News about news

• NDP MP Romeo Saganash has apologized after plagiarizing parts of a Globe and Mail opinion piece attributed to himself. The piece now includes an editor’s note at the end, and has been modified to add attribution.
• CBC did a live interview with right-wing troll Gavin McInnes and people lost their minds. There was an apology of sorts on Thursday’s show.
• The Canadian Press has pushed through two style changes related to capitalization: Making Indigenous and Aboriginal uppercase in all uses (effectively treating them the same way as national descriptors like English and French), and making internet a lowercase common noun. Expect most Canadian journalism institutions that rely on CP style to follow suit (Postmedia has already done so).

At the CRTC

• After receiving an application for an ethnic AM radio station, the CRTC has determined that the Ottawa-Gatineau market is not healthy enough to support another commercial radio station, and has returned that application. It’ll be two years until the commission will consider another attempt at a commercial station.
• It’s licence renewal time for radio stations. Decisions giving full seven-year licence renewals for stations owned by Bell Media, Pattison, and some smaller independents.

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News about news

• Caroline Locher (who, full disclosure, I went to journalism school with) is stepping down as general manager of the FPJQ as of Sept. 1 for another job. The notice for a replacement has been posted, with a deadline of July 20.
• So there was a float during the Fête nationale parade on Saturday that accidentally looked hella racist. The group behind it said it was all a misunderstanding before eventually apologizing. This sparked plenty of hot takes by white people: Mario Girard and Étienne Côté-Paluck in La Presse, Lise Ravary and Richard Martineau in the Journal de Montréal, Philippe Labrecque at HuffPost Québec and Simon Jodoin at Voir, among others. Fortunately some clued in that asking black people about this might be a better idea, so we got more informed opinions from La Presse (Ricardo Lamour), Le Devoir (Myrlande Pierre) and Vice (Gabriella Kinté).
• Three CNN journalists have resigned from the company after an insufficiently sourced article linking a Trump confidant to Russia was published without being properly vetted.
• ABC has settled a lawsuit with a South Dakota meat producer after saying it used “pink slime”. ABC admits no wrongdoing.
• Sarah Palin is suing the New York Times over an editorial that blamed her for the shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in 2011.

At the CRTC

• Peter Menzies, vice-chair telecommunications, is stepping down on July 15, a year before the end of his mandate. This departure leaves only four permanent commissioners when there can be up to 13. Five positions — and all three senior positions — are listed as vacant (one of which, the chairperson, is being temporarily filled by Judith LaRocque, and another is in dispute as Raj Shoan continues his legal battles). The federal government needs to get moving on replacements.
• A notice of hearing for Sept. 7. Besides the radio compliance issues are other applications:
  • An application by CIHW-FM Wendake to upgrade from a 50-watt low-power station to a 400-watt regular-power station. The increase in power would allow the station to be received in nearby Quebec City, to serve the indigenous population living closer to the provincial capital.
  • An application by Stingray for new licences for Stingray Juicebox, Stingray Loud, Stingray Retro and Stingray Vibe. These music video channels that Stingray bought from Bell Media had their licences revoked because they had fewer than 200,000 subscribers and so qualified for an exemption from licensing. Stingray says all four now have had more than 210,000 subscribers for three consecutive months, being distributed by Rogers, Shaw Cable, Eastlink, Telus, Sasktel, Cogeco, Zazeen and others.
  • An application by Vintage TV Canada for a discretionary service licence. Similar to Stingray, this is an existing channel that no longer qualifies for an exemption because of the growth in subscriber numbers.
  • An application for the sale of CJUI-FM Kelowna, B.C. (103.9 Juice FM), from Vista Radio to Avenue Radio, for $650,000.
  • An application by CKRW in Whitehorse to replace its main AM transmitter with an FM one. (It currently has temporary authority to use its FM transmitter as its main.) The new transmitter in Whitehorse would have a power of 4,400 watts.
• The commission has agreed with a request from RNC Media’s CHLX-FM Gatineau (WOW 97,1) to remove a licence requirement that 20% of its music be jazz. The CRTC found that the station met the requirement, continued to lose money, and that deleting the requirement would not unduly impact other stations in the market, and so approved the request. The station was first licensed in 2001 as a classical music station, and in 2008 it got the CRTC to remove most of its specialty music obligations, leaving only the 20% jazz requirement, as it shifted to an adult contemporary format.
• CKLX-FM Montreal (91.9 Sports) as well as CKXO-FM in Chibougamau have had their licences renewed for a full seven years until 2024.
• AM-to-FM conversions approved in Norman Wells, NWT (CBC Radio One) and Mount Pearl, N.L. (VOAR)

TV

City Montreal softball team

• Members of City Montreal and Breakfast Television, including Elias Makos and Derick Fage, took part in a charity softball game on Tuesday against (but in support of) the McGill Memory Clinic and Jewish General Hospital. The TV team lost 11-2, which they consider better than CBC’s 25-10 loss a week earlier.
• Like Shaw and Rogers before it, Bell has made cuts at its community channels in large markets to redirect that money to local commercial television stations, per the new CRTC policy. This includes about 20 staff at TV1 in Montreal. I asked Bell to confirm the cuts, and their response was this: “Our ability to now redistribute funds in support of local news presents the opportunity to ensure that our communities continue to receive coverage of the issues that matter most to them. We don’t discuss actual staffing numbers, but there has been some restructuring within Bell TV 1.”
• Forgot to mention this last week: The nominations for the Prix Gémeaux, Quebec’s television awards, were announced. One of the biggest hits of the year, the daily drama District 31, hasn’t been nominated, because it is the only eligible series in its category, and the rules therefore exclude it. This goes back to the feud between the Gémeaux and producers (Fabienne Larouche and Julie Snyder in particular) that was settled when the Gémeaux split its drama categories into “daily”, “annual” and “seasonal” categories based on the number of episodes a year.
• The Netflix series Sense8 has been uncancelled long enough for a two-hour finale after overwhelming pressure from the audience.
• Rupert Murdoch’s proposed $20 billion takeover of Sky has become a political issue in the U.K.

Radio

• CBC Radio has cancelled the program The 180, hosted by Jim Brown.
• CBC Radio is introducing a new show and podcast, called Seat at the Table, hosted by Montrealers Martine St-Victor and Isabelle Racicot, starting Saturday at 10am. Bill Brownstein has a profile in the Montreal Gazette.

Print

• The Toronto Star has killed Star Touch, its tablet app based on the La Presse+ platform, and issued 30 layoff notices. The app will be replaced by a universal tablet/smartphone app after its final edition on July 31. Not only is this bad news for the Star after spending tens of millions of dollars on this project, but it’s bad for La Presse, which sold the platform to the Star and hoped to sell it to others down the road. La Presse+ is still successful, but with one spectacular failure and no other successes, it’ll be very difficult to sell this plan to other publishers in the future.
• Canadaland has investigated and found that Rogers is not paying back the Canadian government for subsidies it got for printing magazines it no longer prints. Both the government and Rogers seem to say that Rogers still met its requirements under the program, but it’s unclear how that makes sense.
• The New York Times is battling with its own copy editors over cuts to the copy desk. The copy editors argue the paper has turned its back on them, wanting to cut their head count in half (as I sit here imagining being outraged at a copy editing desk of only 55 people). The Times responded by saying it has far more editors per story or reporter than its competitors and that it has no intention of eliminating copy editing. That didn’t stop a walkout by employees in protest.

Online

• Facebook is eliminating the ability to edit headlines and photos when sharing links, after this ability was abused by people promoting fake news. (Generally, I only used this when an encoding issue caused curly apostrophes to appear as a jumble of code.)
• The Conversation, a website devoted to bringing journalists and academics together to make academic research more digestible, has begun a Canadian spinoff. They also want to have a French version.

News about people

He's still making us laugh! @SportsStache finds a stack of 80's era headshots in his desk and signs 'em on request! XO back atcha my friend. pic.twitter.com/goXtakrdu5

— Cindy Sherwin (@SherwinCindy514) June 26, 2017

• Beryl Wajsman continues to milk as much free publicity as possible for his Westmount mayoral run, with an apparent official announcement this week.
• In case you hadn’t heard, because he wants to be low-key about it you see, Peter Mansbridge is retiring from The National this week. His final broadcast will be the Canada Day special. The CBC honoured him by renaming the atrium at the entrance to the CBC building in Toronto as Mansbridge Hall.
• A bit of a shuffle at Rythme FM: Jean-Philippe Dion becomes Mitsou’s new co-host at lunchtime, replacing Sébastien Benoit, who moves to the afternoon drive show with Marie-Soleil Michon.
• Cindy Pom is leaving Global News to pursue a master’s degree in Paris.
• Greta Van Susteren has been let go as a host at MSNBC, less than six months after starting there.

Obituaries

• Alain Bouchard, 70, former Le Soleil journalist
• Marion Goldin, 76, producer at 60 Minutes

Jobs

• Videojournalist, CityNews Montreal
• Senior Reporter for Global News in Ottawa
• Associate Producer, VICE du jour in Montreal
• Digital journalist, CBC Quebec City (deadline: July 1)
• Business reporter, Canadian Press in Toronto (deadline: July 17)
• General manager, FPJQ (deadline: July 20)
• On-Air Host, CHOM 97.7 (deadline: July 28)

News about news

• The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage has issued its report into the funding of Canadian media. The report includes some common-sense things like fairness in tax treatment for online publications and tighter controls on competition, but also a bunch of we-should-study-this-more kicking of the can.
• The London Free Press won the Michener Award for public service journalism.
• The Wall Street Journal fired chief foreign affairs correspondent Jay Solomon after learning he was using his position to engage in business dealings with sources. It’s a story that sounds similar to one in Canada that also involved a guy named Solomon.
• The L.A. Times got burned when a bot it set up to tweet (and even write short stories about) seismic activities posted a story about an earthquake that happened in 1925.
• The department of Canadian Heritage has appointed a committee to oversee appointments to the CBC board of directors. The committee includes Tom Clark, former host of The West Block on Global, and actor Colm Feore.

