Monthly Archives: April 2009

| Media

Quebec media (but not all Quebecers) shut out of CAJ award nods

The Canadian Association of Journalists announced the nominees for its annual awards, and Quebec media were nowhere to be seen.

Part of the reason behind that is that there aren’t any French-language nominees. Darn francos can get their own awards, dagnabbit.

But The Gazette, the community papers, as well as CBC, CTV, Global and CJAD news teams were also excluded from the nominations.

Still, there are some Quebecers on the list who worked for national media or media in other regions. I spotted two off the bat:

Perhaps there are others I’ve missed.

I’ll also take this opportunity to point out yet again that a list of journalism award nominees is issued and nobody thinks to link to the nominated pieces for people to read.

| TV

CBC’s “renewal” cuts budget, expands newscasts

Today the CBC announced Part 17 of its huge cost-cutting operation, in which 70 people in its English news department lose their jobs.

The headlines at CBC talk about “24-hour coverage” and “better service” without giving too many details of what that means. CP has the first actual detail: regional supper-hour newscasts will be expanded to 90 minutes (you’ll recall they were just recently expanded from half an hour to an hour), and would start at 5pm instead of 6. Coronation Street would fill the half-hour betwen 6:30 and 7.

This certainly makes sense for Montreal, which currently has three English-language local newscasts competing against each other at 6pm (and two of them always losing that battle). Starting earlier might be the ticket to a larger audience.

Of course the question remains how CBC is supposed to have more product with a smaller staff. We’ll find that out over the coming months.

| Canadiens, In the news

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before

So a singer, a philanthropist and a media magnate walk into a banker’s office…

Though scarier than the thought of Céline Dion being the permanent national anthem singer or the Journal de Montréal getting exclusives on everything related to the Canadiens is this:

This trio of potential buyers is said to be contemplating a dedicated pay-TV channel in Quebec that would carry Habs games and other hockey-related content as one way to increase revenues from the team.

It’s just an idea, but it’s an idea that would be devastating to RDS.

| Montreal

Anti-psychiatry Scientologists push envelope on academic freedom


Anonymous video of display at Concordia

The local anti-Scientologist Anonymous group is in an uproar over a display setup at Concordia’s Library Building this week by a group calling itself the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (auto-play video warning).

The CCHR is part of the Church of Scientology, and its message is that psychiatry is responsible for all the world’s ills, including the shooting at Dawson College in 2006.

This is a rather bold claim, and seems to be based more on religion than on science. Kind of like Intelligent Design. Only Intelligent Design isn’t as likely to encourage people to make the wrong decisions about their health.

Anonymous has taken to writing letters, alerting the media (I’ve received two emails about it so far) and personally insulting Concordia administrators.

The response from the university (according to these people) is that while they may not agree with the message, the university respects their right to say what they want provided they don’t descend into hate speech or discrimination.

For some reason, Concordia always seems to be the centre for these kinds of envelope-pushing events. Perhaps it’s because other universities stop them before they start, or because people just feel that when they want to test the limits of freedom of expression they should do so at Freedom Of Speech University.

In any case, Concordia has caught the attention of Anonymous. And for that they have my sympathy.

UPDATE: The Gazette covers the controversy. CTV follows with comments from an actual psychiatrist. Radio-Canada also reports on it.

| Radio, Technology

cbcdbktwt

CBC Daybreak has taken to Twitter, with staff (including host Mike Finnerty) sharing the tweeting duties. Although it includes a lot of stuff that might be considered noise to some (live-tweeting of Habs games, for example), it also gives a rundown of the next morning’s broadcast the evening before, which is useful.

The only thing is you have to learn how to speak txt:

Your Mic is at 0740, 0815 is the chase, new 2u+me from the am. Ur first am MTL news, all the world and biz news from onight – c u from 0530

I think I’ll just stick to listening to the podcast and finding out what was on the program hours or even days after it aired.

| Montreal, Public transit

Here it is, your bus ride of zen

Paper with quotation on a traffic light post on St. Denis St.

