“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…
Access to Information is broken in Canada. OK, ok, nothing new about that. But there is a new report, some attempts at explanation, and plenty of blame on the failure by the current government (the Stephen Harper Conservatives campaigned on accountability) to fix the system while at the same time plugging casual information channels.
“Democracy needs dialogue more than it needs bumper stickers,” writes Stephen L. Carter, a novelist and Yale law professor, in a persuasive essay arguing for more context — more thoroughness — in journalism. The piece is American, but applies elsewhere.
[Note: This post has been updated] “The CBC is heading toward a new fiscal year with little clarity about its funding from Ottawa, even as it suffers a projected 2008-2009 shortfall in ad revenue of up to $65-million,” reports the Globe and Mail.