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News about news

https://twitter.com/laurenstrapa/status/872981955998097409

• Robyn Doolittle, the Globe and Mail reporter who spent a year and a half researching how police departments across the country investigate reports of sexual assault, followed up her big reveal by filing freedom of information requests to police departments to find out how they communicated to each other about their communications with her. The resulting story shows that police were annoyed by her inquiries and worked together to try to resist answering her questions because they were unflattering.
• Antiquated ideas of how female journalists do their job have surfaced again. For the second time, the Chamberland inquiry into police spying on journalists has revealed that a department suspected an officer of sleeping with a female journalist and leaking her information. Last time, it was a Laval police officer with 98.5 FM’s Monic Néron. This time, it’s an SQ officer and Radio-Canada’s Marie-Maude Denis. Funny how it’s never a female officer accused of sleeping with Félix Séguin or Stéphane Giroux, huh?
• Megyn Kelly continues to make a big splash on her new show on NBC, and this week is interviewing conspiracy theorist and grunter Alex Jones of InfoWars. News of the interview prompted a lot of discussion, some defending the interview as a way to shine light on a man with a large following, others arguing that he shouldn’t be given a platform to spew insane and hurtful things like that the Sandy Hook shooting was faked.
• A U.S. Senate move to block reporters from filming interviews in hallways has apparently been rolled back after criticism.

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News about news

La Presse story protects identity of Liberal source who says Liberals believe in freedom of the press. pic.twitter.com/XGXbrHPT88

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) June 8, 2017

• La Presse reports the federal Liberal government will support an amended version of a Senate bill that gives some protections to journalists’ sources. The amendments appear to be designed to prevent journalists from claiming this protection to protect themselves in cases where they are under investigation for a crime. It’s unclear if other issues (like the lack of protection for non-professional journalists) will be dealt with.
• Journalists are still having trouble recording public meetings of municipal councils.
• News came out that Laval police investigated a leak to a journalist. Which isn’t that unusual. The police officer confessed, which is a bit. But when it was revealed that his superior accused him of sleeping with a reporter, people were not pleased. The reporter in question certainly one of them. Criticism of the situation got to the point where the court issued a rare statement criticizing the media.
• A Montana Congressman has apologized and donated $50,000 to charity after bodyslamming a Guardian reporter during the special election campaign.
• Journalists’ eyes are on a South Dakota legal case in which a meat producer is suing ABC News for basically using the term “pink slime” to describe what it puts into its meat.
• That Barack Obama speech in Montreal got a lot of attention in Canadian media, but far fewer in other countries, particularly the U.S. On CNN, there was no mention of it live. Instead, journalists talked about Donald Trump’s use of Twitter.
• The federal government’s failure to nominate board members at the CBC means that by the end of the month the corporation will barely make quorum for its meetings.
• Research has unsurprisingly shown that Facebook is a more popular source of news among young people than print newspapers.

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News about news

• RTDNA Canada announced the winners of its national and network awards. Of the 75 awards (a bit much, don’t you think?), CBC Montreal won two digital awards and a radio award, CBC Quebec won a radio award, and other local broadcasters were shut out.
• The New York Times is axing the job of public editor, finding that its other methods of attracting feedback from readers are more effective.
• The Denver Post is no longer employing a sports reporter after he made a tweet that was a bit too honest about his feelings after a Japanese man won the Indianapolis 500.

At the CRTC

Demande soumis au #CRTC pour autoriser la distribution de Canal+ International (France) au Canada. Voici la grille horaire. pic.twitter.com/3ntOqgQk3h

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) May 29, 2017

• An application has been filed to allow France’s Canal+ International to be distributed in Canada, including signature shows like Le Petit Journal. No word on what distributors might be interested. The last time Canal+ came here was with a deal with video website DailyMotion that eventually died.
• Newcap says it has received CRTC approval to sell radio station CISL 650 AM Vancouver to Rogers, which will use it to launch a Sportsnet station there. No price is listed, and the CRTC has not yet posted the application or approval to its website.
• The commission is advising those whose radio broadcast licences expire in 2018 to submit their renewals by the end of summer. That includes TTP Media’s CFNV 940 AM in Montreal, which still isn’t producing regular programming. The 600 AM station has exactly one month from today to launch.
• Chairperson Jean-Pierre Blais wrote an open letter to those criticizing the commission’s recent television licence renewals, particularly the decision to eliminate a special licence condition for Corus’s Séries+ channel that requires a certain amount of spending on original French-language programming.

TV

• The Ottawa Senators’ Game 7 against Pittsburgh became the most watched NHL broadcast of the year, with 4.29 million viewers in English. At the peak of the second overtime, there were 4.71 million watching in English and 1.2 million watching in French.
• TSN and RDS have renewed their agreement as official broadcasters of Canada’s national soccer teams.
• Bell Media has announced CTV’s U.S. acquisitions for 2017-18, which continue to show that sequels, reboots and spinoffs are a driving force behind television series.

Print

• The National Magazine Awards were handed out Friday. The list of winners is here. The NMAs are being boycotted by major publishers like Rogers and TVA Publications, who have gravitated toward a new competitor, the Canadian Magazine Awards. But many freelancers for those publications submitted for awards anyway, and in some cases won.
• Dave Bidini is starting a new newspaper in west-end Toronto called the West End Phoenix, supported largely by donations.
• The Toronto Star has decided that, for mainly political reasons, it will begin using uppercase letters on the words “indigenous” and “black” (the latter when dealing with the people and culture, naturally). The Canadian Press, whose style guide is used by most publications in Canada, still uses lowercase letters in these contexts.
• La Presse has lost a case against its union in arbitration, and will have to bring back 26 employees it laid off.

Online

• Videotron, which has been ordered by the CRTC to cease offering its “Unlimited Music” plan because it discriminates based on types of data, has asked the commission to give it some leeway related to existing customers, at least until the end of their current contracts, because it doesn’t want to unilaterally take that bonus away from them. The CRTC has begun an expedited process to reach a decision on that well enough before the July 19 deadline that subscribers can be informed.

Other

• Bell has renamed the MTS Centre, home of the Winnipeg Jets, as Bell MTS Place.

News about people

• With Mutsumi Takahashi getting a lifetime achievement award from RTDNA Canada, Bill Brownstein profiles the normally very private CTV Montreal anchor for a story in the Gazette. Takahashi also got a special video from her former co-anchor Bill Haugland (who never gets up from the desk in that video so you know he ain’t wearing pants)
• Mary-Jo Barr, who was once the news director at CBC Montreal, has a new job as Christine Mota’s replacement at the head of media relations at Concordia University.
• Some staff changes at La Presse:
  • Hugo Pilon-Larose moves from culture reporting to Quebec’s National Assembly
  • Gabriel Béland is now a general assignment reporter
  • Marie-Eve Morasse is covering education
• Scott Oake, reporter for Hockey Night in Canada, speaks to the Winnipeg Free Press about his son Bruce and the institute being set up in his memory.
• Catherine Verdon-Diamond had a bad experience at a restaurant and wrote about it on Facebook. Eater Montreal wrote it up, and mainly takes her side.
• Sue Montgomery, former justice reporter for the Montreal Gazette, is considering another run at politics, this time for a borough mayor job with Projet Montréal. An announcement is scheduled for tomorrow. Montgomery will need to fight for the party’s nomination. She tried a run with the NDP in the 2015 federal election, but lost that nomination battle.
• Brennan Neill is taking a job as afternoon assignment editor at CBC Montreal.
• Scott Pelley is being pushed out of the anchor chair at CBS Evening News. He will continue with 60 Minutes.
• CNN has dropped Kathy Griffin from their annual New Year’s Eve show after she was photographed with a fake severed Donald Trump head. (She apologized.)
• Megyn Kelly is back on the air starting this Sunday, now with NBC.
• Elliotte Friedman opens up about that time he screwed up calling a swimming race during the Rio Olympics.

Good reads

• The depressing economics of the book industry in Quebec, by Pierre-Yves McSween

Obituaries

• Frank Deford, sportswriter

Jobs

• La Presse diversity bursaries and internships (deadline: June 9)
• Digital journalism instructor at Concordia University (deadline: June 19)

News about news

• A gang trial in B.C. heard testimony about a plot to kill a journalist (which was called off because it would have attracted too much police attention). The testimony was covered by the journalist in question.
• A judge in Alberta has found CBC not guilty of contempt of court after deciding that allowing stories published before a publication ban to still be accessed does not violate that publication ban. The easy availability of archive material is one of many issues that complicate publication bans in the age of the Internet.
• Vice Canada is trying to get the Supreme Court to weigh in on the idea of journalist source protection by appealing a case involving journalist Ben Makush, which it has lost at lower levels.
• Radio-Canada has launched a journalist training centre in Regina.
• Projet J, the francophone equivalent to J-Source, is shutting down for lack of funding.

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News about news

• Quebec Liberal minister Rita de Santis has apologized after holding a press conference for anglophone media only. A Presse Canadienne reporter had to pretend to be writing for The Canadian Press in order to get in. The issue was the redrawing of Quebec’s electoral districts, which became a scandal in the anglophone community because it merged Mount Royal with neighbouring Outremont.
• A freelance journalist working for Global News and a Global cameraman were arrested in Hamilton for obstructing an investigation into a collision that killed a 10-year-old girl. It’s unclear how the journalists may have been obstructing the police, but Global News is seeking answers. Hamilton Police says it is reviewing the incident.
• CBC has announced a project for mass digitization of more than 1 million media assets (physical audio and video recordings) in French and English. The move is being done now in part because of the upcoming move of the Maison Radio-Canada in Montreal. Le Devoir speaks to the broadcaster about the project.

