Toronto Star explores the life of a 19-year-old woman, for some reason

Toronto Star explores the life of a 19-year-old woman, for some reason

This morning’s Toronto Star has a huge front-page exclusive: Pierre Trudeau was a bit of a ladies’ man. No, we haven’t travelled back in time to 1971. And yes, the former prime minister had a daughter out of wedlock. The Star apparently did a Google search and found out where she’s going to school, investigated, then published its findings under the headline “Pierre Trudeau’s daughter, Sarah, lives under the radar.” Not anymore, eh, Star?

A brief sample of the kind of news that can be found only in the pages of Canada’s largest daily:

To passersby she’s just another sophomore at one of the world’s most prestigious business schools. To those who know her on campus, she’s not Canadian royalty but the sporty outgoing sorority girl who carries her weight in a backpack filled with economics text books.

By day she hustles around campus in a duffle coat, tuned into her iPhone as she lugs that backpack from class to class.

By night she helps organize parties and fundraising events for her sorority. In her spare time she tends to the books for the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s soccer club. And on occasion she finds time for the odd tennis match.

Teenagers have iPhones? Stop the presses.

No, really, stop the presses. This entire article reads like a regrettable mistake. Not serial-killer-on-the-front-page regrettable, but from beginning to end it’s clear the only reason this girl’s face is being put in the paper is that she’s Trudeau’s daughter—as if that made it self-explanatory.

Anyone can be forgiven for wishing for the era when our politicians were charismatic, exciting and impossible to ignore (these days, top reporters talk about how important apathy is to contemporary politics), but blowing a private person’s life all over the front page for little apparent reason isn’t going to bring those days back, folks.

• Pierre Trudeau’s daughter, Sarah, lives under the radar [Toronto Star]