video blog report that I demonstrated during my Friday p.m. session, “Web video is not television.”

Just one small vignette from the many talented Canadian guitar-driven acts that took the stage that night.

The music drew many to the dance floor . . .