News about news

These are the five victims killed at @capgaznews today.
Rob Hiaasen https://t.co/CBJAVUuJNQ
Wendi Winters https://t.co/kKhVllQWWb
Gerald Fischman https://t.co/bmYvTdDBwd
Rebecca Smith https://t.co/3cM4VhG0q9
John McNamara https://t.co/vCRaIUIzAB pic.twitter.com/55Jeu3UhSh

— Kevin Rector (@kevrector) June 29, 2018

• Five people were killed in a shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland. The shooter is identified as a man who had a long grudge against the paper. Remaining staff kept producing the paper.
• Postmedia is making more cuts to its news operations as the company (my employer) continues to struggle financially with declining print ad revenue. It’s closing six community newspapers, making three others online-only (which, in the past, has only delayed the inevitable), and reducing print frequency for a 10th. All 10 affected papers were bought in the Sun Media deal and have long histories of ownership changes, with owners like Thomson, Hollinger, Osprey, Otter, Bowes, Newcap and Annex. Postmedia as a whole wants to cut 10 per cent of its salary base, which means another round of buyouts to unionized staff (including those at the Montreal Gazette), and possibly layoffs if those don’t reach that target. Community papers being cut are:
  • The Daily Graphic in Portage La Prairie, Alta. Man., is ending its print edition but will remain as an online-only publication.
  • The Camrose Canadian in Camrose, Alta. The Canadian’s last issue will be Aug. 9.
  • The High River Times in High River, Alta., is dropping from twice a week to weekly. It just brought in a new intern, which it’s sharing with two other local papers.
  • The Ingersoll Times in Ingersoll, Ont., is shutting down. Its last issue is July 11. It is redirecting readers to the Woodstock Sentinel Review, based 15km away.
  • The Kapuskasing Times (aka Kapuskasing Northern Times)  in Kapuskasing, Ont., is shutting down. Its last issue is July 26.
  • The Northern News in Kirkland Lake, Ont., is dropping from three days a week to one (Postmedia has this listed as going online-only, so I’m not sure if that weekly edition is a print one).
  • The Norwich Gazette in Norwich, Ont., is shutting down. Its last edition is July 11. Like the Ingersoll Times, it is redirecting readers to the Woodstock Sentinel Review. Woodstock is 20km from Norwich.
  • The Pembroke Observer in Pembroke, Ont., is shutting down its print edition but will remain online. Its final issue is July 28.
  • The Petrolia Topic in Petrolia, Ont., is shutting down. Its last issue is July 11, five months short of its 100th anniversary. It’s redirecting readers to the Sarnia Observer, based 23km away.
  • The Strathmore Standard in Strathmore, Alta., is shutting down. Its last issue is July 25.
• The New York Times has a story about one of its own journalists, Ali Watkins, being in hot water after it was discovered she was having an affair with a senior official on the Senate Intelligence Committee (which she covers as a national security specialist). She said she didn’t use him as a source, and he denies giving any information to journalists, but it’s an obvious red flag.
• The Canadian Journalism Foundation has posted videos from its awards gala. A highlight is this one of Robyn Doolittle asking journalists to support each other.
• Facebook is “partnering” with Agence France-Presse to limit the spread of fake news on its platform in Canada. Though some might see a Liberal conspiracy afoot, the bigger question for me is whether AFP has the resources or the interest to stamp out every Canadian fake news story out there.
• Politico is coming to Canada. Not to cover Canadian politics per se, but more to cover how the Canada-U.S. relationship affects U.S. politics. It has hired Alex Panetta, former Washington bureau chief for The Canadian Press, to join the project.
• The Toronto Star’s Kathy English points to a study that shows western media is not paying enough attention to the developing world.

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News about news

• Rogers and Village Media have teamed up for another local news website, KitchenerToday.com. Like HalifaxToday.ca and OttawaMatters.com, the site will be fed by a Rogers-owned all-news radio station and Rogers TV community TV channel on a Village Media platform.
• The Globe and Mail has a new feature online that adds helpful process info on, for example, how it uses anonymous sources, right in the stories.
• The Professional Hockey Writers Association, for the first time, is publishing the individual ballot selections of its members that led to the choosing of NHL Awards recipients. The Gazette’s Pat Hickey and TVA’s Renaud Lavoie are among those listed as having submitted ineligible all-star team votes.
• A consortium of broadcasters denies that there was any threat from them to cut coverage of the Ontario election results after a concession speech by Kathleen Wynne was delayed too long.
• The Link has some more details about Concordia University’s new institute for investigative journalism.
• Charges have been laid against a man alleged to have led a right-wing group’s storming of Vice’s Montreal offices last month.

At the CRTC

• The commission held a hearing this week where four radio stations begged for their lives, err, I mean explained their chronic issues with licence compliance — CKMN-FM Rimouski, CHOC-FM Saint-Rémi, CKWR-FM Kitchener and CKUN-FM Christian Island. The transcript is here.
• A commission letter to the Bell Fund, an independent production fund set up by Bell to dole out some of its mandatory contributions to Canadian content, says that its board makeup appears to be insufficiently independent of Bell. This is part of a complaint by several broadcasting groups that a new program set up by the fund unfairly discriminates against smaller broadcasters.
• RNC Media has asked the CRTC to maintain its Independent Local News Fund allocation despite having shut down TV station CKRN-DT in Abitibi. RNC says it has moved all CKRN’s news resources to CFVS (its V affiliate) and produces the same amount of local news in the market as before.
• Colba.Net has thrown in the towel on a TV distribution service in Ontario, and handed its licence back to the commission.
• Native radio station CKOK-FM Nain, N.L., has been told it can’t be exempt from the national public alerting system, despite the argument that such a regulation is at odds with UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
• Licence renewals for Pattison-owned radio stations CKWD-FM (Wild 95.3) Calgary and CKNO-FM (102.3 NOW!) Edmonton

Ethical reviews

• Canadian Broadcast Standards Council: A Doc Mailloux broadcast was not discriminatory against old people nor overly sexually explicit.
• Toronto Star Public Editor: When is it appropriate to use the term “elderly“?
• CBC ombudsman: CBC can’t delete an article about the former mayor of St. Albert, Alta. violating the Municipal Government Act, even though the judge in the case found the mayor was acting in “good faith”.

