News about news

I spent the day reading messages, texts, tweets and emails. I’m in a puddle of tears, overwhelmed by your kindness. It’s been my privilege to have grown up with you the past 21 years. The love you have shown me is with me forever. xx pic.twitter.com/KIaaT488Bu

— Tamara Taggart (@tamarataggart) April 11, 2018

• CTV has made some changes (a “major refresh” in PR-speak) at its Vancouver station, the most notable of which is dismissing both evening news anchors, Mike Killeen and Tamara Taggart. In a 25-second statement on Monday’s newscast (starts at 18:30), Mi-Jung Lee announced the co-anchors “are no longer with CTV News” and praised them on their careers. “We thank them both and wish them well.”
• Surveillance video showing the mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque last year won’t be broadcast, but journalists were allowed to describe what happens in them. Radio-Canada’s Michel Cormier explains why the media would want permission to be able to broadcast such horror. The FPJQ also issued a statement denouncing the decision.
• A judge has determined that the media attention it drew should be a factor in sentencing against former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre’s son, who used his family’s credit cards and then falsely told his family and police that he had been the victim of identity theft.
• A roundup of TV news graphics getting foreign countries wrong on maps.
• Bloc Québécois leader Martine Ouellet is continuing to threaten journalists with libel suits. The latest threat is against Radio-Canada radio show Médium Large, which brought on psychologists to talk about stubborn politicians. Despite explicitly saying on air that they’re not diagnosing Ouellet, Ouellet said it’s clear that they were diagnosing her. Radio-Canada responds here.
• As Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a U.S. congressional committee, Craig Silverman points out that some of the Facebook features that allow companies to scrape data about people have also been used by journalists.
• Blacklock’s Reporter reports that the federal government paid half a million dollars to a company called News Canada that distributes royalty-free news to small newspapers across the country desperate for free content. The information highlights risks about small newspapers republishing government-written news stories without disclosing that.
• The group Canadian Journalists for Free Expression is in a crisis after its communications coordinator published a statement on its behalf condemning assaults on journalists in Gaza. The group’s board will have tighter control over communications in the future.

Ethical reviews

• Canadian Broadcast Standards Council: CHEK TV in Victoria should have broadcast a warning to viewers before showing video of a motorcycle crash caught on camera. It was, however, not inappropriate to use the video.
• CBC ombudsman: Report on human trafficking in London, Ont., was not “prohibitionist propaganda”

At the CRTC

• The CRTC has dismissed two complaints against Rogers about the way it produces daily Mandarin and Cantonese newscasts on OMNI. The Unifor union and Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic and the Urban Alliance on Race Relations complained after learning that Rogers was outsourcing the production to Fairchild TV, which owns Chinese-Canadian TV channels, despite promising to “produce” the newscasts itself. The complaint came down to what “produce” actually means, and the CRTC found that, read in context, it did not mean Rogers had to produce them in-house and could make use of an outside partner. Unifor was not happy with the decision, accusing the CRTC of failing to protect local news.
• The commission has revoked the licence of CKRT-DT Rouyn-Noranda, and its retransmitters, by request of RNC Media, which has shut down the Radio-Canada affiliate TV station. In its request, RNC Media says the drop in advertising revenue and the increased cost of maintaining its transmitters (especially with the coming 600 MHz reallocation forcing them to change frequency) means it can no longer afford to keep it running. It says journalists are being reassigned to its other stations and only one person will lose their job.

At the CBC

• The broadcaster has reached an agreement in principle with the SCRC, one of its two main unions. The SCRC covers journalists working in the province of Quebec, Moncton and foreign correspondents, for both Radio-Canada and CBC.

TV/video

• Radio-Canada is putting the entire series La Petite Vie on its Tou.tv Extra platform to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The series airs Saturdays at 6:30pm on Radio-Canada télé, and the first three episodes are on YouTube on the Encore+ channel (and are among its most popular uploads).
• Robyn Doolittle is not crazy about the idea that a Rob Ford biopic has cast a man to play the role of a reporter apparently based on her (the director and actor say it’s not). The discussion that ensued included this comment about how female reporters on TV and in movies generally fall in love with or have sex with people they shouldn’t. That reminded me of a 2016 CBC drama called Shoot the Messenger, which was also loosely inspired by the Rob Ford story. The first shot of the series, which you can see here, features the naked body of the reporter, having sex with a cop. The series, written by Jennifer Holness and Sudz Sutherland, lasted eight episodes.
• Netflix is no longer participating in the Cannes Film Festival after a rule change required entrants to be shown in a French theatre.
• Young people aren’t abandoning television in Quebec, according to ratings data. But they are watching it differently, notably by recording it and watching it later.

