Gazette jobs moved to Winnipeg

Montreal's The Gazette has announced that it is dismissing 46 employees in reader sales and service, and transferring their work to Reach Canada in Winnipeg. The 46 are represented by the Montreal Newspaper Guild (MNG), which is filing a grievance because they believe it is a violation of their contract, which gives the union jurisdiction over the work.

If successful, MNG says management will eliminate a largely bilingual workforce and will directly affect service to readers, saying that over years of service, they have established a strong relationship with the newspaper's almost 1,000,000 subscribers.

This news comes after an October announcement that parent company, CanWest Global Communications Corp. would be cutting 200 jobs at their TV stations.

CAJ award finalists announced

Finalists for the 2007 Canadian Association of Journalists awards for outstanding investigative journalism have been announced.

On Wednesday, April 16, the CAJ announced the candidates in 10 categories for the $1,000 cash prizes. The winner of each category will be announced on May 24 at the CAJ Awards Banquet in Edmonton.

The awards include the Don McGillivray Award for the best 'overall' investigative report for 2007 as well as categories for photojournalism, computer-assisted reporting and student journalism. No finalists were declared in the “regional television” category.

The finalists in the OPEN NEWSPAPER/WIRE SERVICE (circulation (greater than 25,000) category are:

Dene Moore, Alison Auld, Dick Meissner, Steve Mertl, Stephanie Levitz Missing Lives The Canadian Press Greg McArthur Brian Mulroney: The Payments and the Tax Man Globe and Mail Gary Dimmock and Greg McArthur The Secret Agent Who Conned the Mounties The Ottawa Citizen and the Globe and Mail

Kevin Donovan, David Bruser, Andrew Bailey Give and Take The Toronto Star Dale Brazao, Robert Cribb, Andrew Bailey Dirty Little Secrets The Toronto Star

The finalists in COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER:

Brian Whitwham Firestarter Guelph Mercury Gordon Hoekstra Clearing the Air Prince George Citizen Stacy O'Brien Desperate Times Lethbridge Herald

Heather Rivers and Elliot Ferguson Poverty in Prosperity's Shadow Woodstock Sentinel-Review Tina Comeau, Carla Allen, Michael Gorman, Eric Bourque, Fred Hatfield After the Crash Yarmouth Vanguard

The finalists in OPEN TELEVISION (greater than 5 minutes):

Neil Docherty
Darfur: On Our Watch
CBC

David Ridgen
Mississippi Cold Case
CBC

Linden MacIntyre, Harvey Cashore, Timothy Sawa
Brian Mulroney: The Unauthorized Chapter
CBC News - the fifth estate

Brett Mitchell, Victor Malarek, Patti-Ann Finlay
Off the Rails
CTV W-FIVE

Jeff Silverstein, Robert Osborne, Alan Fryer
Murders in Mexico
CTV W-FIVE

The finalists in OPEN TELEVISION (Less than 5 minutes):

Paul Hunter
Lost Canadians
CBC News-The National

Vera-Lynn Kubinec and Alex Freedman
Lemon Cars
CBC News

Graham Richardson
Prison Suicide
CTV

Ioanna Roumeliotis and Melanie Glanz
Skin Deep
CBC News - The National

Timothy Sawa, Katherine Wilson, Jo Lynn Sheane
Mercury in Canned Tuna
CBC News Manitoba

The finalists in OPEN RADIO NEWS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:

Conway Fraser and Megan Thomas
Dining in the Dark
CBC Radio

Kim Kierans and Dick Miller
Rising From the Ashes
CBC Radio

Maureen Matthews and Dave Redel
Memegwesiwag
CBC Radio

Susanne Reber, Karen Pauls, Gary Symons
So You Think You're Canadian
CBC Radio

Gino Harel
a qui confiez-vous vos yeux?
Radio-Canada

The finalists in CAJ/CCNMatthews COMPUTER-ASSISTED REPORTING (CAR):

Jim Bronskill and Sue Bailey
Cooperate With Us and You Will Not Be Stunned
The Canadian Press