At the CRTC

• The commission issued its licence renewal decisions on Monday for the big private TV broadcasters — TVA, V, Bell Media, Rogers Media and Corus. The headline is that OMNI will get what it wants: nationwide mandatory distribution at $0.12 per subscriber. But only for three years, as the CRTC offers the chance for others to offer something better. I’ll have more highlights from the decisions in another post.

TV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy9sKeCE8V0

• I have not looked forward to a new TV series as much as I have this one. It’s like if Galaxy Quest was turned into a TV show.
• Bell has announced Alt TV, which is basically Bell Fibe TV only without a set-top box and far fewer features at a slightly reduced price. Available only to Fibe Internet customers in Quebec and Ontario for the moment.
• The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council found that TSN should have done a better job preventing swear words captured during a CFL game from being broadcast on air, during the day without any viewer advisory. The decision notes the difficulty of censoring live broadcasts, but “the language could and should have been anticipated, there appears to have been no attempt to discourage such language, and there were not consistent acknowledgments and repudiations of the language by hosts or other announcers.”
• ABC is bringing back Roseanne for eight episodes. On one hand, TV could use a show like Roseanne, with good comedy about working-class life. On the other hand, it’s yet another 90s nostalgia play.
• Mohawk Girls is shooting its final season in Kahnawake and looking for extras from the community.
• The Handmaid’s Tale, the Hulu adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel, has become Bravo’s most popular series ever.
• The U.S. rights to the Canadian drama Cardinal have been sold to Hulu.
• Conan O’Brien has extended his deal with TBS another four years through 2022. He’s also expanding his show’s brand to include other media like podcasting.
• Beth Mowins will be calling a National Football League game on ESPN on Sept. 11. This is noteworthy because Mowins is a woman, and women calling games in professional sports is incredibly rare for some reason.

Radio

• TSN 690 has renewed its broadcasting rights agreement with the Montreal Alouettes for a “multi-year” deal (apparently three years). Negotiations were probably helped by the fact that there isn’t a competitor to Bell Media at the moment that would broadcast Alouettes games.
• Montreal writer Ian Howarth has a book coming out about the golden years of Montreal music radio: CFOX, CKGM and CFCF in the 1960s and 70s. Bill Brownstein writes about it in the Gazette. The book includes many interviews with personalities from those days who are surprisingly still around. (I got an advance copy so I could write a short quote for the back cover.) It launches Thursday evening.
• CBC has launched its station in London, Ont., and announced its broadcast team. The station has a local morning show and will be the home station of the regional afternoon show.
• Newcap Radio is buying NL Broadcasting, owner of three radio stations in Kamloops, B.C.
• CFGL-FM 105.7 in Montreal is now broadcasting in HD Radio. So far it’s just the station’s regular signal on an HD channel. Presumably owner Cogeco will simulcast CKAC 730 AM on a subchannel in the near future.

Print

• Transcontinental has sold its first newspaper as part of a process announced last month. The Journal de Chambly has been sold for an undisclosed price to Les Versants du Mont-Bruno Inc., which owns Les Versants, Le Journal de Saint-Bruno and Le Journal de Saint-Basile. The sale takes effect immediately. TC has also added a page to its website where it will keep a list of its newspaper sales.
• Le Devoir lost $300,000 in 2016, but is pretty optimistic about the future. Nevertheless, it’s passing the hat looking for donations.
• Meanwhile, Le Devoir announced its entire newspaper collection until 2009 has been digitized, available free on the BANQ website.
• Workers at the Winnipeg Free Press have agreed to an eight per cent pay cut if the paper doesn’t make enough of a profit. In exchange, the paper has agreed not to lay anyone off until 2019.
• Jonathan Kay has resigned as editor-in-chief of The Walrus. He explains here.
• Postmedia has added former Ontario finance minister Janet Ecker to its board.
• The Chicago Sun-Times ran a front-page ad announcing it’s for sale. The ad is required (though not on the front page) in order to push through a takeover from rival Chicago Tribune.

Online

• Apple and Amazon have buried the hatchet, allowing Apple TV devices to stream Amazon content in exchange for Amazon allowing Apple TV devices to be sold.

News about people

• François Bugingo, the freelance journalist who disappeared from public life after a La Presse investigation showed he made up several stories, will give his first interview since then, June 2 on Télé-Québec’s new talk show Y’a du monde à la messe.

Good reads

• A statistical analysis of the repetitiveness of song lyrics based on how much they compress using the Lempel-Ziv algorithm.

Jobs

• General assignment reporter at Yukon News (deadline: May 19)
• La Presse diversity bursaries and internships (deadline: June 9)

Upcoming events

• May 20: Canadaland in Montreal

News about news

• It was election day in British Columbia yesterday, and not only did the results come far too late for eastern Canadian newspapers or late-night newscasts to include, but the results were so close that we still don’t know for sure what the resulting government will look like. CTV eventually called a minority government at 1:30am (10:30pm PT), and The Canadian Press did as well once all the polls reported. But if the B.C. Liberals hold their 43 seats and a recount goes in its favour in Courtenay-Comox, where the NDP won by nine votes, Premier Christy Clark would just barely get her majority in the legislature. Either way, B.C. politics will get very interesting over the coming weeks.
• The National Newspaper Awards were given out on the weekend. The Globe and Mail was the big winner, taking half the categories. The Toronto Star won two awards, and no other newspaper took more than one.
• The RCMP is looking at generalizing a policy that would offer journalists more protections in criminal investigations.

At the CRTC

• The Raj Shoan drama continues. After winning a legal challenge to the government’s decision to fire him based on a report that he successfully challenged in court, Shoan was summarily fired again in what can only be described as an obvious case of bad faith. Naturally, he plans to take the matter to court again.
• Flooding in the Ottawa River has forced government offices in Gatineau to close, and that includes the CRTC. As a result, major decisions expected this week on TV licence renewals for the big media companies, and the request by Rogers to make OMNI into a mandatory pay TV service, will be pushed to next week.
• The CRTC has approved a change to APTN’s licence that allows the network’s HD feed a little more scheduling freedom compared to the three SD feeds (East, West and North). They will have the same programs, but be able to schedule them differently.
• A university professor created a pretty useful guide for beginners on how to participate in CRTC proceedings.

TV

• The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council was deadlocked on whether this TV ad for CHUM-FM in Toronto violated its codes. Half thought it was unacceptably dehumanizing, while the other half thought it was okay because it was a woman doing it to a man. Because ties go to the defence, there is no sanction.
• A major deal in the U.S. with Sinclair Broadcast Group buying Tribune Media for $3.9 billion, creating a major player in local television stations. Tribune’s stations include Chicago’s WGN, L.A.’s KTLA and New York’s WPIX, while Sinclair has more than 150 stations. Tribune’s print assets were previously spun off into the ridiculously-named Tronc.
• ABC is reviving American Idol (already?)
• Israel shut down its public broadcaster with very little notice. The plan is to create a new one, which has critics wondering if the new one will be as independent of the political machine.
• Groupe TVA released its quarterly financial report. It’s bad news overall, but some better numbers for TVA Sports, which saw its net loss cut by a third thanks to 16% more ad revenue. The Canadiens making the playoffs will help in the current quarter, which started April 1.
• Hugo Dumas writes that the guerre des réseaux is heating up again, with shows on Radio-Canada and V having difficulty getting TVA personalities to appear.
• La Voix ended its fifth season on Sunday. Brendan Kelly explains its appeal to anglophones. Similarly, the Ryerson Review of Journalism has a piece explaining Tout le monde en parle.
• Télé-Québec’s Les Appendices won’t come back for a 10th season, but there will be two specials, including and end-of-year one.
• Orphan Black returns for its final season on June 10.
• The Amazing Race Canada returns July 4. Other summer CTV schedule announcements here.

Radio

• FYI Music News speaks with Rob Farina about iHeartRadio Canada, which he insists is open for non-Bell stations to join, and future plans for the platform, including a pay version that allows saving songs.
• Radio station CHIN in Toronto has gotten CRTC approval to transform its FM retransmitter into its own FM station with partially distinct programming.
• Rogers is hiring for its new Sportsnet station in Vancouver.

Print

• Le Devoir has digitized its entire archive up to 2009. The collection is available for free from the Bibliothèque et archives nationales du Québec.
• Cult MTL released the results of its annual shameless popularity contest, the Best of Montreal readers’ poll. I’m listed #5 in Best Twitter. Evelyne Brochu is listed in the Hottest Woman (#1), Best-Dressed Montrealer (#1), Best Icon (#10), Best Twitter (#1), Best TV Personality (#3), Best Instagram (#1) and of course Best Actress (#1). The media results are here. Among them:
  • Best Radio Station: CKUT, CHOM, CJLO, CBC, CISM
  • Best Radio Host: Nick Schofield (CKUT), Terry DiMonte (CHOM), Mitch Melnick (TSN 690), Mike Finnerty (CBC), Paul Arcand (98.5)
  • Best TV Station: CTV, CBC, RadCan, Télé-Québec, RDS
  • Best Newscaster: Mutsumi Takahashi, Céline Galipeau, Pierre Bruneau, Paul Karwatsky, Debra Arbec
  • Best Newspaper: Cult MTL, Montreal Gazette, Le Devoir, La Presse, Métro
  • Best Website: Cult MTL, MTL Blog, Reddit Montreal, Urbania, YULorama
  • Best Podcast: Mike Ward Sous Écoute, 3 Bières, Cadeau & Janco Wednesdays @ Lunch, Go Plug Yourself, La soirée est (encore) jeune
• BlogTO checked out what the old Globe and Mail building looks like as it’s being demolished.
• Bell Mobility has a new offer giving access to PressReader and most major newspapers for $10 a month.
• Le Devoir gave awards to student journalists

Online

• InfoPresse speaks with La Presse’s new president, who says that they’re working on a new smartphone app that might be more engaging than what they currently offer, which may (or may not) offer a La Presse+ like experience on smartphones.
• Greg Brady and Caroline Cameron of Sportsnet have created a new podcast called Point Taken. It launches today.

