More than 70 journalists, students, funders, and supporters gathered Wednesday evening to celebrate the Investigative Journalism Bureau’s fifth anniversary—and its new partnership with Postmedia.
It was a night of reunions and reflections, as the architects of the IJB recounted its unlikely journey from a classroom experiment at Toronto Metropolitan University a decade ago to an award-winning, nationally-recognized newsroom backed by the University of Toronto, Postmedia and major Canadian philanthropic funders.
“This is emotional. This feels like family,” said IJB founder Robert Cribb, who credited past and present staff and longtime collaborators for the groundbreaking success.
Cribb recounted the Bureau’s origin story as a three-act play.
The idea began with a “teaching hospital” approach to investigative reporting at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) where Cribb instructed journalism students by having them tackle real-world investigations alongside senior reporters and academic researchers. When those investigations began appearing in major media outlets, including the Toronto Star, CTV and Global News, the idea snowballed into a live newsroom that needed a home, and investment, to grow.
Shopping his pitch around town and across the country, Cribb said, “I got a hundred no’s. Not even thoughtful no’s. I got perfunctory no’s.”
Enter Gerry Gotfrit, a TMU journalism graduate turned real-estate investor who Cribb lovingly called “this weird guy who cares about journalism” to the laughter and claps of a knowing crowd. Gotfrit heard the pitch, and to Cribb’s recollection, said he liked it. He would become the IJB’s inaugural supporter, fundraiser and chairman.
“I detoured out of journalism when I graduated in ‘72,” Gotfrit told the crowd. “Fate makes you want to buy back your youth. Buying and selling office buildings, it’s a living…But changing the world and making it a better place, story by story, is really so important.”
Cribb and Gotfrit thought their dream was over six years ago when TMU declined to support the venture. But then the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health opened its doors to model, and the merging of newsroom and classroom.
“I think it took us about 10 minutes to be in violent agreement,” Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, dean of the school, said about those initial discussions. Public health, like journalism, relies on investigative projects that unquestionably reveal public-serving truths, he explained.
“I actually worry nowadays, whether we’re talking about public health… or the world generally, that the fact-based is slipping through our fingers,” he said. “It makes sense that this is a thing we can support… and it actually helps to restore fact-based reporting.”
As the IJB enters into a new partnership with Postmedia, the newsroom’s work is already starting to appear in the country’s largest distribution network with more than 40 newspapers across Canada.
The second IJB investigation published in the National Post about misconduct from the Law Society of Ontario was published earlier that day, and had already hit the top five most read stories across the network in Canada.
“We can touch a lot of hearts, a lot of people, and make a lot of change,” Gotfrit told the crowd.
Earlier that day, Postmedia’s chief content officer, Duncan Clark, visited the IJB team in action in their new newsroom at Postmedia offices in Toronto.
“It made my heart feel good to see a group of people together working on such critical and important work,” he told the audience that evening. “I feel that we’re very fortunate as a company, as a country, to have found this solution.”
Cribb credited the faces in the crowd, former and current reporters of the IJB, for the success it has become.
“This is the best investigative unit in Canada.”
