Several years back I witnessed a young Toronto Star journalist in the newsroom become so infuriated about whether their name — or as we call it in the newspaper business, byline — was going to appear on a front-page story the next day, it nearly led to a physical confrontation with another reporter.
An editor quickly stepped into the fray to separate the two writers and calm things down. The journalist later fell on their sword and apologized profusely for this out-of-character behaviour. It never happened again and the brief episode is now looked upon in a humorous light.
But one thing I know from my former days as a reporter, is that it’s important for journalists to have their names on their stories. They derive pleasure and an immense sense of reward seeing their bylines and photo credits on news articles, features, photographs and opinion columns. Getting this credit, especially on a big story, whether it’s on the front of our newspaper or the home page of our website, can be a high for journalists. It's like a pat on the back for a job well done.
And the public sees bylines too, which to be frank, can be a nice ego boost. So, not giving adequate credit can have consequences.
I was thinking about this a few days ago while working on a clarification note for a freelance feature article that ran in the Star recently about the Well, a new, massive and very impressive looking mixed-use building downtown that the Star is headquartered in.
In the well-written piece the freelancer noted that the Well, reminded him in a good way of a New York-themed hotel and casino in Las Vegas, “where a pastiche of the Manhattan skyline is amassed together. It’s whimsical.”
The writer later mentioned the urban design master plan for the Well. A master plan, which I’ve learned from my former days as a reporter on the housing beat, is a “vision” document for development projects, that lays out elements such as what the buildings will look like, where they will be situated, heights and shapes, where parks and sidewalks will go, etc.
The article stated that the urban design master plan was by Montreal landscape architect Claude Cormier, who recently passed away. Cormier has designed other projects in the city, notably Berczy Park, east of Yonge downtown, the article pointed out. Cormier’s work is so popular that the New York Times wrote an obit on him in October after his death at age 63 from what his firm CCxA said was a rare genetic condition.
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The Times article referred to him as an “avant-garde” Canadian landscape architect who created “playfully subversive and much-loved” public spaces. “Bureaucratic confusion and public delight were typical reactions to Mr. Cormier’s work, which enlivened Toronto as well as Montreal,” the article went on to say.
The writer of the Star article on the Well, I later learned, looked at the CCxA website and saw a reference to the Well project under the firm’s "master plan" heading.
But a day after the article ran, a spokesperson for Hariri Pontarini Architects, a well-known Canadian architectural design firm in Toronto responsible for several significant development projects in the city, reached out to the Star to complain that they were the master plan architects on the Well and that a correction needed to be published for the Star article.
“That kind of error cannot stand,” the spokesperson for Pontarini wrote in their message to us.
Looking into the matter, I had the opportunity to chat on the telephone with Guillaume Paradis, a senior landscape architect and partner at CCxA in Montreal. He told me that Cormier and his firm did in fact work on the Well project several years back.
“We (Pontarini and Cormier’s firms) worked together to do the master plan. The Well is a team effort. We were involved since early 2013,” Paradis said, adding Urban Strategies, a global urban design and planning consultancy with their head office in Toronto, was a third significant player on the master plan.
“It was a collaboration,” he said.
So, I went back to Hariri Pontarini with an idea for how to fix the Star article — a clarification stating that Hariri, Cormier’s firm and Urban Strategies worked on the Well’s urban design master plan together.
Pontarini agreed that yes, Cormier was involved. So, I changed the text online and appended a note at the bottom of the story and for the Star’s archived version of the print article.
But in looking into all of this I did notice one thing — that neither the CCxA website nor Pontarini’s mentioned the other’s participation in the Well project.
So, there’s one potential pitfall for journalists.
A similar thing happened to me when I was a reporter looking into development in Toronto’s Canary District. I relied on information from one developer’s website to write about some of the new buildings in the area, but the website didn’t mention other developers involved in the construction. My paper had to publish a correction.
I’ve learned that credit is important in the building, planning, design and architecture industries, though some companies may not necessarily be prompt or fully transparent when it comes to giving credit to peers.
While working on this column, one industry insider told me that whether it’s credit on construction hoarding in front of a project or “cornerstone” plaques on buildings, which credit builders, architects etc. the competition can get fierce.
“Acknowledgment is important,” the source said.
“It’s a very self-congratulatory industry,” the source later added with a chuckle.
As public editor, the lesson I would pass along to journalists covering this beat is make sure you ask the question: who else was involved on this project/master plan/development application/design etc.
“Another lesson in always asking questions is good,” the freelancer wrote me in an email after the clarification note ran.
As we both learned from all of this, when covering this topic it’s always important to give credit where credit is due.
