News about news

A day in the life of a journalist… Email person A ?? get out of office reply asking to get in touch with person B ?? email person B ?? get out of office reply asking to get in touch with person A pic.twitter.com/RSIf4yGMk4

— Kelly Greig (@KellyGreig) July 21, 2019

• APTN is launching its new national French-language newscast on Aug. 26. The half-hour newscast, which will focus on Indigenous communities in Quebec, airs Mondays at 6:30pm on APTN E (the eastern, standard-definition feed).
• Nunavik’s regional health board is warning of “media overkill” after a La Presse report about a suicide in that region.
• Canada’s new Leaders’ Debates Commission has announced proposed dates for the leaders’ debates during the federal election campaign: Oct. 7 for the English debate and Oct. 10 for the French one. Included in the consortium broadcasting the debate are CBC, Radio-Canada, Global, CTV, Torstar, HuffPost, La Presse, Le Devoir and L’Actualité. Not included, therefore, are Quebecor/TVA, which has been doing its own debates for federal and provincial elections, as well as Citytv, APTN (even though translation will be available in Indigenous languages), and CPAC (though it will likely broadcast the debate anyway if it can). The broadcasters are also the producers of the debate, which as Chris Selley points out, makes you wonder what the point of setting up this debate commission was in the first place. OMNI will also be broadcasting the debates in five languages (Punjabi, Cantonese, Mandarin, Italian and a fifth to be confirmed), though which of those languages will be on TV and which will be streamed online is still to be figured out.
• Hyperlocal Montreal news site Pamplemousse.ca has shut down, again, after an attempt to revive it failed.
• American social justice magazine Pacific Standard has shut down after its funder pulled its funding.
• A plan by CBC’s The Fifth Estate to have a series on Paul Bernardo is being denounced by those who feel it’s exploiting murders for a transparent ratings grab rather than bringing anything new to the public’s attention. But CBC says it has not yet made a decision whether to go ahead with the plan.
• Postmedia (my employer) has been the subject of stories about worries it is getting too conservative. Canadaland has a long piece about its new management and the centralization of political coverage, and Maclean’s has a piece about worries of a conservative slant.
• Cattle farmers and Saskatchewan’s former premier got mad at the Weather Network for correctly stating that reducing beef consumption would make a difference in greenhouse gas emissions.
• A Canadian Press digital journalist has created a bot that helps journalists get statistical information about federal ridings.
• The Calgary Herald issued a note to readers after journalist Sean Craig learned that columnist Licia Corbella was a card-carrying member of the United Conservative Party and even voted in its leadership race.
• The Alberta government has hired former National Post western business columnist Claudia Cattaneo to help it “fight back” against critics of oil pipelines.
• The Toronto Star reports it now has 19,500 digital-only subscribers since re-establishing its paywall.
• The Athletic, meanwhile, reports passing 500,000 subscribers.
• Facebook is looking at spending millions of dollars to licence new content for a new news section it’s developing.
• I regret to inform you that Pierre Karl Péladeau has found another way to keep his lawyers busy. The Quebecor owner is suing La Presse for a Hugo Dumas story about his ex-wife Julie Snyder. Péladeau doesn’t like the insinuation that he had any role in the fact that Snyder no longer has any contracts with Quebecor’s TVA network.
• A judge has blocked a defamation lawsuit by politicians in the small Ontario town of The Blue Mountains against a local newsletter, after it printed an op-ed by another politician during an election campaign. Under SLAPP law, the plaintiffs have to pay the newsletter’s court costs.
• The New York Times is using statistical analysis to help it keep track of how diverse its obituaries are, and encourage it to chronicle the lives of more women and people of colour.
• Some enterprising scammers are buying up old domains that were linked to from mainstream news stories in order to sell links that have high search engine value.
• The Montreal Gazette got YMCA and SPCA confused on its front page, leading to an apology.
• The News Guild, America’s largest journalism union, has to re-run an election after discovering that more than a thousand members did not get ballots. The CMG guild, which notably represents most CBC employees, had out-of-date postal addresses for hundreds of members.

