In recent years, local newspapers and broadcasters were called on to prop up empires that dabbled in everything from baseball teams to movies. At a crucial historical moment that called for excellence – the arrival of the Internet – newsroom resources instead disappeared down a black hole of ill-managed conglomerates, ensuring few would care at…
The Tyee has a round-up of the status of lawsuits Canwest launched in response to a parody of the Vancouver Sun. Not a lot of humour is evident.
Expect the press-rights case of Globe and Mail reporter Daniel Leblanc — who is ordered to appear in Quebec’s Superior Court to testify about a source in the infamous sponsorship scandal — to make news in coming weeks. Noted a report in the Globe, “Groupe Polygone, one of the companies alleged to have over-billed the…
Access to Information is broken in Canada. OK, ok, nothing new about that. But there is a new report, some attempts at explanation, and plenty of blame on the failure by the current government (the Stephen Harper Conservatives campaigned on accountability) to fix the system while at the same time plugging casual information channels.
It’s well known newspapers are losing advertising dollars from print operations faster than revenue is growing at their online operations. It turns out the same thing is happening to readers, according to a study by the the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. If newspapers can’t change this trend, there is little chance they’ll ever build online revenues…
Internet searches using terms like “unemployment benefits”, “bankruptcy” and “foreclosure” have leaped dramatically in frequency during the past year, according to an analysis by comScore Inc. Call it a digital sign of the times.
“Democracy needs dialogue more than it needs bumper stickers,” writes Stephen L. Carter, a novelist and Yale law professor, in a persuasive essay arguing for more context — more thoroughness — in journalism. The piece is American, but applies elsewhere.
[Note: This post has been updated] “The CBC is heading toward a new fiscal year with little clarity about its funding from Ottawa, even as it suffers a projected 2008-2009 shortfall in ad revenue of up to $65-million,” reports the Globe and Mail.
Even those of us who care about news and newspapers can become cynical about the wailing over the demise of print. Fortunate then that Paul Starr has written a passionate and thought-provoking argument in The New Republic for why all of us should care.
Under his own byline, News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch apologized for an editorial cartoon run by The New York Post showing a police officer telling his colleague, who just shot a chimpanzee, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” Wrote Murdoch…