News about news

• The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has a report of 2017 predictions. Among them, a boost for podcasting, news outlets using less of things like Facebook Live and going it alone to reap the revenue directly, more mergers and acquisitions, and more fact-checking.
• Métro’s Inspecteur Viral, who fact-checks viral news, also has some predictions for the coming year.
• TVO has announced a $2 million donation it has received that will be put towards setting up “local hubs” doing local journalism in Ontario.
• Chinese authorities asked Apple to remove the New York Times app from its store in that country. And Apple complied.

At the CRTC

• The commission’s release #2017-1 is publishing the applications for stations that would replace Aboriginal Voices Radio. The CRTC revoked the licences for this network of native stations in major cities in 2015, and AVR’s court appeal of the decision was dismissed in November, allowing the commission to proceed with applications to replace them. There is a good amount of competition for stations in the major markets — Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver — but only one of the applications calls for stations in all those markets.
• The CRTC has approved two new radio stations for Edmonton: An ethnic station, 10kW at 580 AM, and a French-language community station, 180W at 97.9 FM. There were 10 applications for ethnic stations, not all of them using the same frequency, but the CRTC decided with one existing ethnic station the market could handle only one more at this time.
• Bell Media and the NFL aren’t giving up on their attempts to reverse the CRTC’s Super Bowl ad decision before kickoff. Super Bowl LI on Feb. 5 will be the first exempt from simultaneous substitution rules.
• The commission has yet another vacancy now that Candice Molnar’s term has come to an end. There are now only seven commissioners left, and more will leave as their terms expire. The Trudeau government has made only one appointment — a temporary six-month one — since taking office.

TV

• Sportsnet has declared itself winner in the ratings war with TSN again, this time looking at the 2016 calendar year.
• Bell got a $350-million patent infringement lawsuit over its IPTV technology thrown out of court.

Radio

• Norway has begun the process of shutting down FM radio, which though it was announced two years ago has gained attention across the world in the past week. (I gave a series of interviews with CBC Radio stations today.) Journalists in other countries are wondering if they could be next. In Canada, at least, that’s just not happening. Digital radio here is still in its infancy.
• There was no announcement of this, but CHLX-FM, the RNC Media radio station in Gatineau that became a Rythme FM affiliate, has dropped that affiliation and adopted the brand of WOW FM. On Facebook, the station has been telling listeners the change was made to become “100% local”
• La Voix de St-Lo, the community radio station based in the Centre communautaire Bon Courage de Place Benoit in Saint-Laurent, is moving toward getting the station’s low-power FM transmitter, which was approved last summer, operational. A consultation was held in December about installing the antenna tower, a website has been set up, and the Industry Canada database lists a callsign for it: CJPB-FM. When it’s operational, it will broadcast at 90.7 FM, but its coverage won’t extend much beyond the eastern part of the Saint-Laurent borough.
• An elementary school has set up a web radio station as an education aid for students.

Print

• RIP Sherbrooke Express, the Transcontinental paper that has been shut down.
• The Toronto Star has launched a new short story contest, with a $5,000 grand prize, which it says is the biggest of its kind in Canada.
• The Saguenay edition of the Journal de Québec published a front page on Twitter (since deleted) that announced Team Canada winning the World Junior Hockey Championship. Quebecor has clarified that this version of the front page was never actually printed.
• Canadian University Press, an association of university student newspapers, has dramatically lowered membership fees, one of the key complaints from member papers that has led many to decide to leave the organization, prompting a financial crisis.

Online

• The Internet Archive has compiled hundreds of hours of interviews with Donald Trump, which it has placed in a searchable archive that can be used to show him contradicting himself.

News about people

It's official! Thrilled to announce I am returning to Canada's Global News as Washington Correspondent. Very excited for this new adventure! https://t.co/JBvlb4woF7

— Ines de La Cuetara (@InesdLC) January 11, 2017

• Ines de La Cuetara, who previously worked at Global Montreal and CNN and was most recently covering the U.S. presidential election with ABC, is Global News’s new Washington correspondent. She joins Jackson Proskow, who remains in Washington.
• Tom Clark, who left his job as host of Global TV’s The West Block, has announced where he’s going. It’s a PR job.
• Greta van Susteren, who left CNN for Fox News, has now joined MSNBC.
• Alex Perron has been added to the afternoon show on Rouge FM in Montreal.
• Paul Wells is back on Twitter, months after publicly announcing he was leaving the social media service. Between him, Steve Ladurantaye and Andrew Coyne, we probably shouldn’t take it seriously when a journalist who’s big on Twitter suddenly decides to quit it in a huff.

Good reads

• Are more celebrities dying than before? Yes, but that’s not 2016’s fault. MIT did a study explaining why.
• Did the way we teach people to be critical toward media, with good intentions, backfire and help create a universe where people don’t believe news that contradicts their world view?
• Interview with Florent Daudens, new head of digital news at Le Devoir.
• La Presse talks to Hockey Night in Canada play-by-play man Bob Cole.

Obituaries

• Andréanne Sasseville, Sirius XM Radio host (CTV has a story in English, Sirius XM has a tribute)

Jobs

• National Post summer interns (Toronto; deadline: Jan. 15)
• National investigative journalist, Global News (Toronto, deadline: Jan. 20)
• Videojournalist, CBC Montreal (deadline: Jan. 23)
• Indigenous community journalism trainer, Journalists for Human Rights (deadline: Jan. 27)
• Toronto Star summer reporting internship (deadline: Jan. 30)
• Bourse AJIQ-Rogers (deadline: Feb. 13)