The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union has swiftly moved to denounce the 940 News layoffs, only a month after the fact and a week after the station’s new format launched. Specifically, they’re complaining that the change violates the station’s CRTC license, which establishes an all-news format (at least I’m pretty sure it does — I can’t find the conditions of license on the CRTC website).
But if the TQS situation showed us anything, it’s that the CRTC’s programming requirements for station licenses have an unwritten “it’s not making us enough money” exemption. So not only can you slash staff and radically change a format without getting a license amendment, you can do so without consulting the CRTC, and simply ask for a format change after the fact.
Until the CRTC grows some balls, expect more of these kinds of moves: money-losing broadcasters unilaterally switching to cheap, lowest-common-denominator formats and laying off all but a skeleton staff.
I was busy at work today putting the sports section together (apparently there was this tennis match or something), so I didn’t check my non-work email until I got home. I came back to find 17 new messages in my inbox, which is unusually high. A lot of them were delivery failure messages, which made even less sense.
Looking through them, it was obvious someone was sending out spam mail with a forged address at my domain. I foolishly setup a catch-all for that domain so everything goes to me. None were angry messages professing eventual death, which was nice. Some were away-from-my-desk messages, others were anti-spam confirm-you’re-a-real-person messages. The rest were bounces.
Then I looked in my spam box. There were hundreds of bounces. At least 300.
Thankfully I have Gmail, so cleaning that up was pretty simple.
UPDATE: I wake up, and the same thing happens again.
Because NHL contracts are complicated, I figured some training might be useful for us less-than-insane fans and well-wishers. In order to do that, of course, I had to read the collective agreement that was signed in 2005 after the lockout.
So there’s this guy outside our office at Peel and Ste. Catherine who plays the bagpipes. He’ll stand there for hours on end and play and play. Tourists and others will pass by and find this cute and throw him a few coins.
But for those of us who work on the north side of the building, it can get rather irritating when we’re trying to work. This, despite the fact that we’re on the third floor and the windows don’t open.
So what do we do to take our revenge on this menace to our daily concentration?
The NDP has apparently chosen its candidate for its next most likely by-election pickup in Quebec: the downtown riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie. No, it’s not the guy in the above video (though he sounds like he’d be awesome), it’s CBC Radio Noon host Anne Lagacé Dowson:
(Note: May not be exactly as pictured)
I worked with Anne during my very brief stint at CBC Radio. Considering how incompetent I was, she seemed like a pretty nice person. The fact that she’s running for office under the NDP banner is hardly surprising (though I doubt she and Jack Layton agree on every issue)
Now the NDP seems to think that after their stunning win in Outremont, getting a broadcast journalist on board is the magic ticket to a second win in Quebec.
Unfortunately, it’s no guarantee. Just look at Peter Kent, former Global National anchor who lost for the Conservatives in Toronto (he’s trying his luck again in a much more affluent York riding). And he was at least on TV. (Get Mutsumi Takahashi or Nancy Wood to run and we’ll talk)
Even worse, her opponent is another star candidate (albeit another failed one), former astronaut Marc Garneau.
The riding, which mainly covers Westmount and western downtown (plus a bit of eastern NDG) could be hard to predict, with a mix of rich anglo Westmounters and poor hippie Concordia students. But the federal riding covering Westmount has been Liberal since 1962, and that’s a lot of history to overcome for a party that hasn’t done better than third with 15% of the vote.
UPDATE (July 7): It’s “confirmed” apparently (as if there was doubt). Lagacé Dowson is, as usual, humble:
“I am not falling on my sword in Westmount,” she told a handful of supporters. “This liberal tradition isn’t serving us very well, and we don’t like what the Conservatives are doing to us. I am not running to make a good showing; I am running to win. If Barack Obama against all odds can capture the leadership of the Democratic party in the United States, who says a woman can’t capture the hearts and minds of Westmount for the NDP?”
I’m not quite sure how this relates to Barack Obama, nor being a woman (especially since the riding’s former MP, Lucienne Robillard, has two X chromosomes last time I checked), but don’t let that interfere with the historicness.
Meanwhile, the other parties have filled out their candidates. Just to show how confident the Bloc Québécois is at winning a seat in Westmount, they’ve nominated Charles Larivée, who according to Google is the president of the McGill Political Science Students Association.
The Globe and Mail has a regular feature called “Collected Wisdom” by Philip Jackman, in which a bunch of people ask questions and another bunch of people answer them. The questions are those didja-ever-wonder types, like “why aren’t there A and B batteries?” that you’d find the answers to in Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader books.
This column is part of the traditional media’s embracing of News 2.0, interactivity, where the reader/viewer/listener has power. It’s the same reasoning behind republishing anonymous troll comments in newspapers, or those “live” web chats the Globe is so fond of.
The problem is that this goes against the entire point of having a trusted news source. This column seems to pride itself on not doing any fact-checking whatsoever, nor providing credible source material for the answers it gives.
