By Rod Mickleburgh Paul St. Pierre, B.C.’s superb chronicler of the beautiful Chilcotin and its all-too-human characters, passed away last July. But friends and family waited until Sunday, the weekend of Mexico’s Day of the Dead, to formally say goodbye to the former Vancouver Sun columnist, Liberal MP, gifted writer, and, in the words of […]
Extra, extra, not dead yet
By Rod Mickleburgh The trend is not good for newspapers. Ad revenue is down, circulation is down, the number of stories are down, employment is down. Newspapers are starting to look like vinyl did when shiny new CDs showed up. So old-fashioned, a refuge only for fuddy-duddies and luddites. Record buyers everywhere ditched their collections […]
The Province’s big, gooey Enbridge mess
By Frank Moher Now that we know just how much financial trouble Postmedia is in (see here, and here, and here), the question becomes: How well are they going to balance journalistic and money problems as they attempt, pell-mell, to transition to a digital-first strategy? On the basis of the Vancouver Province/Enbridge-parody furor, the answer […]
Postmedia: The way the words end
By Zoe Grams Many arts supporters are just regaining their breath after the cuts, no cuts, debacle around the Literary Press Group of Canada, which sent waves of disbelief and frustration across the publishing community. But it’s not time to celebrate yet; now the Postmedia Network has announced a slew of job cuts at Canada’s […]
Death in Vancouver, bluster on Twitter
By Frank Moher A young woman died of a drug overdose in Vancouver yesterday. Her name was Ashley. She became one of the approximately 120 people who will die of drug overdoses in Vancouver this year. She happened to be at the Occupy Vancouver encampment when she died. Or perhaps it wasn’t coincidental. Perhaps she […]
Postmedia: Layoffs? What layoffs?
By Brian Brennan Television reporter Tom Clark parts company with CTV News, and the network issues a public statement to that effect. Kevin Newman steps down as Global anchor, and his network does the same. But what happens when dozens, perhaps hundreds of print reporters in this country leave their jobs, either voluntarily or otherwise? […]
White wash
By Frank Moher The various human rights commissions that rejected the complaint against Maclean’s magazine — most recently the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal — were right to do so, of course. Members of the Canadian Islamic Congress had charged Maclean’s with inciting hatred and contempt towards Muslims when it published an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s […]
The issue with “At Issue”
By Frank Moher Calgary Herald columnist Don Martin offered an unfortunate comment during last night’s broadcast of “At Issue,” The National‘s equally unfortunate political affairs panel. Discussing the Conservatives’ plunging poll numbers, Martin derided the “line of pale male faces, with one exception” on their parliamentary front bench. He was sharing the screen at the […]
Dumb and dumber
By guest blogger Brian Brennan Update to story below: CBC Radio announced on January 18 that it is cancelling the pop-culture show “Freestyle” effective mid-March and replacing it with an as yet unnamed daily arts magazine program hosted by Jian Ghomeshi. A CBC executive told the Globe and Mail “this does not mean an increased […]
