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J-Source and ProjetJ are projects of The Canadian Journalism Foundation in collaboration with leading schools and organizations across Canada. Editor-in-chief, J-Source: | |||
J-Source and ProjetJ are projects of The Canadian Journalism Foundation in collaboration with leading schools and organizations across Canada. Editor-in-chief, J-Source: | |||
"At present, the target is Daniel Dale—against a colourful backdrop of vitriol from both the mayor and the Toronto Star."
I don't see the vitriol from the Star, though it would be well deserved, given that Ford is boorish, vindictive and threatening towards the paper -- and implicitly towards all media that don't support him. I find the Star's coverage of this obnoxious thug remarkably restrained and even-tempered.
It's also to the paper's credit that it continues to tell the truth about Ford, despite undoubted temptation to shrink from the fray.
Je suis surpris que M. Lajoie a pris le nom anglophone LesNews pour son site. Il existe déjà sur Twitter le compte @LesNews dédié à l'information internationale et qui a déjà plus de 116 000 abonnés.
Le compte de M. Lajoie, @LesNewsCa risque de semer la confusion et laisser entendre qu'il s'agit des mêmes personnes, ce qui n'est pas le cas. Aussi, @LesNewsCa sur Twitter n'a pas été mis à jour depuis le 7 mars dernier et ne compte que 37 abonnés. Il a beaucoup de travail à faire.
Le compte @LesNews a été créé par un Français et un Québécois passionnés d'actualité internationale. L'équipe est composée d'une dizaine de personnes qui oeuvre bénévolement sans salaire. Les membres de l'équipe sont tous journalistes, formés dans le métier ou ayant oeuvré dans des médias reconnus.
On est loin du concept de @LesNewsCa...
The 2012 Dave Greber Freelance Writers Awards is obviously a nice opportunity for everyone! Freelance writers deserve another feather in their caps! Though every project is different and includes a different type and intensity of work loads to them, still they have the guts to finish a master piece. They might be significantly stressing over a project but they also make sure that they did their very best so that the payment will be all worth it! Article source: Why you should always pad your estimates.
Maybe this will work and maybe not. The fact remains that pricing is, and will always be just about the most difficult challenges for the self-employed and independent contractors. Something that many freelancers neglect to do, however, is pad their estimated hours. Read more here: Why you should always pad your estimates.
Advertorials are a fact of life today. Journalism teachers do a disservice to their students for not training them in efficient advertorial writing. They are an important money-maker for publications of all sizes, in print and online. However, publishers and editors shoot themselves in the foot (a) when they hire reporters and fail to let them know that writing them is part of the job description and (b) do not provide a piece of the commission for each advertorial completed. After all, the ad staff (usually) earns commission on them, and it's important to spread the wealth, especially at a small operation. This leads to a team spirit and enhances staff morale, and puts a few extra bucks in the reporters' pockets.
How, exactly, does the writer believe media outlets in Toronto ought to "stand together" in the Ford-Star dispute without undermining public perceptions of their independence?
Ford is a belligerent person who appears to relish confrontation, is given to making statements that are at least exaggerated and at most outrageously false (claiming sole credit for the planned Woodbine redevelopment during the election campaign). He - like his crony in Ottawa - appears to envision himself in the mode of the Sun King - Toronto, c'est moi - and the media as his fawning, obsequious, adoring minions.
The media must act as one to support not an individual reporter, or newspaper, but the principle that no publicly elected official has the right to institute a media blackout unless a particular individual, or outlet, is excluded. Next time it could be the Sun. Give him a millimetre and he'll take the entire field.
But the media also must remind people that anyone is permitted to be on public land. The entire rationale for Ford's wild-boar-like charge is founded on the mistaken assumption that he, the mayor, has the right to keep citizens off public land simply because it is nearby. As Ford himself was quoted: “I said ‘buddy, I am giving you two seconds to get out of here.’ ”
And his anger is probably caused not by the supposed intrusion but the discovery of his nefarious plan to buy the land in question without anyone's notice.
One wonders why the Metropolitan Toronto Police Dept. has not yet charged Ford with the appropriate offense. Don't think I will hold my breath.
