Editor’s note: In the interests of maintaining my sanity and reducing the amount of time I put into these things, I’m limiting their scope to news that directly affects Canada (though I may occasionally add international news of particular interest to journalism). If you’re interested in getting international media news, you can check out sources like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, the New York Post, Variety.

News about news

• A report by the Public Policy Forum that studied 20 markets in Canada shows a decline in newspaper coverage of local politics. Which, duh. The drop doesn’t seem to be as big as expected, possibly because newsrooms have prioritized local political reporting and cut elsewhere instead. It also doesn’t really explore the entire news ecosystem to determine if there’s been an increase in coverage in other types of media as newspapers have declined.
• With just two days to go before voting day in Quebec, it’s time for newspaper editorial endorsements. So far I’ve only found two: the Montreal Gazette endorsing the Liberals (I know, shocking) and Le Devoir endorsing the Parti Québécois but also Québec solidaire a bit (it’s kind of confusing and doesn’t explicitly say who to vote for, but nevertheless they had to warn people they would take a stand). Le Soleil and other Groupe Capitales Médias newspapers merely encouraged people to vote.
• I compiled election night coverage plans for local broadcast media for the Gazette. CTV, CBC, Radio-Canada and TVA will have all-night election specials on their local TV stations in Quebec as well as their all-news networks. Global and Citytv in Montreal will keep their regular primetime but be active on social media and have special election wraps at 11pm. CJAD and CBC Radio will also have election night specials.
• Stéphane Giroux, president of the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, wrote an opinion for several Quebec media outlets on the issue of government transparency and access to information, criticizing the Liberal government for its failure to meet a 2014 campaign promise to improve things.
• One of the Globe and Mail’s “unfounded” cases of sexual assault has resulted in a conviction after the police reopened the case.
• A man who yelled “a vulgar phrase” (FHRITP) at a CTV Atlantic reporter has apologized and will perform community service as punishment for public mischief and causing a disturbance.
• A Slate story pours some cold water on Apple News, noting that revenue per view on the platform is much less — by several orders of magnitude — than publishers’ own websites.
• BBC News Africa explains how it verified a controversial video and forced the Cameroon government to walk back its denial.
• A British study of the newspaper The Independent showed that going online-only caused most of its audience to disappear as the print audience vanished and the online audience stayed flat rather than increase.

At the CRTC

#CRTC approves new CBC Radio One transmitter in Belleville ( 10kW, 104.7 FM), retransmitting CBC Ottawa https://t.co/eGyvF4YBdU

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) September 26, 2018

• The commission has approved a new CBC Radio One transmitter in Belleville, Ont., at 104.7 FM. The transmitter will fill a hole between Kingston and Peterborough in the network. Meanwhile, an existing Radio-Canada Première transmitter will be relocated to the new tower for this transmitter.
• The Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel, put together by the federal government to recommend changes to the Broadcasting Act, Telecommunications Act and other related legislation, has put out its request for public comments. The deadline is Nov. 30. Its questions are broad and open-ended, but will result in recommendations for major legislative changes in 2020.
• The commission has put out a call for comments on whether new stations should be allowed in Timmins, Ont., and North Bay, Ont., after applications for both markets by Vista Radio.
• The commission has deleted a condition of licence for CHTG-FM Haldimand County (92.9 The Grand) that prohibits it from soliciting advertising in Brantford and Simcoe. Because of a change in the station’s signal, the condition became unnecessary, and Brantford/Simcoe stations don’t have similar conditions related to Haldimand County.
• CIAM-FM-23 in Taber, Alta., has gotten permission for a transmitter relocation.
• Cogeco’s FM radio transmitters in Montreal (CKOI, Rythme FM, 98.5 and The Beat) have been approved for relocation onto a combined new antenna on the Mount Royal tower.
• The commission has set criteria to judge which projects will get access to a $750-million fund to improve access to broadband internet in Canada’s remote regions.

