News about news

La Presse story protects identity of Liberal source who says Liberals believe in freedom of the press. pic.twitter.com/XGXbrHPT88

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) June 8, 2017

• La Presse reports the federal Liberal government will support an amended version of a Senate bill that gives some protections to journalists’ sources. The amendments appear to be designed to prevent journalists from claiming this protection to protect themselves in cases where they are under investigation for a crime. It’s unclear if other issues (like the lack of protection for non-professional journalists) will be dealt with.
• Journalists are still having trouble recording public meetings of municipal councils.
• News came out that Laval police investigated a leak to a journalist. Which isn’t that unusual. The police officer confessed, which is a bit. But when it was revealed that his superior accused him of sleeping with a reporter, people were not pleased. The reporter in question certainly one of them. Criticism of the situation got to the point where the court issued a rare statement criticizing the media.
• A Montana Congressman has apologized and donated $50,000 to charity after bodyslamming a Guardian reporter during the special election campaign.
• Journalists’ eyes are on a South Dakota legal case in which a meat producer is suing ABC News for basically using the term “pink slime” to describe what it puts into its meat.
• That Barack Obama speech in Montreal got a lot of attention in Canadian media, but far fewer in other countries, particularly the U.S. On CNN, there was no mention of it live. Instead, journalists talked about Donald Trump’s use of Twitter.
• The federal government’s failure to nominate board members at the CBC means that by the end of the month the corporation will barely make quorum for its meetings.
• Research has unsurprisingly shown that Facebook is a more popular source of news among young people than print newspapers.

At the CRTC

• The CRTC has told Bell TV it cannot limit customers to one custom package of 10 channels and consider that compliant with its new pick-and-pay rules. It has given them until July 1 to come into compliance.
• Groupe Serdy has filed a request to lower its Canadian programming expenditures quota for Canal Évasion from 46% to 32% of revenues. The independent company argues that 32% is the average for its competitors, who have the benefit of group licensing. Serdy says this is a transitional measure until its licence term is up on Aug. 31, 2018. It plans to request a group licence for Évasion and Zeste.
• The commission has approved a request from Neeti P. Ray, who bought Montreal ethnic station CKIN-FM, to redirect all its remaining tangible benefits funds from the transaction to Concordia University’s journalism program. Normally set percentages of such benefits go to music funds like Radio Starmaker and FACTOR, and a bit to the Community Radio Fund of Canada. The licensee argued that such small funds ($5,918 a year) would have a bigger impact if they went to one recipient. Unsaid in the application and decision is that Concordia will show more public gratitude for such a donation than the music funds.
• RNC Media’s CHXX-FM (Pop 100.9) is asking the CRTC to delete conditions of licence requiring a studio in and local programming for Donnacona, the community west of Quebec City that the station is formally licensed to serve. The condition is to prevent the station from becoming another de facto Quebec City station, which RNC Media seems to argue is no longer required. The station was originally licensed in 1995 to the owner of a newspaper serving the Portneuf region, and a condition of licence was imposed to prevent it from competing directly with Quebec City stations. It was acquired by RNC Media 10 years later.
• The Quebec government is asking the CRTC to review its licence renewal decisions, in light of the removal of a requirement related to Séries+.

TV

• A company called Wow Unlimited Media Inc. has bought a specialty channel from Bell Media. And refuses to say which one it is. The transaction, for $6.9 million, will require CRTC approval.
• Sportsnet crowed about its ratings this year, but the most interesting thing about the press release I found was this: Among female audiences 18-49, the top specialty channels are, in order: Sportsnet, TSN, HGTV, W Network, Food Network and Showcase. Remember that if someone ever suggests that women don’t watch sports.
• The Kahnawake-set series Mohawk Girls had to shoot some of its final season off the reserve because complaints led to a delay in getting a permit. Some residents of the community object to the content of the show, whose plot lines have been critical of Kahnawake’s membership law (a law that directly impacts series creator Tracey Deer).
• Rogers has signed U.S. syndication deals for the City talk/lifestyle show Cityline. Starting in September, it will air on TV stations owned by the Hearst, Graham, Raycom, and Weigel media groups. Those stations include WPTZ in Plattsburgh (Hearst), WCVB in Boston (Hearst), and WDIV Detroit (Graham), which are distributed in Canada, plus stations in Chicago and Kansas City, though it doesn’t guarantee that those stations pick up the program.
• Videotron is blaming the CRTC for its decision to cancel the MAtv program Caucus, hosted by Alain Laforest. The CRTC has said that shows hosted by professional journalists, particularly those employed by an affiliated company, can’t count as community programming.
• Videotron has added CTV Two (CHRO-DT Pembroke, Ont.) and Sky News HD to its lineup. CTV Two, on channels 12 and 612, had previously only been available in Ottawa-Gatineau, and requires a $0 subscription thanks to CRTC skinny basic rules. It has little original programming beyond Ottawa morning show CTV Morning Live. Videotron is the first in Canada to carry Britain’s Sky News HD (688 in HD only).
• A union representing workers at Bell Media has reached a tentative deal on a new collective agreement, which workers will vote on next week.
• The Nashville Predators’ playoff run is very popular in its home market, with a quarter of households tuning in to TV broadcasts.
• Megyn Kelly debuted her new NBC show Sunday Night on Sunday night.