TV

• Roseanne is coming back, but without Roseanne. The producers of the hit revived sitcom are going ahead with a “spinoff” that does not star or have any financial links to Roseanne Barr.
• Sportsnet has announced its national NHL broadcast schedule for 2018-19. The schedule includes national broadcasts for the seven Canadian teams, but since Rogers also has regional broadcast rights to the Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers, and shares those rights with Bell for the Toronto Maple Leafs, some additional regional broadcasts could be upgraded to national for those teams. Here’s how it breaks down per team so far out of 82 regular-season games each (of the Canadiens broadcasts, 22 are on Saturday, 5 on Wednesday and 5 on Sunday, including a Super Bowl matinee game):
  • Toronto: 40
  • Montreal: 32
  • Ottawa: 27
  • Vancouver: 24
  • Winnipeg: 22
  • Calgary: 22
  • Edmonton: 22
• CBC has cancelled the daily business news show On the Money with Peter Armstrong, leaving CBC News Network without a regular business show.
• Worse for CBCNN, the network is moving to a format during the day where the first half of each hour will be live and the second half a repeat of the first.
• V is working on a new talk show in which Phil Roy interviews celebrities in their homes.
• Workers at TVA have voted 97% in favour of a strike mandate. But the union has no immediate plans for a strike.
• TSN will broadcast the home opener of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team, which was devastated when many of its players died in a bus crash during last season’s playoffs.
• Serinda Swan has been cast in the lead role in a new Toronto-set CBC original drama Coroner (8 episodes), set for broadcast this fall.
• ABC pulled an episode of reality series The Proposal after an accusation against one of its contestants related to a previous case of sexual assault surfaced online.

Radio

• Community station CIBL-FM Montreal appears to have made its crowdfunding goal of $35,000, with 91 contributions. One of the station’s recent radiothons was streamed by MAtv.
• Toronto’s CHUM-FM 104.5 went through a rebranding on Friday, and though it built up a lot of hype for the change, it’s unclear what exactly is different, beyond a lot more pink in their logo.

Print

• The Quebec Community Newspaper Association awards winners list has been posted. In the overall newspaper category, first place goes to Kahnawake’s Eastern Door, and second and third place to two editions of The Suburban.

Online

• Sony’s Crackle, the free video streaming service, is shutting down access in Canada as of June 28.
• Paid subscription services YouTube Music and YouTube Premium (formerly YouTube Red) are now available in Canada.
• MUCH has published a five-episode series of videos on LGBTQ issues.
• The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states can require retailers who don’t have a physical presence in their state to collect and remit sales taxes.

Corporate

• Quebecor has officially bought out the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec’s stake in Quebecor Media, and is now the sole owner of that subsidiary. But the Caisse still has a stake in Quebecor Inc. itself, and some of that payement is in the form of a convertible debenture.
• The union representing CBC/Radio-Canada employees in Quebec and Moncton have once again rejected a contract offer.
• Disney upped its bid for 21st Century Fox in response to an offer by Comcast. It’s almost $15 billion higher than its previous bid.

News about people

The countdown is on! @SarahRitchieTV is joining Global Halifax as our lead anchor. She'll bring you the latest in local news starting June 25. #Halifax pic.twitter.com/YB94f8GXus

— Global Halifax (@globalhalifax) June 18, 2018

• Marie-Andrée Chouinard has been named the new editor-in-chief of Le Devoir. She replaces Luce Julien, who was poached by Radio-Canada.
• Irene Gentle has been named the new editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star. She is the first woman to hold the role.
• Luc Bellemare has been named the new permanent primary host of RDS’s l’Antichambre. He replaces Stéphane Langdeau, who left RDS because he shares initials with someone else.
• Emmanuelle Latraverse has decided to leave Radio-Canada, where she was the host of its weekly political talk show until she was mysteriously demoted amid rumours about her behaviour.
• Alain Dubuc is leaving La Presse for a teaching job, and going out with some reflective columns.
• Jane Gerster, formerly health reporter at the Winnipeg Free Press, is now the national features reporter for Global News.
• Radio-Canada reporter Véronique Prince has been named president of the Quebec Press Gallery.
• Emilie Perreault had her last day at 98.5 FM.
• La Presse’s Yves Boisvert talks to cartoonist Serge Chapleau
• Netflix has dropped its head of PR, Jonathan Friedland, after he apparently used the N word.

