My first job as a professional journalist was with a now-defunct Montreal English-language tabloid. That’s where I learned everything about newspapering, or at least how it was done in the Page 3 Girl and hot type era.

Later, while working full-time in TV — and studying part-time for my MBA — I was writing for magazines such as the Globe’s ROB, and reporting on this country’s growing film and TV sector as Montreal correspondent for the show biz bible, Variety.

My 25 years at the Toronto Star, Canada’s biggest newspaper, began with TV and radio columns and features. I covered regulatory decisions, industry news, programming trends, the birth of 24/7 news and the “Information Highway” which, of course, became the WWW.

Then, because I was bilingual and had Quebec political journalism experience, I was assigned to Montreal for two years to cover yet another “constitutional crisis.”

Upon my return to Toronto, I went back to the media beat, tracking and critiquing the industry during its most disruptive decades. (At this time, I picked up a National Newspaper Award in 1996 for Critical Writing.) Convergence, consolidation and concentration were changing every news organization; the number of specialty TV channels was exploding; and, social media began grabbing all the ad dollars.

For media execs, these were troubling times. For a journalist covering them, it couldn’t have been more exciting, especially around 9/11 when my columns were being republished, online and in ebooks while my (award-winning) blog, the Star’s first, was among the most-read items on our website.

In my last few years at the Star, I went on to writing about politics, culture and society, first as a columnist and again as a blogger. (Archived here.) In the period leading up to my retirement, working as a feature writer, I earned a National Newspaper Award co-nomination for investigative reporting.

My earliest TV experience was with a Toronto-based syndicated talk show in the 1970s for which I traveled the world, pre-interviewing actors, authors and other celebrity guests. (The stories I could tell!)

From there, it was on to CBC-TV News & Current Affairs in Montreal, where I was a documentary producer and presenter and, ultimately, on-camera reporter. At the same time, I was a regular contributor to the fifth estate and writing French-language segments for Sesame Street. Back in Toronto, I became a producer and co-presenter of the business program, Venture.

Even after I joined the Toronto Star, I continued broadcast work, as an expert commentator and/or regular panel participant, in both English and French, on TV and radio, on CBC, TVO, CTV, Citytv, Radio-Canada and TFO.

I also co-hosted one of the top-rated weekly hours for the CBC News Network (Newsworld), Inside Media, at the most exciting time after 9/11 and during the attack on Iraq.

In recent years, I’ve been writing for Rabble, The Tyee, TVOntario and Canadaland. My columns have also appeared in Toronto’s alternative weekly, Now Magazine and Al Jazeera English‘s opinion pages, an international platform which attracts a large Canadian audience.

In 2014, my #BeenRapedNeverReported tweets went viral, leading to worldwide media attention. It also resulted in TV and print work, including a 3100-word feature on #hashtagfeminism for Elle Canada, as well as social media consulting.

Today I am consulting on a number of multi- and digital-media projects, as well as writing and blogging for corporate, retail and other private clients.

And, of course, I tweet. A lot.