News about news

• Ontario’s budget plan to terminate its commissioner for French-language services and cancel plans for a French-language university has prompted a sort of meta debate: Is Canada’s anglophone media (outside Quebec) hypocritical? Patrick Lagacé published an English-language column in La Presse noting how much attention was given to Quebec’s “pastagate” controversy versus how few columnists and editorials are being written about the situation facing Franco-Ontarians.
• iPolitics has laid off five people, six weeks after being acquired by Torstar.
• The CBC/Radio-Canada building in Sherbooke had to be evacuated Monday afternoon because of a fire, forcing the cancellation of the local TV newscast and radio show. The fire didn’t touch the broadcaster’s offices, so they were able to return on Tuesday.
• The Washington Post talks to two people on either side of the fake news divide — one who creates satirical stories so outrageous that you’d have to be clueless to believe them, and another who cluelessly believes them.

At the CRTC

Les communications avec le gouvernement peuvent arriver à des points absurdes des fois, comme quand Leclerc Communication explique au #CRTC ça veut dire quoi le mot « ou ». pic.twitter.com/gbh2oLgY0C

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) November 16, 2018

• After some big failures the first time around, a second test of the national public alerting system is scheduled for Nov. 28 at 1:55pm local time (2:55pm in Quebec) to hopefully work out the kinks in reception by wireless devices using LTE networks.
• Native station CKUN-FM in Christian Island, Ontario, had its licence renewed for three years due to repeated non-compliance with licence conditions related to paperwork and monitoring.
• CFNJ-FM in St-Gabriel de Brandon in the Lanaudière region has been given approval to eliminate a condition of licence requiring 70% French-language music content. It will now be subject to the standard quota of 65%.

Ethical reviews

• The National Newsmedia Council has rejected a complaint against the Toronto Star’s public editor, who wrote a column explaining why the paper does not need to cover fringe candidates for office during the municipal election campaign. The complainant argued the Star was “refusing to report facts on the ground.”
• A CBC story about a fatal ATV crash in New Brunswick that quoted a police officer saying if the driver had been wearing a helmet he might still be alive did not violate policy, according to the ombudsman, but serves as a “reminder” of the sensitivity required when covering stories like this.
• A Radio-Canada Acadie story revealing the names of 10 candidates for rector of the University of Moncton did not violate journalistic codes, the ombudsman says.

TV

• Sportsnet magazine has a feature story on Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi, focusing on its push to connect with all Punjabi-speaking communities, regardless of religion or nationality. Coincidentally (or not) the feature comes out a week before the CRTC begins a hearing on the future of OMNI. It’s hard to believe the program would continue if Rogers lost its multilingual channel.
• Dejero, the Waterloo-based company that has simplified the technological process for setting up live remote video feeds using cellular networks, has won a technical Emmy for its work.
• University football in Canada isn’t exactly a big ratings draw, with the two national semifinals getting fewer than 100,000 viewers.
• Radio-Canada is not renewing its daytime shows Marina Orsini and Entrée principale. It’s also ending Orsini’s other show, Deuxième chance. Her co-host Patrick Lagacé pens a tribute to the tear-jerking documentary.
• Fox has renewed its TV rights deal for Major League Baseball, including the World Series.

Radio

• Radio-Canada is considering eliminating the time signal that airs at noon every day, mainly because for stations that broadcast digitally, there’s a delay in reception that makes the accuracy of the time signal useless. So far they’re only considering this for stations that broadcast in HD Radio. CBC has no plans to cut its signal, which broadcasts at 1pm.
• The Ontario Association of Broadcasters held a conference recently that included an industry panel in which multiple-station owners seemed to agree that local content matters in radio. Heads of Vista Radio, Acadia Broadcasting and Corus stressed the importance of local on-air staff.

Print

• The Globe and Mail has reached a tentative deal with its workers union, averting a possible strike. We won’t know details until they’re presented to the members.
• The Montreal Gazette has a new column by Brendan Kelly about how creative artists make ends meet. It doesn’t go much into numbers but does talk about their career path in financial terms.
• In a surprise to hopefully no one, even established authors in Canada aren’t making a lot of money.
• Esi Edugyan is the winner of this year’s Giller Prize for fiction.
• The Globe and Mail has a story about QC Fiction, a small Quebec book publisher that had to deal with the effect of one of its books being short-listed for the Giller Prize.
• Seventeen magazine will publish only special issues after December. Four are planned for 2019.
• Glamour magazine is also ceasing regular print publication.

Other

• Quebecor has bought a minority stake in Quebec City’s ComediHa festival.

News about people

• A memorial service for former Concordia journalism professor Linda Kay is planned for Nov. 21 at 6pm at the Loyola chapel. Concordia’s website published an essay written by her shortly before she died.

Obituaries

• Michel Pepin, Radio-Canada National Assembly journalist

Jobs

• Associate producer, CBC News investigative unit in Toronto (deadline: Nov. 21)
• Summer interns, National Post (deadline: Nov. 23)
• Journalist, Métro (deadline: Nov. 30)