Other

• DHX Media (which owns Family Channel) is buying an 80% stake in the Peanuts brand, prompting at least one headline about Charlie Brown moving to Canada.
• The Grammy Awards are moving to New York City thanks to a deal with the government there.

News about people

.@TorontoStar says I can't be a columnist and an activist at the same time, so I'm giving up my column. https://t.co/keGJlESd8L

— Negro Frolics (@DesmondCole) May 4, 2017

• Desmond Cole decided to become a martyr for freedom of speech and is giving up his Toronto Star column after being told it’s generally not okay for newspaper columnists to engage in disruptive activism. The Star’s public editor agrees, which prompted accusations of the paper setting a double standard because of liberal racism.
• Sean Craig, who covers media for the National/Financial Post, is leaving to join Global News
• Iain MacIntyre’s goodbye column in the Vancouver Sun
• Scott Mitchell, formerly of the Toronto Sun, has been hired by TSN to do baseball reporting
• Rebecca Makonnen gets a profile in Le Devoir

Good reads

• Pierre Trudel on how an access to information request was denied because the documents couldn’t fit on a USB key.
• La Presse explores the Canadian podcast scene, talking with producers of Canadaland and Mike Ward sous écoute, among others
• The New York Times on YouTube creators’ growing frustrations with declines in ad revenue after the company made changes to how it distributes ads.

Jobs

• Digital Editor, Montreal Gazette (deadline: May 11)
• Journalist at CJSO-FM in Sorel-Tracy (deadline: May 12)
• General assignment reporter at Yukon News (deadline: May 19)
• La Presse diversity bursaries and internships (deadline: June 9)

Upcoming events

• May 20: Canadaland in Montreal

Happy World Press Freedom Day!

News about news

• Nominees for the Michener Award were announced Monday. The award, for public service journalism, is probably the most prestigious in Canadian journalism because (1) only one is given out a year, and (2) it’s given out by the governor-general at a fancy ceremony. The finalists are:
  • CBC/Radio-Canada and Toronto Star for the Panama Papers investigation
  • The Globe and Mail for reporting on real estate practices in British Columbia
  • The London Free Press for a two-year investigation into a man’s death
  • The National Observer for investigations into the National Energy Board that resulted in a panel resigning after meeting with Jean Charest
  • La Presse for reporting into video lottery terminals
  • The Toronto Star for reporting on Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit
• CBC Radio’s The Sunday Edition retracted a documentary it aired on Sunday about an ex-convict making good after they learned she downplayed her criminal past (and they didn’t double-check it)
• The Journal de Montréal lost in court, failing to convince a judge to quash an order allowing police to seize a reporter’s laptop. They plan to appeal.
• Journalists at the Boston Herald are pissed after a reporter was suspended for tweeting a scoop without management approval.
• There’s some disagreement over whether Pierre Karl Péladeau’s visit to his company’s National Assembly bureau is to encourage them to be more aggressive against the government he used to oppose as PQ leader, or simply following a tradition of a boss personally meeting his employees. Regardless of spin, it’s clear that a former political party leader running a large news media company makes things awkward. Quebecor’s beefing up of its National Assembly bureau could be seen as a great investment, or a way for Péladeau to help the party he used to lead by increasing the number of embarrassing stories about the government. And the Liberals are not-so-subtly pushing that idea.

At the CRTC

• He’s baaack! After he won a court challenge to the government’s decision to fire him as a CRTC commissioner (which was itself partly based on a report that was also overturned by a judge), Raj Shoan is once again listed on the CRTC website as the commissioner for Ontario. To say things will be awkward between him and chairperson Jean-Pierre Blais is an understatement, but presumably both will attempt to be professional about it. The judge’s decision wasn’t a complete victory for Shoan, and some of his actions (like meeting with groups that have business before the CRTC) are “troubling”, so another review could still find cause for his dismissal. Or maybe Blais just minimizes his involvement (the chairperson decides who sits on any panels, and Blais did not choose Shoan for anything important) until his term is up next year. (Assuming Blais is re-appointed — his own term ends sooner.)
• CBC Quebec held its biannual public consultation on Tuesday. The video is here if you want to watch it.
• The commission has approved the privatization of Sirius XM Canada. The biggest issue for the commission was determining whether the transaction, which would see the CBC sell its shares and three groups (including Sirius XM U.S.) have minority stakes in the company, is considered a change in effective control. The CRTC determined that yes, it is, which means a 6% tax on the value of the transaction to fund Canadian content development. That works out to $29 million, to be paid out over seven years.
• CBC/Radio-Canada has asked the CRTC for permission to move its Radio One and ICI Première transmitters in Timmins, Ont., from a tower north of the city to its old TV tower much closer. It would be able to cover the same area better by using a higher antenna at lower power.
• The commission said no to a proposal by Vista Radio to change the licence for CJLT-FM in Medicine Hat, Alta., so it could move from its Christian music programming to more mainstream indie/alternative music. The commission found that the change would have an undue financial impact on existing stations in the market.

TV

• Global Montreal is pushing something it’s calling Greater Montreal Day on May 11, promoting acts of kindness. This is modelled after a similar thing that Global Toronto did.
• The major vertically integrated companies have started redirecting money from community television channels in major cities to over-the-air local TV stations, now that the CRTC has given them the power to do so. Shaw TV will close in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton to divert money to Corus’s Global TV stations, and Rogers is doing the same with Mississauga, Richmond Hill, Toronto, and Brampton, Ont., redirecting funds to City TV. Other Rogers TV stations will also see cuts.
• The Writers Guild of America has reached a deal with studios to avert a writers’ strike that would have made TV and movies even more awful.
• CTV has greenlit a new Canadian detective series called The Detail. The series will also air on the Ion network in the U.S., the over-the-air network known for mostly running reruns of shows from better networks.
• Bell’s food channel Gusto has announced three new Canadian series.
• City has announced a bunch of awful-sounding reality shows being added to its schedule this summer.
• Global has also announced its summer lineup. Canadian drama Private Eyes returns May 25 for a second season.
• The Handmaid’s Tale, the Hulu series based on the Margaret Atwood novel, has been renewed for a second season. The series airs on Bravo in Canada, which aired the first two episodes on Sunday.
• Two kids walked onto the stage during a live broadcast of Radio-Canada’s Les Échangistes on Monday. We don’t know what they were trying to do other than get attention, but it doesn’t look like it was tied to the May Day protests happening at the same time. They were quickly shooed away.

Radio

• There’s more drama at K103 in Kahnawake. Four of the five board members resigned on the same day last week, leaving only Lance Delisle in charge. The people resigning gave various reasons, which they did not elaborate on, but it’s clear that at least some of them are fed up of whatever conflicts are going on at the station. Unfortunately we don’t have details because the people involved aren’t talking.
• An entry in the Industry Canada broadcasting database has appeared for CFGL-HD, which means that Montreal’s Rythme FM station expects to begin using HD Radio soon. Station owner Cogeco Media also owns CKAC 730 AM, so an FM HD rebroadcast of Radio Circulation seems likely. Other possible uses include a niche music channel or a spillover channel for 98.5FM’s sports coverage. Cogeco also indicated to the CRTC that a move of CKOI-FM to the Mount Royal antenna could allow it to broadcast in HD.
• CKLW 800 AM in Windsor was knocked off the air by a fire at its transmitter site. It quickly took over the transmitter of sister station AM 580 so people could get news-talk programming.

Print

• Major cuts have been announced at Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald and other papers at Fairfax Media.
• Torstar has cut 110 jobs as it announces financial results that include a 19% drop in print ad revenue. Torstar owns the Toronto Star, Hamilton Spectator and Metroland community papers.
• Metro papers in English Canada, also owned in part by Torstar, are cutting their size down. Their length will drop from 12.5 to 11.5 inches on Aug. 1.
• The Eastern Door newspaper in Kahnawake won several awards, including best overall newspaper in the under-1500 circulation category, at the Canadian Community Newspaper Awards. It’s “bittersweet” because the Eastern Door is leaving the CCNA. The full list of CCNA winners is here.
• The winners of the inaugural Canadian Magazine Grands Prix were announced.

Online

• Employees at Vice Canada have ratified their first collective agreement.

News about people

Bit of exciting personal news: I'm joining the @mtlgazette as a business reporter. Starting on June 1.

