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An independent, adversarial news site in Halifax, NS

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Local journalism is dead. Long live local journalism!

Last week's announcement the Examiner will be one of 10 independent digital journalism businesses across North America receiving support and funding from the Google News Initiative's Startups Labs is good news for the Examiner — and its readers. It was, in fact, a good news week for local journalism.

April 4, 2021 By Stephen Kimber 3 Comments

Sometime in early 2014, I began to hear rumours Tim Bousquet was planning to launch his own local online news site. I knew Tim as the city editor at The Coast. He was a fine journalist, an indefatigable reporter whose turn-over-every-rock investigations into city hall concert scandals and the personal will-finagling of Peter Kelly, the […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Featured Tagged With: journalism, the Coast, The Halifax Examiner, Tim Bousquet

The Torstar sale leaves a gaping hole in the Canadian news scene, but journalism can still thrive

Morning File, Wednesday, May 27, 2020

May 27, 2020 By Tim Bousquet 4 Comments

News 1. COVID-19 updates “A woman in her 80s who had an underlying medical condition has died after contracting the COVID-19 virus. She was a resident of the HRM but not a resident of Northwood or any other long-term care home,” reports Jennifer Henderson: The news came at today’s daily briefing by Dr. Robert Strang, […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: coronavirus, councillor Waye Mason, COVID-19, electric buses, fast ferries, forest fires, Halifax Transit, Jim Rudderham, Jordan Bitove, Josh Rubin, journalism, Lands and Forestry Minister Iain Rankin, legacy media bailouts, Navigator, NordStar Capital, Nova Scotia Health Authority (NSHA), pandemic, Paul Rivett, rapid transit service, Toronto Star, Torstar

Mundane and extraordinary mysteries

Morning File, Thursday, May 14, 2020

May 14, 2020 By Philip Moscovitch 5 Comments

News 1. Don’t start stressing out over who will be part of your “bubble family” yet Jennifer Henderson covered yesterday’s COVID-19 briefing for the Halifax Examiner, and reports that we shouldn’t expect the province to adopt the bubble family concept anytime soon. (The idea behind bubble families is that you choose one or two other […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: bubble families, coronavirus, COVID-19, Emma Wilkie, epidemiology, Halifax Stanfield International Airport, Helen Branswell, influenza, journalism, local media, local news, local newspapers, Maclean's, mass murder shooting spree, Ministry of Mundane Mysteries, Northwood, Outside the March, pandemic, Premier Stephen McNeil, Project Pandemic, RCMP inquiry, Spanish flu, Stephen Mayer

The pandemic playbook

Morning File, Tuesday, May 12, 2020

May 12, 2020 By Philip Moscovitch 4 Comments

News 1. Mass killer’s former neighbour recounts horrifying history of violence and terror Joan Baxter speaks with a former Portapique neighbour of the killer who committed the worst mass murder in Canadian history. Even after his death, and despite the fact she now lives in western Canada, she would only agree to be identified by […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Caitlin Moran, Charles Duhigg, collapse of local media, coronavirus, Councillor Lindell Smith, COVID-19, Dr. Robert Strang, East Coast characters, government communications offices, Hannah Jane Parkinson, journalism, living wage, masks, pandemic briefings, pandemic messaging, pandemic premium, Penny Abernathy, Premier Stephen McNeil, Rachel Miller

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?

April 11, 2020 By Stephen Kimber Leave a Comment

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 […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Journalism Tagged With: COVID-19, journalism, Publishing, the Coast

Erica Butler’s deep dive into the transportation beat

Morning File, Thursday, November 8, 2018

November 8, 2018 By Tim Bousquet 3 Comments

News 1. Erica Butler As the Examiner’s transportation columnist, Erica Butler gets into the nitty gritty of, yep, transportation: she attends the planning meetings, pesters the bureaucrats for more information, and interviews the experts and advocates. The resulting columns are incredibly detailed and thorough. For some readers, this holds little interest. But for others, Butler’s […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), Boston Christmas tree, cargo plane crash Halifax airport, CFL franchise in Halifax, Chronicle Herald, Entrevestor, Erica Butler, James Drage, journalism, Orpheus, Peter Moreira, Quentin Casey, T-shirt

Schooling Shawn Cleary on journalism education

Journalism is a generalist’s game. If you have curiosity, a determination to discover the facts, even the ones that don’t match your pre-conceived notions, and a passion for telling stories, there are — and should always be — many ways to learn journalism’s specific, ever evolving skills as well as its ethics and standards. It isn’t about where you learned, but how well you learned.

