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A Letter From The Editors
Torontoist has no over-arching editorial stances.
We are not pro-advertising, or anti-advertising; we are not pro-graffitti, or anti-graffiti; we are not pro-corporation, or anti-corporation. Individual writers may have stances, but we, as a shared entity and a collective, do not, and that distinction between individual and group is an important one. No one person, the editors included, represent the entirety of our staff, nor is there any one “Torontoist Writer” mould that our staff fits into. We don’t expect—or want—our staff or our readers to agree with everything that they see on Torontoist.
The use of an editorial “we” (“we” were at the store, “Torontoist” caught a movie last night) may be confusing, but it is a stylistic choice; not one that establishes group consensus (when we say “Torontoist didn’t like that movie,” we don’t actually mean everyone on staff saw it and disliked it). On our about page, we proudly declare that “the diversity of [our] staff—spread across interests, opinions, age groups, income levels, and any other imaginable category—accounts for the diversity in our content and our readership.” Our contributors have an enormous amount of freedom to express that diversity and say what they want to say, and are censored rarely, if ever.
Bias is a separate but nonetheless interrelated issue: we are, most often, dealing with personal opinions, not straight-up news. Some writers are more opinionated than others, but you, our readers, are all smart enough to judge the merits of their arguments yourself. Some of our staff are also members of organizations that are active in the city (the Green Party, Newmindspace, and the Toronto Public Space Committee, among other groups, all have someone on our staff), and those members are here as individuals to post about issues that are relevant to them. Unsurprisingly, those issues tend to be ones that they are involved with in our city, and there can be overlap between what they do and what they write. Rest assured, however, that Torontoist is under no-one’s thumb (and, conversely, no-one is under Torontoist’s), and that we will not deceive our readers.
Staff and readers are all welcome to agree or disagree with, or to question, or to praise what is published on Torontoist, and the comments on posts are where everyone gets to slug it out. We moderate comments only if they violate Gothamist’s comment policy (which we are actually pretty lenient about enforcing). As always, we welcome feedback on all of our entries—including this one—either in the comments or (if you wish to state your opinion privately) via e-mails to individual writers or editors. We are fortunate to be on the internet, a medium that allows for instantaneous and (mostly) hassle-free participation, a medium where every voice is audible.
The end of the section on the diversity of our staff on our about page reads: “The readers and staff do…have some things in common: they’re all smart, well-educated, and deeply passionate about our city.” It is only the means to that shared end, that shared goal—a great Toronto—that we may disagree on. We’re all pro-Toronto.
Sincerely,
David Topping and Marc Lostracco
Co-Editors-in-Chief, Torontoist