News about news

• The federal government’s 2019-20 budget gives a bit more detail on its plans to subsidize the news (and particularly newspaper) industry, putting a total figure of $595 million on it. The budget introduces the concept of a Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization, whose exact criteria will be established by a panel of experts (it’s not clear who decides who these experts will be). But the criteria already laid out has issues. As Tim Bousquet of the Halifax Examiner points out, it disqualifies very small news operations right off the bat.
• The Quebec budget, meanwhile, didn’t have much of interest to media. There was $25 million for Télé-Québec, and some nickels and dimes for various cultural projects. Also of interest is that the government will move to allow business registry searches by the names of administrators. The government is in a legal battle with the website Open Corporates because that website scrapes the official one and offers the name search function.
• Apple has announced a new subscription service for news, with some Canadian partners on board including the Toronto Star, La Presse, CTV and Global. The service, which grows out of its acquisition of the digital magazine service Texture, costs $13 a month, and Apple will keep half that money. That deal wasn’t good enough for some organizations, like Le Devoir and the Globe and Mail, who make some content available on Apple News’s free service but aren’t part of the subscription tier.
• CTV, CBC, Citytv and Postmedia have teamed up to broadcast the Alberta leaders’ debate on April 4. It will be on all three TV networks plus OMNI, as well as CBC News Network, CTV News Channel, 660 News (Rogers) and CBC Radio One in Alberta. Global isn’t part of the group but has extensive election coverage plans of its own.
• BuzzFeed has successfully defended a libel case brought by the man behind Central European News, which a BuzzFeed investigation accused of being a purveyor of fake news. A story by Craig Silverman and two other reporters called him the “king” of fake news.
• The Globe and Mail looks at a case of a small community newsletter, the kind of one-person operation that’s taking the place of discontinued local newspapers, and the challenge it faces when someone doesn’t like what’s written and decides to sue.
• The Associated Press has announced more style changes, the biggest one being that we’ll no longer be using “per cent” as two words. Instead, the % symbol is to be used when following numerals, and “percent” can be used as one word in other contexts.
• Union protesters at an ABI plant in Bécancour, locked out for more than a year, harassed TVA Trois-Rivières journalist Patricia Hélie and made her fear for her safety. The union has called for calm.
• Peel Regional Police have released complaints they received — including 911 phone calls — after an Amber Alert was sent out late at night. The child in question was found dead.
• CBC employees who are part of the CMG union have voted 80% in favour of a new collective agreement. The five-year deal ends in 2024.
• The Wall Street Journal answers how the National Enquirer managed to get Jeff Bezos’s sexts: from his lover’s brother, by paying him $200,000. (He denies this, sort of.)

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News about news

• The Associated Press’s blind republication of press releases on its website has gotten it in hot water after a press release with right-wing misinformation got published this way. The pages include AP logos and could easily lead people to believe they are AP news stories. Several Canadian websites also automatically post press releases, including the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Montreal Gazette, the Toronto Sun (and other Postmedia papers).
• The federal government is investigating itself after queries from a Postmedia journalist about Irving Shipbuilding were sent by the government to the company before it even responded to the journalist.
• Exo, which runs Montreal’s commuter train network, has ended its agreement with free newspaper 24 Heures that distributed the paper in its stations. Quebecor did an access-to-information request and found an email suggesting the organization may have ended the contract because it was not happy with the paper’s coverage of its service. It’s unclear if that was the main reason, but Exo’s bosses have refused to explain themselves.
• Radio-Canada has cut nine jobs in its Atlantic offices.
• Finalists for the National Newspaper Awards have been announced. The Globe and Mail leads with 20 nominations (including a sweep of the business category), the Toronto Star and La Presse have six each, and The Canadian Press has four. The Montreal Gazette has one nomination.
• RTDNA Canada has announced its regional award finalists (East, Prairies, West). In the Central region (Quebec and Ontario), which gives out the awards April 6 in Toronto, Quebec nominees include:
  • 18 for CBC Montreal
  • 4 for CTV Montreal
  • 2 for Global Montreal
  • 2 for CBC Quebec City
  • 1 for MAtv

