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…
Tom Hawthorn explores the crisis in journalism with a profile of Vancouver native John Temple, editor of the American Rocky Mountain News, which closed this month. An excerpt from Hawthorn’s Globe and Mail piece: “A newspaper is dead five days now, and still the publisher speaks of his column and his staff and his newsroom…
The Tyee has a round-up of the status of lawsuits Canwest launched in response to a parody of the Vancouver Sun. Not a lot of humour is evident.
Expect the press-rights case of Globe and Mail reporter Daniel Leblanc — who is ordered to appear in Quebec’s Superior Court to testify about a source in the infamous sponsorship scandal — to make news in coming weeks. Noted a report in the Globe, “Groupe Polygone, one of the companies alleged to have over-billed the…