Kevin Donovan talking to first-year journalism students
Three years into his career... "I realized the best thing you can do is get out of the office." But back in those days there was more money for journalists to travel
Donovan explains when he went St. Kitt's to cover Ben Johnson's steroid use as a young journalist
"What do you do when you're really depressed in the Caribbean? You go to the pharmacy" says Donovan
Donovan was upset his story made page A19 rather than the front page
Donovan explains the backlash he got after releasing the first information of the crack video.
Audience question about why not buying crack video but bought murder rant video
The sender of rant video sent a watermarked two second clip of the video as proof.
Dangerous part of it: 1 of the three sources said "I gave you Sandra Lici and you didn't give me anything for it." He wanted money since The Star gave money for the Ford video
Audience Question: Are you upset you didn't buy the crack video?
Donovan says no just in case the owner was linked to the drug and gun community. It would be too stressful
Audience Question: How do you feel about whistleblowers?
He loves them but a true whistleblower works inside an organization. If they want to reveal their name then it's probably not good information.
An example is : ORNGE scandal
The only way of secrecy is promising the source that you would never reveal and that they know you would go to jail for not revealing it. "I wish I would go to jail that way I would be famous."
Advice: don't write their name down and (for the whisteblowerd) don't gather information from work
"This should've been over the day we published it," says Donovan about the Ford story. The reason it's still a story is because Ford stayed in office.
"I'm known as the Rob Ford reporter."
The Star newsroom has these big screens with colour-coded notes that say how popular a story is and who is reading it.
A very vicious Ford nation - usually women over 50, Donovan says
He's covered two wars, Gulf War and Afghanistan. So it helps to ease the fear of meeting up with people with the crack video. "The biggest fear is failure," Donovan says.