• J-Source

    Shrinking newspapers, shrinking world

    Reports the New York Times: ”Almost two-thirds of American newspapers publish less foreign news than they did just three years ago, nearly as many print less national news, and despite new demands on newsrooms like blogs and video, most of them have smaller news staffs, according to a new study.” (So much for globalization…. or…

  • J-Source

    A guide to good journalistic practices

    This guide is unique. It is more than the traditional list of dos and don’ts that so many j-schools provide their students about acceptable journalistic practice. Instead, this one is posted online in a format that encourages debate and invites a conversation about the standard rules of journalistic practice. It’s New York University’s handbook on ethics, law and good…

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    Ontario’s courts arguably most closed in country

    News The Supreme Court of Canada has described open courts as a “core value” as central to the justice system as the presumption of innocence. Yet at the trial court level in Ontario, the Ministry of the Attorney General has imposed access restrictions that arguably have made the province’s court system the least open in…

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    Legal system erects barriers to open justice

    CommentaryNo one disputes that open courts are a hallmark of a democratic society. But media lawyer Alan Shanoff, writing the June 14, 2008 edition of the Law Times, says it’s time to stop paying lip service to this principle and to rethink the many roadblocks the legal system throws in the way of openness.

  • J-Source

    No simple task

    As a newly appointed Canwest VP of digital media, Kenneth Maclean has been tasked with growing the online versions of three newspapers. Our advice: take three aspirins and visit J-Source in the morning. Here are some recent posts on the tangled and often uneasy relationship between print media and the Internet. Blogs shut down at…

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    Bush spokesman Tony Snow dead

    Tony Snow, best-known as a one-time White House spokesman for U.S. President George W. Bush and also a conservative editorialist, commentator and a host on a Fox cable show in the U.S., has died of cancer, age 53. Excerpts from an Associated Press story in the Globe and Mail: Said Bush, “It was a joy…

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    Murdoch-Fox/NY Times

    A Globe and Mail piece by Sinclair Stewart summarizes the kerfuffle involving Fox News vs the New York Times, which has been making American media news lately. The focus is on photographs of two Times reporters allegedly doctored by Fox. As  Stewart said, they “have stirred a froth about journalistic ethics in media circles here,…

  • J-Source

    China’s broken promise: PEN’s report

    A one-year report card from PEN (the pdf is here) noted that seven months ago, the freedom of expression group called on the Chinese government to: • release all writers and journalists currently imprisoned and stop detaining, harassing, and censoring writers and journalists in China;   • end Internet censorship and reform laws used to imprison…

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    Wikileaks: Saving journalism?

    The title of a Wired piece revealed the ambition of Wikileaks, the document-leaking site: “Immune to Critics, Secret-Spilling Wikileaks Plans to Save Journalism … and the World” Said Editor’s Weblog: “Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, says his document-leaking site is helping journalists change the world … “For investigative journalists, this powerful new resource has the…

  • J-Source

    Words of solace

    I expect  journalists have always felt like ink-stained wretches at times — and especially now, with the Internet having devoured not only tens of thousands of our jobs, our hopes for financial security, and even the ink. The Poynter Institute’s Butch Ward offers some words of solace: “Remember how talented you are: You can write.…