Summer Travel Reading, from the NMA Archives

A friend dropped us a note recently from his travels in Austria: “I never imagined this place would be so stimulating: the mountains, the gardens, the café life; even the stodgy old Habsburg homes have some life to them.”

It’s summer, deep summer, which means most of us are either travelling or dreaming of travelling. We of the latter shade perhaps are undertaking dozens of vicarious journeys on Facebook and Pinterest. And whether we’re actually on the road or just imaginarily so, we like our travel reading: none better than the collection of award-winning travel stories at the National Magazine Awards Archive.

A few suggestions for your summer pleasures and days:

“The Big Blue” by Charles Wilkins, explore (2011 Gold winner in Travel)
Sixteen brave souls, one uniquely engineered rowboat, 5000 kilometres of open ocean. The author–the unsinkable Charles Wilkins, admittedly not the youngest or fittest of oarsmen–spent 18 months training for this record-breaking attempt to cross the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados without the aid of sail or motor. This blogger felt almost guilty reading of this adventure from the comfort of a Toronto patio, as Wilkins dispatched:

“I was cold, I was exhausted, I was starved… What’s more, I had been beaten up–slapped around by waves that sometime before midnight had started coming hard out of the east onto our port flank… At one point, when for the briefest of moments my focus had lapsed (my brain having detoured into fantasies of my former life as a human being), an uncooperative wave had snatched my oar, driving the handle into my chest, pinning me with savage efficiency against the bulkhead that defined the prow end of the rowing trench.” [Read more]

“Walking the Way” by Timothy Taylor, The Walrus (2009 Gold winner in Travel)
A fixture of bucket lists for centuries, Spain’s Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage trail seems, by the grace of those who walk it, an uneven plane of surrealism, uniting disparate senses of faith and devotion on a single, very literal path. And few writers put pen to trail as evocatively as Timothy Taylor:

“Nobody talks about religion, faith, metaphysics… Nobody says, because not long ago at a party I got into a drunken argument about philosophical materialism–the belief that the only thing that exists is physical matter–and found myself yelling at a woman, ‘Then why are we here? Why are youhere?’ Nobody would admit to that. To losing it. To getting belligerent over the possibility of transcendence. Nobody would admit that, because it would indicate that you somehow needed to walk 800 kilometres across Spain.” [Read more]

“St. Petersburg the Great” by Noah Richler, enRoute (2008 Gold winner in Travel)
A mindful travelogue in the modern mold–a studious writer eager to discover what lies beneath; a photographer (Robert Lemermeyer) with a keen sense of place–it satisfies both the memories of those who’ve already been there and the desires of we who long to go. Not just restaurants–ingredients. Not just vodka–conversation. (Not just English–bilingual; it’s enRoute after all.) Richler keeps the reader at his elbow:

“In St. Petersburg, the noteworthy is either tawdry or a few steps underground or magnificent and palatial beyond imagining. It is as if Peter’s lofty dream and the lowly serfdom that made it possible persist in the soul of the city because neither ever existed without the other.” [Read more]

Read these travel stories and more at the National Magazine Awards archive: magazine-awards.com/archive

[Cross posted with the Magazine Awards blog]

More summer reading from the National Magazine Awards: Essays | Sports & Recreation

Walrus tackles Al-Jazeera, gently

On newsstands at this very moment, The Walrus magazine is profiling the much-maligned Al-Jazeera English (AJE) satellite news channel with a chronicle of the network's trials to become a big boy of global English-language media. The article, "The Most Hated Name in News," is by National Magazine Award-winning writer Deborah Campbell.

It's definitely worth a read if you haven't followed AJE's ordeal to get past the CRTC and other skeptics in Canada.

Favourite quote of the article: "Citizen journalism is like citizen dentistry."

Favourite insinuation that North American news media is a black hole: That if only AJE could break into the North American market its only rival on the global stage would be BBC World, which ironically is barely available in the North American market.

However, the article may leave the reader wanting for more than a peripheral glimpse of AJE.

For example, the article's central character is described as launching "a kind of pre-emptive strike to address concerns about AJE as it applied for a broadcast license from the CRTC." What were those concerns? The article later implies that it was completely due to perceptions of an anti-Israel bias. Makes sense, but where's the proof?

