By Ann Hui

The sky is falling again. In the latest twist in the CanWest saga, the company announced Thursday that its flagship paper, National Post, could shut down as early as Friday. By Friday afternoon, we found out the Post would be okay, after all. So what else is new?

In case you haven't been following along, here's the Coles Notes version:

CanWest's creditors refuse to keep bleeding money into the Post. (The paper has lost over $60 million in the last four years.) In order to keep the paper afloat, CanWest announced Wednesday it would move the Post under a different holding company, but must first gain court approval to do so. A court hearing was set for Friday. This is following months of "sky is falling" moments for the Post. And, given CanWest's past reluctance to air its own dirty laundry, it's a little suspect that the company is suddenly telling the world about its hard times. As media analyst Carmi Levy told CP, "CanWest wants to put pressure on the court to do the deal and transfer the assets." She continued to say, "As part of its effort to underscore how critical this is, it's sort of floating this threat."

Hmm. But either way—even if it's Chicken Little or playing chicken with the Post—the future of the paper remains uncertain.

(Full disclaimer: I've written for the Post in the past and have also worked at a CanWest paper. But really, who hasn't?)

Posted by RRJ at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

But, as commenter Peter B. asks, "Does it come with a nervous, skinny kid who will come running when I scream, 'COPY'?"

Posted by RRJ at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Chelsea Murray

Paul Pritchard, the passerby who shot the infamous video of police tasering Robert Dziekanski in the Vancouver airport, won a citizen journalism award on Tuesday. Apparently, if you effectively point your home camera in the right direction these days, you will be awarded.

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (a group "committed to watching over regions of the world where journalists are assaulted, threatened, kidnapped and killed for reporting the news") gave Pritchard the award because, as the CBC reported, "The incident might never have received much attention if Pritchard had not decided to grab his digital camera and start recording the actions of the distraught Dziekanski before police arrived."

Yes, this is true. The Dziekanski case garnered much-needed attention because of Pritchard, but did he deserve a citizen journalism award? He was simply walking through the terminal, saw the action and shot (though he now says he wished he had helped Dziekanski). He did no reporting after the fact. He just handed the tape over to police when they demanded it. I'm not insinuating that he should have done more. But he was a citizen, not a journalist.

Posted by RRJ at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

By Rodney Barnes

Nick Griffin got his last Thursday at the British National Party's first showing on BBC's Question Time. The leader of the racist party laid himself open to anyone with a hate-on for him—and, according to some of the opinions compiled by The National Post, got exactly what he deserved.

The issue the Post brings up is whether we should be giving crazies a platform, despite the "sacred tradition" of free speech. Minette Marrin at The Times points out that the lynch mob probably helped his cause as much as it served to destroy it. Peter Hitchens over at The Daily Mail thinks that the mishandling of the immigration situation has led to "a lot of people who simply don't care about Mr. Griffin's creepy difficulties over Jews, or his associations with Ku Klux Klansmen."

Slandering, ignoring and even humiliating the BNP hasn't gotten rid of them. The only way, as Asim Siddiqui argues in The Guardian, is to hold them to rigorous analysis. It's easy to meet extremism with more extremism. But by seriously challenging their claims, instead of dismissing them, we can show that they are legitimately wrong and expose their insanity without coming off as insane ourselves.

Oh, and to illustrate what not to do when covering stories like this, here's a brief though decidedly skewed version of Griffin's show on Question Time. Thanks, reddit.

Posted by RRJ at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Maiya Keidan

Last week, Montreal fashion magazine, Dress to Kill, launched its quarterly Toronto edition during the LG Fashion Week. Free copies are currently available in upscale boutiques around Toronto, but eventual plans are in the works to get this magazine on newsstands. The Montreal edition currently sells on stands for $4.50. My roommate, a fashion student, attended a show during the week and managed to snag me a free copy.

Although the magazine is graphically beautiful and offers some well-written editorial content, it's not apparent to me what sets it apart from any of the other fashion magazines on the newsstands. I mean it's hard to miss that the magazine is trying really hard to be edgy, with pages full of scowling models. Editor-in-Chief Stéphane Le Duc believes the magazine is comparable to UK-based fashion mag Nylon.

On the positive side, it's great to see that the industry is opening up to new entrepreneurs, particularly at a time when so many other media organizations are on the rocks. I have to admit I'm at a loss as to determining why this start-up was possible because so far, it seems like just yet another fashion mag to me. I might hazard a guess that because it's based off on the pre-existing, two-year-old Montreal version, the Toronto launch was much easier.

