Tag Archives: La Presse

| Media

Liberals sue La Presse, change their minds

A day after seeking a court injunction preventing La Presse from printing a leaked copy of secret Liberal MP candidates in Quebec, the Liberal party has changed its mind, saying it’s not an official list.

La Presse hasn’t released the list yet, though they say it shows the Liberals are far behind in finding candidates for all 75 ridings in the province. The party said previously that 50 candidates were selected and 12 others are waiting for an election call to leave their current jobs and identify themselves.

| Media

La Presse to pay its bloggers

Via Patrick Lagacé, La Presse’s union has ratified an agreement that will allow La Presse journalists to return to blogging and harmonize La Presse and Cyberpresse journalists.

Among the details of the agreement, according to Michel Dumais:

  • Pay equity between La Presse and Cyberpresse workers, including eight years of back pay for underpaid Cyberpresse workers
  • Extra pay for print journalists who blog
  • Print journalists can now take video, but only when a photographer is also taking photographs at the same time.
  • Print journalists will no longer be forced to file breaking news stories for Cyberpresse and articles for La Presse (really?)
  • Journalists keep copyright over their work, which is being sold back to Cyberpresse for a symbolic fee.

Hopefully this will set a precedent for other unionized papers in Quebec who are facing similar problems with journalist multitasking.

UPDATE (March 21): Tristan Péloquin has returned to blogging.

| Media

La Presse, Gazette up for National Newspaper Awards

It’s that time of year again when the National Newspaper Awards sends out a press release with a list of nominees, and each newspaper writes about what they’ve been nominated for.

The Globe and Mail far and away leads the pack with 15 nominations in various categories (including a sweep of the international reporting category), more than the entire Canwest chain combined. Following it is the Toronto Star with 8 nominations, La Presse and the Citizen with 6 each, and then the leftovers.

The Toronto National Post has only two nominations.

Here’s how Montreal did:

Also of local note, Globe photographer Charla Jones, nominated in the Feature Photography category for photos she took of Leonard Cohen in Montreal as part of this audio slideshow.

I’m still waiting for my NNA for my tireless reporting about local activities and blogs.

| Media, Montreal

Local newspaper union news

La Presse: According to Michel Leblanc, an agreement in principle has been reached between the union and employer, which will remove the disparity between newspaper journalists and online journalists, and would bring back the blogs that were suspended in September, including that of Tristan Péloquin (remember him?). No word yet from official sources. Patrick Lagacé confirms, saying there will be a general assembly on March 19 for union members to approve the deal.

Le Journal de Montréal: Steve Proulx quotes Le Trente that a strike (or lockout?) is on the horizon, because the manager-to-employee ratio is high. JdM employees are paid generously (so much so that my colleagues were shocked to hear pay rates for equivalent jobs there), and Quebecor might look toward building on the “success” of the Journal de Québec. (See some analysis by Julien Brault) (UPDATE March 5: Proulx has an update based on statements from some anonymous sources within the Journal)

Le Journal de Québec: Tomorrow, the 10-month-old lockout/strike will set a new record for a labour dispute at a French-language Canadian newspaper, eclipsing the previous record set by Le Soleil in 1977. (The irony, of course, is that the Journal itself owes much of its early success to that very dispute.) Mario Asselin is starting to lose his zeal for the fight.

The Gazette: Also management-heavy in preparation for new contract negotiations this spring, the paper has decided to lay off 46 employees in its Reader Sales and Service department, transferring call centre operations to a centralized centre in Winnipeg as of May 30. The union is fighting the move, calling it a violation of a contract clause against outsourcing. (UPDATE March 5: The layoffs have been put on hold while arbitrators sort out the union issue.)

| Fun, Media, Montreal

Bid for a date with Patrick Lagacé

Some holiday charity schemes expect you to give away your money with only pride in return. They think you’ll be happy just knowing you’re a good person. But La Presse has a better idea. They’re offering this:

Patrick Lagacé = hot date

Up for auction are 10 lunch dates with their most popular journalists, including cartoonist Serge Chapleau, sports columnist Réjean Tremblay and teen heartthrob Patrick Lagacé (seen above with semi-exposed chest).

Though the auction is far from over, it kind of disturbs me that Lagacé and this woman:

Marie-Claude Lortie

(food columnist Marie-Claude Lortie) are bidding far below this guy:

Pierre Foglia

Pierre Foglia.

What does this say about our society?

The auction continues until Dec. 6. Proceeds go to Sun Youth, the Société Saint-Vincent-de-Paul and Moisson Montréal.

So far the leading bidder for a date with Lagacé is “R. Martineau“. Surely you can do better than his paltry $550.