— Jacob Serebrin (@jacobserebrin) May 1, 2017

• Jacob Serebrin has been hired as the new business reporter at the Montreal Gazette, which has been without a business department of any kind since the departure of Paul Delean in December.
• Jennifer Allen, who left CBC Montreal’s Daybreak to do the traffic job at Metro Morning in Toronto, gets a writeup on the CBC Toronto website.
• Journalist Stephanie McBride has left The Gleaner (which was downgraded by Transcontinental to an insert of a French-language newspaper). It’s unclear what this means for the future of that paper.
• CBC veteran Caroline Harvey has been named executive producer of The National. Still no word on who will host it, with less than two months until the departure of Peter Mansbridge.
• La Presse publisher Guy Crevier was honoured in Toronto and La Presse is very proud.
• Power Corporation president André Desmarais is taking a medical leave on advice of his doctor. Power Corp. owns La Presse.
• Carrie Haber, CBC producer behind the new Monteapolis podcast and the Absolutely Quebec series, among other things, is also a musician, and her group Goldfish got a writeup in the Gazette.
• Bernard Drainville is the new Jean Lapierre at 98.5 FM.
• Ryan Seacrest is the new co-host of Live with Kelly

Good reads

• BuzzFeed on the National Enquirer’s owner publishing Us Weekly and what that means

Jobs

• Digital News Editor, National Post (deadline: May 5)
• Ottawa correspondent for Journal de Québec (deadline: May 9)
• Journalist at CJSO-FM in Sorel-Tracy (deadline: May 12)
• General assignment reporter at Yukon News (deadline: May 19)
• La Presse diversity bursaries and internships (deadline: June 9)

Upcoming events

• May 20: Canadaland in Montreal

News about news

• Reporters Without Borders has come out with its latest ranking of press freedom, and Canada has dropped four spots to come in at 22nd. The group cites police surveillance of journalists, particularly in Quebec, as a reason for the drop.
• RTDNA Canada, the association of radio, television and digital media, handed out regional awards for the Central Region (Ontario and Quebec) and B.C. CBC Montreal won seven awards, and CBC Quebec City won three more. I don’t tend to put much stock in the regional awards because of the low number of entries and high number of awards. Case in point: CFJC-TV Kamloops won the B.C. regional award for best TV newscast in a small market, mainly because it was the only entry in that category. (I was on the judging panel.) The organization also announced a bunch of lifetime achievement awards, to Terry Milewski and Charles Adler nationally, and three people regionally including CTV Montreal’s Mutsumi Takahashi. Oh, and Stuart McLean is being given a posthumous President’s Award.
• The National Post has won an appeal of a libel suit brought on by climate scientist Andrew Weaver. The appellate judges say the trial judge should not have read the several pieces written about Weaver together and based the decision on them, but rather should have considered them individually.
• Radio-Canada is suing the Quebec government for making it harder for journalists to search the province’s business registry by name.
• The news director at TVA in Trois-Rivières has been suspended after being charged with Internet luring of minors.

At the CRTC

• Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais isn’t afraid to call out hypocrisy from Bell and other telcos.
• Missed this from earlier in the month: A letter from the commission clarifies that 4K channels owned by vertically integrated companies have the same requirements as HD ones in terms of being available to competitors at the same time they launch. Telus complained because they couldn’t reach an agreement to launch Sportsnet 4K. Telus can now add the channel and the two can go to arbitration later if they can’t reach an agreement on price.
• Another CRTC letter finds that Sirius XM Canada was far short on its required contributions to Canadian content development, mainly because it donated money to ineligible programs. A $70,000 payment to POP Montreal, for example, was deemed too self-serving.

TV

NHL second-round TV broadcast schedules and NBC/Sportsnet play-by-play teams pic.twitter.com/pBAJxXOmuC

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) April 25, 2017

• The NHL playoffs begin their second round tonight, with only two Canadian teams remaining. Oilers fans without a subscription to Sportsnet are still getting screwed. But at least the Ottawa games are on CBC now. With the Canadiens out of the playoffs, TVA Sports won’t be getting audiences of 1.5 million anymore.
• Speaking of sports ratings, NBA games saw theirs drop this year.
• MAtv has pulled the plug on Montreal Billboard, a series that talks to people from non-profit community organizations. Host Kim Sullivan still has her job at Global, and now so too does Dan Spector, whose contract at MAtv came to an end and will now be a videojournalist at Global Montreal. It’s expected MAtv will find other projects for the English community, including those proposed by the community.
• Bell Media is starting something called The Launch, which will be a six-part music competition series focused on creating hit songs rather than singers. It’s an original format that Bell hopes to sell worldwide. Insight Productions, Bell’s go-to company for such reality TV (Canadian Idol, Juno Awards, Amazing Race Canada) will produce the series this fall for airing in 2018.
• The Writers Guild of Canada handed out awards for screenwriting.
• Like Sportsnet, TSN is so hungry for curling it’s creating new competitions.
• Bell put its estimated loss of Super Bowl ad revenue because of the CRTC decision on simultaneous substitution at $11 million this year.
• History is working on a new documentary series about Canada’s cannabis industry. Bud Dynasty will have seven half-hour episodes.
• FX Canada screwed up on airing the season premiere of Fargo last week, forcing a do-over two days later. Apparently it lost the last 15 minutes or so.
• Radio-Canada says it will launch Panora.tv, an online marketplace for public broadcasting content, this fall.

Radio

• CBC is launching its radio station in London, Ont., in June. The station, CBCL-FM 93.5, will have a local morning show, and will be home to a regional afternoon show that also covers Windsor. The CBC also says it will be a digital-first operation, with digital news platforms being given priority.
• Rogers, which last month acquired exclusive radio rights to Vancouver Canucks games, has found a solution to the problem of where to put them, and it won’t be on its News 1130 talk station. Instead, it’s buying CISL 650 AM from Newcap and will turn it into its third Sportsnet radio station this fall. CISL, which has an easy listening format, was an Astral Media station that Bell sold when it acquired Astral so it could keep its two all-sports stations in the market. The selling price was not disclosed, but we’ll probably learn it the next time Newcap reports financial results. Newcap bought CISL and two (much more profitable) FM stations from Bell for $112 million in 2013. The Vancouver Sportsnet station would be the third for Rogers after Toronto and Calgary, and would make Vancouver the only market with three sports stations. Meanwhile at Bell, which has lost a major rights deal and has a new competitor, they might be thinking of converting that second TSN Radio station into something else.
• Julie Snyder, who was a big star at TVA when she was in a relationship with its owner and isn’t now that they’re separated, has taken a job at Radio-Canada, though it’s in radio, not television. And she’ll be doing it from the Îles-de-la-Madeleine.
• U.S. radio giant iHeartRadio might not survive another year because of its crushing debt load. If it goes under, it’s unclear what that might mean for Bell Media, which uses the iHeart brand and platform for its radio stations in Canada.

Print

• Transcontinental is cutting another 20 jobs at its community newspapers in Quebec, just as they’re looking to sell them.
• Talks with unionized workers at the Ottawa Citizen have failed to reach an agreement, so the two sides are going to conciliation.
• Workers at Postmedia papers in Vancouver have approved a new deal with the company that will save 21 jobs by having everyone earn a bit less.

Online

• Nominees for the Digital Publishing Awards have been announced. The Globe and Mail and CBC have several nominations, and GlobalNews.ca, Vice and BuzzFeed also got some noms. Winners are announced June 1.
• Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is launching a website to combat “fake news” with professional journalists and some wiki-like crowdsourcing. News stories about this announcement don’t mention that there’s already Wikinews, though there are no professional journalists there.
• The Huffington Post is now just HuffPost. And is making a big deal out of that. Meanwhile, the HuffPost has invited student journalists who got their principal fired to be their guests at the White House Correspondents Dinner, which will be low on Hollywood stars this year (and also minus one president).
• About.com is being shut down, replaced with a series of niche verticals.

News about people

Well folks, as you can tell by my new Twitter handle, I was also among the cuts today at ESPN.

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) April 26, 2017

• ESPN is laying off 100 people, according to reports. The list includes Canadians Pierre LeBrun and Scott Burnside, though LeBrun will still be seen on TSN and RDS. There are also other cuts at the sports broadcaster, which has to balance its books as rights fees increase and subscribers decrease.
• In case you haven’t already heard, Bill O’Reilly is not coming back to Fox News. He joins Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson and Greta van Susteren as Fox News stars who have left the network recently.
• When you have two people in on-air jobs at TVA both named Félix Séguin, it’s inevitable they get confused. Which is what happened on FM93 when the hockey Séguin was put on air to talk about a scoop by the news Séguin. He said the confusion happens a lot.
• Tommy Schnurmacher will be a regular on the CHOM morning show on Thursdays at 7:10.

Obituaries

• Kate O’Beirne, National Review editor and pundit
• Albert Freedman, game show producer

Jobs

• Reporter, The Canadian Press in Toronto
• Journalist, L’actualité (deadline: April 28)
• Journalists, Journal de Montréal (deadline: May 2)
• Journalist at CJSO-FM in Sorel-Tracy (deadline: May 12)
• La Presse diversity bursaries and internships (deadline: June 9)

Upcoming events

• May 2: CBC Quebec public consultation
• May 2: Benefit dinner for freedom of the press, organized by the FPJQ
• May 20: Canadaland in Montreal

News about news

• Suzanne Legault, Canada’s information commissioner, talks to Maclean’s about how disappointed she is that the government is not making more of an effort to improve access to information.
• The Canadian Journalism Foundation and CBC have awarded their indigenous journalism fellowships for this year. Julian Brave NoiseCat of B.C. and Lenard Monkman of Manitoba will get $3,000 plus per diems and travel expenses to report on events for possible broadcast by CBC News.

At the CRTC

Francophone community station CHOD-FM 92.1 proposes synchronized retransmitter on same frequency near Hwy 417 (green/blue pattern) #CRTC pic.twitter.com/3a9177XbrU

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) April 18, 2017

• CHOD-FM, a French-language community radio station serving eastern Ontario, needs to improve its signal, so it has applied to the CRTC for a second transmitter. The second transmitter would use the same frequency (92.1 MHz) and would be located in Dunvegan, along the 417 about halfway between Ottawa and Vaudreuil. Having a synchronized transmitter on the same frequency is hard, especially for a low-budget community station. People between the transmitters will hear a lot of interference if it’s not done perfectly. CHAI-FM 101.9 in Châteauguay tried it with a retransmitter in Candiac, but abandoned that plan and replaced its two-transmitter system with a single transmitter. In a few years we could see CHOD-FM do the same.
• The CRTC has released its three-year plan. Not much new here, though it finally expects to do its review of French-language music quotas on radio in 2017-18.
• The commission’s decision on differential pricing and zero-rating, a process prompted by a complain about Videotron making access to online music services exempt from data charges and data caps, will be delivered Thursday at 4pm.