Paper with quotation on a traffic light post on St. Denis St.

Sunday night on my way home, I noticed a piece of paper with a quotation on it taped to a bus stop post. I didn’t think anything of it until I passed by another stop and noticed another quote on another piece of paper. In the end, there were similar pieces of paper taped on or near bus stops along the 361’s route from Old Montreal to Ahuntsic.

No idea why. Naturally, their flimsy construction and unauthorized nature meant they didn’t last long.

Quote and bus stop sign

| Media, Web design

Sun Media’s new insert-paper-name-here redesign

calgarysun.com

Redesigned calgarysun.com

The Calgary Sun today redesigned its website.

Actually, I should say Sun Media redesigned the Calgary Sun’s website. The new site is nearly identical to those of the Toronto Sun and Winnipeg Sun which have already been converted from the old Sun website layout (you know, the one that overused the Impact font and just looked so 90s in general?). Even 24 Hours and the Journal de Québec have most of the same layout styles.

ottawasun.com

ottawasun.com uses the old design

Two papers remain with the old, quaint web format: the Ottawa Sun and Edmonton Sun. Expect them to be switched over some time over the next few weeks.

It’s another example of the Sun chain going where Canwest has already gone. National news desks, centralized layout desks that create copy-paste pages, dumping Canadian Press in favour of its own in-house news service, electronic editions of its newspapers, laying off hundreds of people, and now white-label websites whose contents can be copied from site to site with the click of a button. (Not that the old Sun sites were that much different from each other of course, but this just furthers the process.)

In addition to the wider design that looks like all the other newspaper websites out there (in good ways and bad), a mobile version, and what is sure to be an improved backend, the new system allows reader comments on articles (or at least it says it does – I can’t find any articles with that feature enabled).

(via TSF)

| Media, Montreal

The oxymoron of media ethics

I’m told there’s a free conference on media ethics Friday/Saturday at U de M, sponsored by the CREUM (ethics research centre). Most of it happens before noon when I’m unconscious, but there’s a panel at 5:30 on Friday about whether competition hurts journalism, with Michelle Blanc and Yves Boisvert. If I had any ethics, I might go.

The full schedule (in PDF) is here.

| Montreal, On the Net, Opinion, Web design

Tourism Montreal up for Webby Award

I’ve never really been a fan of the Webby Awards, the anual awards for Web design. It’s not that they charge hundreds of dollars for entries (and then more hundreds to actually attend the ceremony) or because that source of income encourages them to inflate the number of winners, but for the simple fact that the judges for these awards always prefer style (or should I say “Flash”?) over substance.

Looking at the list of nominees, it seems clear that Flash-heavy multimedia ad campaign sites are held in higher regard than genuinely useful boring HTML. The famous websites and bloggers get their nods, of course (assuming they’re willing to pay or their fame is high enough that the Webbys think they’ll add prestige and eyeballs to the event), but everything else seems to be judged on looks alone. In fact, many entries don’t even link to the websites themselves but to special awards pages that explain how awesome the Web campaign is instead of just pointing people to the sites and having them figure it out themselves.

That is reflected in the nominees with Canadian connections. Officially there are 13 Canadian nominees, making Canada the fourth-most nominated country behind the U.S., U.K. and New Zealand, and just ahead of Australia (notice a trend there, perhaps having to do with the primary language of these countries?) Metro has links to them. But nationality is judged by the organization which created the site, not the site itself, so there are actually others.

