The death of Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang on patrol with Canadian troops in Afghanistan has produced an outpouring of sympathy from across the Canadian journalism community – not least because her situation inside an armoured vehicle was both blameless and helpless. It has also reignited debate about the potential return on such excursions. Colin…
John Tierney ponders the key question, imo, of the past decade: “When does the wisdom of crowds give way to the meanness of mobs?” Tierney’s New York Times piece today focuses on a new book by digital pioneer Jaron Lanier, “You Are Not a Gadget,” and Lanier’s attack on “the glorification of open-source software, free…
A Los Angeles Times column, “Freelance writing’s unfortunate new model,” warns that while everyone has been riveted on the loss of staff jobs, freelancing has been taking a quiet nosedive, compounding the loss of journalism. Excerpt from the piece by James Rainey: “Freelance writing fees — beginning with the Internet but extending to newspapers and…
Montreal’s Le Devoir reached the century mark today. CBC reported that the French-language daily was founded in 1910 under the promise, paraphrased, to “support honest people and denounce the villains.” As Metro Montreal noted, quoting founder Henri Bourassa, it also promised depth and intelligence: “Sans doute nous ne donnerons pas à nos lecteurs le genre…
Finally, Canada’s largest newspaper chain is officially for sale. Senior lenders to struggling Canwest Global Communications Corp, made up of a consortium of Canadian banks, made a bid. It follows a voluntary court filing for protection from creditors, which covers Canwest Publishing, Canwest Books and Canwest Canada Inc. — all of Canwest’s newspapers, digital media,…
Benefits for thousands of retired Canadian newspaper workers are at risk. Reported the Hamilton Spectator: “About 3,000 retirees of the Southam newspaper chain, including former Spectator staff, received a letter just before Christmas warning them their retirement benefits are in jeopardy. While coverage will continue “for the time being,” the retirees were warned the company…
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…