At the CRTC

Bell Canada has asked the #CRTC for permission for a 90-day trial of an automated call blocking system that would cut down on the number of nuisance or scam calls. But how it would work is entirely redacted from the application. We have no idea what calls would be blocked. pic.twitter.com/hEi8fhCEJz

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) August 3, 2019

• The commission has released its Internet Code. Similar to consumer-rights codes for television and wireless services, it imposes rules regarding contract language, notifications of usage (at 75%, 90% and 100% of monthly limits) and cancellations. The code comes into effect Jan. 31, and applies only to the 10 large facilities-based ISPs, not to smaller providers. Various consumer rights groups have criticized the code for that and other limits it failed to put on providers.
• The CRTC has asked wireless providers to cease offering 36-month financing plans for wireless devices as it tries to figure out whether such plans are legal. It says it will conduct a hearing and ask those offering such plans to show how they are consistent with the Wireless Code, which limits contracts to 24 months. This comes after the commission asked for more details on those plans. The commission says those with 36-month plans can keep them for now.
• The commission has decided to require wireless providers to give confidential information to the Commissioner of Competition so that office can compile statistics for its own review of Canada’s wireless service market.
• On the wired side, the commission has released new final aggregated wholesale rates for fixed high-speed internet access services. The rates are lower than those that were proposed, which will make it easier for third-party providers like TekSavvy to have competitive offerings.
• CRTC data shows the price of telecom and TV services has gone down over the past two years, particularly in wireless services, but as appetite for data grows, and Canadians switch to larger plans, the average bill is still going up.
• The CRTC has approved a request by Bell Media to delete 28 analog TV transmitters for CTV stations in seven provinces. Like with a similar request from Corus’s Global TV, the CRTC says it cannot force a licensee to operate a transmitter it does not wish to.
• A request from TVA to have new described video quotas apply only to new programming was denied.
• Quebecor’s Videotron has complained to the commission that Bell subsidiary Cablevision du Nord is refusing to allow it to access its cable network in the Abitibi region to provide residential telecom services there. Cablevision responds that it intends to cancel its third party internet access tariff, of which only its subsidiary Télébec is a subscriber, and that Videotron missed the deadline to object to that request.
• ZoomerMedia’s The Beautiful Little Channel has had its licence revoked at its request, as it can continue operating as a licence-exempt service.
• The commission has approved a new retransmitter in Dauphin, Manitoba for CINC-FM Thompson (NCI FM), at 97.3 MHz and 1,650 watts.
• A request for arbitration involving Telelatino and an association of small cable providers has been settled thanks to CRTC-assisted mediation. No arbitration will therefore be necessary in that case.
• A similar dispute has been resolved between Stingray and Rogers, which carries the Stingray audio channels.
• Mississauga’s Sauga 960 AM (CKNT) has asked the CRTC for permission to broadcast up to 22% ethnic content. Normally commercial radio stations are limited to 15% if they are not licensed as an ethnic station.
• Edmonton francophone community station CFED-FM (Radio Cité 97,9) has applied to increase its power (from 190W to 295W) and antenna height (1m to 40m) and move its transmitter to improve its signal. Its application says it would increase its coverage audience 50%, and result in a 10-fold increase to ad revenue, to $250,000 a year.