Obituaries

• Charles Krauthammer, U.S. political commentator

Good reads

• FPJQ’s Trente magazine on Radio-Canada’s spotty acceptance of non-Quebec accents.
• The Columbia Journalism Review looks at Consumer Reports magazine and its plan to stay viable in the future.
• The Toronto Star fact-checked a week’s worth of Question Period at the House of Commons, and rates questions and answers as true, false, dodge and stretch.
• A look at Toronto’s high school newspapers

Jobs

• Videojournalist, Radio-Canada Hamilton (deadline: June 28)
• New York correspondent, Globe and Mail (deadline: June 30)
• Editor-in-chief, MAtv Montreal (deadline: July 6)
• Social media manager, MAtv Montreal (deadline: July 6)
• Reporter, Breakfast Television Montreal

News about news

Has #FIFA19 gone too far controlling photographers? pic.twitter.com/1thwBvuOrN

— Ric Ernst (@RicErnst) June 16, 2018

• The Michener Award, the journalism award given out by the governor general, was awarded to the Globe and Mail and journalist Robyn Doolittle for their Unfounded project looking at how police departments across the country handle investigations of sexual assault.
• Bill 400, which allows La Presse to be converted into a nonprofit, passed through the National Assembly just before it broke for the summer. The bill was rushed through the legislative process (though, at two paragraphs, it doesn’t take long to study), and MNA Martine Ouellet tried to propose seven amendments in committee and two others in the National Assembly, designed to establish rules for how the non-profit’s board should be formed (such as that employees should control a third of the board) and ensure the company is not sold to a corporation with a headquarters outside Quebec. All were rejected. The final vote passed 76-24.
• The National Assembly also adopted a law offering more protection to journalists who wish to protect the identity of confidential sources.
• La Presse published an investigative report this week about Influence Communication, the Quebec news media analysis firm famous for quantifying the weight of topics in the news media. The report questions the company’s methods, particularly when it comes to broadcast media, and quotes former employees saying that president Jean-François Dumas, the firm’s public face, applies a multiplier, whose source is unclear even within the firm, to determine how much a news story is trending on media they cannot directly analyze. Dumas went into immediate damage control, issuing a 4am press release, and appearing on Radio-Canada and 98.5 FM morning shows to denounce the reporter and the story. Dumas says the former employees (who are unnamed in the story) were fired or left on bad terms, and suggests the reporter refused two offers to see how the company works in person. (The reporter, Isabelle Hachey, says both those statements are false.) Influence’s press release does not single out any specific fact in the story as being incorrect.
• Former Toronto Star digital editor David Skok has launched a new online subscription news outlet called The Logic, covering “the innovation economy.”
• The Guardian looks at the issue of journalists in the United States facing danger for reporting on radical right-wing political groups.
• Concordia University has launched a new institute for investigative journalism, with several media and university partners.
• An online survey done for the international Digital News Report shows only 18% of Canadians would be willing to donate to a news outlet “if they were unable to cover their costs in other ways.” More details on the report’s findings about Canada are here.
• Another report shows that news consumers are not very well informed about how journalism works, and that they believe news has veered too far toward opinion (I agree). Details are here.
• Rob Rogers was fired as the editorial cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette because he refused to stop making fun of Donald Trump. The newspaper’s publisher counters that he was “too angry” and obsessed with Trump. The paper itself covered the firing.
• The Boston Globe has suspended columnist Kevin Cullen after learning he allegedly fabricated anecdotes related to the Boston bombing. He’ll be busted down to general assignment reporter temporarily when he returns.
• Former employees of the Denver Post have started a new publication called the Colorado Sun that is being bankrolled by the founder of the Ethereum cryptocurrency. The Sun’s business model is something-something-blockchain but appears to be some sort of crowdfunding model.
• The Ahuntsic-Cartierville community publication Journal des Voisins has hired some student reporters thanks to a government grant.
• La Presse is launching a new webinar series featuring photojournalist Martin Tremblay.

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News about news

• A Google-funded project called NewsWise is aiming to teach young kids how to look critically at the news media and understand how news and politics interact. It has instructional videos featuring people like BuzzFeed’s Jane Lytvynenko and Craig Silverman (or people claiming to be them, who knows) on its YouTube channel.
• A New York Times reporter’s phone and email records were secretly seized by the U.S. government during a leak investigation.
• People saying the media aren’t talking enough about how 4,645 people died in Puerto Rico are probably unaware that the study that number comes from doesn’t actually say that.
• La Presse is giving more detail about its restructuring plan, including that it has asked the Quebec bar for the names of three retired judges, from which it will choose its trustee to ensure the non-profit it establishes respects its mandate. It will also name the chair of its board without consulting Power Corp.
• The disgraced shell of what was once Newsweek is not above exploiting high-profile suicides for clickbait.
• If you think the Canadian regulatory system is broken, consider this BuzzFeed story about a company that is exploiting a loophole in Britain’s local TV news subsidy program and producing low-quality stories that the BBC is paying for but never using.
• Canadaland has a story about the failed attempted formation of a union at the National Post.
• The Globe and Mail is willing to cancel subscriptions of people who harass journalists.

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News about news

• The far-right group Atalante stormed Vice’s Quebec offices, made a lot of noise and left. The FPJQ is shocked and disgusted by the attempt to intimidate journalists.
• The Ukrainian government faked the death of a Russian journalist in order to try to catch who was trying to kill him. The move has prompted some discussion and concern that this further erodes people’s trust in the media and government at the worst possible time.
• Canadaland has a story about CBC News matching competing news organizations’ scoops without credit. This is a common problem in the industry and a pet peeve of mine as well, but it goes far beyond the CBC. Many, maybe even most mainstream news organizations with decades of experience work under the guideline that you only need to credit a competitor until you’ve independently confirmed the news yourself. If news organizations had to disclose where they first heard about all the stories they published, news would read a lot differently. (Also Frank magazine points out it has been scooped by Canadaland without credit in the past.)
• RTDNA Canada announced its national and network award winners, with CBC getting many of those (51 in total, 6 for the Montreal team). Winners from here:
  • CBC Montreal digital on Quebec City mosque attack
  • CBC Montreal digital on Montreal floods
  • CBC Montreal website
  • CBC Montreal’s Montreapolis podcast
  • CBC Montreal radio on flooding
  • CBC Montreal television for Out of the Shadows: Inside La Meute
  • CTV News Channel, Quebec City Mosque Shooting
  • CJAD 800 for Andrew’s Let’s Talk Story
• The FPJQ is moving its Quebec journalism awards ceremony out of its annual conference and into its own special gala, next May, as part of its 50th anniversary celebration.
• The Don Martin/Arthur Kent defamation case has seen its damages increased to a total of $450,000. Martin published a column in the National Post 10 years ago that harshly criticized Kent, an Alberta politician.
• Two TV journalists at WYFF in Greenville, S.C., were killed while covering a storm when a tree fell on their news van.

