Bill Doskoch: Media, BPS*, Film, Minutiae

CBC taps Galloway to host Metro Morning

billdoskoch — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:56:00 -0500

Matt Galloway, who replaced Avril Benoit on CBC Radio's Here and Now, will now be the host of top-rated Metro Morning when Andy Barrie takes his leave on March 1.

When Galloway opened his broadcast on Monday, he said one item would be on shifting one's circadian rhythms. :)

Galloway is a very capable CBC broadcaster who's been a regular fill-in on Metro Morning. A Globe and Mail article said he's 39, but he has the advantage of sounding younger.

What I think gave Barrie an edge was his time in the private trenches in Montreal and Toronto. It was a good mixture of private-radio testosterone with public radio values.

Galloway is much ... nicer.

We'll see how he does as a full-time host.

Monday night mini-set

billdoskoch — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:40:00 -0500

Three songs I posted to Twitter. I think there's a common thread running through them, but you be the judge:

Diana Ross, 'Love hangover' - http://tinysong.com/74dZ

MC Solaar, 'Paradisiaque' - http://tinysong.com/aSME

Miles Davis, 'the Doo-Bop song' - http://tinysong.com/bCeI

The trust is gone

billdoskoch — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:16:00 -0500

It would seem there's nothing like a recession to knock the stuffing out of Americans' trust in information sources, and that applies to friends as well as the news media.

What do NYT readers like to email each other?

billdoskoch — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:45:00 -0500

Long, intellectually-challenging, vaguely positive stories that inspire awe, says a new study.

'Plentiful content, so cheap'

billdoskoch — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:37:00 -0500

NYT writer David Carr essentially writes that if he worked the same way he does now for the rates Demand Media pays, he would have an above-average salary -- in Haiti.

Jonno's visit to the all-spin zone

billdoskoch — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:30:00 -0500

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart paid a visit to Fox News's Bill O'Reilly last week. The NYT calls it the most direct attack on Fox ever broadcast on that conservative attack-dog news channel -- er, at least the parts that weren't edited for time.

CTV Ottawa up in smoke

billdoskoch — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:49:00 -0500

From CTV.ca:

Flames tore through CTV Ottawa's newsroom early Sunday morning, causing more than $2.5 million in damage and destroying local news archives.

Music Monday - a brisk dose of house

billdoskoch — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:58:00 -0500

Here's some songs I posted to Twitter tonight:

- M/A/R/R/S, 'Pump Up the Volume' - http://tinysong.com/82mW

- Sonic Surfers,'Beat of Zen' - http://tinysong.com/dkFA

- Bob Sinclar, 'Tennessee' - http://tinysong.com/Mht

- Bedrock featuring KYO, 'For What You Dream Of' - http://tin...ysong.com/dkGc

- Frankie Knuckles, Disco Shimmy! - http://tinysong.com/aG8K

And for something to ease you into lala land, Mr. Knuckles' Whistle Song - http://tinysong.com/9b5i .

We're stuck in the New York Times's elevator! What will we do?!?!

billdoskoch — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:40:00 -0500

Uh, shoot some video? Tweet about it?

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristoff offered this bon mot:

A new newspaper business model: take hostages.

CBC Radio Metro Morning host Andy Barrie to retire

billdoskoch — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:02:00 -0500

A fixture on the Toronto radio scene will be stepping away from the microphone on March 1.

Andy Barrie is calling it a career on March 1 after 15 years as host of CBC Radio's Metro Morning here in Toronto, which has enjoyed ratings success. He wants to be able to sleep normally again. :)

Barrie suffers from Parkinson's disease, and the CBC also added 15 minutes to the show recently -- meaning an even-earlier start.

Barrie talked about his decision with The Globe and Mail. Here's the CBC's story.

And now, some 'good news' for newspapers

billdoskoch — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:13:00 -0500

Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank on how the recent travails aren't the end of the business, but they are the end of business as usual.

