Luciano Galasso on Toronto Homocides

I feel like everytime I read the mornings paper, whether physically or virtually, on the front page there is something about a homocide in Toronto or elsewhere. It’s not only upsetting but it’s getting to the point where I begin to question what type of society we live in. It seems like it’s always teens or young adults, usually between the ages of 15-30 who are either dead or suspects. My first question is, where are they getting these guns? Especially in countries like Canada which I thought had strong anti-gun policies? Many people will say their parents…but why on earth do their parents have hand guns? I’m going to go ahead and assume these guns are not hunting rifles. And yes, many of these homocides are due to stabbings and they usually happen in rather sketchy areas. Make smart decisions people. Don’t go out in sketchy neighbourhoods at night, alone. They need to put towers in parks and on city streets that have direct connections to the police and other emergency services to assist in keeping people safe, or more police cars need to be patrolling these areas. I am going to copy and paste an article below from the Toronto Star and provide a link to a map of Toronto’s homocides since 2005. It seems a lot more significant and scary when you look at the map.

1 killed, 5 hurt in shootings

JOHN HANLEY PHOTO

Paramedics transport a shooting victim as a second wounded boy looks on. A 17-year-old was shot in the face and a 16-year-old in the back on Teesdale Place, near Pharmacy and Danforth Aves., around 6:45 p.m. Aug. 4, 2009.

Aug 05, 2009 04:30 AM

Precious Yutangco

Staff Reporter

A night of violence was capped with the city’s 34th homicide of 2009.

Just after 10:30 p.m. Tuesday night, Toronto police officers and members of the Emergency Task Force raided a high-rise at 110 George St., near Jarvis St. and Adelaide St. E. after a man walked into St. Michael’s Hospital suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.

Despite having emergency surgery, he was pronounced dead in hospital, said Staff. Sgt. John Spanton.

Spanton said the man was fleeing down the street when friends picked him up and drove him to hospital.

Officers arrested one man at the scene. There is no word yet on charges. Homicide detectives are taking over the case.

The death was the fifth person of the night who was shot.

Around 9 p.m., a 26-year-old man was taken to Sunnybrook Hospital after being shot in the face on Mount Olive Dr., near Finch Ave. W. and Martin Grove Rd. Despite his wound, he was conscious and breathing when he was found.

Three teenagers were shot in two separate incidents in the city earlier in the evening.

Dozens of parents and children ducked for cover as a shootout erupted between two groups of teens at an east end high-rise complex.

A 17-year-old was shot in the face and a 16-year-old boy was hit twice in the stomach in the incident at Teesdale Place, near Pharmacy and Danforth Aves. at about 6:45 p.m.

About two hours earlier before the Teesdale Place double shooting, a teenage girl was shot in the leg on Trethewey Dr. near Eglinton Ave. W. and Black Creek Dr.

Investigators have not ruled out whether a stray bullet may have hit the teen.

The interactive map can be found here

— Luciano Galasso

Luciano Galasso on the End of the Toronto Strike

Well folks, it has finally come to and end. Or at least it looks that way. Via went on strike and then quickly resolved their issues while Toronto Outdoor and Indoor workers took a lot longer to come up with an agreement. Although news outlets reported yesterday that the strike was over, if you looked around the streets today, it doesn’t appear that way at all. Even the mayor is telling you to hold off on your garbage a few more days and to not send your kids back as of yet. They say it may take until the weekend to get everything back to normal. As enraged as I was this morning walking down to get my morning coffee from starbucks (yes, im a sucker) and finding garbage still all over the streets and smelling terribly, this article helped me to get a little perspective on why we aren’t back to normal even though an agreement has been reached

Most services unlikely to start up again before this weekend at the earliest

Jul 28, 2009 04:30 AM

Daniel Dale

Donovan Vincent

STAFF REPORTERS

Don’t put your garbage out on the curb just yet. And don’t even think about shipping the kids back to daycare this week.

Despite tentative agreements forged yesterday between the city and its striking workers, most municipal services are unlikely to resume until the weekend at the earliest. The city won’t release plans until after the deals are ratified.

Members of CUPE Local 416 and Local 79 will vote on their agreements tomorrow. Should they vote to ratify, city council will hold its own ratification vote Friday.

“It will take several days in many operations and program areas before the city can offer full service to residents and businesses,” city officials said in a news release. “For example, swimming pools must be cleaned and refilled, child-care centres must be reopened, cleaned and stocked with food, parks need maintenance and grass cutting, licence renewals and inspection applications must be processed, and many other matters must be addressed.”

