12-14-98 / Ryerson Review of Journalism Online
Perhaps the first major decision any young Canadian journalist has to make is whether or not to remain a Canadian journalist.
Sure, Canada is a great place to start a career in journalism, but is it a wise career move to stay here? And if you do decide to go away, how will your fellow Canadians treat you when you want to return?
Pretty damned well, it turns out.
One of the best ways to kick-start a flagging Canadian career in journalism is to migrate south for awhile. There seems to be something singularly Canadian in our eagerness to export raw materials and import finished goods -- even when the goods are journalists.
Broadcast journalists have known this for years. Who among us cannot recite the roster of Canadian television news talent who have defected for American TV networks? All together now: Peter Jennings, Robert MacNeil, Gillian Findlay, Morley Safer, Kevin Newman, Hilary Brown . . .
Of course it's not news to anyone that America is where the better jobs and bigger salaries are. What is a little less evident is the notion that when Canadian journalists desert Canada, it seems to actually increase their desirability in our home and native land.
Malcolm Gladwell, a Canadian enjoying success as a staff writer at the New Yorker, says: "I think Canadians have a little bit of an inferiority complex and so, naturally, their ears perk up when they hear about Canadians who have been validated by Americans because they have been constantly comparing themselves to Americans.
"It makes perfect psychological sense," he says. "A lot of Canadians do their graduate school abroad for this very reason. I think it's the same with any small country next to a big country. I'm sure people from Uruguay who go and get graduate degrees in Brazil and go back to Uruguay are like considered to be intellectual."
Now that he has officially received a good old American thumbs-up, Gladwell is considered a hot property back here in Canada. During the last two editorial turnovers at Saturday Night, he was approached both times about his interest in taking over the top spot of that eminent Canadian monthly. (Gladwell wasn't interested.)
During the recent search to replace Saturday Night's editor Ken Whyte, Conrad Black ended up interviewing only two candidates : Rick Marin, a Canadian who is a senior writer at Newsweek in New York, and Paul Tough, another Canadian who has been working as a writer, editor and radio broadcaster in the US for the past 10 years. Tough got the job.
Bruce Headlam, a former features editor at Canadian Business and an associate editor at Saturday Night, headed south last April to work at The New York Times. Even though he's been in the U.S. for only a few months, he's already been contacted several times for jobs at Canadian publications. "I don't want to be specific," says Headlam diplomatically, "but I've had calls."
Headlam isn't sure if the Stateside career-boost syndrome is true all across Canada, but he thinks it's certainly a factor in Toronto. "Toronto is an enormously self-conscious city," he says. "I'm extraordinarily fond of Toronto and I'm sure I'll live there and work there again, but it's constantly comparing itself to New York which is a huge mistake because they're different cities."
Toronto, in fact, has one of the most concrete metaphors for "how to succeed in Canada by going south" embedded in the pavement on King Street -- Canada's Walk of Fame. To get your fame commemorated in a sidewalk-square maple leaf, you must be born or raised in Canada and make an "international impact" in broadcasting, the arts or sports. In other words, you can't be a famous Canadian unless you're famous someplace other than Canada.
Oh, and in case you're wondering: No, there aren't any broadcast journalists installed on the walk.
At the unveiling of his maple leaf on the Walk of Fame, director Norman Jewison commented on CTV's Canada AM about the reticence of Canadians to value their native sons who choose to remain at home. "The moment our talent leaves the country and becomes famous or successful," he said, "all of a sudden they're embraced. What is that? I mean, what kind of an inferiority complex is that?"
Impressionist Rich Little (who is also celebrated on the Canadian Walk of Fame) rejoined, saying: "People say to me, 'You sold out for the American dollar!' Well, would I sell out for the Canadian dollar? Have you seen what it's worth? They haven't even got a dollar; they've got a coin."