This column pooh-poohing concerns abt fake news opens w/ a false anecdote about the Spanish-American War: https://t.co/VBMmf0iMS2 So… yeah https://t.co/BK9opEyIjz

— Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) December 31, 2016

News about news

• An Oklahoma newspaper was one of many who endorsed Hillary Clinton in the U.S. general election despite being solidly Republican in the past. The fallout from that decision continues to affect the paper’s relationship with its readers.
• Kevin O’Leary has been finally dropped by Bell Media after announcing he’s studying the idea of entering the Conservative leadership race.
• A judge has ruled that the seizure of a Journal de Montréal reporter’s laptop was legal.
• Presse Canadienne has a (mostly Quebec-centric) roundup of media news from 2016.

TV

• Julie Snyder finally has a new TV deal. She’s bringing back reality show Occupation Double, except this time it’s going to V. The network says it’s the biggest investment in a show they’ve ever made.
• With a month to go until the first Super Bowl without simultaneous substitution, Bell Media and the NFL are trying whatever they can to put things back to the way they were. They’re taking the matter to court (again), they’re lobbying the House of Commons, and there’s a new website apparently set up by unions to lobby the public. Bell Media also has a page on its website devoted to the issue, which notes that its contract with the NFL goes through 2019. And chief regulatory officer Mirko Bibic has an op-ed in the Globe and Mail calling for a “time out” (i.e. stalling).
• GameTV learned from the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council that it needs to be more careful about airing David Cronenberg movies before 9pm and with insufficient viewer advisories.
• NBC switched its affiliation in Boston on Jan. 1. Canadian providers who use Boston as a U.S. station source switched to the new feed, and as far as I know none are continuing to distribute WHDH north of the border.
• Saturday Night Live posted a video showing how a set is dismantled during the opening credits.

Radio

• CBC broadcast the final episode of The Vinyl Cafe, though host Stuart McLean hopes to be back someday.
• Corus has rebranded a station in Winnipeg as Peggy 99.1.
• Rythme FM in Montreal has a new morning team: Stéphane Bellavance, Jean-Francois Baril and Annie-Soleil Proteau.
• The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council took a dim view of a suggestion (apparently not made seriously) by a host on Ottawa’s CISS-FM that a contest participant was not chosen at random.

good morning Torstar typo https://t.co/c9iEAbtmub pic.twitter.com/oEg5DmNPg2

— 12:36 ? (@1236) January 3, 2017

Print

• With just days to go before the end of the year, the sale of l’Actualité to a company owned by Alexandre Taillefer was announced. The magazine published an open letter from him. He promises to keep the magazine editorially independent from Voir. Charles Grandmont has been named editor in chief.
• Latest newspaper fatality: The Chilliwack Times. Ownership is billing it as a merger.
• The Toronto Star has published its annual You Be The Editor quiz, letting readers second-guess them on whether something is too offensive to publish.
• New business model alert: A man in upstate New York bought all the newsstand copies of a newspaper so nobody would see the news about his DUI arrest.

Online

• MobileSyrup speaks to former Shomi employees about the downfall of that company.
• Some online publishers are starting to sour on Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages, mainly because those pages’ addresses start with google.com.
• RIP @BreakingNews. (Announced in December.)

News about people

Saying goodbye to @CTVMontreal technical director Dave Maynard, who's retiring after 40 years! pic.twitter.com/0e36oGtjk5

— Stéphane Giroux (@SGirouxCTV) December 21, 2016

• Dave Maynard, the technical director at CTV Montreal who oversaw the technical side of the station and until recently directed newscasts, retired just before the holidays after 40 years. Among many other things, he oversaw the station’s upgrade to high definition and the creation of its new studio.
• NBC News won the Megyn Kelly sweepstakes. She’ll host an unnamed one-hour daytime show as well as a weekly Sunday night show, details to be determined later.
• Nathalie Normandeau has settled her legal case against Cogeco Media. The latter fired her from a job at FM93 after she was arrested in a UPAC investigation.
• Pierre Houde didn’t call Tuesday’s Canadiens game in Nashville because his wife had emergency surgery in Tampa. RDS viewers got Alain Crête instead.
• Lauren Strapagiel has been named managing editor for Canada at BuzzFeed. She succeeds former Montrealer Craig Silverman, who still works out of Toronto but is on a media beat now.
• If the name David Fahrenthold means anything to you, the Washington Post has a first-person story from him about his coverage of the Donald Trump foundation and the Access Hollywood video.

Good reads

• The New York Times explores the difficulty of advertisers buying cheap ads automatically without having them appear on fake news sites.
• The Times on the fact-checking website Snopes, which has gotten so big it now has to deal with fake stories about itself.
• The Globe and Mail speaks to Randy Lennox, the head of content at Bell Media, about various strategies, including more of an emphasis on original programming. (Paywalled)
• An ode to the copy desk, something fast disappearing at newspapers these days.
• Stephen Harper’s former communications director on how easily the media can be distracted these days.
• 9 famous quotes from Winston Churchill that were never actually said by Winston Churchill (or were said by someone else first).
• How the quick-churn online media can take an out-of-context quote and turn it into an outrage story.

Jobs

• Producteur(trice) associé(e), Vice (Montreal) (deadline: Jan. 6)
• National investigative journalist, Global News (Toronto, deadline: Jan. 20)
• Toronto Star summer reporting internship (deadline: Jan. 30)
• Bourse AJIQ-Rogers (deadline: Feb. 13)