News about news

• Rogers and Village Media have teamed up for another local news website, KitchenerToday.com. Like HalifaxToday.ca and OttawaMatters.com, the site will be fed by a Rogers-owned all-news radio station and Rogers TV community TV channel on a Village Media platform.
• The Globe and Mail has a new feature online that adds helpful process info on, for example, how it uses anonymous sources, right in the stories.
• The Professional Hockey Writers Association, for the first time, is publishing the individual ballot selections of its members that led to the choosing of NHL Awards recipients. The Gazette’s Pat Hickey and TVA’s Renaud Lavoie are among those listed as having submitted ineligible all-star team votes.
• A consortium of broadcasters denies that there was any threat from them to cut coverage of the Ontario election results after a concession speech by Kathleen Wynne was delayed too long.
• The Link has some more details about Concordia University’s new institute for investigative journalism.
• Charges have been laid against a man alleged to have led a right-wing group’s storming of Vice’s Montreal offices last month.

At the CRTC

• The commission held a hearing this week where four radio stations begged for their lives, err, I mean explained their chronic issues with licence compliance — CKMN-FM Rimouski, CHOC-FM Saint-Rémi, CKWR-FM Kitchener and CKUN-FM Christian Island. The transcript is here.
• A commission letter to the Bell Fund, an independent production fund set up by Bell to dole out some of its mandatory contributions to Canadian content, says that its board makeup appears to be insufficiently independent of Bell. This is part of a complaint by several broadcasting groups that a new program set up by the fund unfairly discriminates against smaller broadcasters.
• RNC Media has asked the CRTC to maintain its Independent Local News Fund allocation despite having shut down TV station CKRN-DT in Abitibi. RNC says it has moved all CKRN’s news resources to CFVS (its V affiliate) and produces the same amount of local news in the market as before.
• Colba.Net has thrown in the towel on a TV distribution service in Ontario, and handed its licence back to the commission.
• Native radio station CKOK-FM Nain, N.L., has been told it can’t be exempt from the national public alerting system, despite the argument that such a regulation is at odds with UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
• Licence renewals for Pattison-owned radio stations CKWD-FM (Wild 95.3) Calgary and CKNO-FM (102.3 NOW!) Edmonton

Ethical reviews

• Canadian Broadcast Standards Council: A Doc Mailloux broadcast was not discriminatory against old people nor overly sexually explicit.
• Toronto Star Public Editor: When is it appropriate to use the term “elderly“?
• CBC ombudsman: CBC can’t delete an article about the former mayor of St. Albert, Alta. violating the Municipal Government Act, even though the judge in the case found the mayor was acting in “good faith”.

TV

• Roseanne is coming back, but without Roseanne. The producers of the hit revived sitcom are going ahead with a “spinoff” that does not star or have any financial links to Roseanne Barr.
• Sportsnet has announced its national NHL broadcast schedule for 2018-19. The schedule includes national broadcasts for the seven Canadian teams, but since Rogers also has regional broadcast rights to the Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers, and shares those rights with Bell for the Toronto Maple Leafs, some additional regional broadcasts could be upgraded to national for those teams. Here’s how it breaks down per team so far out of 82 regular-season games each (of the Canadiens broadcasts, 22 are on Saturday, 5 on Wednesday and 5 on Sunday, including a Super Bowl matinee game):
  • Toronto: 40
  • Montreal: 32
  • Ottawa: 27
  • Vancouver: 24
  • Winnipeg: 22
  • Calgary: 22
  • Edmonton: 22
• CBC has cancelled the daily business news show On the Money with Peter Armstrong, leaving CBC News Network without a regular business show.
• Worse for CBCNN, the network is moving to a format during the day where the first half of each hour will be live and the second half a repeat of the first.
• V is working on a new talk show in which Phil Roy interviews celebrities in their homes.
• Workers at TVA have voted 97% in favour of a strike mandate. But the union has no immediate plans for a strike.
• TSN will broadcast the home opener of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team, which was devastated when many of its players died in a bus crash during last season’s playoffs.
• Serinda Swan has been cast in the lead role in a new Toronto-set CBC original drama Coroner (8 episodes), set for broadcast this fall.
• ABC pulled an episode of reality series The Proposal after an accusation against one of its contestants related to a previous case of sexual assault surfaced online.

Radio

• Community station CIBL-FM Montreal appears to have made its crowdfunding goal of $35,000, with 91 contributions. One of the station’s recent radiothons was streamed by MAtv.
• Toronto’s CHUM-FM 104.5 went through a rebranding on Friday, and though it built up a lot of hype for the change, it’s unclear what exactly is different, beyond a lot more pink in their logo.

