Ken Whyte versus the RRJ

ShareThisNot 24 hours after a Ryerson Review of Journalism story on publisher Kerry Mitchell went online, Rogers publisher Ken Whyte sent a letter to the editor expressing his “disappointment” with the way his comrade was portrayed.

The story, which describes Mitchell as an “interfering publisher” with a “hungry ambition and a cool demeanor” who recently crossed Whyte, was written by Robyn Urback and Maiya Keidan (both of the RRJ’s spring 2010 issue) and published online Wednesday, March 31.

The next morning, Whyte sent a scathing email to the RRJ, which read, in part:

“The supposed criticisms of my Rogers Publishing colleague Kerry Mitchell are ridiculous. It is not a "transgression" for a publisher to be involved in the cover and contents of her magazine; it is a duty. A "hands-on" management style is not a flaw or a problem but something Kerry has in common with the founder of our company, Ted Rogers (whose name, incidentally, is on the wall at the Ryerson School of Management).”

The letter, however, was vague and non-descript, and though it speaks of factual inaccuracies, it lists no specifics.

D.B. Scott wrote about the incident on the Canadian Magazines blog, and the entry has spurred more than a dozen comments over the weekend. One anonymous commenter wrote:

“The RRJ has undone what little credibility it had with this story (and other stories that use the same silly reporting techniques).”

David Hayes, a Toronto-based freelancer, pointed out that the RRJ’s fact-checking department is more rigorous than that of Maclean’s, and that the strong point of view in the piece is similar in feel to the pieces Whyte has cultivated for his own baby. Hayes writes:

“Disagreeing with the point-of-view of a strong feature that has a point-of-view (as good magazine journalism should) is fine, to be expected. As most publishers would say, including Ken Whyte who delights in the buzz & controversy created by the point-of-view journalism he runs in Maclean's, it's when no one cares much one way or the other about an article (or a magazine) that you should worry.”

It’s worth noting that this is just one of several RRJ pieces published this year (for both the spring and summer issues) that Whyte declined to comment on during the research stage.

Full disclosure: I worked on the summer 2010 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism as managing editor (and ran the issue's fact-checking department).