CTV.ca | CTV.ca News Team

A veteran journalist, Mark has worked in newsrooms across Canada as a radio and television reporter and was a network and foreign correspondent for CTV News. His last assignment was in Washington D.C. where he covered everything from shuttle launches to hurricanes and the storm that led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

In 2001, he moved into digital media and launched CTVNews.com (now CTV.ca), which won the 2001 Gemini Award for "Most Innovative Web Site", the Radio-Television News Directors "2001 Best Web Site Award" and was nominated by both the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and "Editor and Publisher Magazine" for excellence in online journalism.

From 2002 to 2003, he was also the Executive Producer and Channel Head for CTV Newsnet.

Since then, he has directed the creation of more than a dozen websites at CTVglobemedia that have won eight major design awards including two Geminis, four RTNDA awards and a Webby.

Mark also sits on the board of the Media Awareness Network, a non-profit organization promoting media literacy and internet education, is an advisor to journalism programs at a number of colleges and is a member of the Awards Advisory Committee of the Canadian Journalism Foundation.

Hester Riches - CTV.ca Senior Producer

Hester Riches was born in Vancouver and began her journalism career in newspapers -- first at The Globe and Mail, then spent more than a decade as an entertainment journalist for The Vancouver Sun. It was there, as a television critic, that she first logged onto the early text-only Internet with a 2400 baud modem and discovered citizen journalists beating her to scoops on "Twin Peaks" and "The X-Files."

Inspired by Nicholas Negroponte's "Being Digital," she switched to the emerging field of online journalism, at first writing web columns and designing sites, learning the tools that would help launch what was then called "New Media."

She signed on as one of the original writers for CBC Newsworld Online in the mid-1990s, and has been with CTV since August 2000. She has seen the website through several major transitions, and was pleased to get back into the "citizen journalist" mode with the launch of CTV.ca's MyNews and the comments system on news stories.

Phil Hahn - CTV.ca Producer

Phil Hahn joined CTV.ca at the start of 2005 after working as the evening assignment editor for CTV National News. There, he played a vital role in covering stories including the capture of Saddam Hussein, the Chicoutimi submarine tragedy and the Dec. 26 tsunami in South and Southeast Asia.

His web experience includes producing, writing and anchoring daily business news programs for Fortune 500 companies, and writing business stories for toronto.com.

Phil received his Bachelor of Arts from Queen's University, and attended Humber College's post graduate program in which he won the Achievement Award for highest overall average in print and broadcast journalism in 1999.

Mary Nersessian - CTV.ca Producer

Mary Nersessian joined the CTV.ca Web team in 2004. Her appetite for online journalism was whetted while reporting breaking news for thestar.com while working at the Toronto Star.

Her taste for web journalism further sharpened while working at The Globe and Mail, where she covered the 2004 federal election.

Mary cemented her reputation with exclusive interviews of student strippers who paid their way through college and university; victims of the SARS crisis; the mother of Martin Ferrier, one of Canada's most notorious criminals; and cultural heavyweights like directors Mira Nair and Denys Arcand.

Since joining the CTV.ca, Mary has produced the 2008 Beijing Olympics site, and covered everything from federal elections and budget lockups, to the Toronto International Film Festival, and celebrities such as author Charles Frazier and bad-boy chef Gordon Ramsay.

Mary's work has also appeared in the Quill & Quire, Wish magazine, and the Independent newspaper.

Mary holds a bachelor of journalism at Ryerson University, with a semester spent abroad at City University in London, England. She lives in Toronto.

Corey Bellamy - CTV.ca Video Producer

Corey Bellamy leads the multimedia team for CTV.ca. His team produces CTV News content for the CTV Video Player, Rogers and Bell cell phone video platforms, images, interactive features, and photo galleries showcasing CTV.ca's creative and news content.

A Humber Journalism honour graduate, he first came to CTV.ca in 2003. Since then, he has contributed to CTV.ca's special reports, including two federal elections, several federal budgets, hurricane Katrina, the space shuttle Endeavour disaster, South Asian tsunami and the death of Pope John Paul II.

