LaLa Land’s Post

Transcript

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Lolland. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm joined by Jordan Bitto. Jordan is the owner of Torstar Corporation, which is the publishing company for Toronto Star. He was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2023 and he was a part of bringing the NBA to Canada. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. It is my honor to be here. And I'm excited. I'm excited, too. I've heard that you're extremely passionate about what you do. So the focus of our episode today is going to be passion. Great. I love it. Yeah. So I read an article that you in the 70s delivered newspapers. So you have a long history with news and spreading the word of different world issues and different issues in our city to Canada. Can you tell me a little bit about your history? With news, where'd you find this passion for journalism? First of all, beyond thrilled to be here with you and I, I love what you're doing. I love the approach to it. And so I'm glad we're able to do this. So I'm the youngest of five. And I think being the youngest, you, you have the benefit of watching your siblings. And I think you sort of, you probably see it with, with you and your family dynamic, but you, the youngest sort of tracks and, and has to learn a lot of because mom and dad are focused on #1. #2 #3 by number 567, you're a bit of an afterthought. And so I think what happens is you develop a lot of independence through that, and then you develop your passions through that. And for me, a big part of where I am today and was watching my father and my mother, but then watching my siblings. And I had a, you know, 4 very successful siblings who, you know, lived their lives with a lot of passion. And I think that became the cue to me. To understand what I, what I, what was important and to really observe. And as a result of that, my brother John, who's Next up guy that always sort of pushed the limits and worked hard and everything. And I kind of wanted to be a lot like John and my brother Tom and my brother Nick. But what was interesting was, you know, when a lot of my friends were maybe playing sports or whatever, we were raised that you had to have a job, you had to get your own money to pay for things. And so a newspaper route was the easiest thing for a 10 year old. Kid to do obviously no ones hiring 10 year olds to do real jobs. So what I saw with that was if I built a root up and money in my pocket and if I actually worked harder back in the old days, they would give you rewards. You could win candy, you could win skateboard basketball or whatever. And I learned really a very fundamental rule thing about passion and the reward from passion that you can have a so that was my really my early assertive version. And so I really want to touch on that a little bit. How did passion serve you in your world today? It's an amazing question and I love it because it's the one thing I I tell people is if you don't have passion for what you do, then I don't know how you succeed. Or maybe find another job. I've never worried about the financial side of a business if I didn't have because I always believe that passion will get me to a point if I put my heart and soul into something that will allow me to, you know, work 20 hour days to get there or try and figure out. An angle on something. And so I live my life on everything I do, whether it's with my kids and, and raising our our kids with passion and, and just trying to be at every event that they have, trying to help them out with their homework, driving, getting up at 6:00 in the morning, you're driving to school or whatever. Then I walk in here and as I explained to my team today, I can't wait to get here every day because I'm so excited. And the reason is when you're running a news organization, is there anything better than when you understand that your reporter or journalist. Is actually helping some marginalized person in the city of Toronto or dealing with a situation where 4 year old is found in a dumpster in Rosedale in a very affluent area of Toronto. And there's no explanation for that. And so when you can walk in every day and know that the hundreds of people that work here are living with that day in and day out that passion to do the right thing. And I say I work with a bunch of do gooders here is really what we do, but I call them heroes is really they want to change the world. They want to do the right thing. And so that's an easy thing to happen. I say, I often say I'm luckiest guy in the world being at the publisher and owner of of a news organization that can actually change people's lives. I don't think I'll just say on it is I always say to to people that when we're out recruiting people for a job and people talk about the news industry and the trials and tribulations of it. But the thing that I talk about a lot about is that we actually have an unfair advantage and that why do we have it? Because when I'm recruiting. Someone to work here or if you worked here and you went home tonight and your wife, your kids say, what did you do today? And you'd say, well, I did this that well when you were here, you can talk about the things that I just talked about, about a family that is being wrongfully convicted of manslaughter of their two year old child. And that our reporters actually took on the police and proved the police had had gone rushed to judgment and the family was being wrong. So that's the unfair advantage and that's where the passion comes from. The ability to do that, I really appreciate that. The fact that you talked about what that impact that you're making means to you and what it looks like for you. I think that that passion really carries you so far. And I always like to think of it as something that really helps you push the boundaries a little bit. And I think that's a really nice lesson for a lot of our listeners that if they are passionate about something and they're willing to put in the work to get there, that that's possible for them. I'll go one step further. I always say to my kids, I say people that work with me here, my teammates. That if you put your passion in your heart and soul into something, it will pay off massive. It may not happen exactly when you think it's going to happen, but it will pay off if you just stay true to those values and working hard and doing the right thing for it. I mean, you need to look at other, obviously other factors in that, but staying true to that and being passionate will carry the day over a lot of other. OK, so you just said that if you stick with it and it might not just happen immediately. Can you tell me about a time? Where you were working really, really hard at something and you just kept on failing and but you kind of did about that. I think that resilience is a huge part of it. And I think the people that succeed and rise to the top are the ones that when they hit an obstacle, they stay with it, look smart enough and they stay with it. They have their passion. And so once a week I deal with the situation like that here because when you think about it, you've got hundreds of journalists and whether it's taking on the police in a in a situation or access the information. Where you want to get