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News about news

• There was an element in the SNC-Lavalin/Jody Wilson-Raybould saga that related to the media: Wilson-Raybould alleges that the prime minister’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, told her that the government would “line up” opinion pieces in newspapers to defend a decision to give SNC-Lavalin a deferred prosecution agreement. That comment set off a wave of denials in the media, with people like Toronto Star public editor Kathy English and this nameless St. John’s Telegram editorial writing that newspapers don’t accept such things. Former Harper communications head Andrew MacDougall and Globe and Mail media columnist Simon Houpt also pour cold water on the idea, though with some nuance. I kind of wish the industry was a bit less defensive about this, and undertook a dispassionate, open-minded review of how the political machine can influence opinion sections. The National Observer points to a similar case in Ontario where a woman was directly asked by the government to write an op-ed favourable to its changes to autism care. It would be naive to assume there’s no attempt to influence, and that attempts to influence will always fail. (Also, the op-eds that have since been published defending the government should come with reassurances that they were not ordered by the PMO.)
• Atlantic Canada’s Saltwire Network is implementing a metered paywall system, with a $15/month cost to get around it. Its publications, which include the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, are also dropping the Canadian Press wire service (after it cut several Halifax employees), replacing it with Postmedia and Reuters. Postmedia has no publications in Atlantic Canada, and its predecessor Canwest tried to ditch CP and go with its own wires to save money before eventually deciding to sign up again.
• A probably made up rumour about a “Momo challenge” to get kids to take their own lives has prompted a wave of news stories that have probably served to only propagate the idea in people’s heads and do more harm than good.
• Canadian actor and comedian Boyd Banks has apologized after repeatedly licking CBC reporter Chris Glover during a live TV hit.
• APTN reporter Kenneth Jackson has a Twitter thread on the difficulties getting access to public documents at the Thunder Bay courthouse.
• Journal de Montréal editorial cartoonist Yannick Lemay (YGreck) has apologized (kinda) after a cartoon depicting Jody Wilson-Raybould as wearing a stereotype of an Indigenous outfit for no apparent reason.
• The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled that a construction company’s lawsuit against the Globe and Mail should not be summarily dismissed as a SLAPP suit.
• Philippe Papineau at Le Devoir writes about La Presse canadienne (The Canadian Press) and how the media business model crisis is affecting the wire service.
• A new movie about the Rob Ford scandal does a good job of erasing Robyn Doolittle, who’s responsible for much of the original reporting on the case.
• Apparently Exo, the public company that runs Montreal’s commuter trains, doesn’t publish the agenda and minutes of its board meetings, and 24 Heures can’t get a hold of them.
• A judge has ordered a journalist for Le Nouvelliste in Trois-Rivières to turn over photos to a company involved in a lawsuit against the city.

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News about news

I send my FOIA birthday cards when my original requests turn one year older. Does this speed up my FOIAs? Not really, but the cards have to go into some file forever. pic.twitter.com/QjEPnpbzHQ

— Bill Geerhart (@CONELRAD6401240) February 11, 2019

• The FPJQ says 256 journalists submitted 422 stories for its 10 Judith-Jasmin journalism prizes this year, while 54 photographers submitted 213 photos for its six photography categories.
• A Quebec Court of Appeal ruling has said that the Quebec Press Act, which sets a time limit on when someone can sue a newspaper for defamation, does not apply to newspapers’ websites. The case in question was dismissed anyway, but the ruling could set a precedent for such cases in the future. The act dates from 1929.
• Some people were not crazy about CTV’s Omar Sachedina going to Gerald Butts’s home and talking to his wife after he resigned from his position in the Prime Minister’s Office.
• The Toronto Sun fell for a fake Gerald Butts Twitter account.
• Montreal mayor Valérie Plante says her city is being used as a “punching bag” for its handling of snow clearing operations, even though other cities are also experiencing snow-clearing problems and Montreal has received more snow and far more rain than in a normal winter.
• There’s a tendency at the National Assembly for politicians to change their routines to actively avoid journalists. CAQ members are entering caucus meetings by the back door, and PQ members are holding their caucus meetings on a floor inaccessible to journalists.
• Of the federal government’s total advertising spending, about half went to digital ads, and more money was spent on Facebook than TV, radio and print combined.
• Le Devoir has a new weekly newsletter summarizing the week at Quebec’s National Assembly.
• UQAM’s student publication Montréal Campus is actively avoiding using masculin nouns and adjectives when referring to groups of people.
• 12-year-old Hilde Lysiak is putting journalists far older than her to shame with her reporting, filming a police officer threatening to arrest her. The story got national attention. The officer in question was disciplined in some way, but his employer won’t say how.
• CARE International has created a list of the 10 most under-reported humanitarian crises of 2018.
• A study by Northeastern University says viewers engage more with TV news stories that are longer and more emotional and include animation. The study itself actually re-edits some news stories to demonstrate, and frankly I’m not convinced by them. While some of the animations are very useful (like one of a train crash), others (like wacky transitions) add no information to stories, and the study doesn’t really address how much more work animation requires, while TV newsrooms are getting smaller.