Radio

https://twitter.com/Dutrizac/status/872842229785784321

• Benoit Dutrizac was let go on Friday as mid-day host on 98.5 FM in Montreal. His contract wasn’t renewed, and we have only rumours about why that is. His replacement this fall will be Bernard Drainville, the former PQ minister (and journalist before that), who moves here from Quebec’s FM93. Myriam Ségal takes Drainville’s old place on FM93, cohosting with Eric Duhaime.
• Numeris has released the spring ratings for metered radio markets including Montreal. Not much new here: CJAD is still ahead in overall listeners, and The Beat still leads Virgin overall and among adults 25-54 and women 25-54 (Virgin still lives in a parallel universe where it’s the #1 station, based on weekly reach). In the francophone market, CHMP-FM 98.5 is still the leader, followed by Rythme FM. Cogeco’s CKOI has moved ahead of Rouge FM for second place among franco music stations. Radio-Canada’s morning show has also seen significant gains. La Presse has some more details.

Print

• The Quebec Community Newspaper Association gave out its annual awards this weekend. The Eastern Door won best overall newspaper. The Nunatsiaq News won best news story and best investigative story and generally did well in the writing categories. The full list of winners is here.
• Transcontinental has turned down some requests by employees to buy some of its community newspapers as part of a previously announced selloff. TC Media won’t say why.
• Le Devoir reports it raised $150,000 from 1200 donors in its latest fundraising campaign. It also notes that the Saturday edition will be improved in some way when La Presse stops printing its Saturday edition.
• The union representing workers at the Ottawa Citizen and Ottawa Sun has voted 91% in favour of a strike mandate. This is mainly a negotiating tactic, but it means the union can call a strike without further consultation with the members.
• Agriculture weekly La Terre chez nous underwent a redesign and is consciously trying to be less Montreal-centric in its coverage.

Online

• An organized campaign to get advertisers to blacklist The Rebel seems to be working. Ezra Levant, being a proponent of freedom and the free market, accepts this as private businesses expressing their free will to advertise where they please … I’m just kidding. He’s straight-up accusing everyone of anti-Semitism.
• Apple’s plan to stop Safari from auto-playing videos could be a blow to publishers like CNN, whose story about it has an autoplay video.

Other

• Radio-Canada is organizing three outdoor free movie screenings at Emilie-Gamelin Park this summer.
• Eastlink has launched wireless service in St. John’s, N.L.

News about people

• Gord Gillies, anchor at Global News Calgary, is leaving to take a job as morning radio host on CHQR 770 AM, still within the Corus family.
• David Rudin has been hired as a digital editor at the Montreal Gazette. He replaces the person who replaces Mick Côté, who left for Presse Canadienne.
• Valérie Gaudreau has been named news director at Le Soleil.
• National Post reporter Stewart Bell has been hired away by Global News, which has been picking up several reporters recently.
• Jessica Laventure is in Montreal this week and stopped by her old workplace for an interview on Global News Morning.
• Shirlee Engel is leaving Global News for some as-yet-unspecified job.

Good reads

• How The Intercept Outed Reality Winner — A cautionary tale of how to scrub documents of potentially identifying information.
• Tracey Lindeman writes for Nieman Lab about Radio-Canada’s idea accelerator lab.

Jobs

• La Presse diversity bursaries and internships (deadline: June 9)
• Digital engagement editor, Ottawa Citizen (deadline: June 11)
• Digital journalism instructor at Concordia University (deadline: June 19)