Here are the Canadian website nominees I’ve found:

  • Tourism Montreal, by local outfit Sid Lee, in the tourism category. Best known for its slick (and expensive) Montreal in two minutes video, it also has an event search that warns you not to use the basic functions of your browser.
  • Adidas 60 years of soles and stripes, another Sid Lee joint, in the fashion category. Appears to redirect to another Adidas site. In any case, it’s a flashy site for a company whose business model relies on being lashy and cool.
  • Visual Dictionary (Merriam-Webster) from Montreal-based QA International, in the education category. A quality nominee that’s both good-looking and useful.
  • Smartset’s Fashion at Play, by Toronto-based Taxi, in the animation/motion graphics category. A completely useless site, it encourages people to spin boxes around to reveal new outfits, and then plays a video. That “unlocks” access to a downloadable ZIP file which contains a desktop background, ringtone and video, all of which are connected to the campaign and aren’t interesting at all. And when you unlock everything … nothing happens. Fantastic. But hey, the boxes spin.
  • 1000 Awesome Things, a Toronto-based one-person blog about things that are awesome, in the personal/culture blog category. (Hear an interview with its creator with Terry DiMonte on Q107)
  • Kaboose, a Toronto-based parenting site, in the family/parenting category. No complaints here.

I should also point out that the Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog, a very simple idea simply produced, is also nominated.

There are also nominees in advertising, video and “mobile” categories, but I don’t care about those (except to note that my favourite remix of all time is nominated as a viral video). Here are the Canadians:

Interactive ad campaigns

  • Russian Dolls
  • Nokia Accessories Portfolio Video
  • The Big Wild Email
  • Let’s Change Insurance – Aviva Banners
  • Coffee Cup

    • Online videos

  • Follow Your INSTINCT (2 nominations: Best Editing et Best Sound Design)
  • The Curse of Degrassi
    • | Media

    Freelancers get class action authorization against Gazette

    The following was just released (following an embargo) by the Electronic Rights Defence Committee, a group of former Gazette freelance writers who have received authorization to bring a class action lawsuit (UPDATE: Link fixed. Stupid gummit website.) against The Gazette, Canwest and related companies for republishing freelance articles submitted to the paper in the Infomart article database.

    The release is presented here without comment, since as an employee and freelancer (though not a member of the committee) I’m in a conflict of interest.

    After more than a decade, the Electronic Rights Defence Committee has received authorization from Quebec Superior Court to proceed with a class action suit against some of the biggest names in Canadian media.

    At issue is the electronic use without permission or compensation for work by freelance writers in The Gazette.  The defendants are Montreal Gazette Group, CanWest Global Communications, Hollinger Canadian Publishing Holdings, CanWest Interactive, Southam and Southam Business Communications, Infomart Dialog and Cedrom-SNI.

    In February 2008, the Honourable Eva Petras, J.S.C., heard three days of arguments from Mireille Goulet, ERDC lawyer, and a team of lawyers representing the defendants. The Justice’s decision was rendered March 31, 2009.  It authorizes the ERDC to institute class action proceedings with writer and translator David Homel as its official designated member. The class action group includes all freelance writers whose articles, originally published in The Gazette, have been allegedly illegally reproduced on the Infomart data base since 1984.

    The next steps will lead toward a trial on the merits of the case, a process which may take several years to reach a conclusion.

    The ERDC case is one of several in North America seeking compensation for unauthorized electronic use of freelance writers’ work. In October 2007, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled five to four in the Heather Robertson vs. Thomson case that freelancers do indeed hold copyright on their work reproduced in electronic data bases.  The US$ 18-million class action settlement in the United States which followed from the Tasini vs. New York Times case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court which has agreed to decide whether a lower court has jurisdiction to approve settlement agreements. The Association des journalistes indépendants du Québec is also currently in the process of undertaking a class action against several Quebec medias.

    I’ll update with a response from The Gazette or Canwest if one is issued publicly.

    Other comments from ERDC members Mary Soderstrom and Jack Ruttan.

    | Montreal, Radio

    CFQR announcement a whole lot of nothing

    Q92 logo

    It was billed as a big announcement. Huge. Multiple full-page ads in the paper, lots of announcements on the radio. Everything was going to change at Montreal’s Q92 at 8:45am this morning.