Posted by RRJ at 07:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Tyler Harper

There's a lot of great perks to being a sports reporter. Getting paid to watch games, speaking with star athletes, plenty of travel. It's a sweet gig, and it just got a bit sweeter for CTV reporters.

The Toronto Star reports that 27 of CTV's "storytellers" will take part in the Olympic torch relay ahead of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. The spots are part of the US$153 million that CTV shelled out for exclusive broadcast rights to the event. Reporters from CBC and Global will also be taking part.

This crosses an ethical line. The reporters taking part in the event can't be expected to deliver a critical look at what is one of the biggest and most controversial news stories of 2010.

As a sport's reporter, "no cheering from the press box" is the first lesson you are taught, and an important one at that. Journalists aren't fans. They don't cheer, they don't wear jerseys and they don't participate. That's not the job, and anything less compromises objectivity.

Sports reporting is a lot of work. The hours are long, the deadlines are tight and if I've learned anything about the job it's that you can't do it with a torch in your hand.

Posted by RRJ at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Jonathan Ore

Many news publications in Canada adhere to The Canadian Press Stylebook. For those who have not worked with CP (or its American counterpart, The Associated Press or AP), it's the venerable guidebook that decides whether to write one or 1, what words are best used to avoid the implication of bias, or whether you'll see color or colour (or even couleur, for any Devoir readers out there). It's also probably the reason your snooty journalist friend interrupts you mid-speech with "We don't say Oriental anymore, it's Asian-American."

With this in mind, check out the FakeAPStylebook, a Twitter page dedicated to deconstructing venerable AP conventions in the most irreverent and hilarious methods. Examples include:

Refer to him as "President Obama" when he first appears in an article, "Soul Brother Number 1" in subsequent mentions.

If you're short on space, "fake" may be used in place of "psychic" or "homeopathic."

Dates should be formatted as MM/DD/YY except for the years 1990 through 1992, which should be denoted in "Hammer Time."

Active verbs should be used frequently, just like your mom.

The FakeAPStylebook does take the time to impress upon readers that these suggestions should not be taken seriously: a label at the bottom of the page says, "If you use this, you will get fired!"

Suggestions for a Fake CP Stylebook are, of course, welcome.

Thanks to Wired for finding this.

Posted by RRJ at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Whitney Wager

Leave it to the video game techies to come up with the newest advertising ploy. The December issues of Official Xbox Magazine and Playstation: The Official Magazine use 3-D technology in an advertising campaign for the video game Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising developed by Codemasters.

The ad instructs readers to visit gamesradar.com and hold the magazine ad up to their computer webcams. A special page appears depicting a war scene from Operation Flashpoint in 3-D. This new feature for magazine ads reminds me of the different techniques advertisers have used lately. Esquire, Entertainment Weekly and EPSN The Magazine have all come out with some groundbreaking schemes. But how far is too far?

Magazine covers have always been a sanctuary from advertising real estate. But as ad sales drop, magazines find they must cater to advertisers. Readers can see the ads slowly infringing upon the once-sacred space. The change could very well turn readers off.

Or it could turn them on? Take Esquire's flashing cover, which some readers have suggested be indicted into the Smithsonian. Maybe it's not so bad that ads are creeping onto the front page if it means experimentation with new and cool formats? Editors are constantly struggling to make their content web-friendly, so what better way than to use interactive images.

Posted by RRJ at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Matthew Stein

Protecting confidential sources has always been a controversial game in Canada and is on display yet again in the Supreme Court of Canada.

On a day that already saw this country's press freedom ranking slide from 13 to 19, Daniel Leblanc, a reporter for The Globe and Mail, is awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court on whether he will be allowed to preserve the identity of a key source in the paper's investigation into the fraud-ridden Quebec sponsorship scandal.

According to the Globe, the plaintiff in the case, Montreal media company Le Groupe Polygone Editeurs Inc., is strenuously arguing that, "the right of a person who leaks information cannot take precedence over the livelihood of a company that is trying to defend itself in a serious lawsuit."

The case, together with a ruling due shortly on the National Post's attempt to protect a key source behind Andrew McIntosh's investigation into the Shawinigate affair, will have serious implications for a journalist's relationship with his source.

The importance of the Leblanc case has rallied a Facebook group around his cause and has been addressed by media law professor, Dean Jobb, in a recent article in the Winnipeg Free Press.

For a more in-depth look at the Leblanc story, check out Katherine's Laidlaw's piece "To Report and Protect" here.

