When Twitter becomes the news
Sometimes, how the story was broken becomes a story in itself. First, yesterday’s big news was that Postmedia News offered the National Post‘s entire newsroom buyouts. An internal memo, sent to all Post staff last Friday, informed employees they had until the end of this week to accept the deal, which offers three weeks of pay per year on […]
The RRJ’s journalism blog: not an oxymoron
Amongst some journalists, you’ll still witness a slight shutter at the mention of bloggers. It’s not that they feel challenged anymore (the threat of citizen journalism is so 2008) or fear for their jobs. But, whether they’ll cop to it or not, there’s still a sense that blogging is not “real” journalism. But this sentiment […]
Max iPad
Paul Michelman over at Harvard Business Review is worried publishers are going to fail with the iPad in the same way they failed online. Taking the print product and making it digital didn’t work online, and it won’t work with the iPad, wrote Michelman. “The publishing industry’s strategy: create products and experiences that so mimic print that […]
Cuban ethical dilemmas
I was just in Cuba. You all know this because I blogged about it here before I left. Well, there were no issues with the custom agents; most of them were young and female and attractive and more interested in finishing their evening shift than sifting through our bags. The reception we received from the Cuban public […]
Bewildering
Get this—a post that doesn’t lead with the words “layoff,” “severance,” “grim,” or “death!” (Simple pleasures, for us folks at the Review; just let us have it.) No, today it’s good news! A new online fashion mag has just been launched! Yes, you read that right—growth. The Style Notebook is the new sister site to Torontoist and promises to go […]
Newsroulette
Journos often complain that online news websites don’t provide the same surprise factor as their print counterparts. Well no longer! The Guardian and The New York Times have both developed Stumbleupon-like apps that randomly brings up an article published within the last 24 hours. Serendipity, indeed; it’s almost as fun as clicking on Wikipedia’s “Random article” link, though not quite as addicting as looking […]
Post 17
In between fighting an expensive divorce battle with his wife, being punched in the face by his constituent and making wildly inappropriate comments about Barack Obama, Silvio Berlusconi has found time to slash the $2.8-million his government gives to Canada’s only Italian daily newspaper by half. The Globe and Mail reported today that Corriere Canadese, the 55-year-old paper […]
”This is also one of the most chauvinistic things I’ve read in any magazine article in this century.”
Yesterday, Exclaim! magazine published a letter to the editor on its Facebook fan page. It was in response to Keith Carman’s concert review of the punk band Vivian Girls‘ performance during last week’s Canadian Music Week festival. Titled “Angry-ish Ravings from a Feminist Cunt” — the reader’s word choice, by the way — it has now sparked a debate on […]
RRJ on the road: Off to Cuba
Today, I’m off to Cuba. Not for the sun or sea or rum, but to investigate an issue very close to the hearts and minds of the Cuban people: baseball. However, reporting on such a nationalistic issue in a country where press freedoms, according to Reporters Without Borders, is “”disastrous,”” will be a challenge. Without […]
Sticks and stones
Senator Mike Duffy threw down some tough words for Canadian journalism schools this week. Duffy gave a speech to Conservative party members Monday in Amherst, saying that journalism programs these days train their students with a leftist bias. “When I went to the school of hard knocks, we were told to be fair and balanced,” said Duffy. […]