Ethical reviews

We're sorry for this tweet. In retrospect, a Twitter poll is insensitive in light of the gravity of this hearing. We've deleted it. pic.twitter.com/4CqRhkuCat

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) September 27, 2018

• Torstar has updated its journalistic standards guide. Public Editor Kathy English explains that the guide calls for more transparency so readers understand the journalistic process.
• English also explains why the Star does not believe all candidates for mayor of Toronto need to get equal treatment.
• Globe public editor Sylvia Stead explains that the paper took care in getting proper consent in a series about dementia, either from the patients themselves where informed consent was possible, or from family members with power of attorney.
• CBC ombudsman Esther Enkin believes a Terry Milewski piece about Sikh nationalism was not incorrect or biased in violation of policy.
• Radio-Canada’s ombudsman Guy Gendron responded to a complaint (in English) about an article about the People’s Alliance of New Brunswick that described it as being “hostile” to bilingualism and its leader’s comments as “incendiary”. The ombudsman found that the descriptions were reasonable.

TV

• TVA’s union reached a deal with the employer just in time to avert a planned Sept. 22 strike. Workers will meet Oct. 6 to vote on it.
• The International Emmy Awards has announced its nominations, and five of them are from Canada:
  • Arts programming: Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas (CBC)
  • Performance by an actor: Billy Campbell, Cardinal (CTV)
  • Comedy series: Workin’ Moms (CBC)
  • Short-Form Series: How to Buy a Baby (CBC)
  • Short-Form Series: L’âge adulte (Radio-Canada)
• DHX Media, which owns the Family Channel and its sister channels, has taken itself off the auction block and announced that it will focus more on short-form digital content for children and less on traditional television.
• The Quebec cop series 19-2, which has already been adapted into an English Canadian series of the same name, will be remade again, this time in the U.S. by CBS. CBS’s version will be called H-Town and set in Houston.
• Some coverage of 514 Undiscovered, the new MAtv series, in the Suburban and Gazette.
• RDS will broadcast 18 Laval Rocket AHL games this season.
• CBS Television Studios is opening a “production hub” in Mississauga.
• A controversy is building in Ontario that could wind up at the CRTC or another tribunal. Faith Goldy, a candidate for mayor of Toronto who has been criticized for being a bit too sympathetic to neo-Nazis and white supremacist arguments, had ads banned from Bell Media’s CP24 this week. But whether Bell has the authority to do this is unclear. The CRTC requires broadcasters be equitable in treating candidates during elections, both in free and paid time. Goldy is a municipal candidate, not a provincial or federal one, but presumably should be afforded the same rights.

Radio

• CBC has posted the job of host of Breakaway on CBC Radio One in Quebec City. The job is to replace Saroja Coelho, who left last month.
• Radio-Canada’s ICI Première station in Montreal (CBF-FM at 95.1) has activated an HD Radio transmitter and its second channel is broadcasting the ICI Musique Classique channel, a digital-only service that airs just classical music.
• Radio-Canada has a new fiction podcast called Cavale that is recorded in “3D” audio. By “3D” they basically mean “stereo”, though it’s a bit richer than that because the microphones capturing the audio moves during scenes. I listened to an episode and you definitely feel the stereo sound (sometimes the difference between the two sides is too much and gets distracting), but it doesn’t feel that “3D”, whatever that’s supposed to feel like.
• CBC Radio One’s satirical news show This is That is ending its run. The show, probably more famous for having fake news articles online that would be trusted because they were on the cbc.ca domain, will air its final episode Dec. 29.
• Former 92.1 CITI host Dave Wheeler is suing his former employer after he was fired for making transphobic comments. The lawsuit raised eyebrows for revealing that he was making $335,000 a year.
• TJ Connors is returning to Winnipeg to co-host the morning show on 92.1 CITI. Connors was hired a year and a half ago at St. Catharines’s HTZ FM.
• New station 104.5 More Country has launched in Strathmore, Alta., and announced its on-air staff.
• Amazon Music Unlimited has launched in Canada.