• Dufferin Communications (Evanov Radio) has applied to swap the formats of two radio stations in Brantford, Ont., CKPC 1380 and CFWC-FM (Arise Brantford 93.9), moving country music to the FM station and the Christian format, which is less music-intense, to AM. Dufferin is also asking for permission to boost power on CFWC-FM from 250W to 3,000W max ERP and move its transmitter to share space with the other Dufferin stations. It says the station’s revenues are “only in the tens of thousands of dollars.” This seems relatively harmless, but it does allow Dufferin to shift economically inconvenient conditions of licence from FM to AM, making it easier to get rid of them by simply shutting down the AM station some day.
• The CRTC has given multicultural station CHTO 1690 AM Toronto an additional year to start up its Mississauga retransmitter at 1490. The station has to change transmission sites and is proposing a new one at the site Radio Humsafar wanted to move to (that application was rejected).
• Francophone community radio station CHOD-FM 92.1 in Cornwall has been given an extension until Sept. 13, 2020, to launch a 20,500-watt retransmitter in Dunvegan, on the same frequency.
• Toronto radio station G98.7 (CKFG-FM) is seeking one-year extension on requirements to pay $183,120 in Canadian content development contributions due by Aug. 31, as it settles the estate of founder Fitzroy Gordon. G98.7 was required to pay more into content development funds as punishment for repeated, severe issues of non-compliance with its licence conditions.
• Rogers has revived its Support OMNI campaign to fight against competitors who are trying to get the federal government to overturn the CRTC decision that renewed OMNI’s licence past 2020.
• Golden West Broadcasting’s $1.6M sale of CHOO-FM (99.5 Drum FM) Drumheller, Alta., to Stingray, which owns the only other commercial station in the market, has been approved.
• The commission has also approved a Golden West purchase, allowing it to get a 100% stake in CKOV-FM in Strathmore, Alta., from Mary McKinnon Mills and Paul Larsen, up from a 25% stake, for $350,000.
• An application filed for a corporate reorganization of Newfoundland Broadcasting, owner of CJON-DT (NTV), CHOZ-FM (Oz FM) and the Newfoundland Herald, notes that Gregory Stirling’s 35% stake in the company is worth $4.4 million. That would put the company’s total value around $12.5 million.
• New stations approved:
  • A new community station in Grand Falls-Windsor, N.L. (94.5 MHz, 35W). (CBC has a story on this approval.)
  • A new English-language community radio station in Saint John, N.B. (96.1 FM, 2500W) 
  • Campus radio station CJBU-FM at Cape Breton University in Sydney, N.S., has been approved to graduate from a developmental licence to a full licence.
• Licence renewals:
  • CFQR 600 AM Montreal, to 2023. The short-term renewal is because of licence compliance issues — failure to file proper annual paperwork, and failure to implement an emergency alerting system. None relate to programming. Two years after the station launched, we’re still waiting for it to air regular programming.
  • CINQ-FM Montreal (Radio Centre-Ville 102.3), to Dec. 31: The ethnic community station went through a financial crisis and power struggle in its last licence term, and the CRTC will further analyze that before deciding on the licence renewal.
  • CJWL-FM Ottawa (Jewel 98.5), to 2025
  • CHBY-FM Barry’s Bay, Ont., (106.5 Moose FM) to 2025
  • CJJM-FM Espanola, Ont. (99.3 Moose FM) to 2026. Denies request to eliminate specialty music requirement.
  • CJJM-FM Espanola, Ont. (99.3 Moose FM), to 2026
  • CJTB-FM 93.1 Tête-à-la-Baleine, Que., to 2026
  • CJEU Ottawa/Gatineau (Radio Jeunesse 1670), to 2023
  • CJTL-FM Pickle Lake, Ont., to 2021 (includes requirement to broadcast failure to submit annual returns on time)
  • CFRM-FM Little Current, Ont. (100.7 The Island), to 2024
  • CHBI-FM Burnt Islands, N.L., to 2024
  • Game+ (formerly FNTSY Sports Network), to 2024
  • Videotron’s Indigo pay-per-view service, to 2024
  • Shaw’s pay-per-view services for its cable and satellite TV distribution arms.
  • CKKS-FM Chilliwack, B.C. (Kiss Radio), to Aug. 31, 2020. Rogers is seeking to separate this station from its Vancouver transmitter, which it hopes to convert into its own station.
  • Stingray Ambiance, to 2020 (administrative renewal)