China's Green Leap Forward

billdoskoch — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:03:00 -0500

China has largely driven its industrial revolution on filthy coal plants, but it is moving fast to green its energy supply -- much faster than the West is. But carbon energy will still dominate there over the next decade.

Have oil shortages been delayed by a century?

billdoskoch — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:37:00 -0500

The Toronto Star's David Olive says recent discoveries have some experts suggesting that we have plenty of oil to get us through the next century.

But while Olive says it would be a mistake to cut back on the green agenda, he only mentions the nettlesome issue of dangerous climate change, which is largely driven by burning fossil fuels, in passing.

'Canadian Broadcasting Corporation signs up with weird American copyright bounty-hunters'

billdoskoch — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 08:17:00 -0500

From BoingBoing: (seen at Twitter and Facebook)

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has signed up with iCopyright, the American copyright bounty hunters used by the Associated Press, to offer ridiculous licenses for the quotation of CBC articles on the web (these are the same jokers who sell you a "license" to quote 5 words from the AP).

iCopyright offers "licenses" to use taxpayer-funded CBC articles on terms that read like a bizarre joke. You have to pay by the month to include the article on your website (apparently no partial quotation is offered, only the whole thing, which makes traditional Internet commentary very difficult!). And you have to agree not to criticize the CBC, the subject of the article, or its author. Thanks for fostering a dialogue, CBC!
The cherry on the cake? iCopyright offers a reward of up to $1,000,000 for snitching on bloggers who don't pay Danegeld to Canada's public broadcaster to quote the works they funded.

BoingBoing pointed to this as a source article: CBC's new licencing plan: Pay to Print, Email, and Blog, and outsource enforcement to American Copyright Digital Rights Bounty Hunters

Update

This was posted to Twitter at 9:09 a.m.:

@johnbowman All it took was some bad blog buzz? RT @dave_mac: Controversial licensing link has disappeared from #CBC stories. Interesting.

Bowman is a CBC.ca staffer. Dave MacIntyre is a University of Ottawa student.

I bought an iPhone!

billdoskoch — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:21:00 -0500

I dropped $200 on an iPhone 3GS, returning me to the world of mobile communications.

'How to report the news'

billdoskoch — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:02:00 -0500

This amusing bit of satire, which takes aim at the conventions of TV news, was pointed to by multiple Twitter sources over the course of Thursday:

Covering Haiti

billdoskoch — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:24:00 -0500

CBC Radio's The Current had a decent discussion this morning on covering Haiti. I'll try and make some notes when I get home tonight. Sometime later today, the show should have the audio posted (it ran in the second block after 9 a.m.).

iPad coverage roundup

billdoskoch — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:04:00 -0500

I just heard CBC Radio's Andy Barrie say this about the iPad: "I think this is going to be as important as Gutenberg. I really do."

That's quite a prediction! What do others say?

Mocking the iPad

billdoskoch — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:15:00 -0500

MadTV played around with the idea of an iPad back in 2006:

Myself, I was amused at how the Huffington Post played the story. I asked myself, "How would the HuffPo cover the end of the world?" I came up with this.

Paul Wells, tweeting as @inklessPW, offering this bon mot:

iPad pricing "starts" at $499. Which is stunning. Although if you want batteries or microchips, it's $6,499.

But he did follow with this:

Actually it's $829 for the top model. This is truly historic: an Apple product that isn't priced at highway-robbery prices.

Oh, to be a crime reporter in Barrie!

billdoskoch — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:45:00 -0500

From the Jan. 27 Barrie police blotter:

Occurrence Type: Suspicious Person

Occurrence #: BA10-003571

Date: 27Jan10

Details:

During the mid day hour, reports of a male checking residences in the south east of Barrie was placed to the Barrie Police by local residents. Officers responded and arrived on scene, and located the male suspect as he was departing in a motor vehicle. Officers spoke to the male and determined that he was the public utility meter reader.