Radio/audio

• CIBL is calling for submissions for summer radio shows.
• Énergie 94,3 has announced its summer schedule. It includes Sébastien Trudel, Marie-Claude Savard and Maxim Martin on the afternoon drive show.
• Meanwhile at 107,3 Rouge FM, Patrick Groulx is the new face of the afternoon show this summer.
• Bell Media has added features to Google Home, so now when you ask to listen to CTV News, BNN or TSN, you’ll get a minute-long “flash briefing” with top headlines.

Print

the look of ‘StarMetro’ pic.twitter.com/NggJNy0czQ

— 12:36 ? (@1236) April 10, 2018

• La Gatineau, an independent community newspaper covering the Gatineau valley, is shutting down. The paper writes about its own plight here.
• The Denver Post took the bold step of calling out its owner in an editorial that denounced drastic staff cuts that are hurting its ability to do proper journalism. The same week, it tried to laugh off an error in which it published a giant photo of Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia thinking it was Denver’s Coors Field. Meanwhile, a local group is hoping to buy the paper away from its hedge fund owner.
• Employees at the Chicago Tribune want to form a union.
• AJIQ, an association representing freelance journalists in Quebec, has settled a dispute with the magazine Voir over freelance contracts.
• Meredith, the publisher that bought Time Inc., is planning to sell Sports Illustrated separately from Time and the other magazines for $150 million.
• McClelland & Stewart is going to publish a book about the Bruce McArthur case, written by freelancer Justin Ling
• Postmedia has posted its second-quarter results, and they show the same thing as usual: huge declines in print advertising, and a moderate increase in digital revenue that doesn’t come close to making up for that.
• Kahnawake newspaper Iorì:wase celebrated its fifth anniversary.
• Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Florida produced an edition of their Eagle Eye magazine devoted to the people who lost their lives in the shooting at the school. You can read it here.

Online

• YouTube has apparently determined that having an algorithm decide what is safe for kids wasn’t working, so it will manually whitelist channels for a new YouTube Kids app.
• Bell’s SnackableTV has announced a bracket competition for jokes on its short-form-comedy-video platform, taken from the Just For Laughs library.

News about people

Monique Lacombe has been helping you navigate this city's roads, highways, busses and Metro for more than a decade as the traffic and transit reporter for @cbcdaybreak. Today is her last day, and she has a message for you. pic.twitter.com/88zDwEY0hU

— CBC Montreal (@CBCMontreal) April 12, 2018

• Monique Lacombe, traffic reporter for CBC Daybreak and a CBC Montreal employee for 17 years, has left the show and the corporation. She’s joining Premiers Pas, a charity organization, according to her colleague and husband Steve Rukavina.
• Paul Bliss, the former CTV Toronto reporter who was let go following allegations of sexual misconduct, is suing his accuser and CTV.
• Bill Brownstein writes about a recent gathering in honour of former columnist Nick Auf der Maur, 20 years after his death.
• Brian Wilde is leaving Recrutes.ca after a year, determining the website is “not viable” for him.
• Cathy Senay is moving from Radio-Canada to CBC in Quebec City, reporting on the National Assembly.
• Kalina Laframboise is moving from CBC to Global Montreal to be an online producer there.
• Mark Cameron and Dave Blezard have been appointed to new program director jobs at Corus radio stations in Barrie.
• Randy Henderson is retiring as host of CBC Northbeat, based in Yellowknife.

Obituaries

• Robert Bousquet, former La Presse sports journalist
• Lise Le Bel, Radio-Québec host
• Tyler Bieber, Humboldt radio announcer
• Jonathan Pitre, TSN analyst

Good reads

• BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith on reporting on Belarus at the turn of the millennium and discovering he’d been lied to about the consequences of his reporting.
• Actress Molly Ringwald revisits the John Hughes classics she starred in and comes to terms with some latent misogyny she hadn’t acknowledged before.

Jobs

• J-Source/CWA Canada reporting fellowship (deadline: April 20)
• Desk editor, La Presse (deadline: April 27)
• Diversity bursary, La Presse (deadline: May 3)