• J-Source

    Circulation grows! (or, “Man bites dog!”)

        “CIRCULATION GROWS” could be a screaming headline in 72-point with multiple exclamation marks. But, oddly, it arrived in my inbox today as a mere item in the latest e-bulletin of the Canadian Newspaper Association…

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    Another Wente controversy

        A discussion is raging on Facebook about Margaret Wente’s latest Globe and Mail column, “What Dick Pound said was really dumb – and also true.” …

  • J-Source

    Media wins access to recount

    The British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that a Victoria newspaper can attend and report on a judicial recount of federal election results in Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca. Sadly, that’s news.

  • J-Source

    Silver lining amid subscription cuts?

    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…

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    Poll of news organizations

    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…

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    Afghanistan and freedom of expression

    “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…

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    Bloggers don’t have Baghdad bureaus

    “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…

  • J-Source

    Media shares tank

    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…

  • J-Source

    Danish Mohammed cartoons

    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…

  • J-Source

    Afghanistan and freedom of expression

    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…