TV

• CBC is holding online discussions, moderated by Daybreak host Mike Finnerty — in a suit! — as part of its response to criticism of the Canada: The Story of Us history documentary series that has been criticized for lack of inclusion or misrepresentation of French Canadians, westerners, Atlantic Canadians, indigenous peoples and just about everyone else. It’s bilingual (the version with French translation is here) though for this episode at least most of the discussion is in English. They’ll be back for another discussion next week.
• Today is National Canadian Film Day:
  • Bell Media is celebrating by airing a bunch of Canadian movies on its pay TV movie channels TMN, TMN Encore, Super Écran and Cinépop. Which sounds great, but it’s 25 movies spread across 11 channels (they’re actually airing more than is listed there). Other movies these channels are showing today include Furious 7, Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, The Free State of Jones, Mistress America, Suicide Squad, The Devil at Four O’Clock, War Dogs, Mortdecai, The 33, Madonna: Rebel Heart Tour, Be Cool, Letters from Iwo Jima and I Love My Sister’s Big Tits 6. None of these are Canadian.
  • CBC is also celebrating, by putting some films online for free streaming. Radio-Canada will be airing the movie Sarah préfère la course at 2pm.
  • Other movies screening on TV include Lesser Blessed on APTN, Strange Brew, Monsieur Lazhar and Trailer Park Boys on Hollywood Suite, Laurence Anyways on OUTtv, The Rocket on Sportsnet One, Love Under the Stars on Super Channel, The Stone Angel on Vision TV, and Porky’s on Sundance channel
• The Juno Awards, after 16 years on CTV, are moving back to CBC for at least six more years. The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences notes that CBC has promised more content around the Junos year-round.
• Historia, which has apparently learned that Montreal Canadiens history is the best way to drive viewership these days, has another documentary coming out, this one about the team’s 1970s dynasty. Starts April 26.
• Discovery has a documentary on the Fort MacMurray wildfire airing April 30.
• The NHL playoffs continue, taking over CBC six nights a week (they’re keeping Sundays for Anne and The Story of Us). We’re getting some ratings numbers announced. Canadiens Game 1 had 1.165 million viewers on TVA Sports and 1.324 million on CBC, 219,000 of whom were Quebec francophones. On Sunday, TVA Sports had 1,560,000 for the Canadiens, justifying their move of La Voix to Monday, where it got 2,011,000 viewers.
• As part of its NHL playoff coverage, NBC is making a thing about having Pierre McGuire in a different city each night. On Thursday, he’ll be at the Bell Centre covering Game 5 of Rangers-Canadiens, though because the game is on USA Network in the States, most Canadians won’t be able to catch him. (TSN’s Chris Cuthbert will be calling the game there, while Paul Romanuk and Garry Galley continue calling it for CBC/Sportsnet.)
• A couple of Mohawk girls started a podcast about Mohawk Girls and how the fictional reality of the TV series compares to actual reality on the reserve.

Print

• The union representing staff at Postmedia’s Vancouver papers has reached a tentative agreement with the company to save 21 of the 54 jobs cut recently. The deal would see most employees work only four days every other week. Union members will vote on the deal today.
• The Boston Globe is reorganizing its staff as newspapers have tended to do these days. They’ll be broken down into teams, some covering breaking news, others on beats and investigations, and a dedicated print team.
• The New York Times is changing the way it does placelines because readers don’t understand what they mean. (The fact that many news organizations use fake placelines when covering a story from a distance doesn’t help.) Instead of putting, say, “BEIRUT —” at the beginning of a story, the location of the journalist will go in the byline, as “by Steve Faguy in Beirut”. Purists might scoff at this change, but remember that the NYT refers to these as “datelines” because back in the day when stories would take more than a day to travel around the world, these lines also contained the date a story was written.

Online

• One of the things I really like about how the CBC approaches digital video is its embrace of YouTube, not just for posting promos and extras, but full programs to ensure they get as wide an audience as possible. Here, a short 14-minute documentary on a Mohawk school in Kahnawake and the adults working hard to keep it going.
• Montreal-based WatchMojo.com has started a new web video series called The Lineup, which is a kind of fantasy hockey game show, hosted by Adam Reid.
• Alex Jones’s lawyer says he’s a “performance artist”. Which I’m sure comes as great comfort to Sandy Hook parents who have been harassed by his supporters because he says the murder of dozens of children was faked by the government.

News about people

• Mutsumi Takahashi (CTV Montreal news anchor, for the 12 people here who don’t know who she is) is getting a lifetime achievement award from the RTDNA.
• Former Telus CEO Joe Natale is CEO of Rogers as of today. Rogers reached a deal with Telus to get him out of his non-compete agreement early.
• Lyne Robitaille, who is responsible for newspapers and books at Quebecor Media, will add TVA Publications’ magazine portfolio to her responsibilities.
• Patrick Bégin has been named news director for Cogeco Nouvelles.
• Toronto Sun entertainment columnist Jim Slotek is a bit critical of his bosses in his farewell column.
• Bernard Brault, sports photographer for La Presse, has an exhibition of his work at Lozeau until May 16.
• CTV’s Geneviève Beauchemin ran the Boston Marathon.
• Chris Mota, who has been doing public relations at Concordia University for 23 years, is retiring. She’s been the university’s voice through some pretty tough times, having to deal not only with professional journalists but also those pesky student ones (including myself 15 years ago).

Good reads

• The New York Times on Pierre McGuire, NBC hockey analyst, who’s racking up the air miles travelling between series.
• Steve Ballmer, former head of Microsoft, is making it his mission to take information about how governments spend money and make it accessible.

Jobs

• Reporter, The Canadian Press in Toronto
• Internship (paid), Huffington Post Québec
• Business reporter, Montreal Gazette (deadline: April 21)
• Political producer in Ottawa, National Post (deadline: April 24)
• Canada Media Fund board member (deadline: April 25)
• Journalists, Journal de Montréal (deadline: May 2)
• Journalist at CJSO-FM in Sorel-Tracy (deadline: May 12)
• La Presse diversity bursaries and internships (deadline: June 9)

Upcoming events

• May 2: CBC Quebec public consultation
• May 2: Benefit dinner for freedom of the press, organized by the FPJQ
• May 20: Canadaland in Montreal

Now that it looks like it’s finally dying down, here’s who’s written about that Andrew Potter Maclean’s piece and McGill’s reaction to it, in alphabetical order (not including letters to the editor or social media posts):

1. Paul Adams, iPolitics
2. Jérémie Bédard-Wien, Ricochet
3. Frédéric Bérard, Métro
4. Denise Bombardier, Journal de Montréal
5. Ann Brocklehurst
6. Michael Byers, Globe and Mail
7. Lucinda Chodan, Montreal Gazette
8. Colby Cosh, National Post
9. Andrew Coyne, National Post
10. Dan Delmar, Montreal Gazette
11. Raymond J. de Souza, National Post
12. Bernard Drainville, 98.5fm
13. Sophie Durocher, Journal de Montréal
14. Sophie Durocher again, Journal de Montréal
15. Joseph Facal, Journal de Montréal
16. Michael Friscolanti, Maclean’s
17. Lysiane Gagnon, La Presse
18. Jamie Gilcig, Cornwall Free News
19. Scott Gilmore, Maclean’s
20. Matt Gurney, The Walrus
21. Graeme Hamilton, National Post
22. Allison Hanes, Montreal Gazette
23. Trevor Hanna, Ricochet
24. Michael Harris, iPolitics
25. Joseph Heath, In Due Course
26. Chantal Hébert, Toronto Star
27. Barbara Kay, National Post
28. Jonathan Kay, The Walrus
29. Philippe Labrecque, Huffington Post Québec
30. Patrick Lagacé, La Presse
31. Patrick Lagacé in English, Globe and Mail
32. Josée Legault, Journal de Montréal
33. Josée Legault again, Journal de Montréal
34. Peter Loewen, National Post
35. Emmett Macfarlane, Maclean’s
36. Don Macpherson, Montreal Gazette
37. Candice Malcolm, Toronto Sun
38. Mylène Moisan, La Presse
39. Éric Montpetit, Globe and Mail
40. Brian Myles, Le Devoir
41. Michèle Ouimet, La Presse
42. Natalie Pendergast, Journal Pioneer
43. Nathalie Petrowski, La Presse
44. Joseph Quesnel, Local XPress
45. Lise Ravary, Journal de Montréal
46. Sandrine Ricci, Ricochet
47. Chris Selley, National Post
48. Michel Seymour, Huffington Post Québec
49. Evan Solomon, Maclean’s
50. Michael Taube, Troy Media
51. William Watson, National Post
52. Daniel Weinstock, In Due Course
53. Ira Wells, Literary Review of Canada
54. Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail
55. Suzanne Wexler, Huffington Post
56. Peter Wheeland, Cult MTL
57. Barry Wilson, CTV Montreal

Plus:

• three professors in Maclean’s
• a discussion on CBC’s The Current
• Podcast discussions at Canadaland, Ricochet
• Editorials: Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Maclean’s, Winnipeg Free Press, The Senior Times
• Fact-checks: Le Soleil, La Presse, Maclean’s

News about news

Fact-creation in 2017. According to my sources, 84 percent of all the statistics you've ever seen on the war in Syria were created this way. pic.twitter.com/m1yscTa1q6

— Aron Lund (@aronlund) April 10, 2017

• Pulitzer Prize winners were announced on Monday. Winners include David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post for coverage of Donald Trump’s charitable donations, and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan.
• A bill that passed through Canada’s Senate seeks to better protect the identity of journalists’ sources in court. Bill S-231 makes amendments to evidence law and seems fairly reasonable. One issue, though, is that it defines what a “journalist” is, and that definition is limited to “a person whose main occupation is to contribute directly, either regularly or occasionally, for consideration, to the collection, writing or production of information for dissemination by the media, or anyone who assists such a person.” It also protects people who were journalists when information is given but are no longer journalists. But what about freelancers? And what is “information for dissemination by the media” anyway? Does a PR person qualify? The problem of defining journalists is a complicated one.
• The Chamberland Commission into police spying on journalists continues. Among the revelations this week is that police would sometimes request “tower dumps” which would note every phone connected to a cell tower at a given time.
• J-Source on the Toronto Star’s fight against a police attempt to seize video.
• CBC freelancers got a raise no April 1.
• The Daily Mail apologized to Melania Trump and agreed to pay her money (believed to be in the low millions) for casually suggesting she may have been a prostitute.
• Rolling Stone has reached a settlement with a University of Virginia administrator over its campus rape story.
• Nominations for the Grands prix du journalisme indépendant, awards for Quebec freelance journalists, were announced. They include articles published in Le Devoir, L’actualité and Ricochet. Winners will be announced May 4.