City manager Joe Pennachetti said the city will provide “pages” of service resumption plans to the media and on the city’s website once the agreements are ratified.

Windsor’s 101-day strike ended Friday. Yesterday, community centres there opened their doors and garbage pickup began. Municipal pools and camps, however, were not expected to reopen before next week.

In 2002, Toronto rapidly returned to some semblance of normality after striking workers were legislated back to work on a Thursday in August. Island ferry service resumed the next day as ambulance service returned to regular levels and golf courses reopened; day camps and daycares reopened Monday; indoor pools reopened by Sunday, outdoor pools by Monday.

Street garbage bins and temporary garbage dumps were cleaned over the weekend; household waste collection began on the next scheduled collection day.

According to an unscientific sampling of Yonge St. pedestrians conducted yesterday, it is the city’s garbage situation that Torontonians overwhelmingly want resolved most quickly. But they will have to wait: temporary dump sites will continue to operate until further notice, said Mayor David Miller.

Miller urged residents to keep their trash at home for a few more days if they can. The cleanup of the temporary dumps will not take long, he said, but the process cannot begin until council ratification.

That approval cannot come quickly enough for Tanisha King, 9, or her grandmother Leanne King. Tanisha, a competitive gymnast, has missed a month’s worth of cancelled sessions. In the absence of municipal pools, her grandmother has struggled to entertain her.

“We go to the pool every day in summer,” said Leanne King.

“We went down to the beach, but it’s not very clean.”

The article can be found here

Luciano Galasso on Toronto Lately

I feel like everyday there is something about murder or death in the news media. There are the random acts of violence, gang violence, accidental drownings, car accidents and more. I remember hearing about the murder of Stefanie Rengel, I believe on New Years Day and it was sickening to think that a young boy and girl could murder someone. Their only motive? M.T’s jealousy of Stefanie’s previous relationship with her current boyfriend. According to those who knew M.T they said this was very shocking because she was such a good student and a good daughter. They also say that she shows no remorse for what she encouraged her boyfriend to do. Sending hate mail and threatening to break up with your boyfriend unless he kills his exgirlfriend…does that sound normal to you? I didn’t think so. The fact that her boyfriend agreed to do it shows that something was not exactly right with him either. I’m just glad they were caught and are being charged as adults.

Marina Jiménez

From Monday’s Globe and Mail Sunday, Jul. 26, 2009 05:06PM EDT

But Mr. Flumerfelt dismissed her apology as “an 11th-hour note” that tried to duck responsibility. The murder was calculated, he said, and executed over months “with the advantages and disadvantages carefully weighed.”

M.T. read a brief statement this month in court, apologizing for the lives she has ruined and taking responsibility for her part in Stefanie’s death. Her lawyer noted she wasn’t the one who carried out the act of violence.

The sentencing hearing for M.T., the Toronto teenager convicted of murdering 14-year-old Stefanie Rengel, was frightening for the portrait it painted.

The offender, now 17 and set to be sentenced tomorrow, is a very unusual killer. She comes from an intact, loving family, has no criminal history, excelled in school, babysits her 12-year-old brother and loves the family dog. In other words, she has none of the disadvantages of most juvenile offenders.

Instead her crime was motivated by lethal jealousy: She believed her boyfriend, D.B., liked Ms. Rengel, a beautiful, outgoing teen who had briefly “gone around” with him when she was 12.

In pages of coarse, rage-filled e-mails and text messages, M.T. commanded her boyfriend to kill Ms. Rengel. D.B. eventually went along with it: The 19-year-old pleaded guilty earlier this year to stabbing Ms. Rengel six times outside her Toronto home on New Year’s Day, 2008.

The question parents are left with at the end of this tragic tale is: How is it possible for a seemingly normal adolescent to present two such different personas – an obedient “goody-two-shoes” to her supportive parents who studied hard for tests and a heartless killer who spewed venom online against a wrongly perceived romantic rival whom she had never even met?

Identifying aggression, anti-social behaviour and even mental illness in teens can be difficult, experts say, because adolescents display such erratic emotions and do not have fully formed characters.

However, anyone reading M.T.’s e-mail would be alarmed by the level of violence it conveyed.