Print

• The Quebec Community Newspaper Association awards winners list has been posted. In the overall newspaper category, first place goes to Kahnawake’s Eastern Door, and second and third place to two editions of The Suburban.

Online

• Sony’s Crackle, the free video streaming service, is shutting down access in Canada as of June 28.
• Paid subscription services YouTube Music and YouTube Premium (formerly YouTube Red) are now available in Canada.
• MUCH has published a five-episode series of videos on LGBTQ issues.
• The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states can require retailers who don’t have a physical presence in their state to collect and remit sales taxes.

Corporate

• Quebecor has officially bought out the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec’s stake in Quebecor Media, and is now the sole owner of that subsidiary. But the Caisse still has a stake in Quebecor Inc. itself, and some of that payement is in the form of a convertible debenture.
• The union representing CBC/Radio-Canada employees in Quebec and Moncton have once again rejected a contract offer.
• Disney upped its bid for 21st Century Fox in response to an offer by Comcast. It’s almost $15 billion higher than its previous bid.

News about people

The countdown is on! @SarahRitchieTV is joining Global Halifax as our lead anchor. She'll bring you the latest in local news starting June 25. #Halifax pic.twitter.com/YB94f8GXus

— Global Halifax (@globalhalifax) June 18, 2018

• Marie-Andrée Chouinard has been named the new editor-in-chief of Le Devoir. She replaces Luce Julien, who was poached by Radio-Canada.
• Irene Gentle has been named the new editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star. She is the first woman to hold the role.
• Luc Bellemare has been named the new permanent primary host of RDS’s l’Antichambre. He replaces Stéphane Langdeau, who left RDS because he shares initials with someone else.
• Emmanuelle Latraverse has decided to leave Radio-Canada, where she was the host of its weekly political talk show until she was mysteriously demoted amid rumours about her behaviour.
• Alain Dubuc is leaving La Presse for a teaching job, and going out with some reflective columns.
• Jane Gerster, formerly health reporter at the Winnipeg Free Press, is now the national features reporter for Global News.
• Radio-Canada reporter Véronique Prince has been named president of the Quebec Press Gallery.
• Emilie Perreault had her last day at 98.5 FM.
• La Presse’s Yves Boisvert talks to cartoonist Serge Chapleau
• Netflix has dropped its head of PR, Jonathan Friedland, after he apparently used the N word.

Obituaries

• Charles Krauthammer, U.S. political commentator

Good reads

• FPJQ’s Trente magazine on Radio-Canada’s spotty acceptance of non-Quebec accents.
• The Columbia Journalism Review looks at Consumer Reports magazine and its plan to stay viable in the future.
• The Toronto Star fact-checked a week’s worth of Question Period at the House of Commons, and rates questions and answers as true, false, dodge and stretch.
• A look at Toronto’s high school newspapers

Jobs

• Videojournalist, Radio-Canada Hamilton (deadline: June 28)
• New York correspondent, Globe and Mail (deadline: June 30)
• Editor-in-chief, MAtv Montreal (deadline: July 6)
• Social media manager, MAtv Montreal (deadline: July 6)
• Reporter, Breakfast Television Montreal