Michael Stittle - CTV.ca Weekend Producer

Michael Stittle was born in Toronto. After completing a Master's Degree in English at England's University of Sussex, he studied journalism at Ryerson University. He then reviewed music and films for Chart magazine, and interned at The Kingston Whig-Standard, one of Canada's longest-running newspapers.

He first arrived at CTV.ca in 2005. Among his work for the website, he has written about the first anniversary of the tragic Dec. 26 tsunami, and conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Journalists

Sandie Benitah joined CTV.ca in 2007 and since then has become full-time member of the CTV Toronto online news team.

Since graduating from Ryerson University's journalism program, Sandie has enjoyed working the Toronto beat for several different publications. She has covered a number of municipal, provincial and federal elections and has interviewed Canada's prime ministers, premiers and municipal leaders.

Throughout the years, she has developed a keen interest in municipal politics and environmental affairs but Sandie can never resist a good crime story.

Sandie is also the voice behind TwentySomething, a popular column that focuses on the quarter-life crisis phenomenon.

Sumran Bhan has an educational background in Human Communications Technology and Professional Writing from the University of Toronto.

During her first year in university, Sumran started volunteering at a local cable news station where she worked her way up from production assistant to become director and eventually on-air personality and reporter.

In 2006, Sumran went to New York as part of an internship with the Press Trust of India. As a correspondent she covered the UN General Assembly as well as Indian consulate affairs. After returning to Toronto, she began an internship with CTV Toronto.

On the heels of her internship, Sumran moved to CTV.ca. With her education and journalism background, it was a perfect fit.

Kristen Brown joined the CTV.ca team in March 2006 as a student intern. After experiencing the fast-paced and adrenaline-driven challenges of online journalism she was hooked and remained working for the website upon graduation.

Her main duty at CTV News online is to repurpose television news reports for the web. This process involves picking the best still images to tell a story, writing engaging video captions and producing exciting content for the CTV Broadband Network and CTV's mobile lineup.

Kristen was born and raised in Toronto. She earned a Joint Specialist in International Relations and Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Toronto and a graduate degree in Journalism from Ryerson University. Outside of work, Kristen is an avid horseback rider.

Bill Doskoch has been involved in online journalism since 1997 as both a web producer and a journalist. One of his projects, The Farm Crisis for Non-Farmers, was a finalist in the conflict analysis category of the 1999 Canadian Association of Journalists awards and won the issues category of the American Agricultural Editors Association award.

As a senior web producer with globeandmail.com, he worked on projects such as the Olympics, budgets and the 2000 federal election. For CTV.ca he has spearheaded the evolving blogging process.

Originally from Alberta, he worked in Saskatchewan for a decade and also in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Andrea Janus joined the CTV.ca news team in March 2008, and since then has worked with Avis Favaro and the medical team on our health newsletters, blogs and news stories.

Andrea began her journalism career as a summer reporter at the Edmonton Journal, where she wrote front-page stories on health crises from mad cow disease to West Nile virus, as well as crime stories and features.

Upon her return to Toronto, Andrea covered crime, national security and civic affairs stories as a reporter at the Toronto Sun and spent a year working as a crime reporter for the Toronto Star.

She spent four years as copy editor, then associate beauty editor, of national women's lifestyle magazine, Wish.

Andrea has both an Honours B.A from the University of Toronto with a double major in English and History and a Bachelor of Journalism degree from Ryerson University.

Andy Johnson joined CTV.ca in December 2005. Prior to that, he spent a year in North Africa working on a volunteer project in Morocco and Mauritania, and close to three years as a reporter/photographer at the Port Hope Evening Guide, a daily newspaper in Port Hope, Ont.

Since his arrival at CTV, he has covered two federal budgets, a federal election and written a wide variety of news and feature stories with a special focus on environmental issues.

Andy produces Canada AM's website, co-ordinating with the show's story producers to generate exclusive web content and enhance stories that air on the show.

He graduated from Loyalist College's print journalism program in 2002, where he received an Ontario Community Newspaper Association award for photographic excellence.

