The Seattle Times‘s Ron Judd is not impressed with the media strategy of the organizing committee of the Vancouver 2010 winter Olympics, VANOC. “The organization seems hellbent on turning its media relations into a virtual-reality experience,” Judd writes in a satirical response to the pre-packaged end-of-the-year video release by committee head John Furlong. The piece…
Few legal judgements make for inspiring reading — but the new libel defence outlined in the Supreme Court of Canada ruling Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61 is one of them. The Dec. 22 decision lays out the criteria under which journalists can use the defence of “responsible communication” against libel suits. It’s a…
New York Times science and environment reporter Andrew Revkin is “switching gears for the second half of my professional life.” Revkin wrote in the Times that he’s not abandoning journalism — “I’ll be continuing to blog, write and work with video. And I’ll certainly keep contributing to this remarkable newspaper…” — but is rather taking…
“Journalism, the practice, is not “the media,”” argues Jay Rosen in a mini-essay about how the practice of journalism has become trapped in media production routines. He says, “We got into the habit of calling journalism the “news media,” and then just “the media.” Journalism and the system that carries it became equated.” Now the…
The title of this youtube video says it all: “CBC Translator Loses It.”
Maybe Amanda Lindhout really is not a journalist, as some critics have recently charged. Her first statement since being freed from her Somali kidnappers and arriving back home in Canada reveals that she is not nearly cynical, jaded or miserable …
Cliff Lonsdale hitchhiked at 16 into an African war zone to kick-start his journalistic career. Here he reviews the Amanda Lindhout debate and explains what he tells young journalists these days.
Most journalists strive never to become part of the story — except in life-or-death cases when our humanity demands action. The Toronto Star has decided that climate change is such a case — it joined 55 other newspapers around the world to demand action, not in an editorial, but in a front-page story. Excerpt: “Today…
Compared to the limp competition in Canada, Germany’s media wars are … interesting. “Giant Penis Sparks Bizarre Media War,” headlines DER SPIEGEL.
The obsession with Tiger Woods proves it: we’ve lost our marbles. Australia is drying up. Dubai is in the toilet. The Large Hadron Collider is smashing atoms. Our world is full of economic turmoil, prisoner torture, tax tantrums, pit bulls posing as statesmen … also genuine art, beauty, acts of compassion, marvels of all kinds.…