Posted by RRJ at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Adriana Rolston

This weekend marked Yahoo!'s second annual "Hack Day" event in Taipei, an open conference for programmers to design innovative new web applications while competing for prizes.

When videos and photos of women hired by the company giving programmers lap dancers were posted on Flickr the backlash was shock and fury from the tech community who largely commented on the sexist nature of the event.

Chris Yeh, the head of the Yahoo! Developer Network responded by issuing an apology Monday evening on the Yahoo! Developer Network Blog where photos of the event were originally posted. "As many folks have rightly pointed out, the 'Hack Girls' aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it's certainly not the message we want to send about our values here at Yahoo!" he said.

Although Yeh mentioned in his apology that Hack Days encourage female coders to participate, hiring exotic dancers to gyrate against male developers might not be the way to do it.

This stunt went unnoticed last year during Yahoo!'s Hack Day in Taiwan. Hiring exotic dancers has certainly put a stain in the company's image; it makes Yahoo! look unprofessional and makes it difficult to take the company, one of the most recognized online search engines, seriously. I know I'll be searching with Google next time I'm browsing the web.

Posted by RRJ at 08:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Jordan J. Hay

A spring-training style pink slip would have worked. Instead, he broke the news by memo.

On Monday, The New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller told staff the paper would be cutting 100 jobs by the end of the year.

After apologizing for his impersonal choice of communication (the flu was given as explanation and without reference to a series of letters and ones), Keller wrote that buyout offers were to begin immediately with the hopes of avoiding layoffs.

This is the second round everyone wanted to avoid. In spring 2008, the Times fired 100 newsroom staffers. The union then accepted a five percent pay cut in an attempt to stall further layoffs. The result was in everybody's e-mail inbox on Monday.

Prior to last year's housecleaning, the newspaper boasted 1,330 editorial employees. Currently, that tally hovers around 1,250. The rub is that according to the Times, no other U.S. newspaper employs more than roughly 750 people.

With my shoes off, my math shows that after firing 100 journalists, the Times roster is still going to be around 400 names heavier than the league standard.

What's next, another five percent?

Posted by RRJ at 01:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Joyce Yip

Canwest Global Communications Corp. received news last Thursday that it would be delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) at market close on Friday, November 13, 2009.

The Winnipeg media conglomerate's shares–now worth 23.5 cents–were pushed off the trading table on October 5 when it filed for creditor protection under a debt of nearly $4 billion. The company made its first court appearance in Toronto last Wednesday and was given until January to restructure its company.

If the cool club won't have it, Canwest spokesman John Douglas suggested that the company has yet to decide whether it will appeal the delisting—which is due October 21—or join more pedestrian clubs like TSX Venture Exchange or NEX.

However, if Canwest goes forward with rumoured plans to sell its newspapers (National Post was one of the companies who filed for creditor protection), it could pull in nearly $1 billion.

Before we reach a conclusion, let me refresh your memory:
- Last April, Canwest sold three of its UK FM radio stations.
- Last November, it announced a plan to reduce an annual operating cost of $61 million, which would include deleting 560 positions.
- In March, the Washington-based The New Republic magazine was sold.
- In June, CHCH-TV and CJNT-TV were sold.
- In July, two over-the-air stations were closed.

Now you have two options:
A) Tape this to your mirror so you give 110 percent every work day.
B) Start typing up a resumé for Starbucks.

Posted by RRJ at 09:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Chelsea Murray

The federal government has refused to update Canada's Access to Information Act, despite what a front-page Toronto Star story called "warnings that the program is collapsing under bureaucratic foot-dragging and political negligence."

A Globe and Mail story on the same issue stated that the Commons committee recommended "the information commissioner be given more power to force the government to disclose information in a timely manner."

For journalists this decision is a big deal. Despite living in one of world's richest democracies, we scrape the system for shavings of information. It takes a month, at least, to get a response on an FOI request.

Had the Commons committee's suggestions been accepted, the dreaded FOI process might have been sped up. And journalists' interests might have been taken more seriously.

In the Star story, committee chair Liberal MP Paul Szabo said, "there is a systemic problem where the government is averse to disclosure and is fighting the system and there's no leadership within the government."

Perhaps Stephen Harper could sing Canadian journalists a private serenade so we can just forget about the whole thing.

Posted by RRJ at 09:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Michelle Kuran

And you thought the size-zero buzz of the fashion biz—where an apple-and-only-an-apple-a-day apparently can't keep the doctor away—was low...