During the trial, the Crown entered into evidence more than 30,000 pages of instant-messaging transcripts between M.T. and her boyfriend, including many that revolved around the murder plan. In one chilling instant-message exchange in October, 2007, M.T. tells D.B. if he doesn’t kill Ms. Rengel, she will dump him.

Child psychologists say the anonymity of the Internet prompts many teenagers to call people “bitches and whores” and take on names such as “parking lot slut,” as they live out naughty fantasies and “try on” different personalities. They see social networking sites as “their” form of communication, beyond the realm of adults – and beyond the law.

However, having violent thoughts about their peers goes well beyond ordinary teenaged bravado.

“It’s hard to say where this kind of stuff comes from,” said David Wolfe, a psychologist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. “I see a lot of horrible names and stuff on the Internet. But saying ‘I want her killed’ is very unusual. This is definitely at the extreme end.”

A plan to carry out aggression on someone specific is not typical teenage stuff, agrees Ian Manion, executive director of the Provincial Centre for Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa. Online threats of violence should be investigated, he added.

Philip Klassen, a CAMH forensic psychiatrist, said in his report to the court that M.T. hasn’t shown remorse and sees herself as a victim. He described her three teenage relationships as intensely dysfunctional, marked by anger, rage and jealousy that point to an “escalating problem.”

M.T. is also bulimic, anxious and so insecure about her personal appearance that she wants plastic surgery for her nose and breasts.

He suggested she could have elements of borderline personality disorder, a condition characterized by unstable moods and chaotic personal relationships that is difficult to diagnose.

The defence’s psychiatric report concludes M.T. has no major mental illness, but is anxious, immature, volatile and obsessive. The report notes she made threats against other women, saying she wanted to “kill” her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends with a knife or gun –statements she says she never meant.

Outwardly, however, M.T.’s life was striking for its normality: Her parents bought her clothing and a computer, and took her to the movies and to a cottage. They went bike riding together and played board games. She is close to her mother, a nurse, although apparently hid her violent thoughts from her.

Dr. Manion, who isn’t commenting on this case specifically, notes that some teenagers raised in loving families choose not to follow the same guidelines as the rest of society. “I’ve worked with families with very good parents, but the child has no sense of right and wrong and cannot empathize,” he said. “Some people are very driven by their own needs and desires and cannot appreciate wrong. They have no moral compass.”

At the same time, parents can be alert to potentially disturbing patterns of behaviour in teenagers, including: a sudden change in sleeping or eating patterns; a loss of interest in hobbies, school or friends; and unhealthy levels of attachment to one relationship.

“Parents need to be concerned about the child who suddenly becomes a stranger,” said Sara Dimerman, a Toronto family therapist.

To guard against the abuse of social networking sites, Dr. Wolfe says, parents should keep the computer in a public room, and monitor teens’ use. They should check to ensure their children are not doing anything illegal, including uttering threats or sending out nude photographs of ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends. “They need to know that what they send can come back and have a consequence for them,” said Dr. Wolfe, who specializes in prevention initiatives.

Crown prosecutor Robin Flumerfelt is seeking an adult sentence for M.T., with no parole for seven years. That means she would have a criminal record and would be monitored for life.

My condolences go out to Stefanie’s family. No one deserves to have to go through this.

— Luciano Galasso

Luciano Galasso on NASA, the moon landing & Canada

As I was catching up on my daily news I came across an article about the first moon landing. As the 40 year anniversary of that first lunar landing has just passed it has recently been receiving a lot of attention. I won’t lie to you, I haven’t really paid a lot of attention to the articles. It’s not that I don’t think its a big deal or anything, but I’ve been learning about the landing since I started school as a small child. Then I read this article about Canada’s involvement, something that they didn’t teach me in school surprisingly. I think it’s safe to say without the Canadians mentioned in the article, the USA would not have had their famous lunar landing. That being said, it’s also great to read about positive stories in the news media. Stories like these make me proud to be Canadian.  Anyways, enough on my end, here’s the story:

Dakshana Bascaramurty

Last updated on Tuesday, Jul. 21, 2009 03:11AM EDT

Forty years ago, 17-year-old Ross Maynard tuned the TV in his Houston home to the event of the century: astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bouncing across the moon’s cratered surface.

His father, Owen, stumbled into the living room during this landmark broadcast in a blue bathrobe, still groggy from his slumber.

The elder Mr. Maynard briefly glanced at the flickering screen with disinterest, and then shuffled to the kitchen table for breakfast.

