New column for This Magazine explores the stories that don't get done

This Magazine has launched a column called Stories Undone, to highlight stories that should be covered by the Canadian media but aren't. It's to be posted on the This website every second Monday and is written by Bilbo Poynter, the co-founder and executive director of the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting.

"Sometimes I’ll offer why it is I think a given story hasn’t been taken up," he says, in his opening column, "while other times I’ll simply identify a story I think should be done. Not all of them will be investigative in nature, but many of them will be. The inspiration for Stories Undone lies somewhere in-between the worthwhile Project Censored and the more recent column by Steven Brill for Reuters."

In his first column, he asks the very apt question about why coverage of the Quebec tuition hike story makes no mention of Canada's signature of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, wherein it committed to higher education being made “equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education;”

Poynter has worked as a researcher, associate producer and reporter on numerous investigative projects, including with the CBC’s award-winning Investigative Unit. He was the first Canadian to work at the Center for Investigative Reporting in California and is a past recipient of a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism in Washington, D.C. He also developed and teaches the investigative journalism course at Mohawk College. His reports have been seen and heard on CBC National Radio News, CBC.ca, As It Happens, the Canadian Press, The Montreal Gazette, J-Source and CTV.