The French edition of October's Vogue, which hit newsstands last week, featured a 14-page spread where the face and body of white Dutch supermodel Lara Stone were painted black. Art for art's sake? Maybe in à la mode la-la land. But, for others, there seems to be more at stake...

In The Guardian article "Why blacking up is the worst kind of fashion crime," writer Hannah Pool is perplexed: "What were they thinking? Surely this is the only possible reaction..."

I know that was my gut reaction. Dominique Sopo, president of the French anti-racism organization SOS Racisme, said, "If [Vogue's] aim was artistic, and not to pass off the model as a black girl, the fact that it produces such reactions shows that the world of images—advertising, fashion, whatever—is now paying for its long tradition of not allowing black people to show their bodies in public."

Perhaps Vogue has gone too far. Perhaps we haven't come far enough.

Oh, one hypothetical question: If these magazine pictures were hung next to say, Mona Lisa in the Louvre, do you think this controversy would translate effortlessly from fashion crime to shock art? In other words, outside the mass media milieu, would this still be as much of an outrage?

Posted by RRJ at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Jessica Lewis

The world watched in horror yesterday as the search was on for a missing six-year-old boy from Denver, Colorado.

Falcon Heene was believed to have either been on or fallen out of a 20-foot long and 5-foot high balloon his father had constructed as an experiment. It wasn't until hours later that he was discovered in a box in his attic.

But for the intense 90 minutes of watching a balloon soar through Colorado air, anchors, journalists and everyone at home couldn't help but express their heartfelt opinions on the matter.

Whether it be the business of journalism or the 140-character long gasps, everyone had something to say.

As CNN noted, the experience was a "bonanza for social networking sites."

Over on Mediaite, columnist Colby Hall brought the viewers' eyes back down with the question: what if this boy died on television in front of the world?

Do you think that the live coverage of the balloon flight was too much? And the life assessing question, when does journalism go too far?

When little Falcon was found, and viewers across the world were shaking off that information, we had to ask ourselves: why did journalists spend two hours focused on something that wasn't even true?

One interesting tidbit that surfaced late last night was an interview with the Heene family, who had previously appeared on episodes of Wife Swap, on CNN's Larry King Live. When asked why he did not respond to his parents' cries, Falcon said, "You guys said that we did this for the show."

Update: an uncomfortable interview on ABCnews with the Heene family where Falcon leaves to vomit and we're left wondering why we're watching this.

Posted by RRJ at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Maiya Keidan

Oil company Trafigura had some very smart lawyers in Carter-Ruck, who almost managed to silence a pesky little story about a toxic sludge spill Trafigura caused in Africa. Carter-Ruck blocked The Guardian from reporting on a question asked in the British House of Commons about the spill, seeking and receiving an injunction from a judge.

The term "super-injunction," is applied here. It expresses journalists' frustration at the banning of publishing both the existence of court proceedings and court orders themselves.

So, who saved the day? Twitter. Alan Rusbridge wrote that as he was leaving work on Monday, he posted to Twitter: "Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain?" By the time he got home Twitter sleuthers had gone into overdrive. Halfway through the following day, the company's name was one of the most searched terms in Europe.

Now I'll be honest. I'm not a big fan of Twitter. I jumped on the bandwagon when my colleagues in the journalism program started talking about it. But I soon lost interest and my ears seemed to shut off whenever Twitter was mentioned. Yet this story is truly remarkable. And if Twitter has the power to prevent savvy lawyers and mischievous companies from hiding from the press, then I'll gladly join the line as head Twitter cheerleader.

I think the situation just proves there is one more way for reporters to ensure companies can't hide from the public. It's our responsibility to ensure that stories, like this one, are communicated to the public. That means using whatever means are available to us in order to best serve the interest of those groups who can't speak for themselves.

Posted by RRJ at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Jenny Vaughan

In an effort to attract younger readers, Playboy magazine slapped a nude Marge Simpson on its November cover.

The age of the magazine's average reader is 35 years old according to canada.com, and Playboy CEO Scott Flanders says they'd like to rope in twenty-something readers with their Marge cover.

As Jian Ghomeshi noted on Q this week, if a nudie magazine has trouble attracting young men, it might have bigger problems to worry about.

Indeed, CNN reports that advertising pages in Playboy have sunk by 31 percent in the past year, and newsstand sales have dropped by 25 percent. I guess the kids are going elsewhere for their fun these days.

But what strikes me about the November issue is not the nearly naked cartoon star gracing its cover, it's the stories flagged on the cover. There's a tribute to Farrah Fawcett, a piece of fiction by Stephen King, a dispatch from Texas and interviews with Tracy Morgan and Benicio del Toro.