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News about news

• Nominations have been announced for the Michener Award for public service journalism (considered the most prestigious because it involves the governor-general and because only one award is given out every year). They are:
  • Cogeco Nouvelles for its reporting (by Monic Néron and Émilie Perreault) on Gilbert Rozon’s alleged sexual assault and harassment of women
  • CBC Edmonton (Jennie Russell and Charles Rusnell) on irregularities involving grants to Alberta private health foundation Pure North
  • Global News on how Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada handled permanent residency applications for people with disabilities and medical conditions
  • The Globe and Mail (Grant Robertson) on banned pesticides used in the manufacture of medical marijuana
  • The Globe and Mail (Robyn Doolittle) on police dismissal of sexual assault cases by classifying them as “unfounded”
  • The Toronto Star (Sara Mojtehedzadeh and Brendan Kennedy) on how companies are increasingly turning to temp agencies to limit their liability for workplace accidents, reduce employers’ responsibility and cut costs
  • The Vancouver Sun (Gordon Hoekstra) and Globe and Mail (Grant Robertson and Tom Cardoso) on the lack of punishment for securities fraudsters
• The Quebec government has presented a journalist shield law to the National Assembly, similar to a law the federal government has already passed. The FPJQ is not happy with the proposed law, calling it too little too late.
• The Supreme Court of Canada has put a 50-year embargo on documents about deliberations of their cases, the Globe and Mail has discovered.
• The propensity of foreign law enforcement agencies to leak information (such as the suspected identity of mass shooters) is already leading to some reticence to share information with allied governments.
• The FPJQ is asking the Quebec government to go ahead and eliminate that 1967 law that prevents La Presse from being restructured into a nonprofit, and not use that quirk of history as a pretext to have Power Corp. executives grilled on La Presse’s news coverage. Meanwhile, André Desmarais is noncommittal about further support for La Presse if it’s still in trouble after running out of the $50 million.
• Workers at Thomson Reuters have agreed to a new three-year collective agreement.
• Stories from the Toronto Star, Métro and RCI about Mediafugees, a Montreal-based online news outlet by and for refugees.
• Channel 4’s Jon Snow has voluntarily taken a 25% pay cut to help reduce the gender pay gap.

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News about news

• National Newspaper Awards were announced: The Globe and Mail won six (including journalist of the year for Robyn Doolittle), the Toronto Star and La Presse each won four.
• The Canadian Association of Journalists also handed out its awards.
• Ipsos wants to use copyright law to prevent people from using its poll results in aggregate form, arguing that the polls were not designed to be used in this way. Ekos wants to do the same.
• City Montreal is finally hiring more journalists for its soon-to-launch evening newscasts. It put up postings for two full-time and one part-time journalist. No word yet on a launch date. City had hired Cora MacDonald and Tina Tenneriello for the job last year. Macdonald has since left for Global Montreal.
• La Presse publisher Guy Crevier writes about the decision to go non-profit. As is his habit, there are a lot of statistics. Among them:
  • In 1975, 79% of homes received a daily newspaper. Now it’s 2%.
  • La Presse did three studies in recent years about a paid subscription model. The most generous on showed it could get 50-100,000 subs paying $5 a month. But up to $6 million in revenue would be offset by “tens of millions” in lost ad revenue.
  • Since 2010, the two largest newspaper chains in Canada (Postmedia and Torstar, I’m presuming) held on to only 35% and 42% of ad revenue. La Presse managed to keep 66% despite the fact that it no longer has a print edition.
• Le Devoir looks at the Philadelphia Inquirer, which underwent a similar transformation into a nonprofit.
• Meanwhile, the provincial government is open to expediting the process of approving La Presse’s transfer of ownership. Its unions want the change to happen ASAP.
• Alexandre Taillefer has stepped down from the board of Mishmash Media (owner of L’Actualité and Voir) and dropped his column in Voir to avoid conflicts of interest coming out of his recent decision to become campaign chair of the Quebec Liberal Party.

