This week, the American Society for Professional Journalists issued a press release urging journalists in Haiti to respect their role as reporters of the news. The SPJ claims that some journalists have been blurring ethical lines, immersing themselves into their stories opposed to simply reporting the carnage. Some journalists have gone so far as to exchange their aid for interviews.

However, Israeli journalist, Natasha Mozgovaya, a reporter on location in Haiti, says: "No matter how often you tell yourself that the reports you file will help mobilize desperately needed aid for those who survived the earthquake, the fact remains: Instead of giving them water, you're sticking a camera in their faces. Even as they writhe in pain, you're asking them questions."

This calls into question the ethics of remaining passive amidst devastation and havoc. As journalists should we stand by idly, camera and notepad in hand, instead of digging victims out of rubble or driving the injured to hospitals? Perhaps there is no simple answer to this question. Perhaps we'll only truly know how to react when we're in that situation, hearing, feeling, seeing, the drama first hand.

According to a new little poll[pdf] that's getting a whole lot of attention, Fox News is the most trusted news network in the United States.

Almost half of the 1,151 American registered voters who were surveyed by Public Policy Polling said they trusted the network. Results were less positive for CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC.

"A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most neutral and unbiased conveyors of news," said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. "But the media landscape has really changed and now they're turning more toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear."

Well, if that's true, I should probably start tuning in to "The Weather Network: San Diego."

So, what do these results tell us? I'd say it's that we need to start rethinking our modern news network recipes for success.

To start, we need a lot more shouting, and a healthy dose of fear mongering. I don't care if McCarthyism was 60 years ago; dropping a "Red" or "socialist" now and again is key to an attractive news report. Throw in some pundits, radicals, a little photo doctoring and a "Fair & Balanced" motto, and you're laughing. Occasionally you might have to cover a natural disaster or something of the sort; it's just part of the game. Don't worry—you can almost always make it political.

A magazine known for its urban coolness and lewd imagery has partnered up with CNN. Vice Magazine, a former zine hailing from Montreal, has started featuring a series of short documentaries on CNN.com (the first went viral last Wednesday).

It's an unlikely pairing, but Vice founder Shane Smith says there's logic behind the madness.

Well said, Smith, but to translate, Vice is ready to settle down and take this journalism thing seriously.

And the magazine didn't sweet-talk its way to this deal. CNN.com staff have been charmed by Vice's consistent transparency in its reporting, which is duly noted in the first doc where Smith and his crew interview residents and ex-warlords of an impoverished and crime-ridden Liberia.

Vice is one of the few Canadian magazines that have found success in the United States, with editions spanning the globe. How it's been able to do it has been a surprise to most Canadian journalists. And what seems at first to be a ludicrous joint venture now might just blow up in our faces and prove to be a smart move. Looks like Vice is getting ready to resign as the hipster's Bible.

No serious discussion would contain National Enquirer and Pulitzer Prize in the same sentence, until now.

On Thursday afternoon, Washington Post staff writer, Howard Kurtz broke news of Enquirer executive editor Barry Levine's intention to submit his paper's writings on the discreditable behaviour of John Edwards for one of the prestigious prizes. "It's clear we should be a contender for this," Levine is quoted as saying.

As shocking as the tabloid's sensational covers is that three years of Enquirer coverage on the issue was vindicated by the former presidential candidate's confession yesterday stating that he had fathered a child with his mistress.

In 2008, after the tabloid broke news of Edward's affair and published a photo of him with an unidentified baby, the former senator denied being the father on ABC's Nightline. A year-and-a-half later, he chose to finally admit it to NBC.

Before you go declaring the end of journalism as we know it, note that the 2010 Pulitzer only considers publications from 2009, which excludes much of the paper's '07/'08 reporting on the matter.

Still, it's frightening to consider a Pulitzer Prize winning Enquirer.

Five "fearless" journalists plan to hole up in a French farmhouse with nothing but Twitter and Facebook to connect them to the outside world. This breakthrough method of modern science will surely reveal all the newsgathering secrets of social networking. Right.

Somewhere, someone at the Onion is asking themselves: "Why didn't I think of that?"

As was already pointed out on J-Source, the experiment will likely reveal more about the group's social idiosyncrasies and the quality of their individual Twitter accounts (you can tell everything about a person's news feed by who their friends are). In the same article, Mathew Ingram defies the whole process for its single-source look at a complex news industry.

Are we journalists so desperate in our ignorance of social networking tools that we must devise farcical stunts in hopes of accidentally learning something? The answer is an unfortunate and unequivocal yes.

