The Link, one of the student-run papers at Concordia University, focuses this week on the challenges facing the news media in its Media Democracy special issue.

The eight-page insert is part of the weekly paper, available for free on campus or for download in this 10MB PDF file. Or you can read the stories online.

Among the articles is this interview with some know-it-all complaining about his doomed career.

Also in this section:

• Media lawyer Mark Bantey (who also represents The Gazette in media issues) looks at SLAPPs – lawsuits of questionable merit brought against critics in an effort to silence them.
• Laura Beeston interviews Ottawa journalist Mark Bourrie and Gazette health reporter Aaron Derfel on convergence and computer-assisted reporting
• Tristin Hopper writes a first-person story about working in Whitehorse and accidentally running afowl of court publication bans.
• Terrine Friday (who was an intern at  The Gazette this summer) writes about the pros and cons of using anonymous sources.
• Jane Doe (I’m guessing that’s not her real name) writes about marketers making use of social media for viral advertising.
• Christopher Olson ponders what technology is doing to print culture
• Elias Makos (who is CTV Montreal’s tech correspondent) discusses Rue Frontenac’s upcoming iPhone app with locked-out journalist Jean-François Codère.
• Madeline Coleman writes about music criticism in an age of oversaturation
• Tom Llewellin looks at errors in digital media and the danger they might just be scrubbed without an apology in the future, in an article that amazingly manages not to quote Craig Silverman.
• Kamila Hinkson writes about diversity in media, talking to CBC’s Hugh Brodie and mentioning CFCF’s diversity award last year
• Tu Thanh Ha, a reporter with the Globe and Mail and a Link alumnus, discusses what technology has changed about news gathering, and wonders whether it’s for the better
• Mike Gasher, who runs Concordia’s journalism department, says journalism students are still needed, the profession will survive, and please please don’t shut down J-school.
• Elsa Jabre has a brief look at photojournalism
• Vivien Leung discusses western bias in foreign reporting