One way I judge “good” print journalism is whether a story grabs me, sucks me in and holds my attention until the very last word, no matter my underlying interest in the subject. It helps if the story includes storytelling phrases that delight while delivering solid reporting. A great example of such writing is this Canadian…
The ideological Western Standard magazine will stop printing after three years and 82 publications, and remain an online entity only, says founder Ezra Levant according to reports. “It’s not that we’re an important part of independent journalism, sometimes we’re the only independent journalistic voice,” Levant told CanWest. “Sometimes we were the only people who had…
The CRTC will begin seven days of hearings Oct. 9 on wholesale Internet access, or as the commission says, “the regulatory framework for telecommunications wholesale services.” Rogers, Shaw and Quebecor will represent the industry; the Competition Bureau and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre are also expected to appear. Another Internet development this week is a…
On the anniversary of the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Reporters Without Borders staged a ceremony at the Trocadero human rights plaza in Paris. The press rights group displayed photos of Vladimir Putin and Politkovskaya alongside 18 coffins representing the 18 journalists killed in connection with their work in Russia since Putin became president…
Global television, part of the CanWest conglomerate, is laying off a total of 200 people, the company said Thursday. It’s part of the broadcaster’s plan to update the technology in four centres, in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto. A Canadian Press report said news-gathering staff is being cut in the Maritimes and in Quebec. A…
“Stop the presses!” leads a Canadian Press story, uncharacteristically. An excerpt:Stephen Harper sat down for a news conference with the national media on Wednesday. The prime minister temporarily put aside his well-documented disdain for the Ottawa press corps and fielded a variety of questions in a wide-ranging news conference on Parliament Hill. That wouldn’t normally…
Some time soon, I think, we’re all going to have to scrap the term “online” and agree on a new way to describe news presented on the Internet instead of through what we used to call print, audio and video formats. Meanwhile, the force of the change from traditional to Internet media formats is evident…
I’ve encountered no more brutal assignments than those about suicide. Nobody seems to have found a way to entirely reconcile the gap between private grief and public information, and it’s interesting — and a little disturbing — that Britain’s Press Complaints Commission is attempting to restrict coverage of suicide. The Guardian this week has a…
This week the U.S. will preview five stamps featuring 20th Century journalists. A press notice of an Oct. 5 press conference names them: war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998); John Hersey (1914-1993), whose most famous work, was Hiroshima; CBS correspondent George Polk (1913-1948), killed while reporting on corruption involving U.S. aid in Greece after WW II;…
The official name is ‘Union of Myanmar’, but media outlets appear split on what to call the Southeast Asian nation once known as Burma. The BBC and the Bangkok Post steadfastly stick to Burma, while the Globe and Mail uses Myanmar, stating the name better reflects pre-colonial terminology. There’s power in the act of naming,…