From CBC.ca: (posted April 28)

Former BBC News editor Rachel Nixon has been appointed director of digital media for CBC News, the CBC announced Tuesday.

   more »

Canwest Global Communications announced today that the National Post will take a nine-week summer break from publishing on Mondays.

NATO has imposed tough new restrictions on foreign journalists covering the war in southern Afghanistan, changes that could affect how much Canadians see and hear from war-torn Kandahar.

This story will undoubtedly be in the top 10 of any 'what were they thinking?' roundup of 2009 -- and the year is still young!

Check out this story by David Akin of Canwest News Service: Reports of the newspaper's demise greatly exaggerated.

I suspect it may be one of the most corporate-p political stories Mr. Akin has ever written.

From Maureen Dowd's NYT column: "Old-school newspapers seem like aging silent film stars, stricken to find themselves outmoded by technology."

San Francisco Chronicle editor-at-large Phil Bronstein seems to suggest that traditional journalistic notions of ethics, particularly when it comes to advertising, are outmoded.

NYT public editor Clark Hoyt on word usage at the Gray Lady in relation to the uncomfortable topic of CIA torture of terror suspects.

An American-Iranian reporter jailed by Tehran for eight years on charges of espionage has gone on hunger strike, her father has said.

A Swiss woman has lost her job after her employers spotted she was using the Facebook website when she had claimed to be too ill to use a computer.

Toronto Star public editor Kathy English says while some readers may have been offended by the headline over a piece on Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle, it passes journalistic muster.

The Taliban ordered a pullback from Buner district on Friday, which had them only 110 kilometres from Pakistan's capital of Islamabad.

But distinguished Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid (I've got his most recent book: Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia) warns that Pakistan's government is in complete military and political disarray when it comes to dealing with the Taliban.

Javed Iqbal was accused of using his satellite TV company to distribute the al-Manar channel. The US has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organisation.

He pleaded guilty to the charges, saying he had "made a mistake".

The defence had said Iqbal did not support Hezbollah and the broadcasts were a small part of his business.

It is thought that the women were researching North Korean refugees

Two US journalists arrested by North Korea near its border with China are to face trial, North Korea's state media has reported.

Euna Lee, a Korean-American, and Laura Ling, a Chinese-American, who work for Current TV, were detained on 17 March.

The North said it had decided to charge the women after completing an inquiry into their "crimes" - although the precise charges remain unclear.

The Port Jackson shark is a common species on Australia's south coast

Police in Australia say they are "dumbfounded" by the dumping of a live shark on the doorstep of a newspaper in Victoria state.

The two-foot (60cm) creature was found lying at the front door of The Standard in Warrnambool city under cover of darkness after midnight on Wednesday. ...

Police released it into the harbour after carrying it in a bucket of water borrowed from a McDonald's restaurant.

(Const. Jarrod Dwyer) said the newspaper had no idea why anyone would leave the shark there to die.

"They had no ideas of any person that wished them any harm or wished to send them any type of message, so we're a little dumbfounded," he said.

This NYT article suggests that Pakistan really isn't playing to win against the Taliban, which is now only about 110 kilometres from Islamabad and appears to be inexorably extending its presence.

Melissa Fung and Graeme Smith talked about their respective experiences in Afghanistan and the conditions under which Canadian reporters work there at a Canadian Journalism Foundation event on Tuesday.

Esther Enkin, CBC's executive editor of news operations, explains her organization's policy on covering kidnappings -- a topic that has gained prominence with the release of two Canadian diplomats taken hostage in Africa.

One blogger argues that the NY Times Co. should acquire Twitter, and another shows why Twitter is bad for journalism.

If a Quebec judge is right that the news media have no right to report news based on information from someone who was not supposed to share it, the news media might as well close up shop. Never mind bringing a Watergate-like scandal to public attention. Basic, workaday reporting from nearly any sphere - politics, policing, even sports - would be virtually impossible. The news media would be turned into purveyors of official information. ...