Kevin Donovan, David Bruser, Andrew Bailey
Give and Take
The Toronto Star

Dale Brazao, Robert Cribb, Andrew Bailey
Dirty Little Secrets
The Toronto Star

Glen McGregor
Rapid Fire
The Ottawa Citizen

Glen McGregor
The Hornet's Sting
The Ottawa Citizen

The finalists in the PHOTOJOURNALISM category are:

Ryan Jackson
Photo Portfolio
The Edmonton Journal

John Lucas
Photo Portfolio
The Edmonton Journal

Paul Daly
Photo Essay
The Independent- St. John's

Darryl Dyck
Photo Portfolio
The Edmonton Sun

The finalists in MAGAZINE:

Jeremy Klaszus
Down the River
Alberta Views

Robert Irwin, Don Stoneman, Mary Baxter
Faith in Arlan Galbraith, Ontario's Pigeon King
Better Farming Magazine

Alex Roslin
The 1,000- Mile Diet
Canadian Geographic

Alex Roslin
Are BC's Bee Colonies the Latest to Die Off?
The Georgia Straight

Terry Gould
Fall of a Super Cop
Maclean's Magazine

The finalists in the FAITH AND SPIRITUALITY category are:

Star Weiss and Jo-Ann Roberts
Healing the Heart
CBC Radio One

Maureen Matthews and Dave Redel
Memegwesiwag
CBC Radio One

Jeff Heinrich
Reasonable Accomodation in Quebec
The Gazette

The finalists for the CAJ/CNW Student Award of Excellence:

Sarah Boothroyd
Seeing the Light
Carleton University

Sarah Boothroyd
Sex and Politics Go Postal
Carleton University

Mary Gazze
Canada: Destination for Infertile Couples
Carleton University

David Hutton
Taking Back Pleasant Hill
Carleton University

Searching for the (functional) truth

The first element of journalism is that a journalist's first obligation is to the truth. That being said, journalistic truth according to Kovach and Rosenstiel in their book appropriately entitled The Elements of Journalism is different than many philosophers have been trying to come up with for centuries.

The truth that journalists look for "exists in a social context" rather than a semantic truth that they say is favoured by post-modernists. The type of truth they are looking for in journalism is a FUNCTIONAL TRUTH. This ties into a concept that they call the Awareness Instinct from the very beginning of the Elements of Journalism. This is a concept that humans from the time they began to exist have relied on information beyond their immediate perception to survive. While philosophers may argue about the existence of an absolute truth, or what can be known, functional truth distinguishes itself because it is true to news values that have been essential to human survival for ages.

Kovach and Rosensteil cite Jack Fuller's two tests of philosophic truth: correspondence and coherence. For the journalist, this means "getting the facts strait and making sense of the facts." What is important is accurate reporting that means something to the audience (ie. the local angle).

Kovach and Rosensteil have some positive things to say about technology and media. The proliferation of news outlets and the abundance of stories creates a "conversation" between different stories by different authors at different times (pg. 44). When the story breaks, there may not be lots of perspective, but as writers find different angles and more information, it becomes something bigger than the sum of its parts.

They also see some unsavoury trends in what they call a "Mixed Media Culture," where the fragmented media outlets allow "a journalism of affirmation, whose appeal is not in verifying the facts skeptically but in affirming the preconceptions of the audience." We see this clearly in talk radio programs like Don Imus where right-wing shock jocks do not challenge their listeners' beliefs and tell them what they want to hear. Left-wing publications are equally biased - pandering to their audience but not having enough respect for them to tell them what they are not expecting to hear. This is NOT news.

The other problem that Kovach and Rosensteil find is that there is too much information and too little time for the average person to sift through. Technology gives us news aggregating websites for instance. Again, the problem with this is that there are so many media outlets, this leads to greater and greater specificity of information but does not give the reader the well rounded news that satisfies his/her Awareness Instinct and thus is unhelpful in his/her life.

