Sorry to see you go, Don Newman.
More Don from the Air Farce: Don and Justin, Don Newman's Situation Room, Don and Stephen Harper, and Don explains HDTV. There are dozens more where that came from, especially in seasons 11 and 12 and a running gag back in 2000, all of which unfortunately use RealVideo.
In case you missed it (you ungrateful non-newspaper-readers), the Financial Post and Canwest News Service ran a series this week on the future of newspapers, which unless you've been living under a rock recently you've noticed are in a bit of business trouble. But these writers know newspapers are better than those other media.
The series is in five parts:
As part of the series, Canwest's newspapers were also encouraged to write about their individual histories and connections with their communities. The Gazette got young reporter Jason Magder to do a piece on the paper's connection with its community.
Other Canwest papers also wrote self-congratulatory pieces:
The National Post also asked its "opinion-makers" about their thoughts on newspapers:
As if underscoring how far newspapers have to go, in neither of the three above cases could I find one page linking all these related stories together.
Finally, unrelated to any of the above, Stuart McLean writes in the Globe and Mail about why he loves newspapers.
From the National Film Board's archives, a cute little 1987 film by Michel Choquette about the history of the Victoria Bridge, starring the voices of Terry DiMonte and Patti Lorange on a pretend radio show for a fictional Montreal station.
And as a special related bonus, the 1972 Barrie Howells film Trafficopter, which follows CJAD traffic reporter Len Rowcliffe high above the city.
There, isn't it good to learn something?
Appearing before the CRTC on Thursday, Canwest (my employer, you'll recall) made the case for license amendments at its two Montreal television stations, CKMI-TV (Global Quebec, which is actually licensed out of Quebec City but operates out of Montreal) and CJNT-TV (a former ethnic programming station which has since become half ethnic programming and half E! entertainment shows).
Here are some highlights from the transcript.
Two weeks after announcing a narrowing of a block of Mackay St. next to Concordia University's Hall Building as the triumphant accomplishment of the mythical "Greening of Mackay" project, Concordia University has stepped back a bit in the face of protest from neighbours and has put the project "on hold."
Concordia's announcement said it would be reviewed "over the next few months," which I can only guess means it's not going to happen this summer at all.
That's unfortunate.
Of course, with all the construction going on in that area as Concordia builds a new tunnel from the Hall Building to the Guy-Concordia métro station (and its new buildings next to it), people probably wouldn't have noticed a further narrowing of the street anyway.
Concordia University announced today that it will, effective Monday, unblock access to Facebook from its wired network.
Concordia blocked access to Facebook in September - but intentionally left it open on its wireless network, in residences and in its libraries - out of concerns for "spam, viruses and leaks of confidential information related to use of the social networking site."
This line of reasoning was criticized - even mocked - by Internet experts like Michael Geist, who argued none of these things are specific to Facebook.
It also led to coverage in the media: CBC, Gazette, McGill Daily and others.
So what changed? Officially, it was reopened because of improved security:
After the recent improvement of certain security checks and procedures at Concordia, including the installation of a new firewall, the university made the decision to officially reinstate Facebook.
Again, it's unclear how a "new firewall" will protect Concordia against whatever ills it attributed to Facebook. It used phishing as a prime example, and it's unclear how a firewall will stop those kinds of activities.
But realistically, the growth of Facebook has meant the loss of productivity from its use (my guess for the real reason behind its original blocking) is outweighed by its value as a communications tool - between students and professors, between the university and its alumni, between sports teams and their fans.
Concordia reminds its network users to use best practices for safeguarding personal information and passwords.
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