Philip Stavrou joined the CTV.ca team in the spring of 2005. He arrived after completing a coveted internship at ABC News' 20/20 in New York where he worked on show segments for anchor John Stossel. Philip also enjoyed a year as an associate producer on Toronto Biographies, a Rogers Television program, profiling prominent Torontonians.

Aside from his daily writing duties at CTV.ca, Philip has covered two Toronto International Film Festivals and written features on a variety of topics for the website. He holds a Bachelor of Journalism from Ryerson University.

Amanda Taccone started with CTV's web team in early 2006, and is responsible for updating CTV's mobile video news content and the CTV Broadband Network.

Previously, Amanda worked at CBC Newsworld, where she was responsible for writing the on-screen headline ticker. She also worked as a writer for CBC.ca during the 2005 federal election, was an associate producer for CBC Radio in Windsor and was a researcher for the award-winning youth series Street Cents.

Born and raised in the suburbs outside of Toronto, Ontario, Amanda has a bachelor of science (honours) from the University of Toronto and a Diploma in Journalism from Montreal's Concordia University.

Josh Visser joined the CTV.ca news team in February 2008. He contributed to CTV's online coverage of the historic 2008 U.S. election and the somewhat less-historic 2008 Canadian election.

Josh has also written about Russian politics, oil pipelines in Afghanistan and a lot about the video game industry. But the highlight of his experiences at CTV was interviewing Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner.

Prior to working at CTV.ca, Josh worked for The Chronicle Herald in Halifax covering crime, environment and provincial politics. He then made the move to the web with AOL Canada.

Josh has an honours degree in political science from Dalhousie University and a Bachelor of Journalism degree from Ryerson University. When he graduated from Ryerson he was named "Most Promising Print Journalist" but has surpassed those expectations by going digital.

Entertainment:

Constance Droganes

Constance joined CTV in June of 2007. She has since landed interviews with Oscar-winner Helen Mirren, Emmy- and Golden Globe- nominee Leelee Sobieski and other notable stars for CTV.ca.

A former senior editor at FLARE, award-winning Constance Droganes has worked at several successful Canadian consumer publications in her career. Entertainment and lifestyle reporting have taken her to destinations such as New York, Miami, L.A., Spain, Italy. A Canadian correspondent for People magazine since 2000, she has interviewed celebrities for the Sexiest Man Alive issue, the Most Beautiful People issue and contributed to profiles on stars such as Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Green, Estella Warren. She is also a freelance contributor to Women's Wear Daily and other publications in North America and Europe.

Sheri Block joined the CTV.ca team in January, 2008 after working as a television producer at Pyramid Productions and entertainment reporter at the Calgary Herald. She started her career covering daily news at the Regina Leader-Post, upon graduating from the University of Regina's School of Journalism with distinction.

As well as a stint interning at MuchMusic, Sheri has been fortunate to interview everyone from rock stars to politicians and produce entertainment shows that have aired nation-wide.

She now writes for Idol.CTV.ca, which combines her two loves of music and pop culture.

Sheri holds a bachelor of arts in psychology.

Tyrone Warner has become a key member of CTV.ca since joining the team as an intern in early 2005.

Tyrone has taken part in coverage for major entertainment events including the Juno Awards, the Oscars, Live Earth, Live 8, and the Concert for Diana, as well as taking part in the launch of CTV.ca's Showbiz blog.

Beyond contributing to CTV.ca's election coverage in 2006, Tyrone has also been involved in covering major breaking news events.

Originally filling the role of video and graphic production during the evening news cycle, Tyrone now produces and manages online content for all of CTV's programming properties.

When Tyrone is not focusing on features about "Lost" and "Degrassi," Tyrone can be found performing as a musician on stages across Ontario as "Silver Speakers."

Lindsay Zier-Vogel joined CTV.ca in April 2008 as the journalist for So You Think You Can Dance Canada. Prior to that, she was the department editor at The Dance Current magazine and taught arts education workshops in the public school system.

After training as a contemporary dance artist at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, she received full funding to complete her master's of arts in English with a specialty in creative writing from the University of Toronto, under the advisorship of novelist Anne Michaels. She has received multiple grants for both her fiction and poetry and is working on her second novel.

CTV.ca News Team

CTV.ca News Team

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