San Francisco Chronicle reporter Delfin Vigil has put his money where his job is: he’s taken out a substantial ad on page 9 of yesterday’s Chronicle, suggesting that if the guys in suits won’t or can’t save the newspaper (and other struggling papers across the country) then they should hand it over to the reporters.
New York University professor Jonathan Zimmerman proposes an interesting solution for resource-challenged newspapers: get university professors to write for free.
John Tory thanked the media for being fair in his speech announcing his resignation as leader of the Ontario Conservative party. Oddly, Tory’s full comments on media were not in the CTV Web story about the speech. The quotes below are from Bill Doskoch’s blog. I want to say thank you to you because I…
Ron Robbins, a long-time Canadian Press and innovative CBC journalist before he founded the University of Regina’s school of journalism, is dead at the age of 92, reported the Regina Leader-Post. “So modest was Robbins that he had friends like (Nick) Russell promise to keep mum on his death and would allow only a small…
Mother Jones has become “a real-life laboratory for whether nonprofit journalism — a topic of the moment in mainstream news media circles — can withstand a deep recession,” reports the New York Times. The people behind the American magazine — which won a National Magazine Award last year for general excellence — have long evangelized…
Folio: is reporting that Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief and former longtime part owner of The New Republic, is in negotiations to buy back the assets of the magazine from CanWest Global Communications. CanWest gobbled up the American TNR in Feb. 2007. At the time, it seemed like a good fit for CanWest and its controlling Asper…
“As the economic downturn triggers layoffs for many traditional media outlets across the country, several ethnic media groups in the Greater Toronto Area appear to be thriving, according to industry insiders and observers,” reported CBC. The story quoted a source saying that unlike TorStar, CanWest and the CBC, “the ethnic publications aren’t struggling to find…
“Read 40 Papers for as little as $10 a month—become a friend of Sightline today!” says a solicitation for money from an environmental organization in the Pacific NorthWest. The email from Sightline Institute goes on: “I’m writing to you today because Sightline Daily needs your help. Your Sightline Daily editors get up at 5am every…
Andre Picard, who is perhaps Canada’s top medical journalist, is fed up with the impact of instant online commentary on scientific debate. “On the Web, it is mob rule,” writes Picard, quoting author Anatole France: ‘If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.’ ” Excerpts of Picard’s uncharacteristically-irate piece…
Media giant Readers Digest has hired a firm of lawyers to explore restructuring and possible bankruptcy, reports Bloomberg. The corporate web site of Reader’s Digest Association Inc. calls it “a global multi-brand media” with offices in 45 countries, products reaching 130 million households in 79 countries, 92 magazines including 50 editions of Reader’s Digest (which…