A study of the monthly expenses that families are willing to cut from their budgets during an economic slowdown suggests subscriptions to magazines and newspapers will be cut fourth in order. That’s after tickets for concerts and sports events (1), movies (2) and DVD purchases (3), but before premium cable packages (5). A story in…
OK, this seems ridiculous: either nobody who works for CanWest reads J-Source, or if CanWest journalists do read J-Source not one of them considers their own news service tops. That doesn’t seem believable, but see for yourself: The J-Source election poll asked, “Which major national news organization provided the best election coverage this year?” The…
“On the morning of Oct. 27, 2007, Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh got the call that changed his life,” starts a Globe and Mail interview with the journalism student in Afghanistan whose death sentence was commuted for a 20-year sentence instead. His “crime,” the Globe notes, “would be nothing more than a typical classroom debate for a…
“News and opinion mingle with alarming alacrity [online],” Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor at The New York Times, told the (U.S.) Association of National Advertisers’ annual conference, in a speech on standards and change reported by Advertising Age. “Bloggers cannot replace what we do. They are not going to open a bureau in Baghdad.” Can’t…
The price of CanWest shares on the TSX is down from a 52-week high of 8.28 to a low — at the time of this posting — of 1.10. Analysts have noticed…
Denmark’s justice ministry refused to allow seven Muslim lobby groups to take the newspaper Jyllands-Posten to the Supreme Court for publishing controversial cartoons of Prophet Muhammed, said a report by Agence France-Presse on the Vancouver Sun website. “Terrorist acts have been committed in the name of Islam, and it is not illegal for these acts…
Freedom of expression does not exist under the government that we prop up in Afghanistan. That sad truth of that was verified yet again as Reuters reported, “Afghanistan’s appeal court sentenced an Afghan journalist to 20 years in jail, commuting an earlier death sentence, for distributing an Internet article that said the Prophet Mohammad had…
The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has thrown out a complaint alleging that a Mark Steyn piece in Maclean’s exposed Muslims to hatred and contempt, on the basis of their religion, in breach of s. 7(1)(b) of the Human Rights Code…
An attempt by prosecutors and Conrad Black to have evidence about his case sealed indefinitely has failed, with a final refusal by the Supreme Court of Canada to hear the case “Conrad M. Black v. Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc.” The court turned down Black’s appeal of an Ontario Court of Appeal decision. The appeals court…
How to interview a street person: “Don’t assume I’m stupid,” says an adviser quoted in the Globe and Mail. “Don’t assume I don’t have skills. Don’t assume I don’t come from your world.” The advice is part of a profile of Jody Paterson, former managing editor of the Victoria broadsheet who is now teaching writing…