• J-Source

    Banish “off the record” briefings

    A movement among U.S. media organizations and journalists seeks “to end the practice whereby officials insist their remarks remain ‘off the record’ at large public events,” reports  Editors Weblog. It excerpts a column by Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander: “Standing in front of 300 people and declaring your words to be ‘off-the-record’ is frustrating for…

  • J-Source

    Private data sent to media list

    An employee at a British Columbia bank inadvertently emailed a list of hundreds of people’s insurance claims to 75 provincial media outlets, reported CBC. This is a classic blooper, one that seems to be repeated every few years by some hapless worker. I worked as a desker at Canadian Press in Halifax some 20 years…

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    Usurpateurs de métier: de faux journalistes enlevés

    Radio France Internationale (RFI) rapporte que deux Français qui ont été enlevés en Somalie le 14 juillet dans l’hôtel où ils logeaient s’étaient faussement présentés comme des journalistes. Cette nouvelle a choqué Reporters sans frontières (RSF).

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    La gratuité payante appliquée aux journaux

    Les journaux devraient offrir l’essentiel de leur contenu gratuitement et se financer par la vente de contenus spécialisés, de produits dérivés ou de services connexes. C’est la formule proposée par Chris Anderson, rédacteur en chef du magazine Wired.

  • J-Source

    Migrating news stories to Twitter

    Some solid advice for moving news to a Tweet on Twitter from the Poynter Institute’s David Brewer. “Imagine if a journalist writing a breaking news story online tweeted each element of the story as soon as the information were verified.”

  • J-Source

    Writers’ Union protests treatment of Olympics critic

    The Writers’ Union of Canada has sent an open letter to Gary Lunn, federal Minister of State for Sports, expressing concern about the way Chris Shaw, author of a book critical of the upcoming Vancouver Olympics, was questioned by the Integrated Securities Unit (ISU).

  • J-Source

    Dream job/fantasies

    For many of us, journalism was once the ultimate dream job. (And even in dire times, it still is for a lucky or plucky few.) Now the dream has turned to fantasizing — about alternative employment. Fantasies such as, writes the New York Times’s Judith Warner after surveying her colleagues, turning a Master’s of Journalism…