Print

When you offer to share cover design with Calgary, and they take a few liberties! Apologies to our lovely Edmonton readers for our mistake. And rest assured it’s still full of Edmonton stories written but our hardworking team here! #yeg pic.twitter.com/pXlRhiwZta

— Alex Boyd (@alex_n_boyd) September 21, 2018

• The Express d’Outremont is shutting down along with sister publication Express de Mont-Royal. They’re the second and third Montreal community newspapers to stop production this year, following Le Plateau in Plateau-Mont-Royal, which quietly stopped publishing this summer. Another paper, the Progrès Villeray, was reborn as “Quartier V”, but with no local news content. All of these papers were part of a network of newspapers in Montreal (including Métro) and Quebec City that Transcontinental sold this year. Of the 95 newspapers Transcontinental put up for sale last year, at least 10 have since shut down (three by Transcon, the other seven by new owners).
• The Toronto Star has put its paywall back up. It’s $15 a month if you subscribe for a year ($20 a month if you don’t), and you get five articles a month before you hit it. Editor Irene Gentle makes a pitch for subscriptions on Twitter. The paper has also stopped giving away free copies in universities.

Online

• Refinery29, a website targeted to young women, is launching a Canadian version in October.
• Diply is laying off 35 people and admits it’s not profitable.

News about people

He’s got that “see ya later” kinda smile! Our pal & colleague ?@JohnLaberge? is retiring to pursue other interests and we’ll miss him terribly! Congrats buddy! ?@CTVMontreal? pic.twitter.com/9vDNp58jFg

— Christine Long (@CTVChristine) September 28, 2018

• CTV Montreal editor John Laberge, a popular guy among his colleagues, is retiring.
• Bob Cole is coming back to Sportsnet’s NHL broadcasts for one final 50th year. He’s scheduled to call 10 games, all in the first half of the season.
• Juanita Taylor has been named the new host of CBC Northbeat, the daily TV newscast for northern Canada.
• Ashley Brauweiler is the new meteorologist for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador.
• James Keller is the Globe and Mail’s new Alberta bureau chief.
• Former CTV reporter Bridget Brown is suing CTV and Paul Bliss, the man she alleged sexually assaulted her. Bliss, who was suspended from CTV and later left the company, is also suing Brown.
• Photographer Randy Risling had his last day at the Toronto Star.
• Auto reporter Greg Keenan has retired after 31 years at the Globe and Mail.
• Victor Young is leaving London’s 980 CFPL for Vancouver’s 980 CKNW to be network producer for Charles Adler’s show.

News about companies

• Workers at CBC/Radio-Canada in Quebec and Moncton have approved an agreement in principle on a new contract. The new contract creates dozens of new permanent positions and limits abuse of contract or casual workers. Or at least it does in theory. Some nonpermanent workers are upset that some of the new rules will be worse for them, including an expectation that they respond to phone calls within five minutes when they’re not working.
• SiriusXM is buying Pandora for $3 billion.
• Bill Brownstein writes about the National Film Board’s coming move, from an industrial building next to Highway 40 to a brand new building in the heart of downtown Montreal.

Jobs

• Anchor/reporter, CP24 Toronto (one-year contract; deadline: Sept. 30)
• Reporter/editor, paNOW.com in Prince Albert, Sask. (deadline: Sept. 30)
• Anchor/reporter, 620 CKRM in Regina (deadline: Oct. 5)
• Summer interns, Globe and Mail (deadline: Oct. 26)
• Assistant Professor in Solutions Journalism for Health Improvement at Concordia University in Montreal (deadline: Nov. 15)
• Video journalist, CityNews Montreal

