1. CBC News Network is renewed: Long-threatened changes to Newsworld and The National in October involve a standing Peter Mansbridge, an unsteady-cam at the Breaking News desk, and foreign correspondents barking in via Skype — along with the now-standard promise to broadcast across multiple platforms. CBC vice-president Richard Stursberg responded to the critics by calling them “pathetic” and driven by corporate agendas. But the most scathing indictments of the changes came from an independent source: veteran producer Howard Bernstein’s blog Medium Close Up.
2. The Globe and Mail gets a new editor-in-chief: John Stackhouse replaces suddenly sacked Edward Greenspon in May, as the national newspaper prepares to look slicker thanks to a new printing press — even though the columnist roster reads like yesterday. Management spiked online books editor Peter Scowen’s rant about pressure to make headlines SEO-friendly while communities editor Mathew Ingram obsessively re-tweeted industry woes. Recently, columnist Christie Blatchford got into hot water over Richard Colvin, while the rest of the newsroom carries on much like before the Colvin affair, which is taking over the front pages for the second time this year.
3. Michael Bryant feigns social media expertise: Darcy Allan Sheppard’s bicycle tangles with the former Ontario attorney-general’s Saab convertible on Bloor Street on a late August night, leading to charges of criminal negligence causing the bike courier’s death — and the subsequent spin was surreal. Tabloid-style stories about the politician’s temper were matched by pieces speculating about Sheppard’s state of mind at the time of the mishap. Public relations firm Navigator hastily started tweeting and blogging on Bryant’s behalf, but were outfoxed by a YouTube video of the collision.
4. Stop the TV Tax vs. Local TV Matters: Dave Carroll, who scored a viral video hit with “United Breaks Guitars,” is paid by television lobby to produce a video ditty about how broadcast distributors should be paying their share to carry over-the-air signals — even though those stations have sold advertising for decades based on eyeballs facilitated by cable companies. Yet, executives to whom viewers willingly send a cheque every month argue that any additional fee will lead to a revolt. The latest hearings were enlivened by interventions from regular folk who just like watching game shows.
5. Facebook re-friends the Privacy Commissioner of Canada: Feds want to know how much information is being stored in Palo Alto, California, let alone being leaked to third-party application developers. Mark Zuckerberg responds in August by promising to distinguish between deactivating and deleting a profile, expanding their never-actually-read Terms of Use statement, and defining a method to memorialize profiles of people of the dead. More recent changes have drawn fire from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, suggesting the Privacy Commissioner was kinda duped.
6. b5media runs out of time to find a business model: Jeremy Wright, the charismatic hustler who sold investors on the concept of an infinite number of lightweight weblogs, stepped aside from his position in July amidst assumptions that this idea went nowhere. Along the way, over 300 blogs were consolidated into a handful of portals, failing to quash the complaints of writers who were expecting a bigger payoff for their efforts. While the Toronto company is still looking to fill positions like a work-at-home daytime talk show blogger, their startup bluster has left this virtual building behind.
7. Bernie Farber wears a T-shirt reading “Nobody Knows I’m Gay”: Canadian Jewish Congress CEO marches in Pride Parade in June to offset protesting Palestinians, and Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias backhandedly smirks on her own blog about his hitherto undisclosed sexual preference, leading Farber to ask for an apology for his own clothing. Kathy English, the Star’s public editor, is confused, but that doesn’t stop her from having an opinion about it, later qualified with a reconsideration — suggesting that nobody at One Yonge Street knows anything about social media.
8. CP24 — TORONTO’S BREAKING NEWS meets new landlord: 1050 CHUM had the plug pulled on a 42-year legacy of rock — midway through “Black Magic Woman” — to become a simulcast of owner CTV’s local infotainment channel, as soon as a divorce from Rogers-owned Citytv is finalized in March. The combination of alarmist aesthetics, no-budget news gathering, and untrained air talent makes it the bane of the broadcast industry, although Steve Anthony’s appointment to co-anchor of CP24 Breakfast is a reminder to not take it too seriously. CP24 Radio 1050 share in the ratings: 0.1.