Wait a minute—this looks like real journalism. Apparently Playboy is where I should have gone for my entertainment news all these years. Out of five stories advertised around Marge's bare body, there are five I'd like to read.

Maybe that's Playboy's problem: too much news and not enough nudity.

I'll be curious to see if the Playboy ploy works and if younger men line up this Friday to scoop the Marge issue. More importantly, I'd love to know if it's the cover star that attracts customers or the articles that rope readers in.

Either way, I won't be holding my breath to see Peter Griffin on the cover of Playgirl any time soon.

Posted by RRJ at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

By Seema Persaud

Last week a blogger for ZDNet, Richard Koman, wrote a piece that was entirely false. Essentially he said that Yahoo gave 200,000 usernames and e-mail addresses to Iranian authorities. They did nothing like that. Koman based the piece on a blog post that had been translated for him. Paul Carr, a blogger for TechCrunch, highlights the errors in detail.

A retraction was posted by the editor-in-chief of ZDNet, Larry Dignan, a day later, admitting that the one source used wasn't credible. But we cannot assume that everyone who read the initial piece saw the follow-up.

The Columbus Dispatch editor Benjamin J. Marrison wrote that consultants for the Dispatch's website said "online news consumers don't mind if your initial report is inaccurate. They just want it first. Online readers know that, over time, the truth will come out." Uh, really?

I have no idea who these consultants are, how in-depth the research was for this finding, or whether this applies to Canadian online news consumers, but I can only see this applicable to celebrity gossip. Admittedly, as a journalist, I'm a tad biased. The truth will come out eventually for stories that warrant a lot of media attention, but what about the smaller posts. What else is being written but not being checked?

In a time of instantaneous retweets and blog posts based on other blog posts (ironically somewhat like this one), how are we to know what is credible? How many of us contact credible sources before we tweet and blog?

On a completely unrelated note, here's something to entertain you. Go to globeandmail.com and hit the following keys:
Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, "b", "a". A dialogue box will come up. Click "OK" and hit shift key and spacebar at the same time. A band will come up on the screen, prompting you for a command. Type "contra" and hit enter. Surprise!

Thanks to Mathew Ingram from the The Globe and Mail for tweeting this.

Posted by RRJ at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

By Jill Langlois

According to some, non-profit is the new black. And according to others, all it seems to be is another trend that's failing to keep traditional journalism afloat.

San Francisco financier Warren Hellman has sided with the former, creating the Bay Area News Project in cahoots with KQED, the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, and possibly The New York Times. There aren't many details available about the project, but a few things we do know: he wants the news organization to employ anywhere between 10 and 15 full-time journalists in its early stages, a CEO or executive editor will cost him well over six figures in salary, and he's going to do all of this with $5 million (U.S.).

And as Chris O'Brien says in his Idea Lab blog, "$5 million sounds like a lot. But it's not." In fact, Hellman will likely have to raise an equal amount of funds yearly in order to keep his project running.

Turning a for-profit business like journalism into a non-profit isn't going to save it. Interns are already working for a measly stipend, if they're lucky, and who's to say donors are going to have the money to continue to fund projects like these? Non-profit journalism is a nice thought, but it's eventually going to bring us right back to where we started: searching the "help wanted" ads.

Posted by RRJ at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Rodney Barnes

Hold on a moment. Russ Smith, founder of Splice Today, thinks that if Facebook were to erect a paywall, even of $25, there'd be enough people left over after the mass exit to keep it alive.

Alive, maybe, but useless. What makes Facebook worth anything is it connects me to all of my friends at any time, and because of this it's easier to organize and communicate with them. Even if I wanted to pay for Facebook, were all of my friends to leave I would have no choice but to follow.

Smith's informal survey of peers elicited in some cases a similar response. Michael Wolff, a Vanity Fair columnist, wrote that "social networking depends on an ever-expanding critical mass. If there were suddenly half as many people on Facebook and if its new member growth dramatically stalled, I think the experience would seem substantially diminished, meaning you would lose more people."

There also seems to be a generation gap at work here. Smith, a self-confessed "Boomer," remembers a time when he subscribed to 50 magazines. I don't think I know anyone subscribed to more than two or three.

His nieces and nephews, on the other hand, seem to get it. "Mostly, I feel that in this day and age, Facebook is just something everyone does and it's part of being touch with 2009," said Zoe, his niece. His nephew, Rhys, said that, "My initial reaction would be to pay the fee, because it's a good form of communication. That said, if a lot of my friends dropped it, I would too, because Facebook would become useless."