News about news

• CBC has a new website, CBC Kids News, that features news stories by and for children.
• (English) Canada’s five main freelance writing associations are joining forces in a campaign to get people to say no to bad contracts. So far the initiative is mainly about educating freelancers, and proposes little that takes advantage of their numbers.
• Politico Pro Canada, which publishes news about the Canada-U.S. political relationship, is now live. It’s run by Alex Panetta, former Washington correspondent for the Canadian Press.
• AB Today, a subscription newsletter covering Alberta politics, is launching. It’s from Allison Smith, the publisher of Queen’s Park Today and BC Today.
• A defamation lawsuit against Alain Gravel has been dismissed. The suit, related to an Enquête story from five years ago, wanted damages after Gravel said businessman Lee Lalli had ties to the mafia. The judge found that, actually, he did have ties to the mafia.
• Six Montreal English-language media organizations teamed up on Monday to fact-check the first televised English leaders’ debate. The resulting story was published to all their websites.
• Le Devoir is getting $500,000 from Air Transat over five years to support its international journalism. The money, which the paper says comes with no quid pro quo, will support travel and accommodation costs, while Le Devoir takes care of salaries.
• The Houston Chronicle is investigating whether one of its journalists, Mike Ward, fabricated sources for stories. Ward has resigned from the paper.
• Ottawa police did an oopsie and emailed an investigation report to a bunch of journalists, and is now desperately trying to get them to not use it.
• 20 newsrooms in Texas got together to buy the state’s voter registration database and voting history data for $3,600.

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News about news

• Members of the Ottawa Newspaper Guild, which represents workers at Postmedia’s Ottawa Citizen and Ottawa Sun, are voting on a new contract offer after the employer threatened to lock them out if they did not accept it. The results will be known on Wednesday, and if the offer is rejected, the lockout begins at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. The Montreal Newspaper Guild, which represents workers at the Montreal Gazette (including me) has a pact with the ONG that means a lockout in Ottawa would trigger a strike in Montreal.
• Hyperlocal Montreal news site Pamplemousse.ca, covering the Mercier, Plateau and Petite Patrie neighbourhoods, is back in business after a successful crowdfunding campaign brought the website back from the dead.
• Brampton, Ont., has a new subscription news site called The Pointer.
• A new non-profit called the Fonds québécois en journalisme international will provide up to $75,000 a year in grants to Quebec journalists doing international reporting. Individual journalists can get up to $6,000, or $9,000 for a team.
• Québec solidaire isn’t getting much demand for journalists to follow its campaign bus, so it is opening up media accreditation to just about anyone who wants it. People covering the campaign would be given freedom to say what they want, but they would have to pay for the privilege to compensate the party for expenses related to their seat on the bus.
• The Globe and Mail is now pre-moderating comments on all its stories.
• The Halifax Chronicle-Herald’s Hamilton Spectator’s Susan Clairmont has been allowed back in a courtroom to cover a Family Court case.
• Freelancers have vowed not to work for The Outline after it fired all its staff writers.

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News about news

• Two Reuters journalists imprisoned in Myanmar for supposedly breaking the country’s Official Secrets Act have been sentenced to seven years in prison. Governments around the world, including Canada, are calling for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo to be released.
• The Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale started a bit of a firestorm after he published an account of an off-the-record conversation between U.S. President Donald Trump and Bloomberg News journalists about NAFTA. Trump got mad (then pretended he wasn’t mad) and everyone just assumed the Bloomberg journalists fed Dale the quote, forcing him to clarify that the info didn’t come from the journalists.
• NBC News is defending its decision not to publish Ronan Farrow’s reporting into Harvey Weinstein, which prompted the journalist to go to the New Yorker instead. NBC points out that Farrow did not have any on-the-record sources who would be willing to go on camera, making it difficult to broadcast such a story, and that much of the on-the-record accounts that solidified the reporting came after he had left NBC.
• The Associated Press had to retract a news alert that film director Costa Gavras had died after learning the news came from a fake Greek Culture Ministry Twitter account.
• WSAZ TV meteorologist Chelsea Ambriz was charged with battery after allegedly attacking and seriously injuring a colleague, anchor Erica Bivens, after a romantic dispute over Bivens’s husband.
• The New Yorker has cancelled plans for a live on-stage interview with former White House staffer Steve Bannon at its New Yorker Festival after a social media backlash and threats from other guests to cancel.

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