UPDATE (Dec. 6): The auction’s over, and despite his incessant pleading on his blog, Lagacé brought in the least of the lots, only $1,900. (Foglia brought in $4,500.) He’s still a winner in our book though.

| Media

Awarding excellence in Quebec journalism (with links!)

As part of a weekend conference, the Fédération professionelle des journalistes du Québec presented awards for journalism. Radio-Canada was the big winner for the Judith Jasmin awards for reporting, and La Presse the big winner in the photo category.

The coverage in the media was as you might expect, each media outlet trumping its own successes and downplaying others:

What was particularly annoying about the announcement of the winners is that neither the FPJQ announcements nor any of the news reports about them contained links to the winners’ articles, video reports or photos. This is 2007, for crying out loud. It should be beyond obvious by now that online reports are incomplete without us being able to see what they’re talking about.

So as a public service, here are the winners of the FPJQ’s awards this weekend, with links to the original pieces where appropriate.

Prix Judith Jasmin (reporting)

Grand prize: La leçon de discrimination
Pasquale Turbide & Lucie Payeur
Radio-Canada (Enjeux)

The winner, a TV documentary tackling the hot issue of discrimination, is already available on DVD.

Investigative journalism: Du sable dans l’engrenage
Guy Gendron, Jean-Luc Paquette and Monique Dumont
Radio-Canada (Zone Libre)

An in-depth look at the Alberta oilsands which are booming like nobody’s business now that the high price of oil has made them profitable. It also explores the environmental and (hence) political angles of this industry.

Feature: Inde, poubelle de la planète techno
Noémi Mercier
Québec Science

Mercier’s report on how so-called “recycling” of electronics overseas is really just a long-range garbage dump apparently involved a lot of personal risk on her part.

Opinion: Femmes en retrait
Manon Cornellier
Le Devoir

Cornellier’s piece was recognized not for its original subject (the lack of women in power in politics), but for the clear, well-written way it was presented.

Profile/interview: Monique Lépine, 17 ans de silence
Harold Gagné
TVA

Gagné’s interview with the mother of École Polytechnique killer Marc Lépine was one of those epic scoops, even if it wasn’t timely. The interview itself became news all over the country as other outlets reported on it (The Globe, CTV, CBC, La Presse). The timing was unfortunately perfect, coming just days after the Dawson shooting.

The fact that a runner-up in this category was Sue Montgomery’s portrait of Dawson shooter Kimveer Gill (breaking the silence of his mother) says something, either about their selection criteria or about the state of the media.

National news: Hérouxville dicte un code de conduite rigoureux pour ses futurs immigrants
Katia Gagnon
La Presse

The article that started it all. A reporter talks about a small town called Hérouxville which has some odd ideas about race relations (they polled residents asking “are you racist?”, the answer was 100% “no”). The rest is history.

Local news: L’érosion des berges (video)
Hervé Gaudreault
Radio-Canada Baie Comeau

Honoured for one simple reason: He made the issue of soil erosion sound interesting. I’ll add that it proves that real journalism can in fact come from small markets.

Prix Antoine Desillets (photography)

Daily life: Bernard Brault
La Presse

A this-must-be-photoshopped silhouette of a vacationer in the Antilles. Brault was a finalist last year for another photo from the Antilles.

Sports: David Boily
La Presse

This spectacular photo of F1 driver Robert Kubica having his vehicle totalled (I think, there were a few photos that got picked up) made the AFP and Canadian Press wires and got published around the world.

Photojournalism: Olivier Hanigan
La Voie du succès

The words “acid attack” don’t evoke much emotion until you see the photos of these victims in a Bangladesh hospital.

News: Ivanoh Demers
La Presse

(I’m assuming it’s this photo – it’s part of a gallery with the rest.) A photo of mafia boss Nick Rizzutto being arrested, honoured for its excellent composition of elements denoting the once great man’s being taken down by the law.

Portrait: Bernard Brault
La Presse

Bernard Brault wins again, for a photo of a security guard at the University of Oxford. Chosen for the way it captures the essence of British style.

The winning photos will be on display in Montreal starting Dec. 4.

Prix Judith-Jasmin hommage (lifetime achievement)

This career award went to former Journal de Montréal justice reporter Rodolphe Morissette, who retired last year after 22 years of service.

Bourse Arthur-Prévost (aspiring rookie journalist)

This $2,000 financial award went to Marie-Hélène Proulx, who’s currently at Jobboom Magazine but has had her name just about everywhere since starting a freelance journalism career in 2003. Her magazine articles have already won grownup awards.

Prix Jules-Fournier (quality of language in print writing)

This $5,000 prize for quality of writing in a French-language Quebec newspaper went to Valérie Borde, an independent journalist who works for l’Actualité and writes about science.

Prix Raymond-Charette (quality of language in electronic media)

This $5,000 prize went to Hugues Poulin, Radio-Canada’s European correspondent.