Finally, finally! Wednesday morning, The New York Times announced its plan to put up a paywall and acknowledge journalism's not free to produce.

The beginning of 2011 is the oblique timeline for the "metered model" plan to charge only after readers have gone over a not-yet-set limit of articles per month.

The decision ignited a barrage of Twitter debate, some laudatory and some not. On Mashable, Stan Schroeder argues that the decision won't attract links to the site, nor attract new readers. On Slate, Jack Shafer says the Times is tackling the wrong question—there's an advertising crisis, not a readership one.

Taking a poorly conducted poll of 10 people in the journalism lab from which I am writing, 70 percent say they would pay for Times content behind a paywall. The number peters out at the mention of Canadian newspapers putting up paywalls. We'll just get our news from CBC, these j-students say. Whether or not that 70 percent number bodes well for The New York Times and its two-years-away plan, at least the paper's making an effort to address the problem—we're convinced we deserve content for free. I fear there might not be a way to reserve that sentiment.

Remember that post ten days ago about immersive video technology changing journalism? Well CNN just posted a series of three videos using Calgary, Alberta-based Immersive Media's Dodeca camera system in action in Haiti.

It's clear that the use of this technology is still in its infancy, and I'm waiting to see how broadcast media will incorporate this into its journalism. For now I'll have to be satisfied with feeling like I've just walked and driven through Haiti.

Citytv is in the midst of major restructuring, which will bring major cuts across the board. Rogers Media, which bought Citytv in 2007, was mum on how many jobs would be affected. According to CBC News, there will be multiple layoffs at Citytv's Vancouver, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto stations. Toronto's noon and 5 p.m. newscasts, CityNews at Noon in Edmonton and Calgary and Lunch Television in Vancouver have all been cancelled. On-air personalities Anne Mroczkowsk, who has been co-anchoring the 6 p.m. newscast since 1988, and Laura DiBattista have been given pink slips. The 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts will remain in Toronto and CityLine will remain in all its markets. Popular morning show Breakfast Television will remain on the air in five cities, with Vancouver slashing an hour of programming.

According to Rogers Media Television CEO Leslie Sole, the cuts are meant to improve core business operations by focusing on top performing local programs. They hope to focus on the quality, not quantity, of local programming. Right. Fat chance. Looks like local television is taking a hit yet again and the trend towards nationalizing Toronto's news providers is growing.

For many, the word "beaver" doesn't necessarily conjure up thoughts of Canadian historical chronicles. This is partly why the Winnipeg-based history magazine, The Beaver, announced on Monday, Jan. 11 that it will change its name this coming April. Though the title wasn't a racy innuendo when the magazine was founded in 1920, it's now cited as a subscription turn-off for many readers, especially women under the age of 45.

Deborah Morrison, president and CEO of Canada`s National History Society, which publishes the soon-to-be-called Canada's History, noticed that web traffic for the site averaged eight seconds. "And I have a feeling that might be because a lot of people going to the site weren't exactly looking for Canadian history content," she said.

The magazine's furry moniker spans 90 years and has approximately 150,000 readers, but between inappropriate jabs and spam filter debacles, publishers felt that it was time to employ some pest removal. Market research illustrated that emphasizing online content would require some industrious rebranding. Publications' web images are beginning to factor more prominently into how a magazine is packaged, and whether they can successfully cross-promote with other services and brands. This sharp-toothed rodent has built one too many dams and the price it will pay is being skinned online.

So though sex sells, it doesn't appear to sell history.

The folks at the National Post, Montreal's The Gazette and the Ottawa Citizen can breathe a huge sigh of relief today because it doesn't look like they'll be closing up shop in the near future, as has been predicted in recent weeks. The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail reported today that a group of media bigwigs have put a bid on the table to purchase the three papers. Curiously, the three buyers—former Canadian senator and Citytv founder Jerry Grafstein, media consultant Raymond Heard and Quebec newspaper editor Baryl Wajsman—are not revealing who their financial backers are. But Grafstein did tell the Globe that it was his faith in the future of newspapers that motivated the bid.

No word yet from the Asper family about how they feel about the pitch. The Aspers wanted to sell their newspapers together as a package, not one by one. But the media trio hand-picked the three publications, leaving out Victoria's The Times Colonist, the Calgary Herald, the Edmonton Journal, The Vancouver Sun and The Province. It's like being ignored by the basketball captain in gym class all over again.

As stories about the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti flow in through every news outlet in the world, readers on thestar.com were hit Thursday with a massive advertisement for TD Waterhouse taking up the entire right half of the screen real estate usually reserved for headline and breaking news.