records of of a court case and be able to and you're being told there's no way you're ever. And then you get a judge that will agree with you on it. Things like that happen every every so often here and I and so I'm just used to it. I guess is is a big part of it. Yeah. And you mentioned some of the stories that you've had of different people in Toronto. And I wanted to ask you some of these stories are really like emotional. And can be a lot to do those stories, you see them affecting people in your office or do you see them affecting you and how do you manage your mental health in these situations? Another great quote. These are all great questions. And I think that one, it's a tough, tough, tough one to bring up his October 7th when the situation happened in Gaza and you've got Muslim people working your nation, you've got Jewish people working your newsroom. And at the end of the day, there's no clear. Right or wrong on it, right People are very yeah, passion. There's Um, and So what I tried to really do is just to talk to people about it and help them understand both sides of it and what we've tried to do. And we're a news organization and we try to be balanced and independent and what we do, but we just tried to give people an honest perspective on it. And it's amazing because people say, well, you're wrong on that or you're wrong. I give, but that's part. I'm hoping that our our readers will be intelligent enough to read it and be able to form their own opinion because we see far often too much of it from one side or the other side. And, and so you want to bring balance to that. And how are you managing your team members in those kind of situations, your office spaces? Someone's having a really hard time understanding something. Someone is really, really down about something. Someone's having trouble kind of keeping up with things in the office. How are you doing? With those environments, well, you I didn't answer that was your other part of your question. And it's the mental health and we spend a great deal of time to provide a level of support to journalism. There is a very tough industry, right, especially if you're a woman or you're a woman of a minority and you're a target for all these trolls online and most social media and the and the evil part of it. But it's a very tough thing for a young woman who. Is tackling that day in and day out. And So what we do is we provide a number of different things, whether it's counseling, support, securities and what I say at the end of the day is we have your back. And so whatever it's going to take to protect them and then there's legislation. So we've been pushing the federal government, provincial government to put legislation in to protect the journalists or or whoever. But mental health as we see it, it's a big. Big problem and and I think far too often we're kind of turning our back to it now. There's a real awareness to it and I'm hoping between what we do, the governments etcetera, we shine the light on it and there will be some form of effects work. So I feel like you have this sense of advocacy to you love advocacy. Can you tell me a little bit about that? I was raised by parents that always taught us to do good things for other people that are less fortunate. And, and so I've been, I was raised that way. And so when I bought this organization, I don't think I really understood the significance of what it had done for people that were less fortunate. And that's the point, the biggest point of difference with the Toronto Star on Torstar publications is that we live by a set of principles called the Atkinson principles that really give us a backbone. And it's, it's these, the values in that are things that I think most Canadians live by day in and day out. And, and that puts me in a position, our organization in a position where we have to be advocates and we have to protect. Are those that need to be protected in our society. And it's a wonderful, it's a lot of pressure, but it's a wonderful thing. Again, being passionate about things. It's a wonderful thing to know that. The work of your journalists can actually enact a law to protect someone or as I've talked about, wrongfully convicted or whatever. And we do that day in and day out. Thank you for that. That's just amazing. And it's exactly what our city needs. So I think a lot of our listeners have a lot of appreciation for that, and I know that I do. And so I have one last question for you. What does success look like to you? Success would be your listeners find Toronto Star subscriptions. Yeah, because. But I, I'm quite serious because I, I talk a lot about social media and how we've allowed, whether it's Twitter or Facebook, that someone could post something about you or Sam, a pedophile with some alias name. And there's no accountability. And so there's that part of it, there's the trolling part of it. If you're, you know, as I talked about as a journalist or a young woman and someone comes after you. And So what people have forgotten about is the importance of trusted journalism and what it can do for society and how when something happens. The City Council, if a journalist isn't there reporting on it, whether it's the Greenbelt fiasco that happened in the province of Ontario or something else like I've talked about today, if a journalist from a credible news organization isn't there reporting on it, then it goes there's nothing there. And what happens, we have a very society becomes our democracy is gone in the logs. So I say this, that it's really important for your readers, whether it's our publications or others to have a subscription. To support Canadian owned and operated media and to be informed. Definitely. And I, I really, really like how you answered that because I know that there's a lot of people that are in the business industry, for example, that need to subscribe to these kind of news channels and need it. But we kind of forget about the younger generation of people that are in school. And they don't necessarily need to be reading the news, but they should because getting your news from social media is just not reliable. Not news that's not news. That's one point of view and, and we see now. AI, how it can be distorted very, very quickly. And so that's why if we write one that article, the reputation of the journalist, the, the person delivering the newspaper, the digital team, the publisher, every person in here is impacted. Yet I can post something false on news on Twitter and there's no accountability of that. So I just say it's very important for your listeners and others to understand that the importance of trusted and credible news organization. They get their source of information from and they may not. Agree with it all the time with or if it is opinion or whatever, but it's important to have that because that's what makes Canada great. We are a city or in a country that supports diversity, that has tolerance on religion, on, on, on, on race, on everything. And that's we have to celebrate that and we have to understand that and be and be open and honest with each other about. I really, really appreciate your thoughtfulness and thank you so much for making Toronto an amazing city to live in and thank you so much. For Lowland listeners for tuning in today.