• J-Source

    Trina McQueen award

    The Association of Electronic Journalists announced a new award for Best Television News Information Program, named after Trina McQueen. McQueen has been a reporter for Toronto’s CFTO; co-host of W5; a reporter and later executive producer for CBC’s The National; vice president of English Television News and Current Affairs at CBC and CBC Newsworld;  President…

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    To Be a Journalist in Iraq …

    Six Iraqi women who work in the McClatchy Newspapers bureau in Baghdad were honoured in New York with a “courage in journalism award.” Kudos to the New York Times for running the acceptance speech by Baghdad journalist Sahar Issa, speaking for the six, as an editorial. Excerpts: “To be a journalist in violence-ridden Iraq today,…

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    Reuters’ new mobile toolkit

    Reuters and Nokia have developed a new “mobile journalism” toolkit aimed at helping reporters file and publish text, photo, audio and video news stories from handheld devices, rather than laptops. An excerpt from the press release: Helsinki, Finland – Nokia Research Center (NRC) and Reuters are working together on a mobile journalism project that could transform…

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    Measuring online readers

    The growth of online advertising is being stunted, reports the New York Times, because nobody can get the basic visitor counts straight. An excerpt: Online advertising is expected to generate more than $20 billion in revenue this year, more than double the $9.6 billion it represented as recently as 2004. Nobody doubts that the figure…

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    Electronic media as the “fifth” estate

    William Dutton, an academic and British Internet expert, has some interesting ideas about how a ‘fifth estate’ could support greater accountability in politics and the media. He gave a lecture to the Reuters Institute; the summary is on the Reuters site: The media are often seen as central to democratic processes: a ‘fourth estate’ independent…

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    Peeling the onion

    A U.S. think piece asks of the phenomenon of a publication full of fake news that rivals America’s ninth-largest newspaper in circulation, “Is The Onion our most intelligent newspaper?” An excerpt: While other newspapers desperately add gardening sections, ask readers to share their favorite bratwurst recipes, or throw their staffers to ravenous packs of bloggers…

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    Saskatchewan ban on public servant interviews

    A public affairs spokesperson says Saskatchewan’s health department has imposed a total ban on anyone giving media interviews, on any topic, to any journalist anywhere, for the duration of the provincial election. When I called about a story, I was told that to have a routine bureaucratic question answered, I would have to call the minister…

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    In defence of newspapers

    “A lot of journalists and former journalists and bloggers seem to hate their newspapers because of some vague psychic or moral sensibility, as if some great social contract has been breached. The newspaper was supposed to represent some Rockwellian expression of American idealism and democratic life along with a devotion to craft.  Instead, it became…

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    Media deregulation proposed again in the U.S.

    American media conglomerates would be the big winners under a plan circulated this week by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The plan would, reported the New York Times, relax media ownership rules that have been in place since 1974, and would repeal a rule forbidding a company to own both a newspaper and a television…

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    New York Times savaged on stock market

    From a Bloomberg story today: Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest shareholder in New York Times Co., sold its entire 7.3 percent stake today, according to a person briefed on the transaction, sending the stock to its lowest in more than 10 years….Hassan Elmasry, managing director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, unsuccessfully challenged the Sulzberger family’s control…