Nice by line in the St J TJ.

If they had printed it in their editorial or opinion section I wouldn't have an issue with it.

A few years ago, a few employees of either the TJ or the Evening Times Globe (Saint John) quit to start an independent alt weekly for Saint John called [here]. Its main purpose was to take on the media empire long held by the Irvings and finally allow another voice. It was incredibly successful and Saint John became the smallest city in North America with an independent alt weekly. The paper certainly took on the Irving empire but, for safety sake, were fairly soft on it. A few years after its initial launch, [here] expanded and set up a sister paper under the same name in Moncton. Immediately after, the Irvings set up their own weekly which ran at a loss, severely undercutting [here] in advertising costs. Moncton not only became the smallest city in North America with an alt weekly, but actually had two! Obviously, [here] couldn't compete and in a very controversial move, the editor and founder (his name escapes me, I think his first name was Mark) sold the paper to the Irvings with an incredibly lame explaination. Immediately after the sale, a Fredericton paper was set up and the content was watered down to the point where it was more or less a community bulletin with no real journalism to speak of. I remember when the paper was sold, my friend had a journalism class with Mark (if that's his name) at St. Thomas and that week he had to endure a barrage of hellfire from his students for the entire class. That's how things work in New Brunswick and Connery61's comment couldn't be more on the mark!

Note that it runs as a news story (it ran on page A3 - always a news page) without a byline and the headline is "CBC runs baseless story with no regard for facts or truth". Pravda much? Also note this graf: "The story, written by a summer intern named Matt McCann, contained a number of factual errors - the misspelling of university secretary Stephen Strople's name, his title and the full slate of degrees held by Premier Shawn Graham. In addition, the story did not adequately portray both sides of the story."

So, a name was misspelled, and they didn't get the Premier's degrees right. And there was something else wrong with it too that apparently you readers need not concern yourselves with too much. Just know that there's another side of the story. That the T-J is not going to tell you about here.