By Frank Moher As suddenly as the Berlin Wall fell, paywalls went up today across the Postmedia “content network,” or whatever we call what we used to call “newspaper chains.” Steve Ladurantaye, media reporter for the competing Globe, broke the news to a non-waiting nation by posting the death notice internal memo on his personal website. […]
WikiLeaks’ truth, Reuters’ “truth”
By Frank Moher We now know, thanks to WikiLeaks, that the US military lied about the killing of 11 Iraqi civlians, including two Reuters reporters, in 2007. “There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,” said its spokesman at the time. But the classified video released […]
Newspapers: no going back
By Frank Moher We are beginning to see the outlines of the newspaper industry’s survival strategy, and it’s going to be this: since what we’ve been doing doesn’t work anymore, let’s go backwards and try something else that didn’t work. Namely, charging for online content. The signs are everywhere. When John Stackhouse succeeded Edward Greenspon […]
More shoe throwing, please
By Frank Moher Note the quid pro quo built into The Globe and Mail’s editorial on the subject of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who showed off his footwear to President Bush. “Mr. Zaidi gained his privileged access to Mr. Bush on the strength of his accreditation as a journalist,” intones the Globe. ” . […]
Yesterday’s news
By guest blogger Brian Brennan They’re all doing it now but still I have to wonder: Why are Canada’s daily newspapers encouraging their opinion columnists to simultaneously blog on the papers’ websites? I used to think — like media observers elsewhere — that newspaper blogs were meant to be dumping grounds for material the papers […]
About that $100,000, Ken . . .
By Frank Moher Monday’s New York Times contained an article with the hed Trial of Black Raises Conflict Issue, about the game of Twister that Maclean’s has gotten itself into trying to cover the proceedings. It noted that Lady Black is the magazine’s star columnist, and both main trial correspondent Mark Steyn and publisher and […]
Red, white, and deadly blue
By Dave Carpenter Reviewing the grimly fascinating fallout from Seung-Hui Cho’s Virginia Tech rampage and posthumous media spectre, I was particularly amazed by the Sunday New York Times’ colour-coded “info graphic,” illustrating how on average 81 Americans die each day from firearms. The cold hard truth that so many of them turn the barrel toward […]