The CRTC's guidelines for issuing a license to a non-Canadian media outlet includes the following:
"Absent clear evidence, as determined by the Commission, that a non-Canadian news service would violate Canadian regulations, such as those regarding abusive comment, the Commission will be predisposed to authorize non-Canadian news services for distribution in Canada."

This was not cited in the article, to its detriment. Has anyone chronicled "abusive comment" by AJE? Did anyone besides pro-Israel groups protest? How has the CRTC engaged each side of the debate?

Regrettably, the article also misses the opportunity to address another burning question: what is the relationship between Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic? Is there different content and approach to news? Are critics lambasting AJE for what AJA does in its reporting? The CRTC approved AJA in 2004 and has been monitoring it ever since--what has it found? Is AJA a hate-mongerer, or are its Canadian critics merely Arabophobes?

80% of the important info in the Walrus article--including the same interviewees--can be found in this April Globe and Mail article, at one-tenth the word count.

Give us more, oh Walrus. Tackle harder.*

In related news, the article did pique the Tuque Souq's interest on at least one other peripheral topic: Why the hell is Al-Jazeera banned in Tunisia? This new article from the Committee to Protect Journalists explains the ongoing war between AJA and the otherwise happy-go-luckiers of Tunisia.

Also, in almost totally unrelated news, the new Walrus issue also has a great piece on the making of Just for Laughs gags. They really never get old!

* The Tuque Souq recommends supporting The Walrus (and lots of other Canadian magazines) by taking out a subscription for you and your loved ones, so the Walrus can give us more.

National Magazine Awards gala is Friday

This Friday, Canadian magazines will win awards. Guaranteed! The 32nd annual National Magazine Awards gala is June 5. I'll be there.*

Earlier we took a look at 4 Middle East-related articles up for awards this year. Should victory transpire, they'll grab a place in history alongside these other recent NMA winners covering the Middle East:

Last year (the 2007 awards) George Jonas won a Gold award in the Essays category for his 7,600-word, um, essay/saga: "Meditations on Israel" published in Queen's Quarterly. I tried to get through it and failed. Obviously the judges fared better. (I've linked to the article on Jonas's personal website; if you can find the original QQ publication, there are some nice accompanying photographs.)

In 2006, Deborah Campbell won a Gold and a Silver award for "Iran's Quiet Revolution" in The Walrus... fantastic piece on the fabric of Iranian society just as the nuclear issue was first heating up (pun intended). The same year, George Jonas (again) won a Gold award for "The Spielberg Massacre" in Maclean's, in which he ripped the director for messing with his book about the Munich tragedy.

In 2005, it was The Walrus again: A photo essay by Rita Leistner, "Al Rashad"--about an Iraqi psychiatric hospital--won a Gold award in the Words & Pictures category (obviously the captions were great). (Unfortunately the above link doesn't call up the entire photo essay, just the intro.) "The Peace Wager" by Kathy Cook, also in The Walrus, won a Silver award for reporting on the Darfur crisis.

And just so you don't think that every award-winning Canadian magazine article about the Middle East has to be either published in The Walrus or by George Jonas (or in English, for that matter), in 2004 the venerable Michel Vastel won a Gold award for "Ma guerre d'Algérie" in L'actualité, ruminating on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Algerian war for independence, in which Michel Vastel fought. [Find out a bit more on this in the latest Ryerson Review of Journalism's profile of Vastel, who died last year.]

See you at the gala.

* I have to be there; it's the perk of my day job.

National Magazine Awards nominations announced

Tonight we found out the nominees for the 32nd annual National Magazine Awards, for which there are 36 categories and 341 total nominees from 79 mags, which gives the impression--I hope true--that this country is flippin' crazy about magazines.*

Among the nominees are at least 4 articles involving Middle East issues:

• "Iraq's Walking Dead" by Chris Watt in Maisonneuve magazine is nominated in the category Investigative Reporting. It's about Iraqi Kurds and a Kurdish prison in northern Iraq. Chris, a student, is also nominated for the Best Student Writer award for this piece.

• "The Prince of Little Mogadishu" by Gerald Hannon in Toronto Life is nominated in the Profiles category. (Hannon is hands-down the best magazine profile writer around this town, for those of you who like profiles, which honestly I don't, but I liked this one.) It's a story of K'naan, a Somali refugee-cum-hip-hop-artist. (Clay Stang, who took the photographs for this piece, also got a nomination in the Portrait Photography category.)