At the CRTC

Evanov Radio resubmits new joint #CRTC technical plan for Toronto radio stations CIDC-FM (Z103) and CIRR-FM (Proud FM):
CIDC-FM moves to 103.7, increases from 30.7kW to 45kW, points NW
CIRR-FM to 103.5, from 0.2kW to 20kW and doubles antenna height. Will also add HD. pic.twitter.com/6Njy76hm4t

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) May 10, 2018

• Evanov Radio is trying again with its plan to reconfigure its two Toronto-area radio stations to turn at least one into a bona fide Toronto station. Like its last attempt, this new one involves converting CIDC-FM (Z103.5) into a station serving Orangeville (as it was licensed to do) and clearing the way for CIRR-FM (Proud FM 103.9) to increase power to cover all of downtown Toronto. But after the last attempt was deemed technically unacceptable by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (which regulates radio spectrum) because of interference it would cause to other stations, this one tries another option: move CIDC to 103.7, with a signal pointed entirely northwest away from Toronto, and move CIRR to 103.5, allowing it to increase power 100-fold. Evanov also proposed to add an HD transmitter for CIRR, with up to four channels. The first will simulcast the analog signal, but it hasn’t decided what the other three will carry yet.
• The Supreme Court of Canada will be hearing an appeal by Bell over the CRTC’s Super Bowl ad substitution policy. The court’s focus isn’t on the CRTC’s rules per se, but on the issue of how the courts can overrule decisions by administrative bodies like the CRTC. It’s unclear if we’d get a decision on this by the next Super Bowl in February, but the court has declined a request to expedite the process.
• Kanesatake’s community radio station CKHQ-FM 101.7 is fighting against a proposed new Christian radio station in Lachute on the same frequency. Under Canadian broadcasting regulations, CKHQ is a low-power station and is unprotected, so if another station gets a licence to operate that would cause interference, CKHQ would have to move to another frequency. The problem is that Kanesatake is close enough to Montreal that there aren’t many frequencies available, even for a tiny 11-watt station. Legally it doesn’t have much to go on, but it’s hoping political pressure will push the CRTC to act in its favour. The station, which can’t be heard outside the immediate area of Kanesatake, has been off the air since last July.

At the CBC

• CBC says it has digitized about 20% of its content archives over eight years.

Ethical reviews

• Another week, another decision against André Arthur. This time, the Quebec Press Council finding he was wrong to call teachers “crazy”, and wrong for his employer BLVD 102,1 to deny he said that on the air.
• Other Quebec Press Council decisions:
  • A LaPresse.ca story about an assault suspect being sought by police, that was later updated after the suspect was found, should not have included a description of the suspect as “Indigenous” as that was not relevant. La Presse argued the ethnic description was an “artifact” of the previous story as a physical description of a man being sought by police.
  • A TVA story about the dangers of sugary drinks was not biased against sugar and obesity, despite the complaint of Fondation Belles rondeurs. A complaint by the same group against a Le Soleil series on weight loss was also rejected.
  • A La Presse story about the Quebec City mosque shooter’s like of guns was not sensationalist, despite the complaint of the Canadian National Firearms Association
  • A Journal de Montréal story was not discriminatory or prejudicial by noting that a victim in a gang rape case had consumed alcohol before the alleged crime.
  • CHOI host Jeff Fillion was within his rights to say that if he was a cop, he would treat protesters in a brutal manner. (A split 4-2 decision.) — We’ll see how his suggestion that protesters be outright murdered goes down.
  • A Lise Ravary column in the Journal de Montréal that noted the “climategate” scandal of alleged manipulation of data by climate researchers should have noted that a subsequent investigation found no such manipulation of data.
• The Quebec Press Council itself says it has reviewed 83 cases in the past year, and is looking at mediation to accelerate them because they take about a year to process.
• Toronto Star Public Editor Kathy English wants to know why more women don’t write letters to the editor.
• CBC ombudsman: Broadcasts have to be clear about panelists’ conflicts of interest in political discussions.
• CBC ombudsman: A report quoting a witness at a murder trial saying “Jesus fucking Christ” was not inappropriate but should have come with a warning.

TV

RENEW BROOKLYN NINE NINE
I ONLY WATCH LIKE 4 THINGS
THIS IS ONE OF THE THINGS#RenewB99

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) May 10, 2018

• Fox has cancelled sitcoms Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Last Man on Earth and The Mick. But oh wait, NBC has stepped in and saved the Nine-Nine!
• Meanwhile, Fox picked up Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing from ABC.
• CTV is going ahead with Season 2 of The Launch, and is seeking applications from artists. One of the songs from Season 1 (Ain’t Easy by Elijah Woods x Jamie Fine) went platinum in Canada, four of the songs had short-term success going #1 on the iTunes Canada charts, and the other two (by Ethan Young and Jayd Ink) … didn’t.
• CTV has bought the right to premiere a new Martin Scorcese-directed SCTV reunion special in Canada (now with Rick Moranis set to participate). This means the show won’t be available on Netflix in Canada right away, but will be after it airs on CTV.
• Most French-language TV broadcasters not owned by Quebecor have agreed to a partnership with Radio-Canada’s Tou.tv that will make some of their content available on Tou.tv Extra. This includes Bell, V and TV5, and possibly Télé-Québec in the future.
• V has renewed Le Show de Rousseau, its replacement for Éric Salvail’s nightly talk show, despite its less-than-stellar debut.
• Bell’s food channel Gusto is on free preview from May 15 to June 26.
• Quebec City’s ComediHa! festival has renewed its TV deals — for three years with Radio-Canada and Bell Media and for two years with Unis.
• Thursday’s Winnipeg Jets/Nashville Predators Game 7 unsurprisingly did well in the ratings in Canada. Its 3 million viewers made it the most-watched Jets game ever. It even did okay in the U.S., with 1.6 million viewers on NBCSN and streaming.

Radio

• CJAD has added a new name to its wall of fame: former host Melanie King.
• Claude Rajotte is returning to CIBL, with a show Wednesday nights starting May 16.
• Mario Dumont is leaving Montreal’s 98.5FM in June, where he was a collaborator to the morning show, citing a lack of available time. His replacement, Denis Coderre, will stay on, despite saying last fall that a media job is not what we should expect him to go into.
• Vancouver’s Roundhouse Radio went off the air last Sunday, though it looks like the station will be sold. A sale requires CRTC approval before it can take effect.
• CBC has renamed its B.C. noon-hour call-in show from B.C. Almanac to BC Today. That was a bit annoying to BC Today, a website that covers the B.C. legislature.