It's true that $25 wouldn't break the budget of most of its users. But it's not an issue of how much; if the paywall were a penny there'd still be significant losses. And we'd all move on to the next free social networking platform (probably created by Google), and publishers would still be wondering how they'll ever make money off the internet.

Edit: I've heard no talk about Facebook even considering a nominal charge, although Smith says that it would be inevitable were the site to be sold to a large corporation. If this happened, we could expect to see a great example of paywalls at work - or not working.

Posted by RRJ at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Robyn Urback

According to several discontented tweeters last night, CanWest has cancelled its cheques to freelancers.

This comes just days after the media giant filed for bankruptcy protection. Under $4 billion of debt, CanWest's court-ordered restructuring is expected to take four to six months.

In the meantime, freelancers' cheques have turned to mere paper. According to Piali Roy, a Toronto freelancer, CanWest sent emails to freelancers letting them know their cheques were cancelled. A fortunate few caught wind of the move early and cashed their cheques quickly.

First Transcon, now CanWest; seems the industry is becoming less and less freelancer-friendly.

UPDATE: In an internal memo, Leonard Asper said today the freelancers have been paid. "We had some processing problems while issuing some freelance cheques this week but those have been rectified and payments have been made. This had nothing to do with our ability to pay but rather some new processes that were introduced this week as a result of the filing," he wrote to staff.

Posted by RRJ at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Matthew Stein

On Thursday, The Globe and Mail published an article revealing that Canada is not among the 100 countries that have recently been made eligible to order a Kindle, an electronic book reader, from Amazon. According to the Globe, Amazon is still shopping for a Canadian telecom company to run its wireless connection network that is necessary to download any number of the 260,000 books, 26 magazines, 34 newspapers and 1,450 blogs available from its Kindle library.

The hold up is not expected to last beyond the holidays, but I say the quicker the Kindle gets here the better.

According to the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the wholesale revenue from digital book sales in the U.S. jumped from $1.6-million (U.S.) in the first quarter of 2002 to $16.8-million (U.S.) in the fourth quarter of 2008 and a similar trend should be expected in Canada.

The Kindle's E-ink technology makes reading, especially longer stories, easy on the eyes and its small size allows users to take it along with them anywhere they go. In our current fast-paced society, where people routinely multi-task and rarely have a minute to waste, the Kindle makes both news and literature more accessible. Moreover, a recent study by Greg Kozak, Vice President of Information Technology Services at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, proved paper-based books create four times the greenhouse gas emissions as e-book readers.

As journalists, the popularity of these devices can only benefit our work. The Kindle makes online material more accessible and reading it is more convenient and more enjoyable.

Posted by RRJ at 04:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Mai Nguyen

If there was ever a way to glamourize journalism these days, this is it. The Globe and Mail launched the Journalism Dream Contest where one writer and one photographer will embark on a journey to the west coast to cover the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Entering the contest is quite simple: be a Canadian citizen between the ages of 25 and 44 and submit a 500-word report on any sporting event. Even cricket will be accepted. The grand prize consists of paid airfare, paid accommodation for 14 nights, an Acer laptop and $1,000 in cold hard cash. You can get all of this, plus share it with one guest.

The contest was introduced in an attempt to publicize the 2010 Winter Olympics, in which the Globe is an official sponsor. The contest also marks the first time the newspaper has welcomed its own readers to join the crew as "guest journalists."

The Globe's marketing director, Sean Humphrey, told Media in Canada that the contest "reinforces our brand stance that the Globe and Mail gives its readers access like nobody else—through unique editorial, through one-of-a-kind experiences such as our recent cruise, and access to events and offers via our recognition loyalty program."

In other words, it gives citizen journalists the spotlight they've been waiting for, at least for a little while until the sponsorship is over.

For those who could use a free trip, the deadline for submissions is Nov. 22.

Posted by RRJ at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Katie Hewitt

David Dewees killed himself. The police don't release details about suicides; it's protocol. But if you lie down on the subway tracks at High Park station, like Dewees did on Saturday, people are going to talk, especially if they already know your name.

The Jarvis Collegiate teacher spent his last two days facing police charges—two counts of invitation to sexual touching and two counts of luring. An additional charge of sexual assault was mistakenly reported by the Toronto Star.

Rosie DiManno acknowledged the mistake in a column about Dewees's suicide, spent some time speculating about whether it was his reputation ruined by guilt or the news report that drove him to suicide, and then stated, outright, that he was guilty.