• "York's Middle East War" by Brett Grainger in Toronto Life is nominated in the Society category. I read this article when it first came out and found it a bit sensationalist. But having been involved in campus wars involving Middle East issues for years, my opinion probably matters little here. If you're a Tor Life fan (and really, a magazine's job is to pleasure its readers, not necessarily me), or if unlike me you don't have 20 friends who are grad students at York U, I'm sure you'll find it very insightful.
  
  
• "Liban, les « métiers » du chaos" par Katia Jarjoura dans L'actualité, sur l'équipe de nuit, d'une sorte, au Beyrouth. (Possibly the most interesting article nominated, but it's in French. C'est okay, oui, because all of you are bilingual, non? Like moi, I'm being bilingual maintenant.)
  

Up for grabs for these and hundreds of other articles: Gold and Silver awards at the 32nd annual National Magazine Awards gala on June 5. Stay tuned.

*Full disclosure: Your humble blogger platoons as the Communications Manager for the National Magazine Awards, so this blog posting is probably 49% utterly shameless promotion of the organization he works for and, more to the point, initiates and tracks the media coverage of. But the other 51% is pure, unaffiliated love for Canadian magazines!

Chop Chop... is Mohamed Kohail next?

For sale: The life of a Canadian citizen on death row in Saudi Arabia. Goes by the name of Mohamed Kohail. Special 2-for-1 sale. Asking price: $5 million.

The article "Chop Chop Square" by Adam St. Patrick in the new issue of The Walrus magazine makes a heavy footprint on the hearts of those following the Kohail case. The author is reporting from... well, I think the title makes that plain. He witnesses a public beheading in Saudi Arabia, and wonders whether Mohamed Kohail will be next on the block.

It may not be long: in the latest serve-and-volley between Saudi courts, a lower court at the request of a higher court upheld its own earlier decision to uphold the death penalty against Mohamed Kohail for his part in the death of a schoolmate. [For more background on this convulution of justice, see our most recent Tuque Souq posting on the Kohail saga. Mohamed's younger brother Sultan Kohail also faces a possible death sentence.]

The Kohail case is a tragic casualty of the seemingly unending war between Saudi jurisprudence and Reason, underscored no more precisely than in Wednesday's Globe and Mail article which laid out the cogent argument that the Kohail brothers are now essentially being held for ransom--blood money--by the victim's family, which has the power to grant clemency.

As Mr. St. Patrick affirms in his article about the Saudi system of capital punishment: "[A]t any time until the sword strikes, a victim’s family can pardon the condemned — usually for a cash settlement of at least two million riyals ($690,000 or so) from the convict or his family."

Except that in the case of the Kohail brothers, the asking price is almost ten times that: $5 million, according to the report in the Globe.

Amnesty International has issued an "urgent action" petition for clemency, indicating that the successful application of swift, direct pressure on Saudi Arabia from the outside--don't bother turning your head, Mr. Prime Minister, we are looking at you--is now the only way to save the Kohails.

Or five million bucks. Hey, why don't we ask some of those folks who are paying off Somali pirates?

Tuque Souq Autumn (Magazine) Reading List

The Tuque Souq is on a mini-holiday until November 3, at which time we'll return - 24 hours before the polls close in the western U.S. - to call the election for Barack Obama well ahead of the liberal elite media as well as the liberal regular media, and Fox News.

In the meantime, we present for your diversion the first-annual Tuque Souq Autumn (Magazine) Reading List: 6 articles from 6 great Canadian magazines to tickle your long-form-journalism fancy. Enjoy.

"Iran's Quiet Revolution," by Deborah Campbell, The Walrus, September 2006.

"Tear Down That Wall," by Sue Ferguson, This Magazine, September-October 2007.

"The Persian Dub," by Abou Farman, Maisonneuve, December 2006.

"Prop Afghanda," by Anthony Fenton, Briarpatch, June-July 2007.

"The Great Game," by Stephen Osborne and Christopher Grabowski, Geist, Spring 2007.

"Jazz and Jihad," by Gilad Atzmon, Adbusters, July 2007.

Happy reading. And support Canadian magazines by buying them, then surreptitiously leaving them behind the next time Stephen Harper invites you over for tea and biscuits and arts bashing.