Print

• Amid the talk about La Presse going nonprofit, Le Devoir’s Brian Myles discusses its structure, which is technically a for-profit enterprise but one that’s controlled by its director and accepts donations.
• Cult MTL has released its annual Best of Montreal readers’ poll results, which includes a section on local media.
• The Toronto Star is bringing back the paywall, three years after dropping it. It’s also applying the paywall to StarMetro, even though those are free newspapers.
• The Star is also dropping its contract with Pagemasters North America to outsource the editing and print layout of its paper. PMNA is owned by The Canadian Press.
• Employees at the Windsor Star have voted 91% in favour of a new three-year labour contract, just before they were set to go on strike. The new deal avoids most of the concessions demanded by the employer, and includes only a 0.5 per cent pay hike in 2020.
• The Chicago Tribune’s owner has voluntarily recognized a new union, which will encompass the Tribune and some related publications.

Online

• Le Devoir talks to Mike Ward about his podcast series Sous écoute, which features discussions with comedians.
• Spotify has pulled R Kelly’s music from its playlists — but not from the service itself — after more reports of sexual misconduct.

Other

• Quebecor got an outdoor amphitheatre named after it in Shawinigan.

News about people

In 1975, Jim, who lived down the street, asked me to prom. We had a blast and he moved away. 40 years later we reconnected, fell in love, and last night he proposed! #ISaidYes ? pic.twitter.com/tad1aRpTX3

— Marilyn Denis (@MarilynDenisCTV) May 7, 2018

• Marilyn Denis got engaged.
• Montreal Gazette cartoonist Terry Mosher (Aislin) and La Presse’s Serge Chapleau are getting honorary degrees from Concordia University.
• CBC’s Kate McKenna launched her book about the abortion fight in PEI, first in PEI and on Thursday in Montreal.
• Radio-Canada reports the police have ended their investigations into Éric Salvail and Gilbert Rozon. It will now be up to the prosecutors if charges will be laid against them for alleged sexual harassment.
• La Presse speaks to Maripier Morin about her personal branding and her reputation.
• Robyn Doolittle has a book deal out of her long investigation into police departments dismissing sexual assault complaints.
• The Washington Post profiles Lainey Lui (The Social, eTalk) and her LaineyGossip blog.
• Amil Niazi is leaving Vice Canada to join the BBC.
• Alex Panetta is leaving The Canadian Press, where he was its Washington correspondent, for some other unnamed job.
• Tyler Dawson is leaving the Ottawa Citizen to become the new Alberta correspondent for the National Post.
• Lindsey Wiebe, formerly at audience development at Rogers Media, is joining the New York Times as its first Canadian audience growth editor.
• CTV’s Avis Favaro is getting an honorary doctorate from McMaster University.
• Christiane Amanpour has been named Charlie Rose’s replacement at PBS. The new show will be called “Amanpour & Company”
• An internal report at NBC has conveniently showed that NBC bosses did not know about Matt Lauer’s behaviour toward women.
• Rita Trichur has been promoted to senior editor at the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business magazine

Obituaries

• Elizabeth Hughes, CBC Vancouver executive producer
• André Payette, journalist and essayist
• Peter Mayer, former Penguin Group chief executive (in charge when it published the Satanic Verses)

Good reads

• The Walrus on the Toronto Star’s efforts to reinvent itself (not much new here, but a good summary of its history and some insight from star reporter Daniel Dale).

Upcoming events

• CIBL fundraiser, May 17
• National Magazine Awards, June 1

Jobs

• Reporter/photographer, The Eastern Door in Kahnawake (deadline: May 14)
• Summer intern, Maisonneuve magazine in Montreal (deadline: May 14)
• Student summer researcher at FPJQ in Montreal (deadline: May 18)
• Videojournalists, City Montreal
• Program Director, K103 in Kahnawake (deadline: June 1)

News about news

• A coalition of journalism outlets published an open letter to Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard demanding it expand the province’s access to information law. Signatories are:
  • Quebec Press Council
  • Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec
  • Montreal Gazette
  • L’Actualité
  • Le Devoir
  • La Presse
  • Journal de Montréal
  • Journal de Québec
  • Radio-Canada
  • TVA
  • Groupe Capitales Médias
  • ICI Médias
  • Hebdos Québec
  • Huffington Post Québec
  • La Presse Canadienne
  • Cogeco Nouvelles
  • 24 Heures
• After TVA and every other French media, it looks like there might be a televised debate in English between the four main parties ahead of the provincial election in October. All four have agreed to participate, though these agreements are through scrum answers and tweets so not the most official. CBC, CTV, Global, CJAD and the Montreal Gazette form the consortium that would broadcast it.
• The Association des médias écrits communtautaires du Québec handed out its awards. The Rouyn-Noranda Indice bohémien won the award for publication of the year.
• The Prix Lizette Gervais for emerging journalists were also given out.
• The Quebec Press Council holds its annual general assembly on May 11.
• A terrorist attack in Kabul has killed nine journalists, including the AFP’s chief photographer there. A 10th journalist in Afghanistan was killed the same day in a separate attack. It’s the deadliest day for journalists in the country since 2002.
• The Denver Post has shut down its cannabis vertical The Cannabist.
• The Globe and Mail has finally brought back comments to its website, but will now restrict the ability to comment to paid subscribers. Le Devoir and The Athletic have also done this and it appears to be a very effective way to avoid trolls and increase the level of discourse.
• Village Media, which owns SooToday and other Today websites, has expanded to Bradford.
• Thursday was World Press Freedom Day. The New York Times and other publications marked the occasion by encouraging people to read and support other news outlets.
• High school students at Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation are working on a journalism pilot project with mentors from CBC Edmonton.

