William Thorsell, former editor of The Globe and Mail, calls for a wider sense of inquiry by journalists -- and defecates on traditional notions of "investigative journalism." I offer some context and rebuttal.

As two examples of the paradigm he espouses in his G&M column on Monday, Thorsell pointed to a Globe article on why Ontario's auto industry is doing so well and a Margaret Wente column on why Edmonton's schools are doing so well.

"These were two of the more important investigative pieces to appear recently in the Canadian news media. But most journalists would not recognize them as such. Most journalists confine their understanding of investigative journalism to 'what went wrong yesterday,' especially if it afflicts the comfortable."

While he sneered at CBC in general for this approach, he took particular aim at the morning radio's The Current, "so preoccupied is it with the dark side of life."*

* While crapping on the CBC, Thorsell has previously written approvingly of As It Happens. Here's an excerpt from a Dec. 1, 2003 G&M column:

Investigative journalism isn't just about the bad and the ugly; it is about the excellent and the marvellous. No journalistic vehicle in the country knows this better than As It Happens.

The folks at AIH remember to cover both matters of public interest, and matters that interest the public -- like the many uses of duct tape. Britain is a steady source of nutty projects, with the southern U.S. a close second. And God bless 'em for digging them up.

Curiosity is a defining characteristic of the young (as certainty is of the old). Journalism struggles to stay young.

Thorsell argues that people are hungry to learn from others' success. "How much investigative reporting occurs on the sources of unusual efficiency? The Globe aside, not much. The CBC alone: None. ...

"Want to save medicare as an idealistic journalist? Do some investigative journalism from which hospital managers can benefit."

He warns against giving readers an "unalloyed diet of useless dysfunction and malfeasance -- which shows how wonderfully ethical and skilful you are in police work. You are neither a policeman nor a prosecutor: You are a journalist. Do more useful work with your curiousity.

"Get beyond what's going wrong to what's going on without forgetting what's going wrong."

He also argued that journalism is filled with human interest stories but lacks stories of interest to humans.

In closing, he warned the Internet is eroding the monopoly of traditional journalism. "The dumb habits of older readers, listeners and viewers remain the journalist's best friends."

The worst assumption a journalist can make is that only the dark side of the human experience matters or sells, he said.

My turn

For background, Thorsell isn't saying anything particularly new. He's always looked at journalism that way.

The Globe and Mail of Norman Webster and Geoffrey Stevens was a much more traditional newspaper. Oddly enough, I found a lot of the old-skool investigative reporting done by people like Victor Malarek and Jock Ferguson during their regime to be quite compelling.

However, Roy Megarry wanted to take the Globe in a different direction. He liked what Thorsell, who's never actually been a reporter, had to say. Thorsell took over the newsroom in 1989, remaining until 1999 (during the height of the newspaper wars, new publisher Philip Crawley eased Thorsell out and brought in Brit editor Richard Addis, who lasted three years and returned to the UK. Long-time Globe journo Edward Greenspon is the current editor-in-chief).

Some of Thorsell's innovations -- the the Facts and Arguments back page, with its mix of trivia and personal essays -- remain with the paper. Others, like the Middle Kingdom (an analytical page in the middle of the paper; described in Frank magazine as "shit nobody wants to read or write"), do not.

For a look at Thorsell's first four years, try and find the Summer 1993 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism and read Hostile Makeover ("William Thorsell struggles to give The Globe a new face -- his own"). Thorsell refused to be interviewed for it. For whatever reason, the RRJ didn't put it online.

While I haven't had time to do a comprehensive content analysis of Globe editorial content during Thorsell's tenure for this blog posting, I would say it's reasonable to conclude that traditional investigative reporting faded over in that period. However, in fairness to Thorsell, the entire Canadian newspaper industry got clobbered by both a recession and a changing advertising marketplace during the first half of the 1990s. Investigative journalism, which is expensive to produce, suffered at most media outlets over that time.

And I would suspect that even if times were flush, he would have still de-emphasized it, because he's more an intellectual than a journalist. Whether one sees this as a blessing or a curse, Thorsell never spent much time burning up shoeleather or getting phone ear chasing stories. He started as an associate editor with the Edmonton Journal back in 1984 then moved to the Globe as an editorialist. As a result, he had lots of leisurely lunches with movers and shakers talking over the issues of the day, often under the cover of  "background," but never really had to dig for what we in the craft like to call "news."

In any event, the definition I've used for "hard news" -- the stuff of daily newsgathering -- is that it must have visceral impact. Most of the hoi polloi aren't that cerebral. They gravitate to news and issues they can relate to at a gut level.

As an intellectual, the Princeton-educated Thorsell would gravitate more to story ideas like "What's the history of the Earth's temperature in geological time, and what did the biosphere look like in those eras?"

Some journalists would gravitate to stories like "How does a shady arms dealer end up giving an ex-prime minister $300,000 in cash for advice on a pasta business?"

For Thorsell, I suspect journalism is a chance to slake his intellectual thirst. For others, journalism is a chance to watch history in real time, to chronicle the human experience, to empower people by telling them what's going on in society, and in some cases, to target wrongdoing, be it crooked politicians or shady businessmen.

Those latter subjects are what Thorsell likely means by "the dark side."

I wonder what Thorsell would think of G&M reporter Geoffrey York's excellent story Taliban Rising, which raises some important issues that I don't think were thoroughly discussed during the recent parliamentary debate and vote on extending the Afghanistan mission. Would he consider it to be the equal of Keenan's or Wente's work, or would he see it as being almost Current-ian in its grimness?

To me, the test is as follows: Does it tell people something of importance that they should know?

Thorsell derides those whose view of investigative journalism is limited to "what went wrong yesterday" -- and then adds this telling kicker: "especially if it afflicts the comfortable."

Mr. Thorsell lives a very comfortable existence. He looks to be very much at home at this city's more elite social events. I wonder if he's ever worried on some level that revelling too much in the dark side of journalism would affect his access to that rarified social strata?

All that being said, I think Thorsell's wider point -- stories that tell us what's going right (and why) in a media environment that often obsesses on what's going wrong -- is a good caution. While he mopes that the dark side sells, I would argue that positive news that has the requisite visceral impact sells just as well. 

I would even concede that the visceral, through its addictiveness, can become limiting. Society is wide and complex. The news should not restrict itself by definition to a narrow band of issues and events.

Most serious Canadian media observers would credit Thorsell with bringing some innovative thinking to newspaper journalism in this country and broadening the scope of how we think about journalism.

But I think his derogatory attitude to the difficult, necessary work of classic investigative reporting is a stain on him.