The largest newspaper chain in Atlantic Canada has laid off 109 people. Saltwire Network confirmed the news in a media release late Tuesday afternoon. This comes almost three months to the day the company announced “temporary layoffs” of 40% of its workforce due to economic fallout from COVID-19. “The staff notified today have contributed to Saltwire’s […]
Stop the presses
Our more-than-a-century-old newspaper publishing model — print-on-paper journalism paid for primarily by advertisers seeking eyeballs for their messages — simply doesn’t work anymore. It hasn’t for more than an internet hour. What can — what should — we do about that?
The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free. When I first saw Tim Bousquet’s 9:33 pm Facebook post on Wednesday, March 18, 2020 — deep in the bottomless trough of that still surreal week when everything changed about everything for all of us in a COVID-19 minute — I was stunned. “Tomorrow is […]
The Halifax police department is going to great lengths to prevent you from knowing how Glen Assoun was wrongfully convicted
With very limited exceptions (national security, for instance), we do not have secret court evidence in Canada. We have the exact opposite: an Open Court Principle. I wrote about the Open Court Principle after the Halifax Examiner, the CBC, and the Canadian Press prevailed in our effort to get court documents unsealed in the Glen […]
A victory for open courts: Justice James Chipman finds in favour of the media and unseals the Assoun file
Justice James Chipman today ruled for the Halifax Examiner, the CBC, and the Canadian Press in our application to unseal documents in the Glen Assoun case. Assoun is the man who was wrongfully convicted of the 1995 murder of Brenda Way and spent over 16 years in prison. Assoun was released on an extraordinary court-ordered […]
Extinction Rebellion: we must take urgent action on climate change
“Heading for Extinction and What to Do About It” was the focus of a public presentation at the Halifax Central Library yesterday afternoon hosted by Extinction Rebellion Nova Scotia. Watch for a protest in the streets of Halifax next Monday — with citizens employing some of the non-violent confrontation and civil disobedience tactics borrowed from […]
How the Tracy Kitch expense scandal went down
The IWK's lackadaisical oversight, reporter Michael Gorman's pivotal role, an aborted attempt by Kitch to blame an executive assistant, weekend "business" trips to visit a former colleague, and more.
Highlights of this article: • The IWK Board of Directors seemed complacent about problems with expense accounting until CBC reporter Michael Gorman published an investigative article detailing “the magnitude of the personal expenses.” • IWK CEO Tracy Kitch tried to blame her problematic expenses on poor recording-keeping by her executive assistants. • IWK board member Karl […]
Back to the drawing board, Bill
Finance Minister Bill Morneau says his budget will provide support for journalism. It won't. It will only provide demise-delaying bailouts for badly managed media corporations. There are better ways.
Start with this from Page 173 of the federal budget Finance Minister Bill Morneau tabled in the House of Commons last week: “Support for Journalism.” No one — certainly not I — would argue “a strong and independent news media” isn’t “crucial to a well-functioning democracy,” or that the news media doesn’t play a “vitally important...
The president versus the press. Or should that be the president thanks the press?
The day after the US mid-terms, Donald Trump staged a rambling 90-minute press conference to spin the dross of Republican electoral loss into the gold of never-ending Trumpian triumph, and thus re-establish his personal ownership of the news cycle. The press made it easy for him.
I’ve never been a fan of press-conference journalism. It may be a marginal improvement on canned-quotes press-release journalism when it comes to public accountability, but most press conferences I’ve attended are little more than carefully staged theatre pieces designed to control and direct the flow of information and emotion in ways favourable to the presenter....
Trying to get straight answers from the provincial government is an exercise in frustration and futility
Morning File, Thursday, October 4, 2018
Joan Baxter here again, filling in for Tim who is in Toronto for Wrongful Conviction Day, and being recognized by Innocence Canada, a non-profit organization dedicated to identifying, advocating for, and exonerating individuals convicted of a crime that they did not commit. He is being awarded the the Tracey Tyler Award for his reporting on the […]
The Yarmouth ferry subsidy? Still? Still more? Always…
“Our goal, which I believe we have achieved,” Transportation Minister Geoff MacLellan said when he signed the latest ferry deal, “was to put a stable, long-term agreement in place.” How’s that working out?
I could say I told them so — and I did, way back when “them” was still Rodney Macdonald and his Tories, and from then on forward through Darrell Dexter and Stephen McNeil to whatever same-old-same-old will come next — but I’d have to stand in a too-long line behind all the other told-them-so nattering...
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