Here’s my latest update on local media stuff:
- More big changes in the world of local radio. Newcap has laid off seven people in Edmonton and more elsewhere in the province including Jonathan Best, Audie Lynds, Billy Williams, Jake Taylor, and Geoff Walker. As Cam Tait notes, Audie Lynds has been a fixture in Edmonton radio since 1981. I remember listening to him on Power 92! His last day at Capital FM was Wednesday.
- Episode 47 of the Seen and Heard in Edmonton podcast features German Villegas, “a youth worker who conducts interviews about healthy masculinity on The Modern Manhood Podcast and jaws about hockey with his buddies on Your Team Sucks.”
- Here’s the latest update on Taproot Edmonton. “We’ve been working the soil over the past few weeks, and we’ve now got four stories at various stages of growth. We’ll be sharing the fruits of our storytellers’ labours soon.”
- From Vintage Edmonton, here’s a clip of CFRN-TV News from July 1992.
- Local comedian Sterling Scott will host a new dating game show on Kevin Hart’s Laugh Out Loud network. “Just because we’re from Edmonton, and not from these big name cities, doesn’t mean we can’t create big name things,” he told CBC.
- Congratulations to Global Edmonton’s Margeaux Morin who is now Margeaux Maron! Looks like it was a beautiful wedding.
- Best wishes to Carole Anne Devaney who started her second maternity leave on August 5. She plans to blog during her leave here.
- Congratulations also to Jennifer Crosby who recently announced her second child is due in November!
- Here’s a peak at the Global Edmonton control room.
- A 25-year-old bartender from Edmonton named Seth will be one of the suitors on W Network’s first season of The Bachelorette Canada.
- The Sherwood Park News is still looking for a full-time reporter.
- If you like hockey and social media, this could be the job for you. “MLB Advanced Media, in partnership with the Oilers, is seeking a creative hockey enthusiast with a social media and editorial background to be our eyes and ears at Rogers Place during the 2016-17 season.” The deadline to apply is August 10.
Edmonton Folk Festival 2016, photo by Bo Lu
And here is some slightly less local media stuff:
- I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while: John Oliver on Journalism. In that segment he said, “the media is a food chain which would fall apart without local newspapers,” and covered a range of familiar themes.
- Contrast that with the fascinating changes taking place at the New York Times. In short, they’re going to do less local reporting in order to better go after their “lofty international ambitions.” Public Editor Liz Spayd wrote, “You can’t have your reporters parked in courthouses and police stations all day — or chasing fires — and still deliver memorable, ambitious stories that take time to produce.” I realize that New York and the Times are a bit different than everywhere else, but still.
- In the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan defended John Oliver’s 19-minute riff, saying “the whole Oliver piece was a pitch-perfect ode to how important newspapers are to their communities, and how troubling it is that they are fading.” The Newspaper Association of America was less than thrilled and accused Oliver of “petty insults.”
- Tweeting about the Olympics? Be careful! Here are the many, many ways your business can get in trouble for doing so.
- Should the government bail out the news business? That’s the topic of the latest Canadaland podcast.
- Joshua Topolsky’s new site The Outline has been called “a New Yorker for millennials.” Good luck figuring out what that means, but their target reader “lives in urban areas”, is “really tech-savvy”, and “eats farm-to-table food,” among other things.
You can follow Edmonton media news on Twitter using the hashtag #yegmedia. For a great overview of the global media landscape, check out Mediagazer.
So, what have I missed? What’s new and interesting in the world of Edmonton media? Let me know!
MasterMaq's Blog 