At the CRTC

• As mandated by the CRTC once every two years, CBC Quebec is holding a public consultation with the anglophone community on May 2 in Montreal. Attendance is free and open, but you’re asked to RSVP.
• First notice of hearing in a while. The applications:
  1. A low-power Native FM station in Potlotek First Nation in St. Peter’s, N.S.
  2. Converting a 5W developmental community FM station in Val-des-Lacs (106.5 FM, near Mont Tremblant) to a low-power community station.
  3. A new French-language community radio station in Ottawa-Gatineau at 1350 AM. This station would use the same frequency, site and signal as the former Radio Centre-Ville Ville-Marie (CIRA-5) retransmitter there (1000W daytime, 180W nighttime).
  4. Dufferin Communications (Evanov Radio) acquiring Christian music station CFWC-FM Brantford, Ont., from Sound of Faith Broadcasting, for $440,000.
  5. Dufferin converting ethnic station CKJS Winnipeg (810 AM) from AM to FM (92.5 MHz, 35,000W). In its application, the company reveals sister station CFJL-FM (Hot 100.5) has lost $700,000 in four years.
  6. A corporate re-organization at Blackgold Broadcasting

TV

Announced NHL play-by-play teams per network for the first round of the playoffs. pic.twitter.com/quVIiRwVfc

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) April 10, 2017

(Note that NBC staff here is for Game 1 of each series only.)

• The NHL playoffs begin today. Sportsnet has managed to make sure the Canadiens and Maple Leafs don’t play any games on the same day, so both can get airtime on CBC. (Sunday is an exception, since CBC is keeping that night to itself for its Story of Us series.) Calgary gets priority for the late game. So the Senators and Oilers are largely stuck on Sportsnet. Sportsnet’s schedule for games 1-4 of each series is here. Also, Rogers revealed during a conference call that it has extended its Hockey Night in Canada agreement with CBC for a fifth season.
• TVA Sports 3 has returned for another NHL playoff season. (Channel 199/799 on Videotron.) It will carry extra games that conflict with those already on the first two channels, and be basically dead otherwise. First games are Columbus vs. Pittsburgh and San Jose vs. Edmonton tonight.
• The Canadiens’ playoff series is so big for TVA that it’s moving the next episode of La Voix to Monday night.
• For American viewers, a bit of a treat this time: Viewers in markets where the local team is in the playoffs will get to choose between the local regional feed and the NBC national one. (Except Boston and Philadelphia Pittsburgh.) Unlike in Canada, in the U.S. a team’s regional broadcaster gets to produce games in the first round of the playoffs as well.
• Radio-Canada has announced a new TV series set in New Brunswick, called Le siège. (Hugo Dumas has some details.) After burying the very good series Le clan on Saturday nights, let’s hope this series gets a bit more love from the broadcaster.
• CBC has apologized for some of the issues brought up about its historical series The Story of Us. Unfortunately it’s too late to do anything about it.
• Space has announced premiere dates for original sci-fi series Dark Matter (June 9) and Killjoys (June 30).
• Hasan Minhaj of the Daily Show will be the featured performer at the White House Correspondents dinner, though President Donald Trump has already said he won’t be there.

Radio

• Jian Ghomeshi is back. With a podcast. It’s very pretentious, and you can imagine how people feel about it.

Print

• Quebec’s regional newspapers are taking their battle to save themselves financially to the public with a new campaign. At least I assume it’s the newspapers. The website doesn’t make clear who’s behind the campaign. They want the Quebec government to abandon plans to allow municipalities to issue public notices online instead of in local papers, and reduce burdens such as recycling taxes.
• Aislin’s 50-year retrospective exhibit has opened at the McCord museum. Terry Mosher has been doing the media rounds promoting it, including interviews with or stories in La Presse, Le Devoir, The Globe and Mail, Global News, Breakfast Television, CHOM, The Suburban, the Montreal Times, HuffPost Quebec, pieuvre.ca, and of course the Montreal Gazette.
• L’Express in Drummondville, the community weekly, got a visit from the bomb squad when a package with the word “EXPLOSIF” was found outside their door. It turned out not to be explosive, but the police took no chances, and a photographer’s equipment was one of the victims. An arrest has been made.
• Nathalie Collard explores the people who despite everything gamble on starting new magazines, as the magazine Nouveau Projet (which, I admit, I didn’t think would last) celebrates its fifth anniversary.
• Canadaland takes issue with Liberal MP Seamus O’Regan’s involvement in a committee that’s supposed to ensure that The Walrus remains educational.
• La Presse+ is using the fading-text technique on some of its stories online to get more people to use its iPad app. You can (probably) see an example here.
• Transcontinental has sold L’Oeil régional, the community weekly in Beloeil, to DBC Communications, which owns papers in St-Hyacinthe and elsewhere.
• Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey was interviewed by BNN. He doesn’t like being compared to Bombardier.
• Postmedia has met its 20% salary reduction target, but more cuts will be needed, though it’s unclear if those will also come from job cuts.
• Paul Adams at iPolitics imagines the future of Postmedia. It’s … not good.

Online

• Quebecor Media is reorganizing its digital content teams, and laying off six people, mainly at Canoë, according to Le Devoir.
• PRWeek is feeling a bit awkward about the Communicator of the Year award it gave to United Airlines’s CEO.
• Canada Media Fund’s latest funding decisions for web series. They include another season of Têtes à claques (remember them?) and a second season of Space Riders: Division Earth. (If you haven’t seen Season 1, it’s here.)
• OpenCorporates, which catalogs public information on companies as collected by governments, is suing Quebec for trying to restrict access to its database.

Movies

• Bravo FACT has announced its latest funding recipients for short films. They include a film produced by actress Tatiana Maslany, and one written and directed by Kahnawake native Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs.

News about people

The @davidakin career recap update:
Post 1998-2001
Globe/CTV 2001-05
CTV 2005-08
Post 2008-10
Sun 2010-16
Post 2016-17
Global 2017-

— Steve Faguy (@fagstein) April 7, 2017

• Two high-profile hires at Global News: Vassy Kapelos is now the permanent host of political talk show The West Block after taking over from Tom Clark in January. And David Akin, who has a resume of political reporting for just about every major private media now, will be the new chief political correspondent.
• Former Quebecor CEO Pierre Dion is being paid $7.2 million in severance to make way for Pierre Karl Péladeau’s return.
• After 20 years at CTV Vancouver, Coleen Christie is joining Global’s BC1.
• The National Post has hired Maura Forrest of Yukon News and Lauren Heuser of The Walrus.
• Radio-Canada’s Michel Rochon is retiring.
• Régys Caron, journalist with the Journal de Québec, is retiring. He was recognized at the National Assembly along with fellow retiree Michel Hébert.
• Guy Amyot, secretary general of the Quebec Press Council, is leaving for an unspecified other job. Oh wait, he’s joining the PQ.
• Arlene Dickinson is coming back for Season 12 of Dragon’s Den on CBC.
• Bill O’Reilly’s show is facing an exodus of advertisers amid sexual harassment claims. So he’s going on vacation. Pre-planned, he says.

Good reads

What it's like being a reporter, summarized in five lines https://t.co/fuG7SaJut4 pic.twitter.com/2PXAhp937x

— “Mark Berman” (@markberman) April 10, 2017

• The New York Times on how to write a headline. Though it doesn’t really teach how to write in that almost Yoda-like New York Times headline style
• Washington Post profile of media journalist and CNN host Brian Stelter

Obituaries

• Guy O’Sullivan, president of Proper Television, the company behind series including MasterChef Canada and Canada’s Worst Driver
• Gary Miles, former CEO of Rogers Radio
• Dorothy Mengering, aka David Letterman’s mom
• The Globe has a more in-depth obituary for TV writer Denis McGrath

Jobs

• Foreign editor, Globe and Mail
• Reporter, The Canadian Press in Toronto
• Viral content journalist at Huffington Post Québec
• Internship (paid), Huffington Post Québec
• Political producer in Ottawa, National Post (deadline: April 24)
• Canada Media Fund board member (deadline: April 25)
• Journalists, Journal de Montréal (deadline: May 2)
• La Presse diversity bursaries and internships (deadline: June 9)

Upcoming events

• May 2: CBC Quebec public consultation
• May 2: Benefit dinner for freedom of the press, organized by the FPJQ
• May 20: Canadaland in Montreal

News about news

• The Chamberland commission looking at the protection of journalistic sources in Quebec has begun public hearings. Coverage by La Presse and Le Devoir, notably.
• Some Kansas high school students investigated their new principal … by googling where she got her degree and discovering that university doesn’t exist. The principal resigned as a result, prompting a slew of feel-good coverage in national media.
• A Mexican newspaper has simply shut down, judging conditions for journalists too dangerous to continue.
• Radio-Canada’s Isabelle Richer had to eat some crow on Wednesday, apologizing for getting dramatically wrong a story about SQ leaders being away from their posts at the height of the Highway 13 snowstorm debacle. CBC/Radio-Canada has retracted the story, and Richer apologized on air, but the original Radio-Canada story had not been edited as of 2:30pm Wednesday and I could find no mention on Radio-Canada’s website of the retraction.