Ethical reviews

• The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has finally come out with its first decisions of 2019:
  • A broadcast on CISS-FM (KiSS Ottawa) leading up to the announcement of a winner of a contest was misleading, implying that a draw would happen later in the show when according to the official contest rules it had already happened. The station’s argument that people who entered during the show were entered into the following draw was contradicted by on-air statements.
  • A discussion about Islam on the Zelda Young Show on Toronto’s CHIN 1540 AM included unacceptable statements suggesting Muslims are anti-Semitic.
• Toronto Star Public Editor Kathy English did not appreciate an editorial cartoon depicting an Ontario minister in a straitjacket, noting that this is an offensive trope about people with mental illness (that looks particularly bad because the minister in question had gone public about her mental health).
• The Globe and Mail’s Sylvia Stead gives some guidelines about reporting on opinion polls during an election campaign. It includes the usual stuff about poll sources and margins of error, but also this important one: “Don’t focus on the sub-groups — regional, age etc. — unless the sample size is large enough that the pollster has confidence in breaking that out.”
• The National Newsmedia Council dismissed a bunch of complaints:
  • A complaint from Charles Cooke against a Doug Saunders opinion column in the Globe and Mail about Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu that said he was on “a self-declared mission to breach the long-established foundations of peaceful co-existence and to goad Mr. Trump into war with Iran.” The council found he was expressing an opinion.
  • A complaint about a story in the Chilliwack Progress that referred to someone as being “wheelchair-bound” in the headline. The headline was changed and the council was satisfied with the corrective action.
  • A complaint about a story in the St. Catharines Standard about a fentanyl bust that said fentanyl could be absorbed through the skin. The complainant said current science shows that was untrue. The story was updated with additional information and the council was satisfied with that.
  • A complaint about a Canadian Press story on a dental care announcement to come in the Ontario budget. The council found CP was justified in using confidential sources in the story.
  • A complaint about a Susan Clairmont column in the Hamilton Spectator about a denied insurance claim that includes mention of an unrelated criminal charge against the claimant. The complaint said those charges were stayed and irrelevant and shouldn’t have been mentioned. The council agreed with the paper.
• CBC ombudsman decisions:
  • A television report by Olivia Stefanovich erred when it said a story about Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather being a Nazi was “fake news”. Though the true motivations of the man may never be known, he did in fact work for a newspaper sympathetic to the Nazis.
  • A Fifth Estate episode about the future of Donald Trump’s administration and whether he could be impeached was not unduly biased against Trump, though one exchange about Trump’s infamous statement about being able to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue was misleading, since the statement was about the loyalty of his supporters, not his immunity from indictment.
  • An Associated Press story about Britain posted on CBC’s website was justified in altering the headline to adapt it for a Canadian audience, and the removal of the term “anti-Semitism” from the headline was not meant to downplay the scandal.
  • A Neil Macdonald column about the anti-Israel BDS movement (sigh) was not filled with misstatements, though could have included some additional context. There was one error, though, about Israel blocking food aid into Gaza.
  • A CBC Edmonton investigation into Covenant Health, a Catholic health-care provider, and its resistance to medical aid in dying, was not unfair to Covenant Health, nor biased against it over a series of stories. Though the ombudsman was sympathetic to some of their concerns, and one attribution error was corrected.
• Radio-Canada ombudsman decisions:
  • A story about a man being sentenced for hate speech was incorrect in using the word “éloge” (praise) in describing his statements about Quebec City mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette. The story has been corrected with a link to the ombudsman’s decision.
  • A story about changes to Quebec’s employment law and how it calculates vacation time did not have to go into complete detail about various interpretations of that law, as a complainant demanded.

TV

I went out to St. Michel to the @MCLBJM to speak to some kids about what my day looks like as a journalist / mobile journalist. #mojo #mobilejournalist pic.twitter.com/3Y6b1KCKQD

