Josh O'kane

About

Josh O’Kane covers the businesses, institutions, economics and policy that shape arts and culture in Canada. He previously spent five years reporting on technology companies and how their decisions affect society. His latest book, Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy, investigates the failed effort by Google sister company Sidewalk Labs to build a future-focused neighbourhood in Toronto and the consequences of Big Tech’s push into the physical world. It is a national bestseller, and was named one of the best books of 2022 by The Globe and Mail, CBC, The Hill Times and numerous other publications.O’Kane won the 2019 Arthur F. Burns Award for transatlantic political and cultural reporting from Germany's Internationale Journalisten-Programme. His reporting has also won numerous Best in Business Canada awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. He has written widely on music, entrepreneurship, and Atlantic Canadian culture; his first book, a biography of the musician Joel Plaskett called Nowhere with You, examined all three subjects. O’Kane has extensively reported from Berlin and the Atlantic provinces, and is based in Toronto.