It’s not the reaction one would expect from one of the top managers of the Apollo space program – the man who designed the lunar module “Eagle” that astronaut Buzz Aldrin piloted.

But Sarnia, Ont., native Owen Maynard was never one to make a fuss about his career achievements. And in turn, his name and the names of many other Canadians who worked at NASA for the Apollo program have been reduced to footnotes at best in the history of the moon landing.

Space exploration historian Chris Gainor published a book about the Canadian contributions in 2001.

“Did they get as much recognition as they should have? I don’t think so,” he said. “And in a few years they’re all going to be gone.”

Because the space race was an element of the Cold War, putting a man on the moon was a triumph the U.S. wanted to claim exclusively for itself, said Robert Godwin, space curator at the Canadian Air and Space Museum.

Canadian astronaut Dave Williams

The astronaut describes what the Apollo 11 moon landing meant to him as a teen watching it on a black-and-white TV (The Canadian Press)

During the early days of the U.S. space program, a team of engineers north of the American border – including Mr. Maynard – were at work on the design and construction of the Avro Arrow, a sophisticated interceptor jet fighter. When the federal government axed the program in 1959, Robert Gilruth, a pioneer of the American space program who later became the director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, flew to Toronto the next day. By the day’s end, he had hired 25 men to join him in Virginia. Seven more from the Canadian company joined his team soon after.

After Mr. Maynard transplanted his family to Virginia (and later to Houston), there was little time to adjust. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the goal to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. The pressure was on.

Mr. Maynard, with a decade of jet engineering experience under his belt, was hired as chief of systems engineering.

“He was probably the first person to put pen to paper for NASA for what a lunar module should look like,” Mr. Godwin said.

The younger Mr. Maynard remembers his father and his fellow Canadians working 12- to 18-hour days, six days a week. On Sunday, they worked 10 hours.

“All those guys were totally consumed by this mission,” he said. And the work environment was stressful.

After a fire killed three astronauts in Apollo 1 in 1967, an exhausted Mr. Maynard told his supervisors he’d stay with NASA for two more lunar landing attempts.

“His body was telling him ‘This is gonna kill ya,’ ” his son said.

The elder Mr. Maynard died in 2000. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Toronto in 1996 but will receive national recognition for his work Monday when he is posthumously given the Canadian Air and Space Pioneer Award. It will have been 40 years since the moment when two men emerged from Mr. Maynard’s lunar module “Eagle” – a moment when he was most concerned about what he’d have for breakfast.

— Luciano Galasso

Luciano Galasso on National News

This is going to be short and sweet. But on the 6:00 news and in many of the newspapers this week I have been reading about how Misha Barton was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital because she was apparently a danger to herself and to others. I just find it sad that this is actually news. For example I saw this article today entitled Mischa Barton is Improving. It goes as follows

Mischa Barton is “making improvements” and plans a return to work nearly a week after she was escorted to hospital for an undisclosed medical problem.

Spokesman Craig Schneider says the 23-year-old actress is “still seeking treatment but making improvements.”

He said yesterday she planned to report to work on the new CW series The Beautiful Life later this month. The show, which stars Barton as a pill-popping supermodel, is scheduled to begin production July 31.

Los Angeles police say they removed Barton from her home last Wednesday for an undisclosed medical problem. The actress was reported to have been placed under an involuntary psychiatric hold.

Internet gossip sites have alleged that Barton was in the midst of a drug binge when worried friends called police.

EW.com reports that producers of The Beautiful Life have begun putting a contingency plan together to replace Barton should she be unable to return.

This article came from The Toronto Star and can be accessed here. Really? That makes headlines? What about what is going on in Iraq or Afghanistan or at the very least how the earth quake that took place in Australia shifted New Zealand closer to Australia by something like 30cm? Or about how a little girl was taken today in Oshawa by a man driving a silver truck with an Ontario license plate that read 72B 381 (I’m unaware if she has been found or not). No offense Misha, but I don’t care. I’m rather sick of this infotainment

That’s all for now.

Luciano Galasso

Luciano Galasso on the Billings Murder

So over the past few days in the news I have been reading a few articles about the murder or as the newsmedia has been saying “slaying” of Byrd and Melanie Billings. This case interested me at first because it is tragic. Even more so because the initial findings were that it was purely for robbery. Byrd had two children from his first marriage and Melanie had two of her own and they had adopted 13 special needs children. Again, tragic that this happened to two people so willing to give to those who needed them most. They also believe that 7 or 8 people were involved with this break in and currently they are working on capturing them all.

