Journalist Cynthia Brouse passes away

Fact-checker, copy editor and prolific magazine writer Cynthia Brouse
has passed away after a long struggle with cancer.

I met Cynthia at Ryerson University, where she taught me and many, many other keen young journos the intricacies of fact checking and copy editing, with the help of her copy editing manual/bible, still used by many magazine editors today. To this day I can’t report on anything without hearing Cynthia’s voice ask: ‘Are you checking sure?’

Cynthia has touched many people’s lives with her frank humour and relentless, open honesty. She won the Outstanding Acheivement Award at the National Magazine Awards last year. D.B. Scott writes in his Magazines Canada blog that she “accepted it bald-headed with the chutzpah we had come to associate with her.”

In his Magazines Canada blog, D.B. Scott writes:

“When I know more about funeral or memorial arrangements, I will post it here. [UPDATE: I have heard from a longtime close friend that her family’s initial thought is that they would like to postpone a memorial service for friends and colleagues until mid-September, which would give enough notice to people who need to travel from out-of-town.]

“Meanwhile, if you want to know the kind of woman she was, read her poignant and often funny blog, The Clothesline Saga, which chronicled her treatment, her reflections on her own mortality and which many of us hope will find more concrete form in a book lest it vanish like lamplight in the mists of the blogosphere.”