• J-Source

    Dramatic change in Washington corps

    “The corps of journalists covering Washington D.C. at the dawn of the Obama Administration is not so much smaller as it is dramatically transformed,” said a report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The report used the word shock in describing the degree to which “what we once thought of as the mainstream news…

  • J-Source

    National press council advocated

    NewsThe Ontario Human Rights Commission is calling on Parliament to force all Canadian magazines, newspapers and “media services” Web sites to join a national press council with the power to adjudicate breaches of professional standards and complaints of discrimination. Journalists warn that mandatory government regulation poses a threat to freedom of expression. Joseph Brean reports…

  • J-Source

    Web 2.0 libel suits multiply

    Feature The Web 2.0 movement ushered in an interactive Internet and put power in the hands of the people, tapping the so-called wisdom of the crowds to change the world — and to keep such a digital democracy in check. A decade later, as defamation lawsuits mount in response to an explosion of vicious attacks…

  • J-Source

    Broadcast TV profits plunge

    Profits at Canada’s biggest private television broadcasters plunged by almost 93 per cent last year, said a report from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. Amid comments about the Canadian Press story on the Globe and Mail site (why does the Globe not at least rate the angry torrent of drivel?) is this sage observation:…

  • J-Source

    Free market blues spur calls for new tune

    Shrinking newsroom budgets have left former T-Star publisher John Honderich asking: Whither serious print journalism? He finds some interesting possibilities in the U.S., where non-profit foundations and cooperative ownership models are coming to the fore. Meanwhile, there are no quick answers for papers that continue to grapple with the Internet despite the fact that the…

  • J-Source

    Readers pay, reporters dig on Spot.us

    In yet another twist on user-pay, US-based Spot.us solicits reader donations to cover the cost of journalistic investigations. The problem? The reporting just isn’t very good, says James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times.

  • J-Source

    PEJ starts tracking blogosphere (and zombies)

    The Project for Excellence in Journalism is now tracking news discussions in the blogosphere every week as well as news coverage by traditional U.S. news media. The first “new media index” published last week revealed bloggers were just as mesmerized by the Obama inauguration as was the MSM. But the indices published this week are more interesting – while economic…

  • J-Source

    Just when you thought dead-tree newspapers were just plain dead …

    Some young people who wouldn’t be caught dead reading a newspaper today expect they will in the future. That’s what doctoral student Seth C. Lewis found when he surveyed students at two U.S. universities. While only 14 per cent of the more than 1,200 students surveyed would openly admit to reading a non-student print product today, 41…

  • J-Source

    Shooting British messengers

    What on earth are the British thinking these days, aiming their guns at their messengers? The Brits harassed five top financial journalists who appeared at a government hearing in London to defend themselves against accusations their reporting caused panic and helped escalate the financial crisis in the U.K. Reported a story on CBC.ca: “An independent…

  • J-Source

    Sudan expells Canadian-Egyptian journalist

    Canadian-Egyptian journalist Heba Aly was expelled by Sudan, where she had been reporting for the Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg and Irin, reported AFP. A Canadian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman spoke out against the expulsion, saying Canada is “concerned” and has “have contacted the Sudanese authorities, including the foreign minister, to get an explanation and express our…