At the CRTC

• The CRTC is seeking comments on an application by Rogers to acquire Tillsonburg Broadcasting, owner of CJDL-FM and CKOT-FM in Tillsonburg, Ont. (southeast of London) for $4 million. The sale was announced in September.

TV

• After turning Super Channel 4 into an e-sports channel, Allarco is turning Super Channel 3 into a retro movie channel, apparently similar to what you’d find on TMN Encore or Movietime. Aside from having even less space for premium programming, it seems even less justification for spending $10 or $15 a month to get Super Channel. The company remains under creditor protection.
• The Juno Awards broadcast caused some trouble for co-host Russell Peters, whose sexist comments about Mélanie Joly and young women in the crowd didn’t impress the politically correct.
• Meanwhile, CBC also got in trouble for Sunday night broadcasts. Its series The Story of Us is being criticized for being too anglo-centric. An op-ed by Quebec professors lays out the major issues in its first episode.
• CBC has greenlit a new drama series from the creators of Murdoch Mysteries. This one is set in 1920s Toronto, starring a private detective played by Lauren Lee Smith.
• This Hour Has 22 Minutes has been renewed for yet another season
• Comedy Central has finally found a replacement for The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore: Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper will host.
• Videotron has added FXX Canada to its lineup, on Channel 821 in HD. It and FX Canada are on free preview until June 1.

Radio

• Cuts at Bell Media’s 89X Windsor, which closed its Detroit office

Print

• The Surrey Leader is no more. The 87-year-old Black Press newspaper in B.C. published a farewell issue on March 31. It’s being merged with Surrey Now into the Surrey Now News Leader.
• The Globe and Mail wants editors to be a bit more aggressive after the Leah McLaren column fiasco
• The Tyee on the layoffs at the Vancouver Sun and Province, owned by my employer Postmedia
• La Presse shut down a bunch of blogs, so the Journal de Montréal/Québec was only too happy to write about it.

Movies

• Nominees for the Gala Québec Cinéma were announced. The awards, which have a new name (Iris, replacing Jutra), a new trophy, new hosts, a new time during the season (pushed back to June to avoid competing with hit programs) and a new lesser-awards gala, will be given out June 1 and 4.

Online

• Ed The Sock helped announce some new network called FU Network, which is being billed as the spiritual successor to MuchMusic. It looks like it will be a streaming channel (maybe just a YouTube channel?) and Ed The Sock’s live show (see an example here) will be part of it, but other shows are also planned, depending how much money they can raise. (UPDATE: The YouTube video has been pulled, apparently because Bell Media is using its legal muscle to put a stop to this use of the MuchMusic brand.)
• A video by Pepsi featuring Kendall Jenner was removed from YouTube and apologized for after people reacted very negatively to its message that a celebrity with a can of pepsi is all that’s needed to end police violence. This piece breaks down all the things wrong with it.

News about people

• Jennifer Allen, traffic reporter for CBC’s Daybreak, is moving to Toronto for a similar job there as Monique Lacombe returned this week from a maternity leave.
• Gordon Fisher, president of the National Post and the Pacific Newspaper Group (Vancouver Sun/Province), is leaving Postmedia.
• Robert Plouffe is joining the Journal de Québec’s increasingly beefed up Quebec parliamentary bureau
• Chris Wilson-Smith is leaving as foreign editor for the Globe and Mail

Obituaries

• Neil Macrae, Vancouver radio personality

Jobs

• Digital content editor, CTV News (deadline: April 6)
• Two reporters for Report on Business (Globe and Mail)
• Foreign editor, Globe and Mail
• Journalists, Journal de Montréal (deadline: May 2)
• La Presse diversity bursaries and internships (deadline: June 9)

Upcoming events

• April 8: Montreal Media Celebrity Hockey Marathon, Pierrefonds (CBC will be there)
• May 20: Canadaland in Montreal

News about news

• The number of published commentaries on Andrew Potter has surpassed 50. I compiled links to them on last week’s digest.
• The Globe and Mail has reportedly suspended columnist Leah McLaren for a week after Twitter lost its mind over a column she wrote claiming to have tried to breastfeed Michael Chong’s baby. Judith Timson in the The Toronto Star was among those to note that, similarly to Andrew Potter in Maclean’s, McLaren could have been saved by more aggressive editing.
• More organizational changes at CBC News.
• Jean-François Lisée thinks Radio-Canada wants Quebecers to think they’re racist. Or something.
• The Journal de Saint-Lambert was ordered to pay the former mayor $130,000 for defamatory articles against him, driven by the man who is now the new mayor.

At the CRTC

• The commission was busy this week hearing applications for new aboriginal radio stations in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. There were some tense moments discussing how the federal government deals with indigenous people, and an acknowledgment from the chair that there are no aboriginal members at the CRTC. (It’s the government that has failed to appoint any.) Transcripts are here: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.

TV

• NBC has finally seen the light and decided that it should show the next Olympics live in all U.S. time zones rather than on tape delay to ensure the big events are in primetime.
• CTV has eliminated its sports departments at Kitchener, London and Windsor, which will no longer have local sportscasts and will cover sports as news stories. Unifor is not happy about this. Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton have also lost staff and apparently won’t have dedicated local sports segments on local news anymore.
• Quebec’s budget announced this week includes an additional $10 million over five years ($2 million a year) for Télé-Québec.
• Channel Zero, which owns CHCH television in Hamilton, has announced a $1-million settlement with former employees who were laid off as the company that employs them was forced into bankruptcy. Because the deal was reached with the union, the actual former employees who would be getting money didn’t get to vote on the settlement, which gives them less than they would have been entitled to as severance under their collective agreement.
• After some people expressed worries that The Handmaid’s Tale, a Hulu series based on a Margaret Atwood novel, wouldn’t be available in Canada, and after repeated promises from Atwood that there would be a way to see it here, Bell Media finally announced that it has acquired the Canadian rights to the show and will air it on Bravo. It will add the show to its Crave TV library after the Bravo run is complete.

Radio

• Quebec City radio host André Arthur is facing another libel lawsuit. Meanwhile, he’s also being criticized for suggesting it’s okay to run over cyclists during winter.

Print

• Quebec’s budget has a $36-million gift to the local newspaper industry. Two thirds of that will go to vaguely described programs meant to help written news outlets. The other third will subsidize a fund that newspapers pay into to compensate municipalities that have to recycle their products. A coalition of newspapers that called for government assistance says this isn’t enough.
• Last Friday was bad news day at the Vancouver Sun and Province. J-Source compiled “so I’ve been laid off” tweets from staff there.
• Nominees for the Magazine Grands Prix, the breakaway competitor to the National Magazine Awards, have been announced
• Postmedia rolled out a new national brand campaign: “Built on trust”, featuring full-page front-page ads in 10 daily broadsheets.
• The Link, one of the student newspapers at Concordia University (of which I’m a former editor-in-chief), is going from a weekly publication schedule to a monthly one. The change was approved by students at the paper’s annual general meeting on Thursday. The paper remains a daily news source online.
• The Fulcrum, the student paper at the University of Ottawa, got a legal threat from the student union president after reporting what was said at a student council meeting.

Online

• Brendan Kelly profiles Montreal-based video creator WatchMojo
• CBC Montreal is starting up a new podcast, Montreapolis, hosted by Steve Rukavina

News about people

• Traci Melchor, who left CTV’s The Social temporarily, has decided to make the departure permanent and focus her efforts on eTalk. Marci Ien, formerly a co-host of Canada AM, has been named to the permanent Social host team to replace her.
• Paul Wells is going back to Maclean’s after a brief stint at the Toronto Star.
• Catherine Lévesque, who was HuffPost Québec’s Ottawa correspondent, is heading to Quebec City to cover the National Assembly instead. She takes the office of Patrick Bellerose, who was the first online media journalist to work full-time at the Quebec press gallery. He was recently poached by the Journal de Québec.
• Martin Patriquin, recently laid off as Quebec correspondent for Maclean’s, will be writing columns for iPolitics
• Mike Strobel will be retiring from the Toronto Sun
• Nova Scotia journalist Alexander Quon is leaving CBC to join Global Halifax

Good reads

• The Toronto Star on an insanely long process trying to get information out of Toronto Hydro.
• Actress Mariloup Wolfe opens up to La Presse about the difficulty being a celebrity with everyone talking gossip about you, and how she manages social media.

Obituaries

• Janine Sutto, Quebec actress (so important to its cultural scene there are even some obits in English)

Jobs

• Head of special publications, Le Devoir (deadline: March 31)
• Assistant general manager, FPJQ (deadline: April 2)
• Photojournalist, Global Montreal (deadline: April 4)
• Digital content editor, CTV News (deadline: April 6)
• Two reporters for Report on Business (Globe and Mail)
• Journalists, Journal de Montréal (deadline: May 2)

Upcoming events

• April 8: Montreal Media Celebrity Hockey Marathon, Pierrefonds (CBC will be there)
• May 20: Canadaland in Montreal

With any luck this should return to its usual schedule starting next Wednesday.