• J-Source

    Kory Teneycke tagged as Harper’s new communications director

    Canadian Press reports that a former energy-industry lobbyist and Reform party activist is expected to become Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s new communications director. An excerpt of the CP story: “Highly placed sources tell The Canadian Press that (Kory) Teneycke will take over Monday from Sandra Buckler, who announced her resignation June 26.” Kory Teneycke seems…

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    Online ads up

    A release from the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada said online ad revenues in Canada rose some 38 per cent, to more than $1.2 billion, between 2006 and 2007. A hopeful sign? Or such a drop in the bucket that it’s really water torture for journalists suffering the transition from print to web.

  • J-Source

    Cringe

    I feel a little bit mean posting this, but it’s such a perfect example of why journalists have lost respect with the public (in this case anyone with basic science knowledge) that I’m going to post it. I had an email from This magazine, asking for donations to fund This’s investigative journalism. An excerpt: Dear…

  • J-Source

    Dunces

    Thought for the week: “Perhaps a nation can function without newspapers. But it would be a confederacy of dunces.”

  • J-Source

    Buckler resigns

    Reporters were interrupted in their sipping of wine and eating of canapés at Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s s annual summer garden party June 26, by an email from Harper’s director of communications, Sandra Buckler, announcing her resignation. The pros were appropriately restrained in their reports: Andrew Mayeda reported for CanWest that Buckler’s resignation ends “a…

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    Monday mayhem

    Apropos of nothing — or just because it’s Monday: Journalist suspected of murdering women in Macedonia Story of a journalist Stripping His Way to a Ph.D. Reporter breaks back after riding inside inflatable ball

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    Is it broke?

    “Journalism is broken,” said a speaker at a lecture series put on by the U.K. Guardian. The series, which is partly available online, asked, “Is it?”

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    Tim Russert, icon or poster boy

    The explosion of news about deceased U.S. broadcaster Tim Russert (at one point in the week a Google news search returned some 10,000 hits) reminds me of how O.J. Simpson burst into the global public consciousness in 1994 via a live televised police chase of Simpson in his white Bronco. Simpson, I maintain, was previously…

  • J-Source

    Floating feet

    “Why,” asks the Globe and Mail, “are newshounds around the world so enraptured by a grim West Coast story about human flotsam?” OK, it’s a rhetorical question — every reporter and reader knows it’s an engaging story; the fact that it’s engaging is why the Globe devotes yet more ink to a story about the…

  • J-Source

    20 questions about polls

    The American National Council on Public Polls has a piece on its website that looks like a worthwhile read: 20 Questions A Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results. Hat tip to the U.S. discussion list,IRE-L, of Investigative Reporters and Editors.