Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » Canada

Canada encourages MPs to tweet from parliament

Paul McNally — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:50:35 +0000

The Canadian House of Commons has issued MPs with Blackberry devices and encouraged them to tweet and post messages on Facebook during their parliamentary work.

According to the Canadian Press newswire, about half of Canada’s MPs are already avid social media users and others are setting up new accounts as elections near.

It is expected that the move will improve public access to information and encourage debate.

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That’s the way the cookie crumbles – a lesson in handling the press

Laura Oliver — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 16:20:53 +0000

I don’t know what’s better in this clip of (now former) chief executive of a Canadian health service Stephen Duckett – the journalists’ perseverance or Dr Duckett’s love of his oat-based biscuit snack.

(via Mumbrella)

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Iranian blogger jailed for 19 years

Rachel McAthy — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:32:23 +0000

An Iranian journalist and blogger has been sentenced to almost 20 years in prison and a five-year ban on working in politics or journalism upon his release, after being accused of managing an “obscene website” by Iranian authorities.

Hossein Derakhshan, who has dual citizenship in Iran and Canada and reportedly previously studied in London, was convicted yesterday of “collaborating with hostile governments, committing blasphemy and propaganda against the Islamic Republic, and managing an obscene website”, according to a report by Al Jazeera.

Reporting on the ruling, press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said the sentence was the longest to have ever been made against a blogger in the country.

He is the victim of political rivalry within the government and the case against him was fabricated. We urge President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to intercede personally in order to obtain his release without delay.

Derakhshan defended the Islamic Revolution’s principles, supported Ahmadinejad’s policies and returned to Iran from Canada after being assured by people close to the president that he would not be arrested. Canada and the rest of the international community must press for this harsh sentence to be quashed and for Derakhshan to be freed at once.

Derakhshan can appeal the decision, according to reports. A petition has been launched calling for his release.

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Globe and Mail: Canadian National Post staff offered buyouts

Laura Oliver — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 08:33:24 +0000

All employees at Canadian newspaper the National Post have been offered buyouts as part of a cost-cutting drive, according to reports.

Parent company Postmedia Network has implemented similar measures at the Post’s sister titles.

Full story on the Globe and Mail at this link…

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What do you want first, the good news or the good news?

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:18:00 +0000

A free newspaper launched today in Canada will aim to put a smile on its readers’ faces – by promising to only cover good news.

The publication, called Zoom NB, will be distributed in cafes and restaurants in Moncton.

Speaking to CBC News, publisher Daniel Mlodecki said the newspaper will focus on the local community, using images to tell many of the stories.

What we’re tying to focus on are the people in our community and the things they’re doing. We’re going to demonstrate that through photography. So we’re going to have big, bright colourful photos of people we know in town of things that are happening.

It is reported that 10,000 copies of the paper will be printed in the first run. Mlodecki says so far the feedback has been positive.

We’ve got a very vibrant first issue coming out, We’ve got great reaction from advertisers. We’ve actually sold more than we thought we would and have been frankly a little overwhelmed with it.

Despite strong competition from established Irving-owned publications in the same area, the publisher is confident that there is enough room for the two of them.

Read the full report here..

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BBC News: Canadian magazine The Beaver changes name – to avoid spam filters

Judith Townend — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:15:23 +0000

BBC News reports on how a Canadian magazine, the Beaver, has changed its name after 90 years, because its content was getting blocked by spam filters.

[I]n recent times the magazine’s attempts to reach a new online audience kept falling foul of spam filters – particularly in schools – because beaver is also a slang term for female genitalia.

The publishers of the magazine – now to be known as Canada’s History – also noticed that most of the 30,000 or so visitors to their website per month stayed for less than 10 seconds.

Full post at this link…

PS. Looks like LSE student newspaper the Beaver hasn’t yet given up on its name…

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Location-based restaurant reviews

Judith Townend — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:46:43 +0000

An innovative partnership has formed in Canada: between free daily paper, Metro and Foursquare, a location-based social network.