Then the story becomes interesting for another reason. They now believe that it might have been a hired hit. But what makes the story even weirder is that in the article I recently read on cnn.com (for the article click here) they mention something I thought was really strange:

Additional documents released Monday from the Florida Department of Children and Families show a bizarre attempt by Byrd Billings to copyright the children’s names and demand money from the department for their use.

A department attorney, Katie George, told CNN that every time the agency sent Billings a letter referencing the children by name, he would reply with an invoice demanding millions in copyright infringement. In one document released by the department, he demands $10 million in silver or federal reserve notes of equal value.

In a sharply worded letter in December 2005, another department attorney, Richard Cserep, wrote to Billings: “You reference a wide variety of law in connection with this claim” for damages.

“This includes copyright violations, trademark violations, contract violations, admiralty and maritime law, libel and the Truth in Lending Act,” the letter said. “At no time in any of your correspondence have you made a plain demand for damages under a clear and cognizable theory of liability.”

A handwritten note on the letter says that no further correspondence was received from Billings after that letter.

Weird no? Who tries to copywrite their childrens names? Does that mean if one of his children was name Luciano, everytime I wrote my name in a document someone would have to pay him? It seemed like he was a little off…or maybe that’s just me.

I’m going to keep reading up on this story and keep updating this post and let you guys know what ends up happening.

— Luciano Galasso

Luciano Galasso on Tori Stafford

I’m not going to say a whole lot because the story speaks for itself. What I do want to say is that my sympathies go out to the friends and family of Tori and that I hope and pray that the remains are found to be hers so that they are able to bury their daughter and the nightmare can end.

Staff Reporters

A grisly discovery south of Mount Forest is of a child’s body that had been exposed to the elements for quite some time and police are “cautiously optimistic” it is the missing girl, Victoria Stafford.

The news, although not confirmed yet, is a relief “not just for the community but worldwide,” said her sombre father, Rodney Stafford.

“Everybody is holding their children a whole lot closer.”

New information led police yesterday to a wooded area with tall trees and rocks, said OPP Det. Inspector Anthony Renten. He wouldn’t elaborate on if the information that sent them to a spot away from the previous search area came from either of the two people charged in the death and disappearance in April of the 8-year-old known as Tori.

“We’re hoping the forensic evidence confirms our belief,” Oxford Community Police Chief Rod Freeman said today at a news conference at the cordoned -off area.

A hearse from Hendrick’s Funeral Chapel in Mount Forest drove away with the remains around noon.

“Since 6:04 on April 8, our main goal was to bring Victoria home,” said Freeman. “It will be satisfying to some extent to provide some closure.”

The officer who found the remains “was working with new information (that had) come to light,” said Renten.

“A lot of good police work is a hunch,” said Freeman. “The search revealed what we believe is very critical evidence.”

“We have a very strong case,” said Renten. “We are hopeful the forensic examination will give us more information to make that case better.”

Terri-Lynne McClintic, 19, and Michael Rafferty, 28, were arrested May 19 and are charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder.

McClintic was initially helping police with their search.

The remains have been taken to the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto “for further expert examination,” police said. Neither Freeman nor Renten would speculate on how long that would take.

OPP Sgt. David Rektor said this morning the remains were found in a remote place. “It’s definitely known to the people in this area only,” he said.

The remains were discovered about 15 minutes north of where the initial searches were conducted in the Guelph and Fergus areas.

Her voice breaking, Tori’s aunt, Rebecca Stafford Nichols, said this afternoon that police came last night to tell family they had come across a site that raised their suspicions. This morning, she said, they confirmed it was the remains of a child.

“This is not the ending we were hoping for,” said Stafford. And then, echoing her brother, she said: “But we’re not going to be spending a life time wondering, looking in every car, in every back seat, through every window and wondering, ‘Is Victoria there?'”

The girl’s grandmother, Dorreen Graighen, told The Star earlier she heard the news around midnight.

“I didn’t sleep well. You know when you have those feelings, your instinct. I just had this feeling (it was her).”

Rodney Stafford said he will bid his daughter goodbye at the end of his 3,400-kilometre bike ride across the country in honour of Tori, planned to raise money for Child Find Ontario, which works to find and protect missing children.

He was to leave Aug. 2 from Woodstock for Edmonton but the departure date now depends on the private family funeral for the little girl.