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News about news

• So yeah, the Jeff Bezos dick pic thing. Here’s his post accusing the National Enquirer of trying to blackmail him. And here’s Canadaland noting the connections between Enquirer owner American Media Inc. and Postmedia (my employer).
• A Saskatchewan Court of Appeal hearing into the provincial government’s challenge to the federal government’s carbon tax law will be televised, after various Saskatchewan media outlets pushed the court to allow live broadcast.
• Torontoist has been acquired by Daily Hive, which has essentially just used it to push readers to Daily Hive Toronto, though they promise to “carry on the legacy” of the website.
• The Canadian Press has made cuts, particularly in Atlantic Canada, with four layoff notices issued Friday to journalists there: Aly Thomson, Keith Doucette, Alex Cooke and Brett Bundale (a former Montreal Gazette intern). CBC reports that voluntary departures of more senior employees could save some of those jobs. Six positions are being cut in total. They also include Tara Deschamps at the business desk in Toronto.
• There were also, according to Le Devoir, 11 cuts at Vice Canada (including Chris Toman) and two voluntary departures at Vice Quebec. There were also unspecified cuts at Global News, according to the CAJ.
• Radio-Canada is closing its bureau in Beirut, bringing journalist Marie-Ève Bédard back to Montreal. The Middle East will now no longer be covered full-time by the public broadcaster.
• Gazette cartoonist Aislin (Terry Mosher) caused a bit of a kerfuffle when he posted a rejected cartoon on Facebook and Twitter featuring a CAQ logo with a KKK-style white hood. Reaction started with why-is-the-Gazette-censoring-you and grew to anglos-hate-Quebec as the cartoon began being shared in the francophone sphere. It prompted stories by Radio-Canada, La Presse, Presse Canadienne and Énergie, discussions on Quebec AM, Daybreak and columns by Richard Martineau and Rima Elkouri, and a cartoon by Le Devoir’s Garnotte. Mosher now admits even he believes the cartoon went too far and never expected it to be published.
• La Presse has rearranged its arts and lifestyle sections, which includes more books coverage through the week, and added some new columnists:
  • David Goudreault
  • Simon Boulerice
  • Jenny Salgado
  • Noémi Mercier
  • Jocelyn Maclure
• Concordia University’s journalism department has started a new digital publication called The City, fed by journalism students.
• The New York Times is using donations to make its content available free to 3 million U.S. students.
• The Toronto Star is trying to block publication of documents it considers commercially sensitive in the Competition Bureau case against its newspaper deal with Postmedia.
• A secret group of liberal journalists from France that has been coordinating harassment of women has been exposed, leading to resignations, firings, suspensions and other fallout. Le Monde gives some background on it.

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News about news

• La Presse has launched its voluntary contribution initiative, starting up a website to allow people to contribute $5 or more on a monthly basis or give a one-time donation of an amount that they want. Saturday’s edition included a special section of mostly self-congratulatory articles, including an impressive list of investigations that resulted in major changes, as well as the behind-the-scenes story of one of those investigations, and some thoughts on what it means to be a columnist. It’s unclear how transparent La Presse will be about its donations, but its website says that donations are confidential unless the giving party consents to it being publicized. La Presse also published its journalistic standards and practices guide.
• La Presse’s workers have also ratified a new collective agreement. The agreement is retroactive to 2016 and lasts until 2021, with a salary freeze until 2020 and a 1% increase the final year. The employee pension plan (the one that began when La Presse became a non-profit) will transition to a targeted benefit structure. The union will also have some access to La Presse’s financial information once a year, and employees will get an abridged version of that.
• It’s been 10 years since the start of the lockout at the Journal de Montréal. During a panel discussion on the future of media, Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau credited the lockout with saving the paper (and similarly the Journal de Québec, which also went through a lockout).
• Le Devoir has started a new weekly news quiz and is expanding its email newsletter offering. It’s also added three new columnists: Normand Baillargeon (education), Émilie Nicolas (diversity) and René Vézina (business).
• An agronomist with Quebec’s agriculture ministry has been fired after sharing documents with a Radio-Canada journalist and sounding the alarm about corporate interference in studies on pesticides. Despite being apparent retaliation against a whistleblower, the government is standing by its decision.
• James Sears and LeRoy St. Germaine, the men behind the Your Ward News publication in Toronto, have been found guilty of promoting hate against women and Jews. The judge didn’t buy their “but it was satire” defence.
• The woman who lives at the Toronto home where remains were found that led to Bruce McArthur’s murder charges has some things to say about how she was treated by less professional journalists.
• The Telegraph has apologized and paid “substantial” damages to Melania Trump after a magazine profile of her included many facts that both sides now say were untrue.
• The 19 newspapers in Alberta’s Great West Newspapers have joined the National Newsmedia Council.
• The Desjardins credit union in Quebec has rethought its marketing strategy in a way that encourages more advertising with local media and less with big web giants like Google and Facebook.
• Toronto Sun columnist Anthony Furey may or may not be headlining a Conservative Party fundraising event. (It has since been cancelled.)
• The Fonds québécois en journalisme international has announced its second cohort of bursary winners. Among them is Charlie Fidelman, former Gazette journalist, who will get to do some reporting from Mexico.
• Freelance entertainment journalist Phil Brown writes about how he has given up and abandoned that career.
• Montreal lifestyle freelancer Marissa Miller Kovac has some tips for PR people on how to deal with journalists and freelancers in particular.
• The Washington Post on the demise of the Newseum in Washington, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars on its building and is finally realizing that its ambitions are unsustainable.

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