July 2, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

My Examiner column last week seemed to set off a modest Twitter tempest, mostly because its subject, Coun. Shawn Cleary, chose to respond to what I wrote and didn’t write (even when he didn’t seem to realize I’d written it); and then to respond in scattershot kind to various readers and constituents, who had taken umbrage at...

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Filed Under: City Hall, Commentary, Featured, Subscribers only Tagged With: councillor Shawn Cleary, journalism, Willow Tree development

Is it always a bad idea to get governments involved in journalism?

I hesitate to disagree with Tim Bousquet, the editor of The Halifax Examiner, my colleague and boss. But in this instance I do. Not completely, but significantly.

July 4, 2017 By Stephen Kimber

“It’s always a bad idea to get the government involved in journalism.” Tim Bousquet June 27, 2017 I hesitate to disagree with Tim Bousquet, the editor of The Halifax Examiner, my colleague and boss. But in this instance I do. Not completely, but significantly. Tim was writing last week about a proposal by a group...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Journalism, Subscribers only Tagged With: business model for newspapers, journalism, Newspapers

“I think the founding fathers had way too high an opinion of human nature”: Examineradio, episode #95

January 6, 2017 By Russell Gragg Leave a Comment

This week we speak with regular Examineradio guest Paul McLeod. Formerly a local journalist with Allnovascotia and the Daily News, Paul later went on to become the Chronicle Herald’s Ottawa bureau correspondent. He now covers American politics in Washington, DC for Buzzfeed. The 2016 presidential election was his introduction to the world of US-styled elections. He […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Examineradio, journalism, Nova Centre, Paul McLeod, podcast, United States

Salvage: The Stephen Maher interview. Examineradio, episode #74

August 12, 2016 By Russell Gragg Leave a Comment

This week we speak with Michener Award-winning journalist Stephen Maher about his new novel, Salvage. Set on the South Shore, the book is a gritty thriller packed full of Nova Scotia-isms. Maher’s book will be released this weekend with a Saturday party in Chester and a launch in Halifax on Sunday afternoon at the Economy Shoe Shop. Also, totally racist […]

Filed Under: Featured, Province House Tagged With: Amherst, Chronicle Herald, Examineradio, journalism, podcast, Stephen Maher, WTCC

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The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

Keonté Beals. Photo: Keke Beatz

Episode #21 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne is published.

The young R&B artist Keonté Beals — Tara’s former NSCC student, by the way — started out singing in church in North Preston and performing popular covers before digging into who he is an artist. On his debut album KING, he sings about love, loyalty, and authenticity. He zooms in for a chat about its creation, his children’s book, and how not even a pandemic can keep him down.

This episode is available today only for premium subscribers; to become a premium subscriber, click here, and join the select group of arts and entertainment supporters for just $5/month.

Please subscribe to The Tideline.

Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

About the Halifax Examiner

Examiner folk The Halifax Examiner was founded by investigative reporter Tim Bousquet, and now includes a growing collection of writers, contributors, and staff. Left to right: Joan Baxter, Stephen Kimber, Linda Pannozzo, Erica Butler, Jennifer Henderson, Iris the Amazing, Tim Bousquet, Evelyn C. White, El Jones, Philip Moscovitch More about the Examiner.

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Recent posts

  • Atlantic Bubble likely will be postponed; 6 new cases of COVID-19 are announced in Nova Scotia on Tuesday, April 13 — all involving travellers April 13, 2021
  • Pieridae’s pipe dream April 13, 2021
  • What’s the Big Idea? April 13, 2021
  • Federal COVID-relief funding to help people struggling with heating, electric bills April 13, 2021
  • Council approves Elmsdale mobile home park despite concerns around turtle habitat, ground water April 13, 2021

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