    And nothing did. Which makes me kind of cranky because I’m not used to waking up before noon and I’m low on sleep for nothing.

    But with parent company Corus Entertainment seeing a 30% drop in profits from its radio division (pdf), it’s clear some management types decided major changes were in order.

    Here’s what is changing:

    • The name and logo. They’ve added the indefinite article “the” before the Q. This gives them a new, edgy and unique name (if you don’t count that station in Victoria)
    • The website. From Q92fm.com to 925theq.com, which seems more complicated to me, but I’m not an online marketing expert.
    • The on-air talent. Despite some rumours, the morning team remains the same, but some of the afternoon and weekend people are leaving. Details below.
    • The programming (maybe).They’re promising “more music” as if it’s somehow possible to cram more songs into an hour and still have advertising, traffic and weather. They also say they’ll have more variety, but having listened for a few hours I haven’t heard a single song that screams variety to me.
    • The jingles. Still in the same style, but with a new annoying catchphrase.

    Continue reading →

    | Canadiens

    Your 2009 Habs playlist

    UPDATE: See the 2010 version here.

    Since people seemed to appreciate last year’s list, here’s some Habs songs, most courtesy of your local radio stations, to get you in the mood as you prepare for the Habs-Bruins series which starts on Thursday.

    And if public sentiment is any indication, our team is going to need all the help it can get. This time they’re No. 1 and we’re No. 8, we’re the ones plagued with injuries and will face each playoff round with the other team having home ice advantage.

    In compiling this year’s list, I noticed quite a different tone from last year. In April 2008, the Canadiens were expected to finish out of the playoffs but surprised everyone with their strong season and first-place finish in the East. This year, the expectations were high (especially with the centennial) but a post-All-Star meltdown nearly put the Canadiens out of the playoffs. Some of the songs below reflect that.

    I’ll start us off with Annakin Slayd, who produced a very popular video last year. This time he’s back with a French version, which thankfully removes obscures the Journey sample and adds a reference to Alex Tanguay to show it’s current. The production values (thanks to Aviva) are also noticeably better. But the song – and its magic – are still essentially the same.

    A similar list is compiled on the Bébé Habs blog, though I’m doing my best below to respect copyright. Links to MP3s are on radio station or artist websites and YouTube links are to official videos only. Please let me know if I screwed up somewhere there or if there’s an iTunes link I should add.

    Go Habs Go.

    Continue reading →

    | Media

    Synergy at Sun Media

    In an effort to cut costs, Sun Media is combining resources at its small Ontario dailies (which formed the Osprey Media chain that is now part of Quebecor). It’s being described as “synergy”, but it basically means replacing local jobs with fewer, lesser-paid jobs at larger production centres.

    Among the changes:

    In each case, jobs that were considered technical rather than editorial in nature are being replaced by a centralized operation that can be more efficient and work with fewer people. But the worry is that the people doing these jobs now have no connection to the papers and don’t care about the quality of what they put out. The fact that union jobs are replaced by non-union jobs with less pay and no benefits only makes that problem worse.

    It’s also touching aspects of editorial too. As the Observer article points out, the papers are taking advantage of “synergy” by running national columns rather than local ones wherever possible. The Sun and Osprey chains are even copying whole pages (taking advantage of their similar layouts) from each other, and outsourcing layout work to a centralized location (which is how the Journal de Montréal is still functioning despite a lockout of 253 workers).

    If this sounds familiar, a similar strategy is at the centre of stalled contract talks between my union and Canwest, which has centralized its customer service call centre, is centralizing some layout and copy editing work, and started printing standardized business pages in its major dailies.

    I think some centralization (even of editorial work) makes sense, and I understand the need of these companies to reduce costs, but there’s a fine line between outsourcing a technical job to a company that specializes in that work and removing parts of what give local papers their identity, which go beyond just what names appear in the bylines and what you get in the police blotter.

    In the end, it will be the subscribers who decide whether or not any cut goes too far.