Recent comments

There was some coverage of the "unsavoury allies," as Kathy Gannon puts it. I remember stories about Gen. Rashid Dostum (a man who reportedly had living people chained between tanks and pulled apart), for example. I believe the N-P had a headline to the effect of 'This is our ally?' Unfortunately, in a time of war, a significant proportion of the readership don't want context. They want their prejudices confirmed -- as Gannon notes. The sad truth for journalists is we can do our jobs exceedingly well (at least as we see it) when it comes to reporting on a conflict. But frankly, there are forces much bigger than us out there, and if the big boys want to have their war, they will.

Here is a little reality about "Time stamps" on digital cameras and digital image files ...and why it is pointless and useless to use them in an attempt to prove anything. The time a photo is shot, transmitted and released to the public all leave a different time mark on a data file. ...even the order in which photos are queued, edited and released will all determine what may look to the ignorant eye as "THE TIME" ...when its not. 1/ most photographers do not bother to set the time zone or local time on their cameras. Why bother, we could be shooting anywhere. 2/ Some photographers who travel a lot and have a need to sync over time zones have their cameras set to UTC ...but very few have this need. 3/ another time stamp occures when a photo is transmitted. 4/ another time stamp occures when the photo is released to the wire 5/ clients mark when a photo enters their local systems If every agency, publication and editor followed strict (and very few do) IPTC database protocol you could open the metadata of an image file and see all those specific time stamps in their own assigned database fields. ....but I'd bet dollars to donuts those with political agendas wouldn't really care even if they could figure it out. Greg

I guess asking questions are now security threats. RCMP today, army tomorrow... Greg

Ewwwww Gee, Bill. Thanks for sharing that, and in big bold, too! : )

Could this mean that CP will now have to hire more staffers to gather news in areas where it was getting feeds from CanWest papers? ...or would they have already had people in these areas? Greg

In reference to your last entry, I can only say, 'Oh Jacques, you smooth operator!' Thanks for the anecdotes.

Blatchford is full of sheep dip. I remember very well the military coverage of our soldiers in the Balkans. I mean, who can forget the footage of one of our boys handcuffed to a flagpole.

I'm biased. I have reported and written for Time for eight years and, other than having to toss out my business cards with the Toronto address, am now uncertain of my freelance job. I agree that Time and news magazines generally, despite an increasing web presence, fall short on immediacy in our globalized, frantic 24/7 news environment. But news magazines offer, especially to the many who aren't so plugged in (I often think they're the sane ones), overview and perspective. Time's approach to Canadian issues is to stand aside, even though stories are mostly done by Canadians like bureau chief Steven Frank. For example, Steve's piece on Harper's dispute with media provides a broad context for those not hanging onto the issue day to day, and adds value for those who do follow the hourly news . Over the years, when Time Canada commited itself to the select few big stories a year it produced, I watched it pour in tremendous resources: whole teams of reporters working on the same issue, filing thousands of pages of documents and analysis for an end result of maybe four-five pages. Such processes can be frustrating, an understatement, but by the time a story was printed on Sunday, it was more thorough, concise, polished and fact-checked than any in other organization I've worked for. Personally, I found a lot of value and satisfaction in my work for Time (not least because pretty much everyone at Time is a pleasure to work with, an oddity in journalism). But all the above, including Barry's initial comment, covers the small stuff. The big stuff, which anyone who cares about journalism should pay attention to, is that Time is less a victim of journalism in transition from print to Internet than it is of the opportunists who have swept through American media extracting value and in the process destroying much that's good in journalism. Like the firesale of the venerable Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, like other organizations, Time is bleeding because of cost-cutting demanded by stock market profiteers. Here are some excerpts of a Feb. 17 business story in the New York Times:

The financier Carl C. Icahn is backing away from his attempt to break Time Warner into pieces, looking instead to negotiate some smaller changes at the company in exchange for dropping his acrimonious campaign, according to people involved in the discussions. (snip) Time Warner, the world's biggest media company, has seen its stock price languish over the last few years as Mr. Parsons has dealt with the aftermath of the company's merger with AOL. In addition, the stocks of most large media companies have fallen out of favor on Wall Street. (snip) Mr. Icahn began the recent negotiations with Mr. Parsons by presenting a laundry list of demands, like spinning off the company's Time Inc. and cable television units. He has reduced that list to two chief demands: increasing a planned buyback of Time Warner stock and committing to additional cost cuts , according to two people briefed on the talks....(italics are mine)

All this is made worse by people entertaining themselves to death: somewhat serious publications like Time let alone more scholarly journals are increasingly tough to find on the supermarket, drug store and conveninece store shelves swamped by the bilge of celebrity "journalism." Nit-pick about the timeliness and treeware format of a publication all you want, but the closure of Time's Canadian bureau is really about how decisions guided by short-term profit are changing the overall framework of our media and gutting journalism. All this is oblivious to the role of journalism in our society.

That would look great on a flip chart Bill, but what exacly does it mean? What can a weekly dead tree publication do that newspapers, Internet etc can't? Presumably depth, but I know that I'll spend ten minutes on Google before I'll pick up Macleans or Time. Or I'll pick up the New Yorker, whichi sn't really a news magazine, but which seems to have lot more meat.

Honestly, I don't know when it last occured to me that Time even had a Canadian bureau any more. Surely weekly news magazines, especially in Canada, are a thing of the past. I can't recall the last time that I read a copy of Time, and my recent exposures to Macleans were sufficiently unpleasant to keep me away from that publication as well. The question I pose is this: what is the role of a weekly news magazine in an era of always-on news via cable and Internet?

In some communities, businesses have been known to split their ad sales around just to keep a competing newspaper going, because if a monopoly develops, the lineage price is unlikely to drop. It seems this wasn't the case in St. John's. But you're right: Without sufficient revenue, and that generally means ad sales, a publication can't survive.

No but it can be called, "lets get rid of the staff and get our content for free."