The online community was not happy. Reddit.com, a social news site, received a slew of commentary, ranging in tone from rational to witch-hunt. Other users vote to move the posts up or down in sequence.

One email to DiManno, voted for by the people on reddit.com, calls for her to "lay down on a track (sic)" and do the world a favour. And so DiManno's own media trial begins, complete with demands for her death.

A democratic medium with a built-in voting process? Seems more like a public execution.

Posted by RRJ at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Colleen Tang

One hundred thousand users were given invitations last week to Google Wave, the next new social media tool that has gotten lots of attention on how it will affect journalism and change the way journalists do their job. Another batch of invitations went around this week and word has it some journalists got their hands on an invite.

Just as Twitter is a tool for journalism, Google Wave will be at the forefront of conversation until everyone has had their crack on it. Stephanie Hannon, a project manager for Google Wave, said that it is definitely a tool journalists can use to collaborate with others and that a revision history tool will soon become available to look back at any moment that was published on the web.

Los Angeles Times had a lot of helpful and insightful commentary on the ways that Google Wave might change journalism, such as introducing live editing, increasing transparency in the reporting process and being able to participate in conversations as you're reading and potentially creating instant polling.

Another interesting idea is being able to have a virtual forum where witnesses and reporters can share and contribute news and photos in one frame.

Since the invites are rare, even if you get one you are only allowed to send it to eight other people, so the hype over this new tool is going to last awhile. I for one would like to get an invite instead of reading about other people's experiences.

What do you think? Do you think Google Wave will dramatically change journalism?

Posted by RRJ at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Rodney Barnes

Mark this date in your calendars, ladies and gents - it seems Canada's media industry has finally put itself on the road to becoming more viable online. With three whopping website redesigns launched yesterday - one each at thestar.com, CBC Radio 3 and The Mark - we're at least trying to deal with this Internet thing.

That's not to say we're doing it right. Teehan and Lax, the company that helped redesign the new Toronto Star site, posted a walkthrough of some of the site's new features, including the optional news views and the homepage. In their comments, however, Matt Nish-Lapidus pointed out that the new homepage gives equal weight to every story below the top story, going against the traditional hierarchy usually employed to organize news stories; also, it's hard to decide which of the news views to use.

"Presenting [multiple views] as options like 'Grid View' doesn’t tell me why it will help me," Nish-Lapidus wrote. "As a reader of The Star, what is my incentive for using the other views? How do they fit into my reading habits and needs?"

Both thestar.com and CBC Radio 3's website are still beta, and The Mark has put a moving feedback tab along the right side of their page. All three acknowledge that there is more work to be done still, and they're not quite finished polishing yet.

So if it all goes to hell you can't say we didn't put up a fight.

Posted by RRJ at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Melissa Wilson

First Condé Nast axed four of its titles and now Canwest has filed for creditor protection. It's not a happy time to be a journalism school senior.

For years, people have been predicting that Canwest will go belly-up, but now it looks like they're really going to go down fighting. Having sought shelter from their $4 billion debt load under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, Canwest has bought itself some time to get its act together.

In layman's terms (explained to me by my favourite financial expert—my mom), this means Canwest gets a reprieve from any payments they are behind on, and can move forward focusing only on upcoming bills. This buys them a bit of time (four to six months, according to Canwest president and CEO, Leonard Asper) to restructure their finances, in hopes of staying afloat.

However, only about a fifth of Canwest's businesses will be affected by the filing. Among those that are: the National Post and Global TV. We can only hope that those working for these businesses will be able to land on their feet after all is said and done.

Toronto author Warren Kinsella blogged about the news, writing: “Someone needs to be thrown under the bus for this mess, but it's not the working journalists, that's for damn sure."

Much of Canwest's debt comes from the 2000 deal where they acquired the Post from Conrad Black. In a few weeks, the Post will celebrate its 11th birthday. Last year, it celebrated the double digits with the knowledge that it had still not made a single dime in profit. I can't see this year's party being any cheerier.

For the full story, check out this article from the Canadian Press.

Posted by RRJ at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Katherine Laidlaw

Today, Condé Nast folded four magazines. The luxury magazine company has been threatening cuts for months, and fears and commentary heightened when CEO Chuck Townsend brought in McKinsey & Co. to assess where the company could cut costs. Three of the titles, Cookie (a parenting mag), Elegant Bride and Modern Bride, I've never read and don't recall ever noticing. But Gourmet's closure hits me where it hurts—my nostalgia. A fixture on my relatives' coffee tables and in their kitchens, the magazine's stunning photography and recipes left enough of my family salivating each month that even I, the most domestically challenged in my family, will miss its pages, sometimes home to such luminaries as David Foster Wallace.