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News about news

• Former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown has made good on his threat to sue CTV News for the story that got him kicked out of his job. He’s focusing on something CTV got wrong — that a woman he is alleged to have given alcohol to was underage at the time.
• The Journal de Montréal summarizes the absurdity that is access to information, from both the provincial and federal governments.
• Véronique Lauzon of La Presse studies the gender breakdown of sources cited in the media. You will very much not be surprised by what she found.
• Canada has climbed four spots to 18th on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom ranking.
• RTDNA Canada has announced its annual national and network award finalists. CBC Montreal, CBC Quebec City, CTV Montreal and CJAD are among the nominees in the national awards, having won regional awards in the same categories.
• Plateau Mont-Royal borough mayor Luc Ferrandez said he would no longer speak to TVA’s Yves Poirier after Quebecor media outlets published a story about him apparently falling asleep during a city council meeting. It’s unclear how seriously we should take this apparent boycott.
• Radio-Canada is going to hold its televised Quebec leaders’ debate on Sept. 13, broadcast as well on Télé-Québec, V, and online via La Presse+, Le Devoir, HuffPost, Metro and others. TVA is hosting its own debate a week later.
• Netflix has a new series following BuzzFeed reporters.
• The Peabody Awards for news, radio and public service were announced. This American Life’s S-Town podcast is among the winners.
• Bloomberg News is reportedly putting up a paywall. Vanity Fair has also launched a metered paywall.

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News about news

• Winners of the Pulitzer Prize have been announced. Among them are stories on the #MeToo movement, the Roy Moore U.S. Senate scandal, Russian interference in the U.S. election, and Kendrick Lamar. They also include this story by the Cincinnati Enquirer, which mobilized dozens of journalists to cover one week of the heroin epidemic in the area.
• Families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Conn., are suing InfoWars’s Alex Jones for repeatedly saying they don’t exist.
• CBC Montreal is publishing stories out of a collaboration with Concordia journalism students on Montrealers’ relationships with food.
• CBC published a news story about Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, the eighth victim of Toronto alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur, translated into Tamil.
• Someone not only stole Bruce MacKinnon’s editorial cartoon about the Humboldt bus crash to sell on T-shirts, but didn’t do so as a fundraiser. The Australian website the shirts were being sold through is now donating proceeds to charity.
• The RCMP says it needs another 80 years to work on an access to information request
• SABEW Canada (Society of Business Editors and Writers) has announced its Best in Business journalism awards. Among the winners are the Globe’s telecom reporter Christine Dobby.
• Canadaland got a copy of a Toronto Sun internal memo offering editorial guidance on how to cover the Ontario provincial election. The memo says the paper is “advocating for change”. (The Toronto Sun’s parent company is the same as my employer’s). The union is not pleased.
• TVA has set Sept. 20, 8pm as the date and time for its Quebec provincial leaders’ debate. The election is Oct. 1. The two-hour debate will feature the four leaders of parties with seats in the National Assembly.

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News about news

• A case between the RCMP and Vice News reporter Ben Makuch about getting access to original source material of communications he had with an ISIS fighter will go to the Supreme Court. This despite the fact that the man Makuch interviewed has been reported dead.
• Reporters with the Toronto Star explain their frustrations with access to information laws and how they’re applied.
• Disney has offered to buy Sky News in order to make it easier for regulators in the U.K. to approve Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of the larger Sky plc network.
• The chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group says he doesn’t understand why everyone is against his company pushing “must-run” segments on its local news broadcasts across the country. Meanwhile, employees of Sinclair are confidentially opening up to Deadspin (which compiled the video of them delivering a “must-run” statement written by corporate denouncing “fake news”) about their dislike of corporate policies and how they can’t say anything about it.
• A report on local TV news shows, among other things, that local TV stations are a primary source of information for local news in many smaller markets.
• Doug Ford is not going to have a bus for media during his provincial election campaign, which is unusual for politicians but kind of expected for a Ford.
• April Fool’s Day was kind of a dud this year, with not much enthusiasm for it locally (or, say, appreciation for a handsome local blogger’s efforts). I found only two press releases on newswire.ca — one from CAA Quebec about pets being made employees, and one from Swoop, WestJet’s discount airline, charging for toilet use. The only hoax to really pique media’s attention was a statement by Jaggi Singh saying he would run for the NDP.
• J-Source and The Discourse have joined the National Newsmedia Council.
• The winners of the Concordia Student Union executive elections were all disqualified, and the runners up declared elected, because student newspaper The Link published an editorial supporting them. Seriously. That’s what happened. Apparently there’s a rule that limits communication with student media right before polling, and it was deemed a disqualifying offence even though The Link says there was no communication before its editorial was published. The CSU’s judicial board will meet Friday to discuss the issue.
• A Vice/Motherboard story about Chinese techie Naomi Wu prompted backlash from its subject even before it was published for asking her about her personal life and rumours about her on Reddit. Wu alleges she made that stuff off limits and that Vice agreed, and is mad that they reneged on their word. Vice, meanwhile, says it did not agree to avoid asking specific questions. The conflict quickly degenerated into Wu accusing Vice of publishing personal details about her (it didn’t even publish her real name) and then publishing the home address of the writer of the story, which led to social media sites suspending her accounts. This Twitter thread provides a good summary (and argument) of how ridiculous Wu’s accusations and behaviour got.

