Tag Archives: editorial-masturbation

Le Devoir to cover Olympics

Le Devoir is teasing us on all the fun stuff they’re going to be doing about this summer:

  • Covering the Olympics
  • Some new weekly guess-the-writer game
  • The revival of its “Macadam” series, which nobody remembers but is basically a bunch of feature stories about things in Montreal
  • Covering Quebec’s 400th anniversary and writing about its history
  • Covering a bunch of meetings and visits of foreign dignitaries

Some of it sounds mildly interesting for those of us obsessed with the local media scene, but isn’t the rest of it just stating the obvious? If the paper wasn’t covering the Olympics, that would be a story.

Le Devoir numbers improving

Le Devoir ejaculates the news today that it’s the only major Montreal newspaper whose readership has gone up this year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Its weekday readership is up 2.4% and Saturday readers up 0.1%.

It takes the opportunity to make fun of The Gazette, whose Saturday subscriptions have gone down 4.3% in just one year.

Good for you, Devoir. But maybe you shouldn’t be too arrogant about your subscription numbers, especially since your readership is fourth out of four daily newspapers in the city (sixth out of six if you include Metro and 24 Heures).

UPDATE (Nov. 13): A similar piece from the Toronto Sun, whose numbers are also up. Notice how it’s the papers who are improving who publish stories about circulation numbers?

The full story? Nobody needs that

In another case of blatant editorial masturbation, The West Island Chronicle ejaculates the news that Peter McCabe (not this one, this one) has been nominated for a National Newspaper Award for this photo, which appeared in newspapers around the world the day after the Dawson shooting.

What the Chronicle piece doesn’t mention is why McCabe doesn’t work for them anymore. According to McCabe, the paper (or its owner Transcontinental) decided last year to go from using him as a staff photographer to abusing him as a freelancer and getting him to work for pennies. McCabe said no, and now he’s getting recognition worldwide for a photo his former paper would have paid about $20 for.

Kudos, Peter.