— Sarah Leavitt (@sarahleavittcbc) August 7, 2019

• Emmy Award nominations are out. CBC’s Schitt’s Creek got some major nominations, and Canada can claim Sandra Oh, Samantha Bee and The Handmaid’s Tale too if it wants.
• CBC is developing five of its original podcasts into television series, including Someone Knows Something and Uncover: The Village.
• Netflix remains by far the most popular paid streaming service in Quebec, with Quebecor’s Illico and Radio-Canada’s Tou.tv Extra behind it.
• It’s not just the Canadian government and industry looking to force Netflix to produce more local content: the Australian government is also looking at imposing the same rules on streaming services as it does for local television networks.
• Joey Elias is producing a new short series for Global Montreal, in which he offers a lighthearted take on local issues. It airs Fridays on Global News Morning over three weeks.
• There’s been a technical change at NBC Boston that in theory might affect Canadian viewers. On Aug. 2, the station’s primary transmitter in the Boston area switched from WBTS, an 11.2-kW transmitter, to WYCN, a 500kW transmitter officially licensed to serve Nashua, N.H., but whose antenna is just outside Boston. WBTS moved south and pointed its new signal southwest to serve Providence, R.I. For Boston-area over-the-air viewers, this just meant having to rescan their TVs, but for Canadians who get their NBC feed from Boston, it’s problematic because WYCN is not authorized for distribution in Canada, and it’s unclear if WBTS is still a viable option. NBC Boston has been trying to figure out its over-the-air signal since it took the NBC affiliation away from the Sunbeam-owned megawatt station WHDH in 2016. It also rebroadcasts as a subchannel of Telemundo station WNEU. (Thanks to Kevin Vahey for spotting this.)
• WPTZ Plattsburgh, N.Y., is a New York station in name only as it has moved its production studio across Lake Champlain to the Burlington, Vermont area. Vermont PBS has also moved studios.
• Quebec isn’t seeing a lot of big-budget film production this year, but is hoping to make up for it with a lot of medium-budget TV productions, including some series for Netflix. The idea of an additional 10% production credit for TV and films produced in the regions is also being floated.
• Hallmark is filming a bunch of romantic holiday TV movies in Canada.
• The Canadian government is investing $14.6 million in a new streaming platform run by TV5 that will not be accessible in Canada, but will help Canadian francophone content be accessible throughout the francophonie.
• Bell Media has announced that Crave has acquired the Canadian rights to the last season of Showtime’s Homeland. New episodes of that series had previously been exclusive to Super Channel, its direct competitor, and was Super Channel’s biggest asset.
• TSN is broadcasting the National Women’s Soccer League, whose teams feature many Canadian soccer stars. Only nine games will be on television, including the playoffs, while the other 29 are to be broadcast online.
• An Oklahoma marijuana dispensary ripped off the logo for Corus’s Treehouse channel. Corus is suing, but the dispensary says the Treehouse logo isn’t protected in the U.S.
• The FCC has fined broadcasters including ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live for misusing emergency alert tones in broadcasts.
• Broadcast Dialogue has some details about offscreen layoffs at CTV Vancouver.
• The Rogers Cup did some nice ratings thanks to a Canadian going all the way. The women’s final, in which Serena Williams retired giving Bianca Andreescu the championship, had an average audience of 594,100 on Sportsnet and 303,000 on TVA Sports. It was the most popular Rogers Cup in Sportsnet history.
• HBO Max in the U.S. is expected to spend more than a billion dollars for the streaming rights to The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men.
• The OMNI TV series Mangoes has been sold to a broadcaster in Pakistan.
• Casting is now open for Big Brother Canada and CTV’s new Mike Holmes series.
• Fall premiere dates announced:
  • CBC Television
  • CTV and CTV2
  • Citytv
  • Showcase and W
  • FX and FXX
  • Canal D
  • ARTV
  • A Little Late with Lilly Singh debuts Sept. 16.

Radio

This is one of the greatest BBC News radio moments ever, IMO. pic.twitter.com/Iowl5qIJgj

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) July 31, 2019

• Some rebrandings as we ease into fall:
  • Rogers has rebranded its Victoria Kiss station (CHTT-FM) as Jack 103.1, taking on the adult hits format it had between 2004 and 2015. Gone are the morning team of Dez Fernando and Jay Hatton, and afternoon host Johnny Novak. Its new morning team is David Larsen (who also serves as program director) and Heather Backman, Terry DiMonte’s former co-host on CHOM and who was most recently at Pattison’s The Q in Victoria.
  • RNC Media is rebranding its Quebec City (technically Donnacona) station Pop 100.9 as La Vibe. The station is one of the ones RNC hasn’t found a buyer for yet. The Pop brand is still being used at RNC’s Gatineau station, which has transitioned to a top 40 format.
  • Harvard Broadcasting’s CJNW-FM Edmonton is rebranding and changing formats, going from mainly-hip-hop Hot 107 to top-40 Power 107.
  • Vista Radio is rebranding CFSM-FM in Cranbrook, B.C., going from Summit 107 to 107.5 2Day FM (a brand it uses at four other stations) and adopting a “party playlist” pop music format (it was previously adult contemporary), after buying the station from Clear Sky Radio. It’s also launching an associated local news site, myeastkootenaynow.com.
• Radio-Canada has launched a web radio station with Fransaskois music. Its library isn’t very large, with just a few dozen songs. You can listen to it here.
• Edmonton’s 630 CHED has announced its new morning team: Chelsea Bird and Shaye Ganam will succeed Bruce Bowie after he retires. Ganam moves over from Global News Edmonton, while Bird, a former Big Brother Canada houseguest, spent a few years doing mornings at Virgin Radio Edmonton.
• BLVD 102,1 in Quebec City has terminated, by mutual agreement, its contract with Nathalie Normandeau. Normandeau, a former member of Jean Charest’s cabinet, plans to write a book.
• Calgary’s Q107 is now getting its morning show from Vancouver’s Rock 101.
• Todd van der Heyden’s Viewpoints radio talk show has added Toronto’s CFRB, giving it a slot on all of Bell Media’s nine news-talk stations.
• Virgin Radio stations in Canada have a slightly revamped logo.
• Fall programming announcements:
  • Énergie 94.3 in Montreal
  • 107,3 Rouge FM in Montreal
  • 91,9 Sports in Montreal
  • QUB Radio

