Here’s my latest update on local media stuff:
- Postmedia and Torstar agreed to swap 37 community newspapers and 4 free commuter papers, many of which were promptly shut down resulting in the loss of at least 290 jobs. While this mostly affected papers in Ontario, former Metro Edmonton reporter Ryan Tumilty was among those let go. “This always happens for the worst reasons,” he tweeted about trending on Twitter in Ottawa after the news broke. Terrible news!
- Ken Regan, long-time CEO at CKUA, wrote a wonderful letter to the staff to celebrate the station’s 90th birthday.
- CBC Edmonton hsa launched a new website design in beta. The new site is responsive but also feels much more sparse.
- Edmonton Quotient’s Jeff Samsonow wrote recently about “bothsideism”. “I’m a believer in the journalism adage to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and we sure don’t do that when we give everyone equal time.”
- Playwright Darrin Hagen and author Michael Hingston are the Edmonton Public Library’s 2018 writers-in-residence.
- CBC Edmonton is looking for a full-time Video Producer. The successful candidate is “a skilled visual storyteller.”
- Jordan Eberle told Sportsnet, “the Edmonton media can be pretty brutal and your confidence goes and this is a game you can’t play if you don’t have confidence.” OilersNation’s baggedmilk wrote about the interview, noting “dude gets paid a shit tonne of money to play hockey so criticism kinda comes with the territory, no?” Well today, fellow former Oiler Taylor Hall backed Eberle up. “I think that if the media in Edmonton think that they don’t impact players, just a little bit, then they’re crazy.” Once again, baggedmilk: “Let’s not pretend that the Edmonton media is any more critical than what you’d get in Toronto or Montreal.”
92.5 Fresh FM in Santa’s Parade of Lights
And here is some slightly less local media stuff:
- Pop-up journalism site The Sprawl has re-launched down in Calgary to focus on the municipal budget.
- The Guardian’s membership program has grown significantly in the last year, to the point that “financial support from readers had officially surpassed advertising revenue”.
- Meredith Corp., which owns Allrecipes, is buying Time Inc. for $1.85 billion in cash, “a significant bet on the future of the magazine industry.” The company has received financial backing from the Koch brothers to make the deal happen though their investment is being described as “passive”.
- The Washington Post has published off-the-record comments from a woman who falsely claimed that she was impregnated as a teenager by Roy Moore. “We always honor ‘off-the-record’ agreements when they’re entered into in good faith,” said Martin Baron, The Post’s executive editor. “But this so-called off-the-record conversation was the essence of a scheme to deceive and embarrass us…Because of our customary journalistic rigor, we weren’t fooled, and we can’t honor an ‘off-the-record’ agreement that was solicited in maliciously bad faith.”
- Founder David Karp has announced he is resigning from Tumblr. “I beg you to understand that my decision comes after months of reflection on my personal ambitions, and at no cost to my hopefulness for Tumblr’s future or the impact I know it can have.”
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!
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