The front page of Al-Ahram, Cairo, Egypt, Feb. 12, 2011

It was Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post from 1946 until his death in 1963, who coined the phrase that has since almost become cliché in the world of journalism and beyond. In a speech to Newsweek’s correspondents in London on April 29, 1963, he urged them, “Let us today drudge on about our inescapably impossible task of providing, every week, a first rough draft of a history that will never be completed about a world we can never really understand.”

Yesterday was one of those days when it was easy for journalists in Egypt and around the world to feel as if they were, indeed, writing the first rough draft of history. And today is one of those rare days where one story dominates headlines around the world: Egypt. The resignation of president Hosni Mubarak inspired front-page designers on five continents to mark the day in unusual and special ways.

That makes it a perfect day to check out the website maintained by Washington-based Newseum. Sort through the world’s front pages by region, compare visual treatments of the story from continent to continent and notice the headlines, including their emphases and nuances. The Newseum’s newspaper front-page index is here.

In my view, face-to-face meetings of world leaders are a useful thing, both to promote discussion of foreign and fiscal policies and to advance rapport and understanding. Multilateral summits have always required extensive security preparations, but the large-scale protests that began to accompany them in the latter 20th century increased the costs enormously. For more than 20 years, anarchists have used large and well-meaning protests as cover for their own destructive and criminal activities. Any legitimate protest group or movement that thought things would be different in Toronto was simply naive. Essentially, large-scale protests and demonstrations provide the cover and anonymity anarchists need to operate. The Harper government, the province of Ontario and the integrated security force operating before, during and after the summit understood this; hence, the $1.2-billion security tab.

Given these realities, meetings such as the G20 ought either to go virtual (a severely limiting option) or be permanently located at purpose-build venues that can reasonably accommodate leaders and their accompanying delegations and hangers-on (which can number into the many hundreds per country). The United Nations comes to mind; in the world of graphic novels it might be a Fortress of Solitude. In any case, to spend more than a billion dollars on security for a one-off set of meetings is unsustainable and borders on immoral.

A few critiques of the news media, which on the whole provided fair and balanced coverage of events inside and outside the security perimeter.

First, the use of social media and new technologies as part of the news-gathering process added another dimension to reporting of events, especially on the streets of Toronto. Tools such as Twitter provided an immediacy in reporting that approached real time. Yes, some tweets and posts were inaccurate or misleading, but the work of journalism behind the scenes has always consisted of a process of sorting accuracy from fiction in the context of fast-moving events. With social media, it merely happens more publicly.

But there’s a downside too. Any reporter who has ever covered a rally or strike knows that the mere presence of a still or video camera can alter events. Where a picket line might be peaceful before the arrival of news media (or even after the arrival of a print journalist), it becomes noisy and agitated with the arrival of radio or television. The ubiquity of cameras in cellphones and webcams — in the hands of thrill-seekers, protesters, police and others — raises the stakes and exponentially distorts the event itself, as various actors in the unfolding drama seek their million hits on YouTube or an adrenaline rush they can take away as a virtual souvenir.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Second, the degree to which news media, mainstream and otherwise, provided any type of historical context for the mayhem that began to spill out onto the streets of Toronto was at first remarkably low. Not until Sunday did coverage more frequently begin to include mentions of multilateral meetings and their accompanying protests in places such as Seattle, Quebec City or Kananaskis (the latter as a setting where nature and geography did part of the work of security). Again, background and context seemed more afterthought than preparation.

Finally, there was a bit of a “homer” element to some reports, as national Toronto-based news organizations, with Toronto-centric news sensibilities, staffed by Toronto residents, wrung their hands in distress and worried aloud about the impression their coverage of violence in the streets of Toronto the Good was leaving on the rest of the world.

Inside a North Korean train car, shot by Sean Gallagher for The Globe and Mail. Gallagher is a freelancer based in China.

I’m finding the current series of articles, diary entries, photographs and video clips by Globe and Mail foreign correspondent Mark MacKinnon and freelance photographer Sean Gallagher on life in North Korea absolutely fascinating. It’s undercover reporting at its finest — illuminating, revealing, well-written and robustly illustrated.

I had the pleasure of getting to known MacKinnon on the days, during my tenure at the Globe, when I acted as a substitute assistant foreign editor. He was always a pleasure to deal with and his prose was unfailingly well-crafted and accessible. At that time, he was stationed in Jerusalem; he had earlier served as the newspaper’s correspondent in Moscow. MacKinnon is currently The Globe’s eyes and ears in Beijing.

I plan to make the series compulsory reading for my journalism classes this week. In addition to discussions about the qualities of feature writing, the series will undoubtedly provoke debate about journalism ethics, especially the uses and abuses of deception.

Watch for the MacKinnon-Gallagher series on the list of this year’s National Newspaper Awards nominations, as well as various online journalism competitions.

CBC News senior correspondent Brian Stewart

Though he’ll be back on the air from time to time to help cover major events, today marks the last day on the job for CBC News senior correspondent Brian Stewart. After he anchors The National tonight in place of Peter Mansbridge, he’ll saunter off into semi-retirement.

Stewart is a journalist’s journalist and has had a remarkable career. Like so many others of his generation, the 1964 graduate of Ryerson‘s journalism program started in print. He was a reporter and columnist at the Montreal Gazette in the late 1960s, winning a National Newspaper Award in 1969 for feature writing. From there, it was on to a current-affairs show on CBC-TV’s Montreal affiliate, CBMT, and then to Ottawa as a political reporter in 1973. It was while Stewart was in the nation’s capital that he honed his skills and broadened his knowledge in foreign and military affairs — a specialty that would shape the rest of his career.

After a three-year stint as the CBC’s foreign correspondent in London, Stewart joined NBC News in 1985. However, he returned to the CBC two years later to become senior reporter with the CBC’s The Journal.

The rest, as they say, is history. Quite literally. What motivated Stewart in the decades that followed were the things that drive all great journalists: to satisfy one’s curiosity about the world and why things happen the way they do; to bear witness to the unfolding of history at home and abroad; to tell meaningful and important stories in compelling and interesting ways; to find out, firsthand, what will happen next in some of the greatest historical and human dramas of our time.

Like many others, I’ll remember Stewart best for his unparalleled coverage of the famine in Ethiopia in the early 1980s. He and fellow CBC journalist Tony Burman were the ones who, almost singlehandedly, alerted the world to the unfolding human crisis in that part of eastern Africa, prompting a massive aid response.

As a foreign correspondent, Stewart was on the front lines of other big international stories too. He reported extensively from Beirut on the Lebanese civil war; he filed gripping accounts of child slavery in Sudan. When the international coalition drove into Kuwait to wrest it from Saddam Hussein’s grip in the Gulf War of 1991, Stewart was the first Canadian reporter on the scene. He witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and filed extensively from the war zones of El Salvador, Iraq and Afghanistan. In all that time amid the dangers of the field, Stewart’s greatest fear appears to have been that he’d somehow get the story wrong.

The CBC has, fittingly, built a special Web tribute page in his honour; several compelling interviews are there, including chats with Burman and Mansbridge. Also available there is the profile that aired last night as part of The National.

Though he’s already past the traditional retirement age of 65, Stewart’s departure from the CBC is part of the public broadcaster’s efforts to downsize through attrition and buyouts. He lives in Toronto with his wife, former broadcaster Tina Srebotnjak, who now works in the communications and marketing department of Toronto Public Library. They have a daughter, Katie.