9. Ryerson School of Journalism faces the future: Sheldon Levy, the university president, wants to transform Rye High into a hub for digital innovation. But the overriding nostalgia for the printed word threatens the viability of j-schools everywhere. Posts on the Ryerson Review of Journalism blog this past semester were drenched in pessimism about the value of the skills being taught — a fundraiser for the RRJ was even called “The Pink Slip Party.” This disposition may just be compensating for the digital divide that is bound to leave students distrustful of anyone still ending stories with —30—.
10. Toronto Star copy editors are outsourced: “DEAD EDITOR WALKING” read the T-shirts worn by staffers in solidarity, as 166 employees finalized their severance packages. Torstar forged ahead with restructuring designed to save $4 million a year. But announcing that newsroom jobs would be contracted out to Canadian Press-owned service Pagemasters met with the most cutting criticism of all: the initial layoff memo from publisher John Cruickshank was pedantically copy-edited in protest.
11. We Need The Walrus: Canadian celebrities rallied around elitist magazine in August. Mercifully, there was no “Tears Are Not Enough”-style song written for them to sing — in appreciation, retired radio exec Allan Slaight came through with $75,000 a year to help pay people to write it.
12. Bad Writing Contracts from Transcontinental Media: Coalition of professional writing groups from across Canada charges against magazine publisher seeking to pinch most future rights from contributors — after freelancers win an $11 million settlement over past unauthorized reproductions.
13. Billboard Tax approved by Toronto City Council: Lobbyists put up a fight, which included their own illegal billboards arguing a $10.4 million tax on their space invasion was a tax on everyone, but most councilors are swayed by artist-types arguing why the outdoor ad industry needed regulation.
14. Canwest sell Hamilton’s E! channel for $12: CHCH emerges from years of turmoil with new owner Channel Zero — a company specializing in digital porn channels — with a format focusing on local news, and schlocky old movies instead of schlocky new American shows. And, thus far, it’s a big hit.
15. National Post has fake-near-death experience: Canwest needed courts to transfer their notorious newspaper back to the division they are ready to sell, and somebody in on the deal cranked up the spin in late October — technically speaking, the broadsheet would have closed if that didn’t happen.
16. toronto.ca/open unveiled by @mayormiller: Mesh conference in April sets stage for David Miller’s re-election campaign that will never be, announcing an open data site for developers to play with. Current communications incompetence at City Hall is exposed in June via lousy Photoshop.
17. Newstalk 1010 given a re-branding: CFRB, the call letters picked by Ted Rogers Sr. in 1927, were semi-retired in October by new owner Astral Media. Several hosts were shown the door, others got reshuffled, and John Tory was given a shift to practice his rhetoric in between political bids.
18. Toronto International Film Festival boycotted over Tel Aviv: John Greyson was the first filmmaker to point out that TIFF’s debut “City to City” programme seemed a tad contentious. Then more celebrated movie folk started taking sides — yet Jane Fonda managed to turn up on both.
19. NowPublic acquired by Examiner.com: Vancouver-based citizen journalism portal folded into reclusive billionaire Philip Anschutz’s plot to reduce journalism to a game of one dime at a time. Rachel Nixon, who helped give NowPublic pseudo-direction, left to attempt the same at CBC.ca.
20. Conference Board of Canada busted for plagiarism: Michael Geist, forever at the forefront of the interminable fight over copyright law, caught his biggest fish in May — an anti-file-sharing report that cribbed from the International Intellectual Property Alliance. The report was promptly recalled.
21. Reader’s Digest gets a hip editor: Derek Webster recruited from his own family-funded Montreal magazine Maisonneuve to help save old-timey condensed reader whose U.S. edition filed for bankruptcy protection. Canadian subscriber solicitations still insist you may already be a winner.
22. i4i awarded $290 million from Microsoft: Word software feature is found to have violated the patent of a Toronto company whose technology to search and alter databases without delving into each document was apparently quite familiar to Bill Gates. MSFT appealed the verdict, and they lost.