Print

My best friends whipped this out after dinner tonight… My first gazette article. They’re so cute and I’m so lucky. pic.twitter.com/ld8OyeG7xh

— Katelyn Thomas (@katelynthomas) July 26, 2019

• Groupe Capitales Médias (owner of Le Soleil, Le Droit and other papers in Quebec’s mid-size markets) is in serious financial trouble (again), according to Bernard Drainville. It’s in talks with Quebecor and Cogeco about a potential acquisition. Or maybe not Cogeco. The Quebec government says it won’t give GCM any bailout money. Or maybe it will.
• Postmedia (my employer) has refinanced its debt, giving it until 2023 to generate the money to pay it off.
• Free newspaper 24 Heures took a week off at the end of July. It didn’t say why, and few people noticed anyway. That could be an ominous sign for the future of the Quebecor-owned daily.
• The LGBTQ+ magazine Fugues turned 35, prompting a short profile in Le Devoir.
• The Edmonton Journal apologized after printing an editorial cartoon that contained what was seen as an anti-Semitic trope. The paper says that was not intentional.
• The Hamilton Spectator writes an obituary on its printing presses, which are being retired after being in service since 1976.
• The New York Times looks at how hedge fund ownership of newspapers could spell their downfall.
• America’s two largest newspaper publishers, GateHouse and Gannett, are merging in a $1.4-billion deal.

Online

• Tumblr has been sold to WordPress owner Automattic for less than one per cent of what Yahoo paid for it in 2013.
• The Globe and Mail has a new feature where articles can be read aloud using text-to-speech software, in English or automatically translated into French or Mandarin.
• LaPresse.ca has undergone a redesign.
• The Sûreté du Québec is getting more sarcastic on social media, finding that it’s a better way to engage with trolls.
• Half of Google searches do not result in any clicks, presumably because the person gets the answer they’re looking for on the search results page.
• Ontario Premier Doug Ford is being accused of pay-for-access after featuring a party donor on an Ontario News Now segment. (He says he wasn’t aware the person was a donor.)
• CBC reports left-wing activist group North 99 has been using “misleading” petitions as a way of collecting data on voters.
• BuzzFeed has more about the hyperpartisan Canadian online media using Facebook to drive engagement. A related story at the Toronto Star points to Facebook pages pushing content from conservative website The Post Millennial.
• LeBron James’s The-Players-Tribune-style website Uninterrupted is expanding into Canada. The basketball star has partnered with rapper Drake, and brought on former Sportsnet boss Scott Moore to manage the expansion.
• Users of Reddit are unhappy with the site’s owners’ response to Russian trolling, and the contention (that the story notes is not true) that banning a community will just cause its members to post their racist stuff elsewhere.

Telecom

• Industry Canada has agreed with the creation of a new tier of wireless spectrum licence areas that are even smaller than its previously smallest areas. The new Tier 5 will have three times as many areas as the previous Tier 4. Under Tier 5, Montreal and Laval are separate areas, while Longueuil, Brossard and La Prairie are grouped together, Châteauguay and surrounding areas are separate, Vaudreuil and other western off-island communities are another. The advantage of allowing such smaller areas is that regional providers (or those wanting to become ones like Cogeco) can be more selective in their coverage areas, instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a licence that, say, covers all of southern Quebec.
• Independent telecom company Iristel is planning to launch a TV service, but needs deals with broadcasters set up first. The service would come without a set-top box and be bundled with internet service.
• Shaw Communications employees in Quebec got caught in an alleged insurance fraud scheme, accused of fraudulently claiming more than $500,000.
• A court ruled against a lawsuit by Bell Canada pensioners about the calculation of cost of living increases. The case centred around how to round a number, and whether the strange placement of a comma affected how the rounding would work. The court ruled the comma was not significant, and that 1.49 should be rounded down to 1 and not up to 1.5 and then up again to 2.
• The Wall Street Journal reports on how the Ugandan government is spying on its citizens — and a popular singer seen as a potential political rival — using technology from Huawei.

