By H.G. Watson, Associate Editor Parliamentary Press Gallery members are still trying to figure out what proposed new security measures will mean for them. On Feb. 24, CBC reported that the House of Commons administrative committee had recommended new screening measures for access to parliamentary buildings, which may apply to any journalist looking to obtain…
This story was funded by the J-Source Patreon campaign By Dylan C. Robertson Data collected late last year suggests Canada’s columns have grown even more unrepresentative since a similar 2014 J-Source columnists survey. Canada’s news and general interest columnists are overwhelmingly male, white, straight and middle aged, according to a J-Source survey of 125 columnists. “The…
By H.G. Watson, Associate Editor Postmedia has announced that they plan to lay off 54 staff at the Vancouver Sun and The Province by early April. A memo posted by Financial Post media reporter Sean Craig on Twitter outlined details of the layoffs, described as the “second stage of our salary deduction initiative.” Phyllise Gelfand,…
By H.G. Watson, Associate Editor Postmedia has made substantial cuts to non-unionized employee benefits, including axing its employment assistance program and eliminating maternity and parental leave top-up payments. A memo released on March 9 details the changes for both full-time and part-time staff. “Across Postmedia we currently have numerous and varied benefit programs, pension plans…
By Sylvia Stead for the Globe and Mail Today and yesterday, the website and the front page of the newspaper have been and are dominated by extensive coverage of the attack on the Quebec City mosque. Much more coverage is and will be done in the coming hours and days and readers still have many…
The following memo was sent to all Postmedia staff on Mar. 9, 2017. Across Postmedia we currently have numerous and varied benefit programs, pension plans and other human resources policies like vacation that apply to various employee groups. In order to both achieve harmony across our operations and to ensure the affordability of these programs…
By Esther Enkin, CBC Ombudsman The Alberta Teachers’ Association released a toolkit for creating curriculum dealing with “sexual and minority genders.” The complainant, Greg Murphy, questioned the balance and fairness of an article about the handbook framed by the objections raised by a critic. He thought it misrepresented the document and distorted its meaning. There…
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star What happens if and when there are no news media? That is the critical question at the heart of an essential public conversation that began in earnest this week with the release of an exhaustive report by Canada’s Public Policy Forum entitled The Shattered Mirror: News, Democracy and…
By Marlene Murphy “What kinds of journalism do we think are worth protecting, and what are we willing to do to protect them?” Christine Crowther said that was the starting point for a new book, Journalism in Crisis. Crowther, a former CBC journalist who now teaches part-time at Carleton University, is one of the six…
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star There is nothing new about critical readers expressing their concerns about what they read in the Star in strong words. My in-box, and those of most other journalists here, is evidence of that. What is new in recent weeks however is the fact some of those critics are…