Awwww, come on. The reporter didn't do his homework, walked right past the piece of land and around the other side of the house. The mayor came steaming out to protect his family. They were both doing what is expected of them.
Although, I am not pleased with zinger's work in this circumstance, thinking it to be an exemplar of yellow journalism, par excellence, i did not write the retraction. Zinger's initial piece was a severe opinion-piece passed off as real hard nose unbias journalism. Their were many skewed facts in his piece but one of the main facts was that he stated "None of it was true" pertaining to my CV and this is yellow journalism, considering in our conversation I did mention I finished my Ph.d., sent an e-mail to the citizen that I finished my ph.d., and told him that each museum mentioned in the CV had an artefact of mine at different levels of processing and/or in their possession. And I told him that I thought these undeniable facts allowed me to mention these museum artefacts on my CV. And this is why I label him a yellow journalist as this is a central fact that changes the whole scope of his article and more importantly his headline. The only scandal here is his yellow journalism. As well, when a museum returns one of my artefacts, such as unacceptance or bureaucratic policy, which from time to time does happen, I take this artefact off my CV. And I believe this to be a reasonable method of operating in the artworld, such as it is today.
I've been showing and exhibiting some 15 years, making a living at art some 8 years, and in the artworld and this is a first for me, zinger is a one of kind piece of work. His piece was my first bad review, a journalist who in my mind was bent on defamation from the start and who ignored real facts in favor of sensationalism and slander. I should mention as well that we never discussed performance, my art as performance etc. he took my comments which had nothing to do with performance and just wrote it out of the blue and attributed it to me. His aresenal of bloggers' openfile.ca, romenesko, the vancouver sun, the vancouver art gallery etc. and the citizen just echoed his point of view like an echoe chamber, without even allowing me to respond. Or when I did respond these bloggers did not included my side of things in their story, my opinion was not even written into their story. The best i could do was add comments in the comment section of their stories at the bottom of the page.
"The brush is mightier than the pen!"
Michel Luc Bellemare (The post-script to all of this is that facts do not matter to some newspaper journalists like Mr. Singer and his arsenal of his lap-dog bloggers. The scandal here is the notion that such low brow slandering mediocrity is allowed to occupy well-paying journalism jobs. Mr. Singer, a yellow slandering journalist cloaked in the illusion of legitimacy.)
"Big Boys Gone Bananas! is a must-see film for journalists – students or otherwise. It will have a special presentation at the upcoming Toronto’s HotDocs Film Festival"
In fact, Hot Docs likes it so much they've programmed it to run at the Bloor after the festival, from May 11 to 18 (with two showings of the original doc). For showtimes see http://bloorcinema.com/schedule/
Je tiens à spécifier une chose cependant. Je mentionne à Hugo Dumas que je reconnais que ça doit être frustrant, mais ce que je voulais mentionner c’est que je reconnais c’est que ça doit être fâchant pour des journalistes de voir leurs nouvelles être recopiés, mais je ne reconnais pas que SHOWBIZZ.NET ou BRANCHEZ-VOUS! recopiaient de façon éhontée.
Dans l’histoire de BV, trois journalistes ont fait du copié-collé et les trois ont été mis à la porte donc il ne faut pas croire que nous avons approuvé un tel comportement.
C’est une triste journée dans l’histoire des médias québécois hier et j’espère qu’elle ne se répétera pas trop souvent.
Longue vie aux sites d’informations indépendants et à l’information en général au Québec.
Carl Charest
Ex-Directeur général – Showbizz.net / BRANCHEZ-VOUS!.
"Comme Yahoo!, AOL ou MSN, Branchez-Vous! est une ferme de contenus où les journalistes ne sont pas appelés à produire du contenu exclusif, mais à rédiger le plus de textes possibles pendant leur quart de travail."
C'est un peu réducteur. Il est vrai que, dans la couverture de nouvelles, surtout les nouvelles générales, BRANCHEZ-VOUS! a fait beaucoup de "curation" d'autres sources - au même titre que des médias comme le Huffington Post (de façon générale, pas spécialement sa version québécoise) et, en partie aussi, certains sites de grands médias.
Mais les blogueurs rédigeaient un contenu entièrement original; on publiait des critiques de films; on a couvert des concerts et des événements; on a envoyé une reporter au CES à Las Vegas. Et même dans la couverture de l'actualité, les journalistes s'efforçaient de reccueillir des témoignages et des commentaires.