Other

• CBC/Radio-Canada is being delayed “a few months” in its move from the Maison Radio-Canada tower to its new building being constructed nearby.
• An unreleased John Coltrane album has been found, thanks to the NFB.
• Ontario government anti-carbon-tax propaganda stickers that gas stations must display — or be fined $10,000 — are on the way.
• Garfield is now property of Nickelodeon.
• Viacom and CBS are merging.

News about people

He's back! A happy and healthy @HerbZurkowsky1 back in his seat in Molson Stadium press box to cover this afternoon's #Alouettes game vs. Edmonton Eskimos after recovering from bladder cancer. #CFL #MtlALS pic.twitter.com/8qjo9eFrdl

— Stu Cowan (@StuCowan1) July 20, 2019

• Herb Zurkowsky has returned to the Montreal Gazette’s Alouettes beat after taking time off to get treatment for bladder cancer. He writes a column about how his time off and treatment has given him perspective on athletes going through major injuries.
• CTV Montreal has hired away some talent from elsewhere:
  • Basem Boshra from the Montreal Gazette
  • Emily Campbell from CityNews
  • Andrew Brennan from CityNews
  • Matt Gilmour from CJAD
• Concordia University chats with CBC Montreal anchor Debra Arbec about her career.
• Andrea Baillie has been named editor-in-chief of The Canadian Press. She succeeds the departed Stephen Meurice.
• Rogers has appointed former Facebook Canada executive Jordan Banks as head of Rogers Media, succeeding the retiring Rick Brace.
• Global Toronto’s Alan Carter and the Globe and Mail’s telecom reporter Christine Dobby got married. Aww.
• James Cowan is the new editor of Report on Business magazine.
• Thomas Daigle, a former CBC Montreal reporter, will be moving from London to Toronto to report on technology for the public broadcaster.
• Rosie Del Campo has been named the new anchor for CTV Kitchener’s News at Six. She succeeds Meghan Furman, who chose to leave the station for another job in “a new industry.”
• Lisa Dutton has been named the new anchor of Global News Winnipeg. She replaces Heather Steele, who has taken a new job as executive producer of CJOB.
• Michael Fulmes, station manager and news director at Global Regina, is retiring.
• Kathleen Goldhar is leaving her producing job at CBC Radio and becoming a podcast producer.
• Alyse Hand, formerly of CTV Atlantic, who was most recently doing PR work, is the new co-anchor of Global News Morning in the Maritimes. She replaces Andrea Dion, who left for CTV Morning Live in Calgary.
• Edward Keenan is moving to Washington to be the Toronto Star’s new correspondent there. He replaces Daniel Dale, who took a job at CNN.
• Alanna Kelly is a new reporter/anchor at CTV News Vancouver Island, leaving Kelowna’s Castanet news service.
• Baseball writer Jonah Keri has been charged with assault and uttering death threats against his wife, just before their first anniversary. His lawyer suggests the death threats were made out of anger. The news has resulted in Keri being suspended as a contributor to Sportsnet, The Athletic and DraftKings.
• Simu Liu, a Canadian actor best known for his role in the sitcom Kim’s Convenience, is soon going to be better known for being a Marvel movie superhero. It’s a pretty big deal for him.
• Amy Luft, web editor at CTV Montreal, got married this month. (I was a guest at the wedding.)
• Scott MacArthur of Toronto’s Fan 590 has come out of the closet.
• Cora MacDonald has a new country music show on K103 in Kahnawake.
• Dany Meloul is the new general manager for television at Radio-Canada. Meloul, formerly of Bell Media, replaces Dominique Chaloult, who will become a consultant.
• Greg Mercer is leaving the Waterloo Region Record to become the new Atlantic bureau chief for the Globe and Mail.
• Cheryl McKenzie, best known as the host of various APTN news programs including APTN National News, has been named Executive Director of News and Current Affairs. She succeeds the departing Karyn Pugliese.
• Eric Minoli has been named interim CEO of TFO. He replaces the departing Glenn O’Farrell.
• Bernadette Morra has been hired back as editor-in-chief of Fashion magazine, after leaving that same job in 2016.
• Kevin Newman is stepping down as host of CTV’s W5 to take on other roles, including a new podcast series.
• Labour columnist Lana Payne has ended her column at the St. John’s Telegram.
• Quebecor owner Pierre Karl Péladeau is apparently still interested in buying Air Transat.
• Kelli Rickard is the new morning co-host on Hot Country 103.5 in Halifax.
• Ellen Roseman’s consumer rights column in the Toronto Star has been cancelled.
• Mike Stafford, morning host at Global News Radio in Toronto, got into a bit of trouble after apparently having a problem with brown people seeking medical help at a hospital.
• Annie Talbot, former general manager of the Fondation La Presse, will be running as a Liberal in the federal elections. This will not help dispel the idea that La Presse is close to the Liberals.
• Jeremy White has signed a contract extension at The Beat 92.5.
• More Globe and Mail departures:
  • columnist Roy MacGregor
  • reporter Jeff Lewis (going to Reuters)
• Globe and Mail is also hiring, though, in its Ottawa bureau:
  • Janice Dickson, now full-time at the Globe
  • Kristy Kirkup, formerly of The Canadian Press
  • Marieke Walsh, formerly of iPolitics