The spending habits and luxurious lifestyles of Condé Nast's top editors have been well-documented, discussed and secretly idolized by many. Condé Nast represents the same luxury and escapism for journalists as it does for readers. Freedom! Money! Glamour! So what if the company is losing money? It sits up there on its glamorous pedestal, beckoning young journalists to what still seems like the land of plenty.

And now that the publishing house is closing 70-year-old titles, it makes this death-of-print threat feel even more real. So today I feel a little discouraged. And I'm not the only one. Susan Orlean, of the New Yorker, wrote today on her Twitter account: @susanorlean; "I don't think I've ever felt more discouraged about the economy, especially publishing, than I do right now. When will there be good news?"

It's a sad day for budding writers, and former Condé Nast staffers, when even Susan Orlean feels nervous.

Posted by RRJ at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's summer time. You're fresh out of high school (or Cégep for you Quebec folk) and your days are spent on the web searching for academic programs for the year ahead. You arrive at Ryerson's admission site and encounter the regular dose of requirements and deadlines for admission. Great. As the summer proceeds, you eventually make your way to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T) admissions site and in addition to the standard, official dose of information, you find a series of blogs from young students like yourself writing honestly about your prospective program. Hmmm. Which one sounds more engaging and useful?

At a time when bloggers are becoming an increasingly dominant source of information, it only seems plausible that they take their expertise and wisdom to university websites. On Thursday, The New York Times explored this phenomena and its potential rewards and risks for universities.

What are the implications of this trend? And as one of Canada's leading journalism schools, shouldn't Ryerson's journalism department be part of it?

Posted by RRJ at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Rodney Barnes

Clay Shirky brought his media-theory guns loaded when he came to tonight's "What's Next For News?" talk at Ryerson University. Much of it is not new for those who have read his book or followed him online, although his pairing with cultural theorist Andrew Keen, both of them moderated by Canada's own Mathew Ingram, meant the night had a vibrant twist.

Of course, neither had any answers for the current fix that journalism is in right now. In the way only academics have for coming up with catchphrases, Shirky said that "the central problem is that there is no central problem."

He mentioned the shift from an economic to intellectual emphasis; focusing on business models ignores the problems news organizations face in terms of content and engaging their audience. The "shock of inclusion," that journalists need to get over their more personal relationship with their readers, is another factor.

Keen was quick to point out the irony of the problems ailing journalism being decentralized. For Shirky, centralization used to be a way to increase the scale that publishers could operate at. With Google and Wikipedia, not only is that scale smaller but the approach is nearing irrelevancy.

Otherwise, Keen didn't add much. "My skill is as a polemicist," he said. Sure, he contradicted himself - and his book, The Cult of the Amateur - three times during the night. But, as Mathew Ingram pointed out later on, he was in it for the debate.

The under-reported gem today was the afternoon talk with five working journalists moderated by Mary Sheppard, executive producer at CBCNews.ca. On the panel were Bryan Borzykowski, senior editor at Canadian Business Online; Adrian Ma, a freelance writer fresh out of Ryerson's Masters of Journalism program; Amber MacArthur, a new media journalist; Romina Maurino, a Canadian Press Queen's Park reporter; and Marissa Nelson, senior editor of digital news at thestar.ca.

The talk gave more of the 'meat and potatoes' people were expecting from the night. The panel discussed how technologies like Blackberry and Twitter have changed the way they do their reporting; filing stories takes half the time, and can be done from anywhere. And finding sources for stories is no problem if you have the right Twitter following.

"The future is mobile," Sheppard boldly suggested. It is also niche; advertisers don't want mass-market distribution. In the future there will be more local content, and more investigative pieces. And storytelling, said Nelson, "is about to go through a fantastic renaissance."

None of this will happen if we plan for it, warns Shirky. Now is the time for experimentation, with new ways of presenting information, of interacting with users. The coming change, because the news industry has done so little to prepare for it, will be much more transformative than anyone can anticipate.

Let's just hope that we can be as persistent as Steve Foster.

Thanks to Joyce Smith, Melissa Wilson and the folks at J-Source.ca, whose liveblog I used extensively in this post.

UPDATE: Check out video for the event at, of course, J-Source.ca.

Posted by RRJ at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)