Foursquare users share location information with their friends, in a gaming format. In this new partnership, Metro will add location-specific editorial content to the Foursquare service.

Metro uses the example of restaurants to explain how it will work:

People who choose to follow Metro on Foursquare will then receive alerts when they’re close to one of those locations. For example, someone close to a restaurant that Metro has reviewed would receive a “tip” about that restaurant and the have ability to link through to the full Metro review on metronews.ca.

Full post at this link…

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The Star: ‘Locked-out’ Canadian journalists lead scandal coverage

Laura Oliver — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:44:31 +0000

What do you do when you’re locked out from your own paper? Set up a website of course and investigate the allegations and goings-on behind the stand-off.

Such is the story of Canadian website Ruefrontenac.com, the work of 253 employees from Quebec newspaper Journal de Montreal who have been ‘locked out’ by their employer Quebecor following dispute over jobs and working hours between the publisher and the union.

“Ruefrontenac.com has set up in an old dance studio overlooking the Journal’s parking lot.

“The journalists choose their own topics to write about without having to consider corporate interests, Bousquet [Richard Bousquet, the website's co-ordinator] said. ‘It’s a bit of a journalistic experiment.’

“Journalists divide their time producing content and picketing.”

Full story at this link…

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New Rue89 venture for Canada goes live

Laura Oliver — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:25:33 +0000

As we reported last month, Quebec89, the new venture from independent French news organisation Rue89, has gone live.

The new site also has a nascent Twitter account.

The site is a partnership with Quebec-based internet company Branchez-vous.com and will feature content from Rue89, which was recently shortlisted for a Online News Association’s general excellence award, and employ a three-person team to produce some local content, Pierre Haski, Rue89 founder, told Journalism.co.uk prior to launch.

The new Canadian site follows previous expanison by Rue89 after the launch a local French news site covering Marseille, Marseille89.

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Update on Futurity.org: the science news site run by US universities

Judith Townend — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:47:58 +0000

Last week Journalism.co.uk reported on Futurity.org, publicised as an online news service through which US university departments will publish their scientific findings directly online in a digestible format – a project designed to combat a reduction in science reporting in mainstream media.

We were interested to learn that the site would be included in Google News and asked Lisa Lapin, one of Futurity’s founders and assistant vice president for communications at Stanford University, for more information.

“Google News is recognising Futurity as a news organisation and will be capturing our news for search, and for display within Google News, as they would another news organisation,” she told Journalism.co.uk.

A release initially announced 35 partners, although we now count a total of 39 participating universities featured on the site. All are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an association of leading public and private research universities in the United States and Canada.

We asked Lapin if they would be adding even more to the service:

“As for partners, we wanted to begin with a reasonable size and institutions that have strong research programmes – thus it was natural for us to include AAU universities,” she said.

“To be elected to the AAU is quite an accomplishment and there is already criteria that we didn’t need to develop. There are 62 AAU universities in the US and Canada. We will discuss expanding futurity.org membership, but we would need to develop some criteria to assure that the news remains truly the greatest discoveries coming out of research universities.”

The project has attracted some criticism, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News:

“Any information is better than no information,” said Charlie Petit, a former science reporter at U.S. News & World Report and the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The quality of research university news releases is quite high. They are rather reliable,” he added. “But they are completely absent any skepticism or investigative side.”

Petit followed up with a lengthier comment and example on the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, and said that press releases published by Futurity should be clearly labelled as such:

“Press releases can and often do carry real news, and in professional and ethical style. In aggregate, they serve reporters and the public in an essential way. However: They may be science writing. They are not independent journalism that seeks (if not always successfully) to get wide opinion and angles on the news. This is not a fine point. It is essential that the distinction be clear.”

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Pagemasters editorial outsourcing spreads to the US and Canada

Helen Martin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:04:00 +0000

Editorial outsourcing firm Pagemasters has announced a partnership with the Canadian Press to provide a range of production services, including design, sub-editing and headline writing, to titles in the US and Canada.

The new division, Pagemasters North America, will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Canadian Press, which already provides pagination services to Canadian daily newspapers including The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star.

