Marc Bergevin tells TSN690 he was surprised by how emotional Montreal’s media is.
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WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) January 17, 2017
News about news
- Craig Silverman has restarted a newsletter about fake news.
- Ricochet has successfully raised $50,000 to finance its legal defence against Richard Martineau.
TV
Cogeco CEO Louis Audet: cord-cutting is "a phase in the life of a young person" and generally changes when they start a family.
— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) January 12, 2017
- Rogers Media has announced the cast of Bad Blood, the miniseries about Montreal’s Rizzuto crime family: Anthony LaPaglia (Without a Trace) as Vito Rizzuto, Paul Sorvino (Goodfellas) as Nicolo Rizzuto Sr., Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy) as Declan Gardiner, and Enrico Colantoni (Flashpoint) as Bruno Bonsignori. The series will air on City TV in the fall.
- NBC is bringing back Will & Grace for 10 episodes.
- The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council came down against a Global News report that aired in Calgary and Edmonton about a “neighbour from hell” that it found went overboard with editing, using the kind of tricks you’d find in a political attack ad.
- They’re casting for The Bachelor Canada. They’ll be in Montreal on Feb. 7.
- The Gazette interviews Karine Vanasse, star of the CTV series Cardinal, which debuts next week.
Radio
- CHXX-FM 100.9, RNC Media’s other station in the Quebec City region, is switching formats, from rock music to adult hits (70s-80s-90s pop), as of Jan. 30. The station, officially licensed to Donnacona, 45km west of the provincial capital, will lose six on-air jobs as it brings in new talent. This change also happened to the Capitale Rock station in Gatineau last fall. The two former rock stations now adopt the same “Pop” branding. But while the Ottawa-Gatineau market has an anglo rock station to fall back on, Quebec City is left without a full-time rock station.
- Énergie 98.9 in Quebec City will have a new weekly show hosted by the owner of Beachclub in Pointe-Calumet.
- A CRTC application shows CBC has agreed to sell an analog subchannel of CBL-FM 94.1 in Toronto to a Tamil-language service. These SCA or SCMO subchannels require a special receiver.
- The New York Times has released a report about its strategy going forward. Among the report’s recommendations are more emphasis on visual storytelling, and fewer copy editors. It also says the Times has a subscriber-centric, rather than advertiser-centric, business model.
- Some potential good news in the Halifax Chronicle Herald strike as it approaches its first anniversary: A meeting with the labour board has been postponed as the two sides look to maybe head back to the bargaining table.
- The Varsity, the student newspaper at the University of Toronto, has appointed a public editor, believed to be a first for student media in Canada.
- A year after trying the we’ll-be-an-online-only-publication thing with Ottawa’s L’Express, TC Media has finally shut it down for good.
- Postmedia’s latest financial results came out. Good news: Digital revenue is up. Bad news: Print revenue is down an order of magnitude more than that.
- The Globe and Mail’s editor wrote a letter to readers about how much journalism matters.
Online
- Jerry Seinfeld has reached a deal with Netflix to take his Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee series there. Since that series is about the only thing people associate with the Crackle platform, it’s really bad news for them.
- Gérald Fillion has an interview with Delphine Poux, general manager of Vice Quebec. But the premise of the interview, that Vice attracts young people to journalism, is far from proven.
- TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin is now streaming live on Twitter.
News about people
Today is my last at The Canadian Press after 29 years. Dog tags (and pucks) tell the tale. What a blast it's been. pic.twitter.com/l40AnjfUNp
— Bruce Cheadle (@BCheadle) January 13, 2017
- Two announcements out of the Montreal Gazette: Allison Hanes becomes the paper’s new city columnist, and Basem Boshra (the former city columnist) becomes the new managing editor.
- Antoine Robitaille, formerly of Le Devoir, has been hired by the Journal de Montréal/Québec as an investigative journalist at the National Assembly. He writes a goodbye column in Le Devoir.
- Fannie Olivier (Presse Canadienne) and Philippe Vincent Foisy (Cogeco Nouvelles) have been hired by Radio-Canada to work on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
- Jessica Rusnak, who left TSN 690 to work for Sportsnet in Toronto, is back, and will fill in as Andie Bennett’s maternity leave replacement on CBC’s Daybreak. (Also, yeah, Andie’s pregnant.)
- Marianna Simeone, a former opinion columnist at CBC Montreal, has been named the Quebec government’s representative in Italy.
- Roberto Rocha, who left the Montreal Gazette and joined CBC, will be part of a new nationwide data journalism team.
- The Journal de Montréal had a two-page spread about Juan Rodriguez, the rock music critic and occasional contributor to the Montreal Gazette.
- Matt Gurney, formerly of the National Post, will be writing a column for GlobalNews.ca. He currently hosts a radio show at Corus-owned AM640.
- Adrian Morrow is changing jobs at the Globe and Mail, from being its Ontario government reporter to Washington, D.C.
- Jonathan Goldsbie, formerly of Toronto’s NOW, is the new editor of Canadaland.
- Hal Anderson returns to Winnipeg’s CJOB.
- Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno’s assault charge has been dropped after she agreed to a peace bond.
- Béatrice Martin, aka Coeur de Pirate, has a new column on Vice’s Noisey website, where she will write about her anxiety.
Good reads
- Last semester, Concordia journalism students started a new website and wrote critical stories about journalism. Concordia’s website explains how that came about.
- The official transition policy for U.S. presidential social media accounts.
- Le Devoir interviews Michel Bissonnette, the new head of French services at CBC/Radio-Canada.
Obituaries
- Clare Hollingworth, war correspondent who broke the news about the start of the Second World War.
Jobs
BEHOLD! An actual job posting for reporter at daily newspaper!! We're back, baby!! pic.twitter.com/u7IEqTwQ6L
— randy turner (@randyturner15) January 17, 2017
- 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)
I’d wondered what had happened to Basem Boshra. He’s been gone for some time, at least in column form. But he disappeared before, only later revealed as paternity leave. Nothing like people disappearing without a notice. He wasn’t with the column long.
Michael
I supported ricochet. I had never head of it before that how-low-can-he-go columnist got a burr under his saddle about their satire. Go Satire! (I know they are not principally about satire, but they ARE about fighting the good fight.)
Amazing how low so much of the traditional media has sunk. Anything to make a buck.
So instead of actual hard news reporting they’ll just tell a bullshit narrative with silly pictures? I was browsing a NY Times the other day – in A section I come across a half-page sized picture of Bill Maher with some text about his opinions on things. That should have been in the F for fluff section. As if anyone actually cares what that guy thinks. This is how they view the population. It’s not for nothing that Trump won. People have had enough of traditional media and the traditional politicians whose asses they always kiss.
The page has been turned. Next up is France where Le Pen will cruise to a comfortable win.
No. The report doesn’t say anything even close to this.