“I will say my goodbyes to Victoria when I get to the top of the mountain on my bike ride,” Rodney Stafford said shortly after 2 p.m. Rodney also thanked police and everyone who had offered their support.

Stafford Nichols, wiping away tears, said she has “a lot of memories to hang on to,” of Tori, most particularly a trip to Western Canada last year. Her message to the public: “Treasure our children now more than ever. Show them every minute, every day how much you love them.”

“I pray to God it’s her. Let us bring her back home to Woodstock,” said Woodstock resident Shirley Robillard.

“I think it’s good news. Everybody knew she is gone. This brings closure,” said another resident, John Davis, who was rattled by the news.

Tori was last seen leaving her school in Woodstock with a woman in a white coat. The young girl, whose disappearance captured international headlines, would have turned 9 on July 15.

Woodstock Mayor Michael Harding said the possible discovery of Tori’s remains will “re-open some wounds here (and) re-open a whole body of feelings that everyone will go through.”

Harding said he had no plans to contact Tori’s family.

“What they don’t need is a politician sort of hanging off them and I’ve chosen to keep my distance since it’s their issue more than it’s my issue,” he said.

This article was taken from http://www.thestar.com. To see the full story and a video click here.

Luciano Galasso on Internships

“Luciano Galasso’s Resume”. A piece of paper that hundreds of companies have seen on the desk over the years. Finding a job is not always the easiest task. Especially now during the recession when companies are firing more than they are hiring. If you’re just graduating at this point you may even just want an internship. While through my daily internet creeping, I came across this article about internships on talentegg.ca entitled Canadian media internships: glitz, glamour or gopher? which may help give you some perspective on internships. I know its not “what’s happening” in the news right now but I thought it might be helpful.

Transporting gigantic lobster costumes. Transcribing hours of raw footage. Juggling six coffees in one hand, and four donuts in the other. You have to start at the bottom to get to the top.

Your Big Break

You want to break into television or radio, but you don’t know how to get your foot in the door. People may be urging you to find an internship. That is some great advice! However, when you go to look for more information, you may find that most internship guides found on school web sites are very general and not very enlightening. The advice is often vague and unspecific to the industry you want to work in.

Well, let me introduce you to two former interns who are now being paid to work in the industry they love. The best advice comes from the people who have had the experiences.

A fellow intern “moves” a lobster costume. Photo courtesy Kate Morawetz.

The young and the hopeful

Kate Morawetz graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a B.A. in Media, Information, and Technoculture. The summer after graduation, she put two impressive internships on her resume. She started off the summer in Los Angeles as a production intern for The Young And The Restless. Then she headed back to Canada to intern at MTV for the rest of the summer. She currently works for MTV Canada’s in-house field and documentary team.

She found both internships with the help of the internship co-coordinator in her faculty. She jokingly quips that she prepared for the [MTV] interview by, “…watching TV and doing [her] hair.” But really she learned about MTV Canada by doing some research and thinking about why she wanted the position.

It is really important to know why you would be the best person for the job and to be able to voice that to the interviewer. Common questions that are asked include: What are your short-term goals? What are your long-term goals? Also, companies may ask you where you find your information. In this situation, you should not just answer, “television.” They want to see that you keep well informed through a variety of mediums.

Three qualities that Kate feels make a great intern include: a winning personality, strong work ethic and the ability to appreciate the internship as a learning experience even though it may include little to no financial compensation. An internship is about learning and if you learn well, the money will follow. If asked to transcribe an hour of interviews tapes, transcribe quickly. Do not creep on Facebook and do not be overly social. The television industry (specifically live TV) works on strict deadlines, so demonstrate to your employer that you can handle the pressure and time constraints.

Finally, if you are going to be a diligent unpaid intern and help out at least a few days per week, be prepared to either make some social sacrifices or get a part-time job to pay for your expenses. Many companies do not pay their interns.

Remember, as much as the company is doing you a favour by hiring you as an intern, you are doing the company a favour by providing free labour. Major companies with established intern programs understand this and will give you opportunities to do more than just fetch coffee. However, if you find you are being sold short, don’t be afraid to speak up. Let people know that you are ready to offer your assistance. But, don’t ever let an employer take advantage of your willingness.

From the audience to behind the scenes

Jamie Wilson graduated from Seneca’s Broadcast Journalism program in 2008. He began an internship at MTV Canada in August 2008. He currently works for CHUM as part of the events team.