These last two awards are sponsored by the Conseil supérieur de la langue française.

| Media, Slow News Day

Loonie tunes

Apparently on Thursday, for the first time (in recent history, I’m guessing), there were more stories worldwide about the Canadian dollar than about Paris Hilton in the mainstream media. Apparently for no particular reason either.

Talk about a horrible job, counting Paris Hilton articles on a daily basis.

And take a wild guess which of these two topics La Presse used to illustrate the story.

| Media, Montreal

Plagiarized in your own paper — NOT

The irony is just too much.

It appears that La Presse’s letter of the week for Oct. 27, about the oversexualization of young girls, was plagiarized from quoted* a Patrick Lagacé column a month before.

As Lagacé puts it: Plagiarized in your own paper, c’est fort en ta…

* The story gets better: The letter actually properly referenced Lagacé’s column. But the citation was cut from the letter before it was published, leaving only the copied text. Now Lagacé, and a copy editor somewhere in the La Presse editorial department, are eating a double serving of crow.

I’m trying not to laugh.

| Business, Media, Montreal, Technology

Cyberpresse bloggers shutting up

One of La Presse’s unions has sent its members a notice asking them to stop blogging on Cyberpresse as a pressure tactic. As a result, bloggers Sophie Cousineau and Marie-Claude Lortie have stopped their blogs with notices explaining why. Both are regular columnists who will continue their columns as usual.

Unaffected by this is star blogger Patrick Lagacé, who explains that he’s under a specific contract to do his blog (unlike other journalists who blog as part of their regular journalistic duties). Tristan Péloquin has a post about it as well, but it’s unclear if he’s stopped blogging or he’s just pointing out the situation.

The local union news blog has more details on the situation.

This isn’t the last we’ll see of this. Employees at the Journal de Montréal are already arguing over online rights to their articles. And as media outlets start expecting journalists to blog, shoot video and do other “online extras” as part of their regular duties (and without extra compensation), we’ll be seeing a lot more of these kinds of disputes over the next few years.

UPDATE: Heri and Steph have some interesting comments on the issue, but they seem to miss the main point: Unionized employees are being told to perform duties outside of their collective agreements, and for no additional compensation. Say what you want about Cyberpresse’s approach to blogging, but these aren’t personal blogs being updated out of the kindness of their hearts. It’s work, and employees deserve to get paid for it.

| Media

Copyright infringement isn’t ok just because everyone else does it

Andy Riga (yeah, he’s still blogging) mentions a tiff that’s developed between La Presse and the website Le Québécois. The paper has sent the website owners a lawyer’s letter demanding that La Presse articles be pulled from the site because they infringe on the paper’s copyright.

The website’s response is an angry “screw you!”

Since I just looked at when media violates your copyright, it seems only fair that we take a look at the reverse, and how equally stupid the excuses are.

As Andy mentions in his blog, copyright infringement through the posting of newspaper articles on websites is a huge and probably unsolvable problem. It happens all the time by people who either don’t realize they’re not allowed to do it or who know that the newspaper isn’t going to waste the effort going after them.

Usually, it’s fairly benign: Someone who was featured in an article posts it to their personal website so their friends can be mesmerized at their 15 minutes of fame.

But Le Québécois was doing it to a bunch of articles, and acting almost as an unlicensed syndicator of La Presse’s content. And because Le Québécois has commercial interests, La Presse felt they needed to act.

The organization’s responses don’t hold much water (especially since they freely admit they’re violating the paper’s copyright):

  1. La Presse is rich. This is an ad hominem attack and has no bearing on the argument at hand.
  2. La Presse (which publishes “propaganda”) doesn’t like us because they’re federalist. Ditto. And if you hate them so much, why are you posting their articles?
  3. These articles are “all over the Internet”. An exaggeration, I think. But either way it’s irrelevant. If you murder someone in Iraq, it’s still murder, even if everyone else is doing it. If you loot a Wal-Mart after a hurricane, it’s still theft, even if you’re just part of the mob.
  4. There’s an unwritten custom that allows articles to be posted if they’re credited. Well I can’t exactly argue with an imaginary rule, but I’d argue that the custom involves using excerpts of articles and linking to the full text where possible on the paper’s website. I don’t see any professional blogs or other websites posting complete articles without getting permission first. Besides, agreements aren’t agreements unless you reach them with the copyright holder.
  5. This is an attack on freedom of expression. No it’s not. You can express any opinion you like. You can quote from the article, comment on it, call it names. You simply can’t violate someone else’s copyright.
  6. We’ll never cite La Presse articles again! OK. You have fun with that.

The Internet has turned everyone into a media publisher. And while the financial barrier to entry is incredibly low, it does mean that people have to brush up on basic facts of copyright (and libel) law.

Nobody gets a free ride on copyright. Big or small.