The move by Australian Associated Press (AAP), the national news agency of Australia, which owns the editing company, follows a contract with Telegraph Media Group announced in January to provide sub-editing services for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph’s weekend supplements.

In a previous article in The Sunday Morning Herald, Pagemasters managing director Bruce Davidson commented on how useful a time zone difference is for the editing process: “The Telegraph can deliver pages at the end of their day, and when they come in the next morning we have completed the work.”

In today’s release, Davidson said: “The launch of Pagemasters North America is a major development and I believe one which has the potential to lead to significant changes in the editorial production model for US and Canadian newspapers.

“We will be heavily involved with The Canadian Press in setting up editorial production centres in North America, working closely with newspaper publishers as they grapple with the radical changes sweeping the industry.”

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Guyana: Four daily papers and 20+ television stations but a poor standard of journalism

John Mair — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:38:38 +0000

Regular Journalism.co.uk contributor John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University and the inventor of the Coventry Conversations, now on iTunes U. He was born in Guyana and returns there regularly to observe and advise the local media. His nom de plume in Guyana is Bill Cotton/Reform.

I am at one of the frontiers of modern journalism: Guyana in South America, but of the Caribbean. Most things go here. Four daily papers and 20+ local television stations feeding the news appetite of the 750,000 population. Journalists rank just above dog catchers as a trade in Guyana. At least the latter get some training.

Over here there is a university course in ‘Public Communication’ but little else to fine-tune wannabe hacks. The best and brightest go north drawn by the bright lights of the USA and Canada, like many others in their country. Newspapers are still sold on the streets by vendors on commission. The four on sale range from the supermarket tabloid Kaieteur News to the urbane Guyana Times. Kaieteur is the baby of local shoe shop entrepreneur Glenn Lall. Brash, vulgar, full of crime stories with some challenging columnists (including me behind a nom de plume).

It hits the popular mark as nearly does The Stabroek News, a paper instrumental in bringing democracy back to Guyana in 1992 after a period of dictatorship. Its guiding light, the Caribbean media giant David Decaires, died last year. The paper has lost some direction since. It is worth looking at though – for the letters column alone. A national Conversation tree but one which is prolix. Working out which letters are genuine makes for a fascinating read. Both major political parties (the PP and the PNC) and racial groups (Indo and African Guyanese) employ specialist correspondents to support their positions under a variety of noms de plumes (I am not alone in my anonymity. It is a Guyanese tradition).

Third in the press race is the Government-controlled Daily Chronicle. Cynics dub it The Chronic or The Daily Jagdeo in honour of the now second term President Bharrat Jagdeo. If a government minister speaks, they report it. If the President does, it hits the front page. The masses have not gone for it in thousands, nor for the new kid on the block for the last year, The Guyana Times. Intelligent, erudite, semi-broadsheet and the brainchild of a pharmaceutical baron Bobby Ramroop. It is well-written if stodgy, but at a level way beyond the literary level of the mass of the population. The Guyanese middle classes are now not here but in Toronto, New York and Miami. They read their papers on the internet.

The big action is on screen-in TV journalism. That is madness. Tout court. 20+ stations all stealing product from international satellites and re-transmitting it. The Guyanese journalism content ranges from the vulgar-local poujadist and station owner CN Sharma, the soi-disant ‘voice of the people’ with oppositional news shows like ‘Capitol News’ and ‘Prime News’, to the ‘Chronic’ of the airwaves NCN and its ‘Sixo’Clock News’ – which I invented a decade ago. The latter is news on the station owned by the Minister of Agriculture (and President manque) Robert Persaud and makes few pretences to impartiality.

Few of the TV journalists have any training. Few stay in the job for long. Few ever work out what the medium means. They think relaying a press conference with a few links is a ‘story’. More than one over several days if they can spin it out as they get paid per piece. Wallpaper is too kind a word to describe their use of pictures to tell tales.