Disons que sur un échelle de 1 à 10 de la copie textuelle pure et simple à la création entièrement originale basées sur des reportages exclusifs, on était peut-être à 4 ou 5 alors que les sites des grands médias (puisque j'ai du mal à voir beaucoup de sites indépendants des grands médias - avec lesquels ils partagent donc des ressources rédactionnelles sans commune mesure avec celles de BV!) sont peut-être entre 6 et 9 (le fait qu'un texte soit "original" n'implique nullement que la source ou la recherche soit exclusive). Les teintes de gris sont assez distinctes, mais ce n'est pas noir et blanc.
Aussi, à leur origine, BRANCHEZ-VOUS! comme Showbizz.net crééaient beaucoup plus de contenu original en proportion du contenu publié. Pendant les premières années, je pense que BV! a été une des meilleures sources sur le phénomène Internet - avec certes des reprises de nouvelles américaines, mais aussi une bonne couverture québécoise. L'accusation d'être un simple "copier-coller" qui a fusé sur twitter est donc un peu injuste.
Enfin, le concept de "ferme de contenu" réfère, dans mon esprit, à un autre modèle - un très grand volume de contenu de référence (et non de nouvelles), souvent de type conseil ("How to..."), optimisé pour les moteurs de recherche. Il ne s'applique pas plus à BV! qu'aux portails généralistes (qui sont eux-même, pour la plupart, un mélange de plusieurs genres).
One quibble of many: Traders did, in fact, have it's first season on CBC.
Anyone who tried to deal with the CBC drama department pre-Stursberg would have noted a lack of cohesion, direction, goals and/or criteria for programming choices, and a notable disregard for whether anyone was watching.
Rob correctly asks, "what's next?" The answer is collaboration on a massive scale, not just between journalists, but with business. If we are serious about using new storytelling methods to make money, we will fail outside of non-profit micro-projects, unless we get closer to entrepreneurial thinking. There has been great reluctance to do this up to now, the fear being some kind of ethical perversion of the craft. We've got to get over that. At a time when everything about journalism has been examined ad nauseum, an opportunity has opened to pull in the wealth-creators of this country, and listen to their take on what is happening and, more important, how to reverse it. Forums like 'Hacks and Flacks' have already brought together two distinct entities. There's no reason that can't be extended to the business world.
Wasn't this inevitable? Media companies have progressively increased budgets for pollsters and well-paid pundits while laying off frontline reporters whose job it is to show, not tell, how election issues impact society. This will not change until there are more eyes and ears actually reporting from the field, and those all-knowing pundits are held to account for the damage they do to the public's perception of journalism. The public is sick of being told in advance that their vote is useless, and have been showing it with declining voter turnout election after election.
It is not quite true that CBC "produced" Kids in the Hall, SCTV and Road to Avonlea. Kids in the Hall aired on CBC but was produced by Lorne Michaels' Broadway Video. SCTV was originally produced by Global, then by Allarcom, then by NBC. Only seasons 3-5 aired on the CBC. And though Road to Avonlea was co-produced by the CBC, along with Disney and Sullivan Films, the creative impetus came from Sullivan.
I find it interesting that the Star chose to protect the identify (or never confirmed identity) of the poster. People need to stand behind their postings. Under any other circumstances, the Star would never have used this material and the fact that it did shows the absolute depths that it will go to shame Rob Ford. It was a low point for journalism.
I was going to wait for Elly Alboim to chime in on this and take a swipe at the media for not doing their homework on this story as he so eloquently posited following the surprising NDP sweep of Quebec following the 2011 federal campaign, but I thought I'd add my own two cents here. I was, like many Canadians pleasantly surprised on Monday not because the PCs won, but because I went to work expecting to follow a tight two way race until the wee hours and instead I got to go home early. It's nice to be surprised in life and being surprised with an election result like I, and so many others, was on Monday night is a bonus. For too many years, we watched to see not who won on election night, but which pollster was the closest in predicting the percentage of popular vote. I think a number of things were at play on Monday, one was that pollsters haven't realized, or maybe they have, that getting access to people's voting intentions and thus and accurate picture of the electorate is very challenging with so many people opting for cell phones over landlines, particularly for those under 35. For some reason political parties in the last federal election knew what was going on in Quebec, and I wonder if political parties in Alberta were also aware of the PCs 10 point lead. The second thing I wanted to mention is that Albertans were in a great political flux in the two weeks leading up to Monday. There were questions about rogue candidates in the Wildrose; Danielle Smith's charisma versus her lack of experience; Alison Redford's standoffishness; damaging scandals in the PC caucus; deficit budgets; a PC party that was no one's dad's PC Party, a booming economy and I think most importantly, there were four parties campaigning on change and no one in Alberta really wanted change.
