Justin Smith

Justin is my name and news is my game. Ok that was lame. I went to Sheridan College for Print-Journalism where I met many different kinds of people and did a lot of different types of things.

I got to cover a lot of interesting events and stories during my time at the Sheridan Sun newspaper, SAME Magazine and other various assignments I was sent on. Along with everything I did at school I was the varsity sports beat reporter, which I really enjoyed doing.

After I graduated from Sheridan I did an internship at the Toronto Sun, where I pretty much was doing what I want to do for the rest of my life. I was sent to cover so many different types of stories from sports to hard news. With all the assignments I was tasked with I found that I had to dig up stories and press-releases to do stories about. Some of the most memorable article I wrote were the ones where I got to travel around the city of Toronto to track down leads and establish my story. There are about 1000 things I could say that I did but then you would likely be here all day. Providing news to a readership was always a passion of mine and that passion was fully realized when I walked through the doors at 333 King St. East. for the first time. I loved it.

But speaking of travelling, before I went to school, I had time to travel across Europe. It was pretty much that cliche backpacking euro-trip montage you see in the movies; only with less money and worse food. I went to five different countries and 10 different cities or towns. I've been in situations where I was in the middle of nowhere, no money and completely lost; scary situations but I got through them. In Europe, when you backpack around, you tend to find yourself in sticky situations. At one point I was standing in the middle of a field in Germany with no place to go, and no way to get back to shelter. I had to hitchhike back to the train station at 12 o'clock in the morning on blind luck because there was virtually no traffic on that back-woods road. As a matter of fact I'm pretty sure we found a secret military base walking around in the dark that night. I actually started singing 'Lost Together' from Blue Rodeo as my friends and I searched for civilization. It was exhilarating!

Couple of quick hits:

I love music like Toronto loves its Leafs, and I love the Leafs even more than that.

Some bands and musicians that have inspired me as a person include:

Pink Floyd

Arcade Fire

Alice In Chains

City and Colour

Lana Del Rey….

…along with almost 40,000 others that, again, would take far too long to mention.


Finally, I am a very humble, hard-working person who relishes a good story.

Example: The #SFBatKid story which made me get a kitty misty-eyed just reading about it.


That's ME!