Don't worry, Big News, a new business model will just happen someday

billdoskoch — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:52:00 -0500

Scott Rosenberg, formerly of Salon, holds forth on why he thinks established news organizations are approaching the business model question backwards.

Guardian editor says paywalls a bad idea

billdoskoch — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 07:32:00 -0500

Alan Rusbridger engaged in some tough talk on paywalls Monday, taking direct aim at News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch.

The Star missed some lines of inquiry with Ariana Huffington

billdoskoch — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 07:14:00 -0500

The Toronto Star has an interview with Ariana Huffington, who will be in Toronto today, but doesn't bring up the subject of the Huffington Post's legions of unpaid contributors or its propensity for extreme downmarket content.

Petropolis

billdoskoch — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:08:00 -0500

Once upon a time, I worked in Fort McMurray, Alta., home of the world-famous tar sands. While there, I once flew up to Fort Chipewyan to cover circuit court and got a glimpse of the Syncrude and Suncor sites from the air.

In 2008 (almost 20 years after my time there), filmmaker Peter Mettler went up with a camera crew and spent three hours flying over the much-expanded tar sands operations up there and produced a visually-stunning film entitled Petropolis.

The movie is playing until Wednesday at the Royal Theatre in Toronto (7 p.m. showtime). Here's the trailer.

A good book on this topic is Tar Sands: Dirty oil and the future of a continent, by veteran Alberta journalist Andrew Nikiforuk.

Needless to say, I recommend you check out both.

Remember Serpico?

billdoskoch — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:42:00 -0500

If you're a child of the 1970s, you may remember a crusading anti-corruption New York City cop named Frank Serpico, immortalized by Al Pacino in an eponymously titled film.

He's still alive and still a cool guy.

'Next News From Haiti: Pulling Out'

billdoskoch — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:14:00 -0500

The NYT looks at the massive media response to the earthquake in Haiti -- and how that response is likely to start scaling back in a time of reduced budgets.

An excellent observation about Crazy Heart's departure from journalistic reality

billdoskoch — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:22:00 -0500

Greg Mitchell had the following observation at his blog:

I liked "Crazy Heart" well enough and Jeff Bridges will surely get an Oscar nod for his portrayal of wasted Townes Van Zandt type country songwriter. That's credible enough, but there's also a crazy conceit, and we're not talking about the May-December romance or Colin Farrell, back from Bruges, as an American country singer: It's the always-appealing Maggie Gyllenhaal as a Santa Fe resident somehow making a living, and raising a kid alone, on the freelance salary of a local alt-weekly music journalist.

In a comment at that blog, I said:

When I think back to my first year in the news biz, I wasn't renting a house, I was living in a bachelor suite above a veterinary clinic. :)

Seriously. For a struggling, small-market freelance music journo and single mom, I thought Gyllenhaal's character was living the good life.

'Graphic photo stirs debate' -- but there's one little problem

billdoskoch — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:34:00 -0500

In this Jan. 23 column by Toronto Star public editor Kathy English, you can't see it.

Hence the irony of her final paragraph:

... Personally, I expect I would have opted to publish Oleniuk's powerful photo prominently on Page A3. But I would not have spiked this disturbing image because I can't imagine shielding readers entirely from its ugly truth.

However, you can see it at this Jan. 17 Star story. Bill Doskoch: Providing links so the Toronto Star doesn't have to.

Addendum

See how NYT public editor Clark Hoyt's web column treated the same topic of gruesome photos from Haiti.

Maybe the Web can't save newspapers

billdoskoch — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:12:00 -0500

From a late-night tweet by @gmarkham:

Some bleak numbers. Newspapers losing their audience online, too. http://bit.ly/5mW23Z

From Mark Briggs at Lost Remote: (posted Jan. 22)

'Can the Web save newspapers?'

billdoskoch — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:37:00 -0500

From the Toronto Star's blurb: "After taking blame for print's decline, the digital world, including mobile devices and tablet computers, is being hailed as a potential saviour."