Forget the fact that many questions can be answered by spending about 30 seconds on Wikipedia or doing a Google search. The answers aren’t checked to make sure they’re right. Occasionally it might come from an expert, but the vast majority of the answers have the same authoritative backing as that guy at a bar or your friend Vinny who says he knows everything about everything.
As a result, we get urban legends repeated as truth, multiple (sometimes conflicting) answers to the same question, and corrections.
It would be one thing if these questions, interesting as they are, were answered by experts in those fields (you know, the way all those “ask the experts” columns are done). But why leave fact-gathering (and fact-verifying) to the most untrustworthy source that can possibly be found: some random person you don’t know?
Either it’s a really dumb idea or it’s just plain lazy journalism. Either way it’s not the way to innovate in the face of the Web revolution.
I know this may shock and amaze you, but not everyone agrees that Henry Morgentaler, the father of abortion rights in Canada, should receive the Order of Canada. Many Tories and conservative Liberals are against it.
Of course, they’re not stupid enough to say it’s because they disagree with the guy on abortion rights, something the majority of Canadians support. Instead, they bring up some silliness about how the OOC recipients should be people who “unite” Canadians instead of “dividing” them.
Which would make Pierre Trudeau immediately ineligible.
One of the comments on the Star article suggests that Paul Bernardo should be next in line for the order the way it’s going. I guess he means that Morgentaler is a murderer and that advocating abortion rights is one step from serial killing. The Holocaust can’t be far off.
But then, Bernardo is probably a good bet by the Tories’ definition. After all, we’re all united in our feelings about him.
Speaking of ridiculous things to be outraged about, the Globe and Mail apparently found it necessary to assign a reporter to write a story about how there was no Canada Day Google Doodle this year.
The Canadian embassy in Washington is apologizing to Impératif français, among others, after it used a photoshopped picture of Samuel de Champlain holding a poutine on invites (now scrubbed of the poutine offensiveness) to Canada Day celebrations. IF reacted to the image with their usual measured response.
Perhaps I missed something in Political Correctness 101, but what’s so offensive about this again? Is it some stereotype that we eat poutine? Is it because the image of Champlain was sullied in some way?
Frankly, I think the fact that Canadian Press had to explain what poutine was is offensive to me.
Université de Montréal is considering shutting down the TV and radio studios of its journalism department and renting some time in UQAM studios instead, according to La Presse. Needless to say the profs (who no doubt leaked the email suggesting this in the first place) aren’t happy about the idea.
As the NHL free-agency period began yesterday, and players’ contracts expired allowing any team to sign deals with them, some pretty wacky numbers started to appear:
$8.7 million/year for Evgeni Malkin
$7.45 million for one year for Marian Hossa
$7.1 million/year for Brian Campbell
$4.1 million/year for Mark Streit
$4.5 million/year for former Canadiens goaltender José Theodore
$5 million/year for former Canadiens goaltender Cristobal Huet
And yet, someone is going to make more next year than all of these people put together: Rush Limbaugh. And that’s not even including his $100 million signing bonus.
An end to outsourcing of classified jobs to Kanata, Ont.
A four-day, 37.5-hour work week (9 hours, 22 minutes and 30 seconds a day), except for classified which work 37.5 hours over five days
A week more of vacation for part-time/temporary workers who have worked more than 10 years
A guaranteed minimum number of journalists covering Quebec City news, but allowing reporters to perform multimedia jobs
Changes to pensions and retirement benefits, plus a bunch of other stuff that I’m sure even union members didn’t care much about
The union says that MédiaMatinQuébec will continue publishing until the employees return to work, which is still weeks away.
Analysis
The terms of this deal seem to be a pretty solid down-the-middle compromise on key points (which prompts me to ask the question: Why the heck did it take so long to hammer out a deal?). The 2.5% per year increase and 37.5-hour work week is consistent with the employer’s demands, but the workers keep their four-day week intact and avoid outsourcing of jobs to non-unionized employees elsewhere.
The announcement doesn’t go into much detail about the other main issue: asking workers to perform multimedia jobs in addition to print reporting. It will be interesting how this major sticking point is eventually resolved.
This conflict has had mixed reaction from the public. Some have questioned some of the seemingly unreasonable clauses the contracts contain (starting with the four-day work week) and said the Journal needs much more flexibility. But most came out on the side of the workers, thanks in large part to MédiaMatinQuébec which laid out their position on a daily basis and made them out to be the underdog against the evil corporate media empire of Quebecor.
If this conflict is finally resolved, it will be good news for the Journal, good news for its workers, and will change the face of media union pressure tactics here for a long time.
But in the end, only one winner emerges from the prolonged, 14-month conflict at the Journal de Québec: Le Soleil, its direct competition.
Anyone who wants to understand the vast excess of western society need only walk around anywhere in Montreal on July 1. There, you’ll find discarded furniture, empty boxes and lots and lots of garbage.
What gets me most about it, though, is the thought that before today, people had these things in their homes. Now it’s so useless even people walking the streets want nothing to do with them.
