Vivian Smith is a veteran journalist, now a j-prof in Victoria, B.C. She used to be a columnist on the side for the Victoria Times-Colonist, a CanWest newspaper.

But earlier this month, she got sacked after writing a column that made fun of local commercial tourist attractions and listed things people could do for free. Tourist operators who advertise in the paper were not amused.

There was a small error in the column: The paper ran a front-page correction (?!?!) about a misreported price of a children's ticket to one local commercial garden. But one suspects that if Smith hadn't otherwise agitated advertisers, that would have been forgiveable.

Now Lynne van Leuven, a colleague of Smith's at the University of Victoria, has quit writing for the Times-Colonist in protest of its treatment of Smith. For more see this Canadian Journalist post or this one from Public Eye Online.

Here's the first Canadian Journalist post on this topic.