A public affairs spokesperson says Saskatchewan’s health department has imposed a total ban on anyone giving media interviews, on any topic, to any journalist anywhere, for the duration of the provincial election. When I called about a story, I was told that to have a routine bureaucratic question answered, I would have to call the minister…
“A lot of journalists and former journalists and bloggers seem to hate their newspapers because of some vague psychic or moral sensibility, as if some great social contract has been breached. The newspaper was supposed to represent some Rockwellian expression of American idealism and democratic life along with a devotion to craft. Instead, it became…
American media conglomerates would be the big winners under a plan circulated this week by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The plan would, reported the New York Times, relax media ownership rules that have been in place since 1974, and would repeal a rule forbidding a company to own both a newspaper and a television…
From a Bloomberg story today: Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest shareholder in New York Times Co., sold its entire 7.3 percent stake today, according to a person briefed on the transaction, sending the stock to its lowest in more than 10 years….Hassan Elmasry, managing director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, unsuccessfully challenged the Sulzberger family’s control…
Anyone wondering why Time magazine is so skinny these days? Marvelling at the fat People on the newstands? Take a look at this graph compiled by the U.S. Project for Excellence in Journalism, showing changes in advertising. Says the blurb above the feature at journalism. org, “It’s been a rough year for the three major…
Later this year Rupert Murdoch will actually get his hands on his new prize, the Wall Street Journal. Jonathan Richards has stories in today’s Times and Guardian based on a speech and an interview with Murdoch following a San Francisco Internet conference, about his plans for the U.S. newspaper icon. In the stories, the planned…
The Association of Electronic Journalists has created an award named after Peter Gzowski, the late Maclean’s editor and long-time CBC radio host of Morningside. The RTNDA Peter Gzowski Award – Best Radio News Information Program was announced today. “Gzowski exemplifies the very best in Canadian Journalism,” said the association said in a press release. It…
A selection of headlines above the first online, breaking-news stories about today’s Statistics Canada crime report. It’s a hot political topic in the context of yesterday’s Conservative government throne speech — which includes a priority on “law and order” measures. The Globe and Mail:Homicide rate drops in 2006Other violent crimes on rise as number of…
The International Federation of Journalists has called on the international community “to take special action to confront the human tragedy in Iraq where the killings of journalists and media staff have reached “shocking proportions that can no longer be ignored.” Everything about Iraq seems shocking — but the IFJ has had enough with the recent…
Canada ranked 18th on this year’s annual press freedom index from Reporters Without Borders. Along with Germany, it was one of only two G8 countries to make the list’s top 20. Most of the countries deemed to have the best freedoms are in Europe, with Iceland at the top. The U.S. ranked 48 (immediately behind…