So there you have it. Poor journalism by under-trained hacks. But all will change later this week when the heads of the Caribbean Governments come to town for their Annual Caricom Csummit. They bring with them the cream of the Caribbean Press Corps. That should be an intriguing piece of media anthropology in action. I will be there.

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Vancouver’s Tyee raises $15,000 in reader donations

Laura Oliver — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:36:07 +0000

From Alfred Hermida’s Reportr.net comes news that Tyee, an online news site based in Vancouver, has raised $15,000 since asking readers to donate money.

Contributions asked for to fund provincial election coverage and, according to editor David Beers, the money equates to double Tyee’s monthly reporting budget.

Beers discusses the campaign’s success in this video interview:

The Tyee has never asked readers directly for money before – though it does have a foundation to fund some reporting, says Tyee.

The response from readers in this instance has exceeded expectation – interesting to note the ‘serious’ nature of the stories being invested in. Readers are empowering journalists, giving them the resources, and telling them where to deploy them and on what issues; they’re not asking for editorial control, adds Beers.

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Thoughts from Doha: a Q&A with Al Jazeera’s Tarek Esber

Judith Townend — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:27:16 +0000

Tarek Esber is senior analyst for Al Jazeera Mobile & New Media and based in Doha. Intrigued by his recent online updates, Journalism.co.uk sent him over a few questions. Firstly, we asked him specifically about the Al Jazeera forum which took place last month, and then asked for more general observations about use of social and new media in the Arab world.

So, we noticed you tweeting from the fourth Al Jazeera forum last month – what was that all about? [TE] The Fourth Al Jazeera Forum was built on the success of past Al Jazeera Forums to debate, discuss, and extend the discourse on the critical dynamics of the Middle East in the context of a globalised world. The forum focused on key topics such as the new players in this emerging multi-polar world, the historical context of the power shifts, and the media’s role in this new political landscape. In addition, two case studies examined the war on Gaza and the instability in the Indian subcontinent. The forum was attended by an international mix of journalists, analysts, strategists, academics, and intellectuals to help bring these issues into focus, as well as leading thinkers and strategists were present to explore the evolving face of the region, its place in the global landscape, and the challenges in reporting it in depth. Speakers spoke in either Arabic or English, sometimes both, and live translation was available in English and Arabic.

What were personal highlights for you? This was my first forum so the whole event was a highlight for me. In particular though was the fact that the Creative Commons Team were there with Joi Ito, their CEO, chairing the first Workshop at the Forum – ‘Building Successful Media Projects in Open Networks’.

That particular workshop had a fascinating discussion about how media organisations can open up their content to their advantage. Our Creative Commons repository came up as an example of this as well as the new US government’s use of CC Licences.

Another personal highlight was the case study about the reporting of the War on Gaza, especially having the opportunity to hear Robert Fisk talk about that conflict. The discussion was particularly interesting to me, given the role Social Media played in the PR battle between the two sides. It was also the first major conflict that we as a New Media team had been able to cover using a variety of New Media tools.

We picked up your comment via Twitter that quoted Al Jazeera English managing director Tony Burman: “Western interest in our [Gaza] content being distributed via New Media shows demand for our kind of message/method”   What are your thoughts on that, as a member of the new media team? I should add that quote to my list of personal Highlights. Tony Burman was referring to the reaction our New Media initiatives received during the War on Gaza.

I think it’s great and as a New Media Team it’s exactly what we aim to do. A major part of our job is discovering new methods of communication – using the latest tools and services to reach out to and interact with new audiences. Inevitably most of the people using these new services tend to be based in the west.

There was also a huge amount of interest in the Twitter feed we set up just for news about the Gaza conflict. 5,000+ followers from all around the world and for a lot of them it was their first exposure to News from Al Jazeera. The feedback we got was fantastic.

Our Livestation stream, which allows anyone who has an internet connection to watch our English and Arabic channels live for free, also proved very popular. During the War on Gaza viewer figures shot up six-fold and the largest pool of viewers were in North America, a traditional dark zone for Al Jazeera. We’re working on that. Since the War on Gaza we’ve started to make a push to get Al Jazeera English broadcast in Canada and the USA: the IWantAJE.com site gives more information.

