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, […]
Mundane and extraordinary mysteries
Morning File, Thursday, May 14, 2020
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 […]
The pandemic playbook
Morning File, Tuesday, May 12, 2020
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 […]
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 […]
Erica Butler’s deep dive into the transportation beat
Morning File, Thursday, November 8, 2018
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 […]
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.
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...
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.
“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...
“I think the founding fathers had way too high an opinion of human nature”: Examineradio, episode #95
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 […]
Salvage: The Stephen Maher interview. Examineradio, episode #74
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 […]
We’ll not pay you not to work: Examineradio, episode #48
On this week’s episode we speak with striking Chronicle Herald reporter Michael Gorman. When not walking a picket line, Gorman stalks the halls of the Nova Scotia Legislature. We talk about the state of the union at the CH, as well as a recent piece he wrote for the Halifax Examiner on Irving’s unpaid temporary workforce. Gorman […]