Context is indeed everything but I don't think mainstream media can shoulder the load for not providing it, nor can social media try to puff itself up as a saviour.
In today's communication mix one can't seem to exist without the other. Much of what gets re-hashed online stems from mainstream reports, and good measure of stories that make it to print or broadcast come from online sources.
For some additional context consider for instance Alan Hunsperger. Social Media helped spread it amazingly well, but it took mainstream media to make it a headline and to get it away from the often very closed circle of social media. If in fact it was leaked by the PC's themselves then neither social media or the big kids on the block can take credit for uncovering anything but both did play into the PC hands. I'm surprised Jim Cunningham didn't mention that Hunsperger was making the news with his views 20 years ago when we he and I were both involved in election coverage. As an ex-journalist Danielle Smith herself should have recognized the Hunsperger name in her candidate list as a possible flashpoint. In the end the story played out well thanks to the online and mainstream mix.
Did Twitter manage to make the Dani-Bus a widespread joke? Sure did - but I wouldn't score that one as a social media success story but rather one that ranks in there with good cat videos. Cute, harmless and of little redemming value. If a CBC reporter first snapped the picture and didn't report on it, I'd even suggest that mainstream made the right choice and moved on to more important things - initially at least, until they too got caught up in a high-school election giggle.
While we haven't hit an ideal state yet I think the ying and yang of professional journalists, strong bloggers, and a good democratic process made this election much more interesting wherever you got your news from.
Good post - just needs a little more context ;-)
Mike
"The reason that culture change is so difficult in any company, one executive says, is because no one person truly has the power to change it."
This is very true especially if the employees were not as flexible as their leaders. Another aspect that could affect is the financial standing of the newspaper industry itself. We are all aware of how far and fast technology has grown, and this maybe a reason why people in the newspaper industry are unsure of where it will head.
Thank you Belinda. We've just steered that apparently unsinkable neologism into an iceberg.
Copyediting 101 eluded me on this one -- thanks for pointing it out Paul.
What I want to know is, in 1912 was anyone using "impact" as a verb?
Centennial College's journalism program was the first college in Ontario to revamp its ethics code for students, after extensive consultation with the Journalism Educators Association of Ontario several years ago. The policy is on the front page of our program websites for all of our streams: post-grad, undergrad, joint program with University of Toronto, and Sports Journalism.
We apply it several times each year, to crack down on academic honesty or plagiarism events, but only after and in conjunction with a seminar we give to all students by the third week of classes, on "How Not to Dress (Plagiarise)."
Why do we give the seminar? Because most students have learned how to do attribution only for essays and high school or university course writing, but not how to apply it for journalistic writing, be it online, broadcast, print, magazine or photo.
I attach the link here. And the first few paragraphs.
Centennial College Journalism Program Plagiarism, Fabrication and other acts of Academic Dishonesty
POLICY
The Journalism program at Centennial College was founded on the principles of honesty and truth in all forms of storytelling be they print, online, imaging, broadcast or magazine.
Why? First, because our readers and audience demand accuracy and honesty about where the information they are consuming comes from; and second, because the industry – where journalism students are now or soon will be working -- insists on rigorous standards of truth and honesty in the news information that they convey to the public.
It’s a matter of public trust, one that we believe deeply in. You need to be on board, as well.
In the past few years, we have suspended or expelled students for violating the code, after an appeal hearing process that takes the case all the way up to the College's senior administration.
With these programs gone the dumbing down begins. I beleive that the Feds are only more than happy to have as many as possible ignorant of what is going on around the world. Sad.