Sometimes large flash-based ads have an option for the user to shrink them down, but no: this one has an option to actually expand it to take up the entire screen, and a video of Patricia Lovett-Reid, TD Waterhouse Canada's unusually chipper Senior VP urges me to start dreaming of my retirement.

The large ad was removed later that afternoon, and the regular-sized advertisement space took its place—sometimes with the more modest version of TD Waterhouse's retirement promotion. Was it due to user complaints, or was it supposed to have an unusually short online lifespan to begin with? While these placements are often designed and decided on a good while in advance of the actual posting, I might feel slightly less offended if this appeared on a slow news day without thousands-strong death tolls on my mind.

Apparently, Condé Nast has put out a suggestion box for its employees, inviting ideas on how to improve the company. Oh yeah, and as an incentive, it's promised $10,000 to the employee who comes up with the best idea.

The company has vowed to cough up $10,000 each quarter to the contest winners—a piddly sum, when you consider that one of the publishing giant's flagship magazines, Vogue, spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on photo shoots every month that it ends up killing, anyways.

But why didn't Condé Nast think of this sooner? Just a few months ago, it paid millions for an outside consulting group to make recommendations on what it could do to fix the company's cash flow problem. Compared to the fee paid to McKinsey consulting, $40,000 seems like chump change.

Then again, since when did employees require cash incentives to give feedback anyways? Isn't that part of the job description? Maybe the heads at Condé Nast should've taken a page from Toyota's kaizen approach—meaning 'incremental improvement'—documented last year in detail in the company's own publication, the New Yorker, and found ways to encourage employee feedback all along.

Plus, as the Atlantic points out, not only does the move reek of desperation, but often the best and most useful ideas aren't the revolutionary ones anyways. Usually the simplest changes (the ones without the 'wow' factor necessary for winning awards—tweaking publications' websites, switching to thinner paper, etc.) are the most effective ones.

Rumours that 2010 will be the year of the tablet already have me steeled for the next technological wave to hit the news industry—one that publications seem ready to embrace. But I had to sit down when I saw this video.

It begins on a boat with rock music and a few dudes giving life the longhorns. Nothing I haven't seen on YouTube. Then I realized I could control the perspective and suddenly everything changed. Later on I had to resist referring to myself in the second person when describing the BASE jumping scene.

The film was made using a camera system that takes 11 video streams arranged in the shape of a dodecahedron in order to capture a 360 degree view. The system was developed by David McCutchen, the chief technical officer at Immersive Media Corp., a Calgary, Alberta-based company founded in 1994 that deals in immersive imagery licensing, among other things.

Tablets may help print media make the digital transition, but if this technology takes off, it could not only offer a more compelling way for journalists to engage viewers but change the way they tell stories. So if you think you have your hands full lugging around your notepad, recorder, camera and video camera, just wait until the release of the dorky-looking Dodeca 2360 camera system.

[Video taken down as it was not working. You can find it here.]

Thanks, Reddit.

It's time to smash open those piggy banks, Canada. Everyone's favourite newspaper chain is now being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

After filing for creditor protection last October, Canwest has now put its bundle of newspapers, including the National Post, Calgary Herald and Vancouver Sun, up for sale, according to a report from the Toronto Star.

According to the Star, the chain hopes to fetch at least $1 billion for the papers, which is about half of what the company initially paid. Ouch.

The general public has been somewhat less-than-mournful of what appears to be the death of one of Canada's media conglomerates (and, smart money would say, the National Post). Deborah Jones at J-Source writes:

"Are we coming to the end of the decade-long train wreck of Canadian journalism, following Hollinger's sale of the former Southam papers to Canwest, and the over-arching ambitions of a series of wanna-be media moguls who ran once-venerable journalism organizations off the rails?"

But I think the more important question is, what will this mean for Canadian journalism? Is this another nail in the coffin of the Canadian media, or is this simply the cutting loose of a dead weight, allowing us to move ahead? I don't have the answers to these questions. Anyone want to take a stab at it?

If you've ever wondered what a list of the most pointless news articles would look like, check out a new top 11 inventory. Personal favourites include number five, about teen pregnancy numbers dropping after 25, and number two, "a millionaire is someone who has $1 million." Jaw-droppingly funny, the list is sadly devoid of information on the sources of bad journalistic efforts. Maybe that's a positive; I know I would lose an inch of respect for the publications that allowed those phrases to be printed.