Jamie’s foray into his internship was a little more organic and less conventional than what Kate experienced. One day he was hanging out in downtown Toronto near the Masonic Temple when MTV’s audience coordinator, Derek, asked if he would like to be part of the MTV Live audience. It was his experience as an audience member at the live show that sparked his interest in television broadcasting.

From that day forward, Jamie regularly attended the show (with a few friends who had similar aspirations) on Monday evenings. He readily participated whenever the Hosts called upon him to answer a question during the show. Soon after graduation the intern co-ordinator at MTV asked him to come for an interview.

Jamie’s story is a perfect example of how networking can often lead to the best internships. Sometimes it’s best to take matters into your own hands because the internship co-ordinator or internship bank at your school only has so many contacts.

He advises potential interns to act professionally. Places like MTV Canada see hundreds of interns pass in and out of their doors each year. New interns are hired every eight weeks. As Jamie puts it, “You may know people in the office but don’t act like you guys are friends. They get interns in and out of [the building] every couple of weeks. Though they are nice people, nice people need their space. Ask what they want for lunch, don’t ask them to go for lunch.” Be friendly, co-operative, and eager to learn.

Jamie snagged his current job at CHUM after a lot of perseverance. Having the hands-on experience he gained from his internship also helped to prepare him. He says that he “made a list of companies, printed off 50 resumes and personally delivered them to as many as possible.” Some companies receive hundreds of resumes every week so in order to stand out it helps if you make a personal connection. A few people he visited that did not have any work for him were still glad to help him out by suggesting leads.

Getting your foot in the door

Many schools have internship resources available for students who would like to gain real-world experience in their preferred industry. Students enrolled in the Print and Broadcast Journalism program at Humber College must complete an assigned 30-day internship (paid or unpaid) in their final year. Ryerson University also finds internship placements for their Radio and Television Arts and Journalism students. Finally, Seneca College requires their Broadcast Journalism students to complete at least 100 hours at an internship placement in order to graduate.

Even if you are hired after your internship, don’t expect to be producing your own show. Most interns are hired on as Production Assistants (PA), temporary help or other entry-level positions. Remember, you have to start at the bottom to get to the top.

— Luciano Galasso

Luciano Galasso on IE8

Hey everyone, Luciano Galasso finally back. I apologize for the delay between postings, it’s been a busy week. Anyways, I was chatting with a friend the other day and he mentioned something about IE8 (Internet Explorer 8). The web browser that microsoft recently launched. As he mentioned it, I just sorta said cool until he mentioned that they had launched a viral video campaign for it. This caught my attention because I had never heard of a viral video campaign being launched for an updated version of a web browser. So I looked into it and I found an article written about one of their videos that was pulled from the internet. I couldn’t embed it in this post but I will attach the link to the article so that if you would like to watch it you can. Here is the article

Microsoft recently released an Internet Explorer () ad that featured projectile vomiting to promote IE 8 and the “Browse Better” campaign. In fact, the vomiting was so prominent and gross that chances are you were not only totally disgusted, but so horrified that you had to share it with friends.

And that you did. According to video measurement firm Visible Measures, even though the O.M.G.I.G.P (Oh My God, I’m Gonna Puke) ad was eventually pulled by Microsoft, that video, just one part of the much larger campaign, accounted for 57% of the entire campaign’s video views.

As we originally reported, many a blog cried “eww” when they first saw the ad, but that didn’t stop video viewers from grabbing the embed code and reposting the video. This activity lead to a viral effect that continued even after the video was officially pulled by Microsoft, as users who had downloaded the original file re-uploaded it as well as their own re-mixed versions.

Just like many of you commenting on the original story, we still think the video is fairly disturbing, but Visible Measures makes an excellent point when they question whether or not this was planned from the beginning. They write, “We’re left to wonder whether or not this was part of the plan all along: publish a controversial though on-message ad, create some heated dialogue, apologize for offending customers, take it down, and drive big viewership numbers … from online video audiences copying and reposting the spot. Might this be the best result for Microsoft in the end?”

The video and the article can be found on www.mashable.com.

I’m going to keep an eye out for other videos and other articles on this topic so I’ll keep updating. Feel free to send me links to videos or anything related to this topic, including Microsoft’s  new search engine “Bing”.