Obituaries

• Byron Ayanoglu, food and travel writer
• Alan Cairns, Toronto Sun reporter
• John Harada, radio broadcaster
• Carmel Kilkenny, CBC Montreal news anchor and Radio Canada International contributor
• Bill Luxton, Ottawa television host
• Gil McCall, radio broadcaster
• Barry Mercer, CBC broadcaster
• Monica Miller, CKUA broadcaster
• Leo Sabulsky, Chetwynd Communications Society chair
• Elie Savoie, TV executive
• Richard Starnes, Ottawa Citizen journalist
• Susan Woods, B.C. broadcaster

Good reads

• Vermont’s independent newspaper Seven Days focuses on local media in its latest issue. Its feature story is about ownership changes at various outlets including WCAX TV.
• Chris Selley gives some examples of when journalism “fact checks” fail.
• A Twitter thread from the Globe and Mail’s Tu Thanh Ha about online resources he used to research an obituary he wrote.
• L’Actualité talks to a “terminologue” who creates new words for the Office québécois de la langue française, as alternatives to simply adopting the English word for a new technology, device or concept.
• The New York Times looks at how YouTube radicalized Brazil.
• Wired looks at the history of the libertarian message board 8chan.
• A freelance journalist writes about charging late fees to publications who don’t pay on time, and how they reacted to the demand. (I think a 20% fee is a bit excessive, but don’t take issue with the practice in general.)
• La Presse checks in with the Grand Costumier, a non-profit that took over a large part of Radio-Canada’s costume department when the broadcaster decided it no longer wanted to maintain one.
• HuffPost takes a deep dive into the workplace culture at Mic, which tried desperately to drive traffic with content that has been mocked as social-justice clickbait until it ran out of money and had to be sold. Similarly, Deadspin takes a look at G/O Media, the latest company behind Gizmodo.
• The New York Times dives into the so-called “GamerGate” fiasco, five years later.
• The New York Times explains how it analyzed and verified social media reports of an airstrike at a migrant detention centre in Libya.
• The Las Vegas Review Journal and CBC News talk to Dennis Casey Park, who famously screwed up a rendition of O Canada before a CFL game in Las Vegas in 1994, singing it to the tune of O Christmas Tree. He explains how it happened, how he made up for it two weeks later, and how the experience led to him meeting his wife.
• La Presse’s Alexandre Pratt discusses the psychological toll that social media can have on professional athletes.
• Journalist Carey Gillam writes about how Monsanto tried to ruin her reputation in response to her coverage of the company.
• The New Yorker has a story about the life and death of Lyra McKee, the journalist shot dead in Northern Ireland.

Jobs

• Journalist, The Gleaner in Hemmingford
• Managing Editor, Flare in Toronto
• Assistant Editor, Chatelaine in Toronto
• Staff editor, The Athletic in Montreal (French)
• Policy reporter, Politico Pro in Ottawa
• Energy and environment reporter, Politico Pro in Ottawa
• Radio room internship, Toronto Star
• Editor-in-chief, Presse Canadienne in Montreal
• Director of French-language publications, Brunswick News
• Reporter, The Canadian Press in Ottawa (deadline: Aug. 22)
• Reporter/editor, CBC Thunder Bay (deadline: Aug. 28)