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CBC crew out in full force- photobomb courtesy of Stephen McCarthy from Valcartier fire department @stpatrick_qc pic.twitter.com/W5fBqd8FRP

— Julia Stewart-Page (@JuliaBPage) March 24, 2018

News about news

• The Canadian Association of Journalists has announced its award finalists. The Globe has 6 nominations, CBC 17, APTN 8, Ottawa Citizen 3, Maclean’s 3. Two are from Quebec:
  • Nicolas Mesly and Hugo Jolion-David of HuffPost Quebec for Quand l’agriculture tue in the online media category
  • Shrinkhala Dawadi and Julia Dick of the McGill Tribune for ‘It doesn’t matter because it didn’t happen on campus’ in the student excellence category
• A survey shows Quebecers have more trust in the media than they did a year ago
• Broadcast Dialogue’s podcast interviews Corus executive Troy Reeb, who’s in charge of news, radio and local stations. He talks frankly about the kind of stuff Global News has been doing lately — the need to rethink TV news stories (get rid of B-roll and make stories shorter), rebroadcasting TV newscasts on the radio (he says the newscasts were rewritten with that in mind), and opening new bureaus in cities they didn’t serve before (Ottawa, Kitchener, Guelph and Barrie).
• Le Devoir looks at Rad, the journalism laboratory at Radio-Canada.
• NBC is reactivating the @BreakingNews Twitter account, which has been dormant for more than a year despite having 9 million followers.
• India is not a safe place for journalists.

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News about news

• Finalists for the National Newspaper Awards have been announced. The Montreal Gazette didn’t get any nominations, and the Journal de Montréal only one, but subscription sports website The Athletic got its first nod. Winners will be announced May 4. The usual outlets led nominations:
  • Globe and Mail: 18
  • Toronto Star: 12
  • La Presse: 8
  • Edmonton Journal: 3
  • Winnipeg Free Press: 3
• Google is putting $300 million into supporting quality journalism. Among the things it plans to do is make it easier for people to subscribe to paid journalism outlets. The blog post explaining the Google News Initiative is here, and there’s a website here.
• Radio-Canada Enquête host Marie-Maude Denis will be asked to testify about her sources in the trial of Marc-Yvan Côté and former Liberal cabinet minister Nathalie Normandeau, though a judge has limited what she can be asked about. Radio-Canada is appealing the ruling as a blatant violation of the public’s trust in journalism.
• Maclean’s has a new politics newsletter.
• A BuzzFeed investigation has shown that a PR firm is paying pundits to write opinions for conservative publications in order to sway public (and political) opinion, and those writers are failing to disclose the financial link.
• Bloc Québécois leader Martine Ouellet is threatening political commentators with libel suits.

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News about news

• Radio-Canada journalist Antoine Trépanier was arrested on Tuesday after sending an interview request to a source for a story. The source had agreed to an interview, then changed her mind at the last minute. He reiterated the request the next day in an email, leading to the source filing a criminal harassment complaint. The FPJQ understandably wants an explanation from Gatineau police, which released this statement. The source, a woman who is allegedly acting as a lawyer but is not licensed as one, says she’ll give her side on Monday. In the meantime, this story exposes how easy it is to get someone arrested by a police department that doesn’t want to bother investigating such minor cases. And that’s besides the whole constitutional issue.
• The Toronto Star finally won a two-year battle with Toronto police to get them to admit that they used IMSI catchers — devices that spy on cellphones — during investigations. The story highlights flaws in access to information laws.
• The Mercier hyperlocal news website Pamplemousse might not be so dead after all. They’re going to try a crowdfunding campaign to save it before they pull the plug.
• National Geographic admits it spent decades looking at the world through racist eyes, and is hoping to rectify that problem.
• ProPublica issued a long correction/mea culpa after incorrectly saying the woman who has since been named the new head of central intelligence in the United States had overseen waterboarding of infamous Al Qaida suspect Abu Zubaydah.
• The Canadian Press has corrected its stylebook after errors related to terminology of Inuit people were discovered.
• The Canadian Psychiatric Association has released new guidelines on reporting on suicide. The organization recommends stressing ways to get help and emphasizing that suicide is not the answer.
• RTDNA Canada has announced its regional award nominations: West (B.C./Yukon), Prairie (Alberta/Saskatchewan/Manitoba/N.W.T.), Central (Ontario/Quebec) and East (New Brunswick/P.E.I./Nova Scotia/Newfoundland and Labrador/Nunavut). Central Region finalists from Quebec, who will find out April 14 if they win, are:
  • CBC Montreal: 22 nominations (12 digital, 1 multiplatform, 7 radio, 2 TV)
  • CBC Quebec City: 4 nominations (1 digital, 3 radio)
  • CTV Montreal: 3 nominations (1 digital, 2 TV)
  • Global Montreal: 3 nominations (1 digital, 2 TV)
  • CJAD: 3 nominations (3 radio, including one shared with CHOM)
  • HuffPost Quebec: 1 nomination (digital)
• The family of former Democratic Party staffer Seth Rich is suing Fox News for peddling a conspiracy theory about his death. Rich’s 2016 shooting death is a common element in conspiracy theories tying all the world’s evils to the Clinton family somehow. But people peddling those theories either don’t know or don’t care what impact that has on Rich’s family.
• Reuters, whose parent company has sold off the business terminal business that made it rich, now has a guaranteed $325 million a year income for 30 years. Recode says it needs to figure out what it’s going to do with that $10 billion.
• Nearly 200 journalists in Italy are under some form of police protection because of right wing threats against them.

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