Several articles from the Economist try to peg new media as a hammer that will strike down the old established media and change the environment for everyone. For the most part, I see no life altering changes coming from new media technology. "It's the links, stupid" describes the information economy of "personal online journals" called blogs. These internet diaries are accessible by anyone, but generally narrowcast to an average following of seven people. I see this as an extension of personal interaction, considering these bloggers generally know one another. It seems like an easy way for a group of friends to always stay connected. I doesn't seem like a news service to me.

In "Among the audience," the author summarizes over five hundred years of media innovation. My conclusion - societies adapt to the new technologies until something new comes along. The message remains roughly the same, and I think it hinges again on what Kovach and Rosensteil call the Awareness Instinct. Media that are able to satisfy this audience demand are bound to succeed and others do not. There is a danger when people lose sight of this reality and think that the medium is more important than the message. McLuhan was criticized for being a technological determinist, someone who sees technologies themselves as having a life of their own. Media theorists now tend to think of technology and society as being two halves to the whole problem of understanding media.

I hope that journalists do not get carried away by the breakneck speed of technological innovation, because at it's very simplest, we're looking for truth...and that's hard enough.

Newspaper industry growing west

Statistics Canada released a report this week that may have editors, reporters and publishers breathing a sigh of relief. Canada's newspaper publishing industry posted "modest growth and stable profits" for 2006.

With nationwide revenue gains of 2.6 per cent over the previous year, much of it is fuelled by the Western provinces with Alberta having the highest growth rates. Analysts have attributed the growth in publishing in those provinces as a direct result of more overall economic growth in the West.

The study showed that Ontario has been plagued with decreasing profit margins from 10 per cent 7.4 per cent, compared to the West's 18.2 per cent. Quebec and the Atlantic provinces fell in between with 13.5 and 12.3 per cent respectively.

While it is the lowest rate of growth in the past three years, Canada avoided the contraction in the US industry where newspaper publishing revenues declined 1.7 per cent.

Canada's Next PM

This is an article that I wrote for York University's Excalibur.

Conrad's vocab: goods words for a callipygian

You know, Conrad Black has gotten a lot of bad press lately...and while it's mostly justified, you would be hard pressed to find a jury that would convict him for poor writing.
Time and time again, his editorials are witty, entertaining, and a joy to read - as long as a dictionary is handy.
Today's editorial:

With trepidation, but not embarrassment, I offer the thought that Mrs. Obama, a formerly disadvantaged alumna of Princeton and Harvard, to judge from her well-strategized appearances on national television in exiguous dresses and trousers, is as callipygian as Jennifer Lopez. (That is my only concession to political correctness for 2008; you look it up if you must.) I saw her on YouTube saying that, "Reform must be from the bottom up." In her well-favoured case, this could be a double-entendre.

So there you have it: you just learned two words - be sure to use them in a politically correct manner!
Let's hope Mr. Black continues to enlighten us from behind bars.

My journeys in blogging

When I fell in to the world of blogging, I was confused and bewildered, leaving my home planet of print. I breathed the same air, people spoke the same language, but there were some distinct differences.

I did my best to make a home, scrounging enough letters together to make a "blog," without really knowing whether I was building a floor or a ceiling. Soon, I figured out what was going on.

I was able to get a little more creative. I found that I could have a voice and a variety of people would listen. But as it was, I was thinking about the Paper Planet of Print more than my home on the interwebs.

As the seasons changed, and the winter winds blew at the walls of my makeshift web home, I realized that I needed to make my words work if I was ever to survive. I found that using the print journalism skills that I had known, and the opinions that I wanted to express, I could combine them in by blog entries to create something new, interesting, and creative.

People started coming to my blog, making it a home that welcomed guests, and soon even a public house where people can come to agree with my views, or disagree.

I have come to realized that the world of blogging may not have a better system of communication and democracy, but it has a different one, no less important.

While I no longer have to live in the blogging world, I am bound to return, because it is important, as someone who lives by words and ideas, to engage in discussions across dimensions of print and web.

This relocation has had a positive affect, and I am glad that I have integrated myself into the blogging society.

See you around the webs!