After 11 years of bringing you local reporting, the team behind the Vancouver Observer has moved on to Canada's National Observer. You can follow Vancouver culture reporting over there from now on. Thank you for all your support over the years!

Linda Solomon Wood

Linda Solomon Wood is CEO of Observer Media Group and editor-in-chief of the National Observer.

She was the recipient of the 2015 Vancouver Board of Trade Wendy MacDonald Award for Entrepreneurial Innovation and her most recent interview was on Canadaland with Jesse Brown.

Award-Winning Publisher and Editor-in-Chief:
In 2014 and 2012 the Vancouver Observer team was honoured with a Canadian Journalism Foundation Excellence in Journalism Award (Small Media). The Vancouver Observer was a finalist for the award in 2013.  The Excellence in Journalism Award honours an organization that embodies exemplary journalistic standards and practices.  In 2010 the Vancouver Observer team received the Canadian Online Publishing Award for “Best Online-Only Articles” (Green Category) for reporting on "Lost Canadians".  It was a finalist in categories including  Best Overall Site and Best Design.  In 2011, the Vancouver Observer was a finalist for Best Overall Site, Best Articles, and won silver for Best Newsletter. In 2012, the Vancouver Observer was honoured as a finalist for Best Articles, again in the Green category.

Award-Winning Journalist:
While working at the Tennessean newspaper in the seventies, Linda won the United Press International Award for Best Public Service Reporting and the UPI Award for Best Investigative Reporting for a series of articles on Industrial Life Insurance (co-authored with Carolyn Shoulders and written under the direction of John Seigenthaler, who was publisher of the newspaper at the time.).  US Senate Hearings were held as a result of the series and the committee received testimony from a number of the public housing project residents who were being sold burial insurance policies with fine print that ensured they would never pay off.  The hearings, led by the late Senator Howard Meztenbaum, resulted in federal regulations regarding "industrial insurance" being changed to make the sale of it illegal.  In 1978, the editors of the Tennessean made a nomination of this body of work for a Pulitzer Prize in the local reporting category.  

Linda won the Lincoln University Unity Award for Economic Reporting for a series on life in Nashville's public housing projects produced with Dwight Lewis, also under the direction of Siegenthaler. 

A second time Linda's reporting led to federal legislative hearings, this time based on a series she wrote on discrimination against nurse-midwives by doctors (chaired by Al Gore who was then a U.S. congressman, as well as a former Tennessean reporter).

Books: "Why I Love Vancouver", by Linda Solomon, 2009, Vancouver Observer Publications, Out of Print

"Extract: The Pipeline Wars, Vol. 1 Enbridge", by Vancouver Observer reporting team, edited by Linda Solomon, Carrie Saxifrage, Jenny Uechi, released 2012 by Vancouver Observer Publications, buy it here

Short Story Publications: Linda's short fiction and literary nonfiction has appeared in Alabama Literary Review,  Cimmaron Review, Gulf Coast Review, St. Anne's Review, Orion and Geist Magazine. Her writing on the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has been anthologized in a collection published by Parallax Press. In 2007 she was short-listed for a CBC Literary Prize for her story about a United Nations media specialist working in Cambodia entitled, "A Point in the Battle".

Web: Linda was an early Internet pioneer, co-founding and co-writing in 1996  thecouch.com, an online comedy about 8 New Yorkers in group therapy.  The New York Daily News described thecouch.com as "The New Yorker meets Rent in cyberspace".  When she first came to Vancouver, she wrote and reported occasionally for The Tyee. Her 2007 story on a Vancouver therapist who was Googled by customs officials at the U.S.-Canada border and was then refused entry to America became the basis for a Colbert Report.

Radio: Linda briefly produced and was a host on WBAI radio in New York City.

Teaching: Linda has led workshops on many aspects of the reporting and writing process at The Women's Institute of Continuing Education in Paris, Emerson College's European summer program, Hollyhock, and Emily Carr University of Art + Design where she taught "The Art of Blogging".  Most recently, Linda taught "The Power of Story" at Island Mountain Arts in Wells, British Columbia. 

Education: Linda received an MFA from Vermont College and did her undergraduate studies at Northwestern University, where she majored in American Culture.

Linda lived for six years in Paris before moving to New York City in 1994. She immigrated to Canada in 2001 and became a citizen in 2012.

 

 

 

Harper's house of cards

In Prime Minister Stephen Harper's house of cards, who will go down next? When will it be the prime minister himself?

Yes, it's time to right the wrongs inflicted on Lost Canadians by Citizenship Act

After years of relentless reporting by the Vancouver Observer, it looks like the Canadian Citizenship Act is finally going to change.

Joe Oliver was wrong: BC pipeline opponents "mainstream British Columbians," not "radicals"

SFU study shows that the Harper government's attack on pipeline opponents as "radicals" was simply inaccurate.

Kinder Morgan president wishes Harper government hadn't attacked pipeline opponents

CEO says feds "fanned the flames" of opposition to the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion

Greenpeace activists blockade Kinder Morgan Burnaby facility

Sixteen Greenpeace activists at are the Kinder Morgan Burnaby docking facility  trying to disrupt the loading facility.  They gained access from the water. Also, there are two activists...

Treaty 8 Tribal Chief Liz Logan asks UN to pressure BC government to respect treaty rights

Fighting gas, oil and mining projects, Chief Liz Logan faces BC-sized challenges.

Why Jim Alseth opposes FIPA: "It makes Canada vulnerable to corporate bullying"

 Jim Alseth emailed me this photograph today and here's what he said about why he took this self-portrait: "I think I'm like many Canadians in my concern about FIPA. Yes, exploring avenues for...

British Columbia drug safety initiative wins support in campaign to have funding restored

It's a big deal to get a mention in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). But an axed BC independent drug watchdog, the Therapeutics Initiative, got an entire article written about it today. ...

Documents reveal "inappropriate relationship" between Port Authority, coal lobby, VTACC says

Calls into question Port's neutrality on proposed coal export expansion, Voters Taking Action on Climate Change says.
Defend Our Coast rally in Victoria 2012

After meetings with federal ministers, Chief Stewart Phillip urges British Columbians to take to the street

Ministers' visit foreshadows Harper's plan to declare pipelines "in the national interest", the head of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs told the Vancouver Observer.