Until next time

Luciano Galasso

http://www.twitter.com/luciano_galasso

Luciano Galasso on Social Networking

I found this article today on the ABC News website and it made me think of a few other things I would like to talk about. The idea of social networking and the impact that it has had on our culture and how it is that we view the world. Now, keep in mind, that this blog is all my opinion and I have no professional background on this subject to back me up but I also would like to hear what everyone else has to say.

I’m going to start with the idea of facebook and myspace and then get down to what the article is talking about, the one and only twitter. Remember those days when you used to ask someone for their number? and that was a big deal? Well it’s an even bigger and scarier deal now-a-days. What stemmed from the phone number asking once the internet came around was the idea of an email. Emailing someone back and forth was a way to work up to the phone number. To get to know someone before you actually heard each other’s voices. It was also a great for when you decided that things weren’t going to work out because then you could just stop responding to their emails, instead of having them call you all the time. But then social networking websites came around. Arguably they have been around before with dating sites and others but they only exploded once MySpace came around. MySpace was the first social network to really make headlines. There may have been some others but MySpace was certainly the first one that I had heard about and it was the first one that I decided to check out. I got my account, I uploaded some pictures, but then I realized that none of my friends had MySpace and so I just sort of put it aside.

I then had heard about facebook through a friend that was a few years older than myself. They were away at University at the time and I was in my senior year in high school. My friend talked about facebook as if it were the coolest thing ever. She talked about how she had “added” all of our other friends on facebook and how she could leave them “wall posts” to see how they were doing. I too was intrigued. I wanted to get this thing that they called “facebook” but I was told I would have to wait until I was enrolled in a post-secondary institution. Defeated I went back to msn.

MSN, another form of social networking, a more instant form of emailing. My parents always asked me “why don’t you just call your friends instead of sitting on the computer all day”. I was always afraid to tell them that half of the people I had on msn I didn’t have phone numbers for nor did I really know what to say to them in person. That being said, MSN allowed me to expand my network of friends because I had much more confidence. I wasn’t afraid to tell a girl I had feelings for her or tell my friend I was mad at him. I was a whole new person.

But, just a few months after I first heard about facebook, a friend who was my age and in my class, told me to go and look at her “albums on facebook”. “I thought you couldn’t get facebook if you were in high school” I protested. Turns out they had expanded the site to include high schools. My tiny little high school had made it on the map. So I got facebook and began adding friends. Soon, instead of asking people for their emails in order to add them on msn to get to know them, I simply had to ask “what’s your name” and I could find out anything I wanted about them and more. I found myself adding people that I barely knew, just to find out more about them. This is what I believe some people call “facebook creeping”. I like to rename facebook, stalkbook.

With the introduction of things like MySpace and Facebook, my friend network continued to grow, from old friends who I hadn’t seen since grade school to that new girl I met at the library the other day who happened to notice I had a third year economics textbook. These connections weren’t as strong as my msn connections because unlike msn where I talked to the people I had on my list every once and awhile, on facebook I really didn’t have to talk to them to know what was going on in their lives. I could simply read status updates, look at their photos or read their interests (along with the school they went to, where they work etc). I was also able to see who they were “friends” with and see if I had any mutual friends. In reality, most of these people weren’t really my friends at all. Then I realized I had to set my privacy settings really high or someone like an employer may see my profile and find me unfit to hire.

Years later, facebook got all fancy and started adding annoying applications and altering its format and doing some other things and so some people decided, facebook now has too much going on. we need something simple. Thus, the popularity of twitter was born. For those of you who have yet to jump on the twitter band wagon twitter is essentially a space where one creates an account and in 140 characters, tells everyone what they are doing, thinking about, where they are etc. You are able to “follow” others status updates as well as people are able to follow yours – if you chose to accept. As the article I have  provided points out,  this simple concept has gotten some people into trouble. That being said, twitter has also allowed people to keep up to date with situations going on in real time without waiting for the news to report their side of the story. Many celebrities, who are followed by thousands, have created even larger fan bases because of twitter but this has also gotten them into trouble, considering thousands of people are reading their every “tweet”. “Tweeting” has become a new form of citizen journalism. Blogging takes people too long. By the the time they have written about a subject, another update may have come and gone.

Where is twitter, and social networking going? Nobody knows. We are always trying to complicate things and make things more complex but as the creators of twitter show, simple if often the most effective.

A friend actually sent me a funny video she found about people’s new addiction to twitter on youtube. feel free to check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2HAroA12w

If you’d like, you are welcome to follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/luciano_galasso

— Luciano Galasso