Megan McArdle offers a succinct analysis of the transition from print to web in a piece posted at The Atlantic’s website. She accuses many “commentators on the changing media landscape (of having) an unjustified fetish for newsprint.” Her points include: — Of YouTube: “If people want to tune out the news, no one can compel…
New CBC/Radio-Canada president Hubert Lacroix says the CBC needs $215-million more federal money as well as a seven-year funding plan, reported Sun Media. Speaking to a conference of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, Lacroix asked Ottawa to designate an extra $40 per Canadian in annual funding, compared to the current $33 per Canadian.…
From CBC.ca: A Canadian magazine will be making history Thursday — Canadian Geographic is publishing its annual environment issue on paper made from wheat, a first for a North American magazine.The issue is being printed on sheets made with wheat straw — what’s left of wheat after the grain harvest.The magazine says adding agricultural waste…
“Though the Iraq war is arguably the most significant act of American foreign policy in decades, it is often invisible at home,” writes Damien Cave. Surprise comes through strongly in the New York Times reporter’s diary, about what it’s like to return to America after a tour in Iraq. “Welcome home, I think: Four doses…
With Canadian soldiers dying in Afghanistan, with Canadian money funding projects, what obligations does Canada — and do Canadian journalists — have to prevent abuse of authority by the government we help prop up? This story reveals the travesty that is Afghanistan’s “democracy.” How can a country claim to be democratic when it uses its…
A story in the New York Times looks at how disobedience by numerous reporters, who covered the Chinese earthquake against direct orders, challenged — and broke down — China’s censorship system. An excerpt: The earthquake has tested this country in many ways, including a death toll that has steadily climbed into the tens of thousands…
Bell Canada can continue to slow down certain types of Internet traffic flowing on the wholesale networks it provides to smaller Canadian Internet service providers after federal regulators denied a request for interim relief from the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, reported the Globe and Mail. The association had filed a complaint calling on the…
Al-Jazeera has appointed Tony Burman, editor-in-chief of CBC News, as managing director of its English-language channel, reported the Guardian newspaper. The story said Burman’s arrival “follows a period of turmoil at the channel during which a number of journalists left amid claims of a revolt over working conditions,” and signals a drive to increase Al-Jazeera’s…
Gunmen dragged freelance journalist Sirwa Abdel Wahab from a taxi and fatally shot her in the head on May 4 in Mosul, Iraq, reported CBC, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, etc. “Her death brings to 212 the number of journalists and media assistants killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003,” said…
Vancouver Sun reporter Kim Bolan writes on World Press Freedom Day about her first-hand knowledge of death threats to journalists in Canada: “I was still startled two months ago to find a photo of myself posted on a Facebook page that had been started a few days earlier to attack me. A bullet hole had…