The posting, while a humorous read, reflects a more melancholy undercurrent of our values. We're all aware of the issues surrounding the future of journalism. Whatever attitude you subscribe to—doom and gloom, or something more hopeful—you must acknowledge that we have a responsibility to prove our importance. This post is funny but it reflects an attitude of sloppiness that isn't. Reporters, editors, producers, etc. need to be aware of the messages they send with sloppy work—uninterested, apathetic and dispassionate media. The message rings loud and clear: if the paper is surviving, it can't afford to make such mistakes and lose an already dwindling readership. News outlets need to value their readers and demonstrate that to them through good quality reporting and finely tuned articles.

Every year, the Consumer Electronic Show provides a glut of geeky, cool products many of us may never own but can no doubt drool over. Pouring over the latest stories yesterday, I found myself mentally measuring the possibility of fitting a 150-inch TV in my living room or obsessing over an impractically awesome transparent laptop.

However, the glut of CES gadgets seems to be e-readers. Tech companies are quickly catching on that the e-reader, which may or may not save media, are on consumer's radar. That's great, because if newspapers make the jump to devices such as the Skiff (which was partially developed by publisher Hearst Corp) then the onus won't be on the next-generation of journalists to figure out how to save the industry.

The only problem is the e-reader is already teetering on the brink of being obsolete. Gizmodo's Wilson Rothman wonders if the e-reader isn't just "an interm technology" while the world waits impatiently for the mythological Apple tablet (buzz over the rumoured January launch was enough to boost Apple's shares in December). Dell and HP released their own tablets at CES, and the technology is quickly making even the newest e-readers look old and tired.

E-reader technology is still too new to make it a must buy. There's no colour and the wireless stores aren't complete. They remind me of the first iPods; they were OK, but you also knew they were just the beginning of something much better. That's more or less where we are at with e-readers and tablets. Kind of cool, but not enough to save your local paper. Not yet, anyway.

So apparently 2010 will be the year of publishing large magazine articles online before the print edition is released. Because if The New York Times Magazine does it, it's cool, right?

On Friday the Times published a story titled "Inside Obama's War on Terrorism" on its website, two weeks before the print edition will be released. Deputy magazine editor Megan Liberman was quoted saying "the 'urgency had set in' to publish sooner" and implied that the web-first tactic is creeping up on the Times fast.

I don't in any way believe that the Times is the first magazine to do such a thing. News outlets want as many hits on their websites as possible. Somehow it brings in money, but more often awareness is quite acceptable.

Peter Baker's piece clocks in at 8,800 words. Do people actually read articles that long online? I sure don't. My grandma eyes make me want to read even websites in print.

The main issue here is that if a news outlet like the Times finds this tactic successful against its subscriber rates, then what's stopping it from doing it again? How early will news leak now? And who's going to be playing follow the leader?

Stop the presses! There is an answer to our print newspaper problem! According to Michael Kinsley of The Atlantic the reason why people are not reading newspapers is because the stories are too long. He writes in a recent issue that dwindling readership "has nothing directly to do with technology," but that the articles are too long-winded and fancy.

He points to a story in the The New York Times from Nov. 8, 2009. A sentence reads: "Handing President Obama a hard-fought victory, the House narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation's health care system on Saturday night, advancing legislation that Democrats said could stand as their defining social policy achievement." Kinsley instead suggests that the article should be written more casually, like when speaking with friends. His editorial changes are as follows: You would say, "The House passed health-care reform last night...It was a close vote...there was a kerfuffle about abortion." I don't know about his friends, but I probably wouldn't say kerfuffle.

And wait, aren't there those television news programs that are 30-second versions of the day's top news stories, written in casual speak for everyday viewers? I thought people read newspapers because they wanted something more than information off a news wire. I thought people read newspapers because they appreciate the analysis and logical organization a journalist can provide. I thought there are those other things called blogs that people go to for a quick dose of news.

In addition to upholding the tenets of the television network known far and wide to be the unrivalled bastion of fairness and balance in news broadcasting, did you know the yokels who comprise Fox News's on-air crew are also the arbiters of piety in God's America? It's true! And now, noted serial adulterer and tabloid diva Tiger Woods has found himself caught in the cross-hairs of one Brit Hume, who says:

He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger is, "Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

Hume, of course, is a former Fox News anchor who stepped down from his perch, only to stay with the network as an analyst once he realized television was probably a better vehicle to spread the Good Word than ranting on a street corner in urine-soaked sweat pants.

Woods, for his part, has not yet given any indication he will renounce his horrific godless religion and embrace Christianity, a faith whose members have never been involved in high-profile sex scandals of any kind whatsoever.