News about news

Has #FIFA19 gone too far controlling photographers? pic.twitter.com/1thwBvuOrN

— Ric Ernst (@RicErnst) June 16, 2018

• The Michener Award, the journalism award given out by the governor general, was awarded to the Globe and Mail and journalist Robyn Doolittle for their Unfounded project looking at how police departments across the country handle investigations of sexual assault.
• Bill 400, which allows La Presse to be converted into a nonprofit, passed through the National Assembly just before it broke for the summer. The bill was rushed through the legislative process (though, at two paragraphs, it doesn’t take long to study), and MNA Martine Ouellet tried to propose seven amendments in committee and two others in the National Assembly, designed to establish rules for how the non-profit’s board should be formed (such as that employees should control a third of the board) and ensure the company is not sold to a corporation with a headquarters outside Quebec. All were rejected. The final vote passed 76-24.
• The National Assembly also adopted a law offering more protection to journalists who wish to protect the identity of confidential sources.
• La Presse published an investigative report this week about Influence Communication, the Quebec news media analysis firm famous for quantifying the weight of topics in the news media. The report questions the company’s methods, particularly when it comes to broadcast media, and quotes former employees saying that president Jean-François Dumas, the firm’s public face, applies a multiplier, whose source is unclear even within the firm, to determine how much a news story is trending on media they cannot directly analyze. Dumas went into immediate damage control, issuing a 4am press release, and appearing on Radio-Canada and 98.5 FM morning shows to denounce the reporter and the story. Dumas says the former employees (who are unnamed in the story) were fired or left on bad terms, and suggests the reporter refused two offers to see how the company works in person. (The reporter, Isabelle Hachey, says both those statements are false.) Influence’s press release does not single out any specific fact in the story as being incorrect.
• Former Toronto Star digital editor David Skok has launched a new online subscription news outlet called The Logic, covering “the innovation economy.”
• The Guardian looks at the issue of journalists in the United States facing danger for reporting on radical right-wing political groups.
• Concordia University has launched a new institute for investigative journalism, with several media and university partners.
• An online survey done for the international Digital News Report shows only 18% of Canadians would be willing to donate to a news outlet “if they were unable to cover their costs in other ways.” More details on the report’s findings about Canada are here.
• Another report shows that news consumers are not very well informed about how journalism works, and that they believe news has veered too far toward opinion (I agree). Details are here.
• Rob Rogers was fired as the editorial cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette because he refused to stop making fun of Donald Trump. The newspaper’s publisher counters that he was “too angry” and obsessed with Trump. The paper itself covered the firing.
• The Boston Globe has suspended columnist Kevin Cullen after learning he allegedly fabricated anecdotes related to the Boston bombing. He’ll be busted down to general assignment reporter temporarily when he returns.
• Former employees of the Denver Post have started a new publication called the Colorado Sun that is being bankrolled by the founder of the Ethereum cryptocurrency. The Sun’s business model is something-something-blockchain but appears to be some sort of crowdfunding model.
• The Ahuntsic-Cartierville community publication Journal des Voisins has hired some student reporters thanks to a government grant.
• La Presse is launching a new webinar series featuring photojournalist Martin Tremblay.

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News about news

• A Google-funded project called NewsWise is aiming to teach young kids how to look critically at the news media and understand how news and politics interact. It has instructional videos featuring people like BuzzFeed’s Jane Lytvynenko and Craig Silverman (or people claiming to be them, who knows) on its YouTube channel.
• A New York Times reporter’s phone and email records were secretly seized by the U.S. government during a leak investigation.
• People saying the media aren’t talking enough about how 4,645 people died in Puerto Rico are probably unaware that the study that number comes from doesn’t actually say that.
• La Presse is giving more detail about its restructuring plan, including that it has asked the Quebec bar for the names of three retired judges, from which it will choose its trustee to ensure the non-profit it establishes respects its mandate. It will also name the chair of its board without consulting Power Corp.
• The disgraced shell of what was once Newsweek is not above exploiting high-profile suicides for clickbait.
• If you think the Canadian regulatory system is broken, consider this BuzzFeed story about a company that is exploiting a loophole in Britain’s local TV news subsidy program and producing low-quality stories that the BBC is paying for but never using.
• Canadaland has a story about the failed attempted formation of a union at the National Post.
• The Globe and Mail is willing to cancel subscriptions of people who harass journalists.

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News about news

• The far-right group Atalante stormed Vice’s Quebec offices, made a lot of noise and left. The FPJQ is shocked and disgusted by the attempt to intimidate journalists.
• The Ukrainian government faked the death of a Russian journalist in order to try to catch who was trying to kill him. The move has prompted some discussion and concern that this further erodes people’s trust in the media and government at the worst possible time.
• Canadaland has a story about CBC News matching competing news organizations’ scoops without credit. This is a common problem in the industry and a pet peeve of mine as well, but it goes far beyond the CBC. Many, maybe even most mainstream news organizations with decades of experience work under the guideline that you only need to credit a competitor until you’ve independently confirmed the news yourself. If news organizations had to disclose where they first heard about all the stories they published, news would read a lot differently. (Also Frank magazine points out it has been scooped by Canadaland without credit in the past.)
• RTDNA Canada announced its national and network award winners, with CBC getting many of those (51 in total, 6 for the Montreal team). Winners from here:
  • CBC Montreal digital on Quebec City mosque attack
  • CBC Montreal digital on Montreal floods
  • CBC Montreal website
  • CBC Montreal’s Montreapolis podcast
  • CBC Montreal radio on flooding
  • CBC Montreal television for Out of the Shadows: Inside La Meute
  • CTV News Channel, Quebec City Mosque Shooting
  • CJAD 800 for Andrew’s Let’s Talk Story
• The FPJQ is moving its Quebec journalism awards ceremony out of its annual conference and into its own special gala, next May, as part of its 50th anniversary celebration.
• The Don Martin/Arthur Kent defamation case has seen its damages increased to a total of $450,000. Martin published a column in the National Post 10 years ago that harshly criticized Kent, an Alberta politician.
• Two TV journalists at WYFF in Greenville, S.C., were killed while covering a storm when a tree fell on their news van.

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