Communications Policy of the Government of Canada: Some advice

Updated most recently in April, the Communications Policy of the Government of Canada is a very long guide for any and all bureaucrats who must tell us what their departments are doing.

I have some advice.

Continue reading Communications Policy of the Government of Canada: Some advice

Media Ownership and Convergence in Canada: Alternate Take

Recently, the Library of Parliament published a paper titled “Media Ownership and Convergence in Canada”. It is, as I said on Twitter when I first read it, a shabby piece of scholarship that the Library ought to withdraw or revise.

Why? It is an inaccurate and wholly incomplete picture of media ownership and convergence in Canada. Policy makers, Members of Parliament, and every day Canadians who might rely on this paper to advocate for the change of any laws or regulations (or to decline to change any laws and regulations)  could very likely make some bad decisions. Continue reading Media Ownership and Convergence in Canada: Alternate Take

The week in Canadian journalism: It was a strange one

It’s been a slightly crazy week if you’re a Canadian in the news business. We start with a friend in Montreal, a top editor at a national wire service, who summed up the feeling in newsrooms across the country quite nicely with these 140 characters:

Continue reading The week in Canadian journalism: It was a strange one

The head of Google News on the future of journalism, objectivity, and everything else

Richard Gingras is the head of Google News. Here’s one of the many interesting things he had to say about journalists during a recent talk at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation:

We need to reconsider our missions and our ethical guidelines (in terms of behaviors and audience engagement, not core ethics), and the concept of objectivity. Richard sides with transparency in this debate and believes readers place their trust in the individual online rather than the brand, and expects reporters to be transparent about their views. He doesn’t buy the opaque objectivity of yore where reporters said, “Trust us,” and consumer opinion surveys bear this out. Continue reading The head of Google News on the future of journalism, objectivity, and everything else

Why are most journalists small-l liberals? Russell might have some answers

I think most journalists — myself included — are small-l liberals. That’s not to say we’re small-l liberals in the political sense. Indeed, I’ve long held that journalists are like any other group: A bunch probably voted Conservative in the last election; a bunch voted New Democrat and a bunch voted Liberal. (In Quebec, some may even have voted for the BQ). But I and, I think, many journalists, like to conceptualize themselves as free thinkers who resist dogma, power, authority, arbitrariness, etc. and that would make us small-l liberals in a philosophical sense. For proof, I offer up the following 10 commandments, put forth by big-l Liberal philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1951 as 10 guides for teachers but I think they are all likely philosophical touch points for most Western (small-l liberal) journalists: Continue reading Why are most journalists small-l liberals? Russell might have some answers

Politics, Twitter, and the MSM: What to make of it all?

Highly recommend an essay by Jean Burgess and Axel Bruns in a recent issue of Journalism Practice. It’s called “(Not) The Twitter Election: The dynamics of the #ausvotes conversation in relation to the Australian media ecology”. [Like most scholarly publishers, the publishers of this paper insist on locking this up behind a paywall so you’ll have to seek out your favourite library, I’m afraid]  Here’s the abstract:

This paper draws on a larger study of the uses of Australian user-created content and online social networks to examine the relationships between professional journalists and highly engaged Australian users of political media within the wider media ecology, with a particular focus on Twitter. It uses an analysis of topic-based conversation networks using the #ausvotes hashtag on Twitter around the 2010 federal election to explore the key themes and issues addressed by this Twitter community during the campaign, and finds that Twitter users were largely commenting on the performance of mainstream media and politicians rather than engaging in direct political discussion. The often critical attitude of Twitter users towards the political establishment mirrors the approach of news and political bloggers to political actors, nearly a decade earlier, but the increasing adoption of Twitter as a communication tool by politicians, journalists, and everyday users alike makes a repetition of the polarisation experienced at that time appear unlikely.

Some quick notes after reading the paper: Continue reading Politics, Twitter, and the MSM: What to make of it all?

Margaret Atwood: The Turnip Who Would Be PM and other Tales from the Enchanged E-Forest

I’ll bet a nickel that this is the first time the populist Toronto Sun has been cited in the New York Review of Books, a favourite of left-wing intellectual elites. (I read and enjoy both!).

