Chronicle of a Mediatized Controversy

This chapter looks at how the Quayside project was represented in The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. Based on a corpus of news items, I analyze the pattern of coverage from October 2017 to May 2020. I document their journalistic storytelling and follow the continuing story chronologically. In the news and views attuned to the three phases of the project, a web of issues and problems became entwined with the partnership, the process and the project. After the project was cancelled, both newspapers presented reaction with opposing interpretations of this event and what it means for the city. A close reading of the narrative progression of the unfolding project brings dialogic interrelationships and matters of contention with an active propose-and-pushback dynamic to the surface. Hence, this mediatized controversy discloses a discursive struggle over the dual production of future urban space.