Our YouTube channels, in Arabic and English, were just as important. They have always been extremely popular but during the time of conflict we were one of the most viewed channels on there.

Did you find the Twitter activity surrounding the forum useful / something to learn from in future? We hadn’t planned to do anything on Twitter for the Forum this year. It was really a spur of the moment thing – I was at this Forum and a lot of very interesting things were being said. My natural urge was to tweet the most interesting parts especially as this was an invite-only event.

This was a personal reaction rather than a Al Jazeera New Media Team initiative. Some of the other members of the team were tweeting in Arabic as well and we set-up a Hastag (#AJForum09) for people to follow. It was all done using our personal accounts.

In the future, and we already have plans to do this for the AJ Film Festival this month, we might be better off setting up an official channel for the Forum so people can tune in specifically to hear what is going on rather than tweet from my personal account. It’s certainly clear that the interest is there. We’re also thinking about other things we can do for the next Forum such as taking questions via Twitter and trying to get some of the live streams online.

What are the most salient points about new media that came out of the forum? Well we’ve already talked about most of the larger points: The Creative Commons repository and the potential for Open Networks, our work during the War on Gaza and how New Media is helping Al Jazeera reach new audiences.

In the ‘Reporting from the Fragile World: Can the Global Media Reconcile with Changes in the Middle East’ session, New Media came up quite often, especially the online PR battle during the War on Gaza came up a few times. The extensive use of social media tools by both sides was unprecedented, especially the amount of preparation the Israeli government did before the conflict started.

In the same session some good points were made by Fahmi Howeidy, an Egyptian columnist and author, about political bloggers in Egypt. He mentioned that in Egypt, people under 30 don’t read papers, they read blogs as it is their method of escaping the government’s oppression of the media.

He also said that, while he didn’t feel political bloggers had much of an effect on government policy in Egypt, what they had done is made people aware of the governments attempts to control the media and dissenting voices.

He said that in the past, when journalists were arrested and imprisoned for speaking against the government, there wasn’t much national or international outcry but when bloggers were arrested, there was. This took away the impression that government officials were ‘Gods’ – it humanised them which means that they can be held accountable for their actions.

How does uptake/use of new media differ in the Arab and western world? Very interesting question, and it’s something I’ve been learning a lot about since moving to Al Jazeera in Doha from the UK. It’s hard to generalize about the Arab world as a whole as it’s really a diverse region in many ways.

Social media, in particular, seems to have really been embraced in the Arab world. There are more and more interesting Arab voices in the blogosphere everyday opening up their cities, their lives and their countries policies to the whole world. There are also a good number of Arab Social Media Services and more are being created every month. There is WatWet, the Arab Twitter and Ikbis which is usually referred to as the Arab YouTube. There are also Arab blogging platforms such as Maktoob.

But I digress from the question: How does it differ to the west? When I think about new media in the Arab world the first thing that comes to mind is constraints. There are technological constrains in some parts of the Arab world – good internet connectivity can be very expensive and might not be widely available. Hosting can also be an issue. Local hosting companies are rare in some parts and are usually expensive. Western hosting can be bought but the cost is still high.

Then there is censorship. In some Arab countries you can’t access services like Blogger or YouTube. In others you might be able to get started but soon find that if your content isn’t acceptable then your site might be blocked.

The biggest difference for me though is the reason people use the services. I feel that in some parts of the Arab world the services are mainly used as a way to escape restrictions in daily life. As with the example above about Egypt, it gives young people the chance to talk about their lives and their governments in a way they can’t do in public. That’s not to say people in the west don’t do the same, I just get the impression that it’s more widespread in the Arab world.

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Editor&Publisher: Canada’s print readership outperforms online newspapers

Laura Oliver — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:51:54 +0000

According to figures from the Newspaper Audience Databank, almost 75 per cent of Canadian adults read a newspaper in print each week compared with less than 20 per cent, who read an online edition during the week.

Full story at this link…

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