The citation comes via Margaret Atwood who blogs at NYRB.com about Twitter, The Rotating Skull, The Ford Brothers, The Turnip Who Would Be PM, and other Tales from the Enchanted E-Forest. An excerpt: Continue reading Margaret Atwood: The Turnip Who Would Be PM and other Tales from the Enchanged E-Forest

NYT: Obama's High-Tech War on Leaks to Journalists

Adam Liptak, the New York Times correspondent at the Supreme Court writes:

… the Obama administration, … has brought more prosecutions against current or former government officials for providing classified information to the media than every previous administration combined. Continue reading NYT: Obama's High-Tech War on Leaks to Journalists

Akin and gang are all terrorists, says former Star editor!

Good “tabloid” headline for this blog post — don’t you think? — and it’ good cuz it’s true! Let me explain:

Later this month, I and several of my Sun News Network colleagues will participate in an event called Freedom Weekend that Ezra Levant, host of The Source on Sun News Network, has organized. Here’s the nub of the idea: Most of the on-air talent you see on Sun News Network will hang out at a nice spot in Ontario’s Muskoka cottage country for a weekend and we’ll talk politics or whatever with those who want to join us.

Other news organizations have done stuff like this.  The Globe and Mail, for example, did a 10-day luxury trip in 2008 with 500 paying guests. It sold out!

Hosted by Globe and Mail Publisher Phillip Crawley and Editor-in-Chief Edward Greenspon, the  cruise features a custom itinerary designed specifically for the interests of Globe and Mail readers including: gourmet classes and demonstrations with Food Network celebrity chefs and  The Globe and Mail‘s own Lucy Waverman; wine tastings hosted by Globe wine expert Beppi  Crosariol; special shopping excursions led by Globe Life’s Amy Verner; and “behind the news”  events with Globe and Mail columnists and editors including Margaret Wente, [Andrew] Willis, [current editorial board chair John Geiger, [current Ottawa bureau chief] John Ibbitson, and [after years reporting from Ottawa and just moving to Halifax] Jane Taber.

“The cruise is the ultimate brand extension,” commented Globe and Mail Publisher Phillip  Crawley.

No wonder it sold out. Great food with Lucy, wine with Beppi, shopping with Amy all capped off with politics with John and Jane! (I kid here but in fact that sounded to me like a lot of fun for I quite enjoyed yakking with Beppi about booze when I worked at 444 Front and John and Jane do, in fact, know a lot about politics. Mind you: I couldn’t afford the freight … sigh)

So Ezra organized something similar for our network — great “brand extension.” I’ll be there. I’ll do what I do 7 days a a week no matter who’s listening – talk about politics, not from the perspective of any partisan viewpoint but from the perspective of “an independent.”

But — get this — John Miller, who is a “professor of journalism at Ryerson for 23 years… That followed a 20-year career as an editor and reporter..  at the Toronto Star, where he was foreign editor, founding editor of the Sunday Star, weekend editor, deputy managing editor, and acting managing editor.
He came to Ryerson as chair of the School of Journalism, and served in that position for 10 year..”
says in a post at his blog that that I and my colleagues participating in Ezra’s “Freedom Weekend” are terrorists.  Now I’ve been called names before  but this one takes the friggin’ cake!

“… the last time a group of ideological warriors went north to train in the backwoods and plot to storm Parliament, blow up the CBC, seize the airwaves and spread terror across the land. Oh yeah, the Toronto 18 did that. Didn’t police arrest the lot of them and call them the gravest threat to our democracy?

I think a weekend with Ezra and friends could be something just like that.

The only thing that sets them apart from the Muslim extremists is that Sun Media will be charging you admission.

[read the whole post: Blog: Fun with Ezra]

And remember: The Star itself [in this excellent long-form series by Isabel Teotonio and elsewhere] agreess that it is accurate and appropriate to identify the Toronto 18 that Miller compares us to as “terrorists.”

C’mon professor Miller! Ain’t you jumping the shark a bit with that one?