23. Michael Ignatieff becomes reviled by worldwide media: Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker paints the Liberal Party leader as a snob. Rachel Cooke of The Guardian thinks he’s a dolt. Ron Graham of The Walrus just writes the guy off — and all of this before he’s even had a chance to lose an election.
24. Martin Streek dies at 45: CFNY announcer terminated from his job in May — mostly hosting live-to-air club nights — signs off in July via status update on Facebook, inspiring exactly what he seems to have wanted: a wave of nostalgia for what “The Spirit of Radio” used to mean in Toronto.
25. t.o.night hits the streets: blogTO is first to trumpet the September launch of a new independent afternoon freesheet — for which they provide a daily page — largely hawked downtown by aging newsboys. For some reason, overly idealistic media pundits expected something greater from it.
26. Perez Hilton bitchslapped by tour manager of Black Eyed Peas: Mario Lavanderia, confronted after the MuchMusic Video Awards by celeb subject, calls will.i.am a “faggot” — then live-tweets the aftermath of a punch. Assault charges against Polo Molina were dropped following an apology.
27. MySpace checks out of Toronto: Rupert Murdoch gets a first real toehold in the Canadian media — albeit attached to what will surely be his biggest fiasco. MySpace Canada were pounding out the partnership press releases every week or so in the months before this old ghost was given up in July.
28. Fox News host Greg Gutfeld apologizes to Canada: 3 a.m. quips about the military needing pedicures and manicures after serving in Afghanistan went viral enough to require a mea culpa. Later, the Red Eye show made amends by recruiting the Fucked Up guy as a recurring panelist.
29. The Mark tries selling smart: New current affairs soapbox website is counting on folks who already draw decent salaries from academia and think tanks to voluntarily feed their daily beast. Their biggest hit came in July, though: former grunge sidekick Melissa Auf der Mar’s “Swine Flu Diary.”
30. Liveblogging software breaks through: CoveritLive closed a million-dollar financing round in January; ScribbleLive pitched Dragons’ Den in November and came away with $250,000 in exchange for 30 per cent of the company — one more such startup from this town, and it’s a trend!
31. Twitter-based startups: Thoora is threatening to scoop all the news; Assetize wants to help tweeters either advertise or monetize; and Tweetbucks is currently, well — “rejigging our model.”
32. Torontoist announces closure due to indifferent American ownership, then is eventually saved by a homegrown publisher and deal to trade links with The Globe and Mail, and yet is always hiring.
33. “The Basterds Issue” of Eye Weekly on August 20 breaks some intriguing ground in the category of film promotion overkill, impossible as it was to believe it wasn’t being paid for outright.
34. “Murder Music” protests on Twitter and Facebook manage to shut down concerts by gay-bashing reggae artists, including a show at Downsview Park after the federal intervention of MP John Baird.
35. MuchMusic turns 25, and new regime boss Brad Schwartz is determined not to acknowledge, as the demographic wasn’t born a quarter-century ago: “We are not in the looking back business.”
36. The Atlantic features a Toronto skyline on one of four covers illustrating an article by Richard Florida, which hardly references Toronto, but the magazine now has a partnership with Luminato.
37. Billy Bob Thornton cannot bear to listen to Jian Ghomeshi’s oleaginous interview introduction on Q, and tells him as much, basically. CBC producers mislabel the YouTube clip as a “blow up.”
38. Gene Simmons hogs the spotlight at Canadian Music Week, promising to save the Canadian music industry — with help from his partner Belinda Stronach — so long as a camera is around.
39. “Colder Than Most People From Toronto” reads a Coors Light billboard in Vancouver, removed for maximum media effect. (Ashley Madison didn’t need to give the TTC a dime for theirs.)
40. Deena Pantalone, socialite offspring of a real estate developer, brags to Toronto Life about her “really old vintage dress” for a web profile — then ends up saying sorry to the designer who made it.
