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Established 2010

Tim Rutten skewers AOL and the Huffington Post in today's LA Times. The company and blog are a match made in journalism hell. Both have contributed to reducing online journalism to a slight commodity that exploits desperate journalists, many of whom lost their jobs - and benefits and pensions - in the traditional media. Here's the conclusion Rutten draws:

The fact is that AOL and the Huffington Post simply recapitulate in the new media many of the worst abuses of the old economy's industrial capitalism — the sweatshop, the speedup and piecework; huge profits for the owners; desperation, drudgery and exploitation for the workers. 

The CRTC must withdraw the proposed weakening of a regulation that bans false and misleading news from the airwaves and call a public hearing on broadcast news, says the Canadian Media Guild. “The Commission appears to be proposing to give (broadcasters) free rein to lie and mislead the Canadian public in the guise of delivering news,” the CMG…
The following statement has been posted at cmg.ca: We are deeply concerned about stories emerging this week from Egypt about beatings, detention and harassment of journalists, including our own colleagues.The events underscore how dangerous our work can be and yet how vitally important it is in order to let the world know what is going at times…
Toronto Star editor Michael Cooke will be the guest at Massey College's Press Club Night on February 16. John Fraser, the Master of the college, which houses a few 19th century presses in the basement, will host the conversation based on Cooke's answer to his question of  "how many new journalists" the paper had to hire to "enliven" itself over…
Two hundred and fifty-three  Journal de Montréal workers marked their second anniversary on the picket line today. They were locked out by their employer, media giant Quebecor, on January 24, 2009, after employees refused to accept concessions. The paper has continued to publish, although many, many freelancers have heeded the call to stop…
The Wall Street Journal online is reporting that the New York Times is planning to launch a paid subscription system, likely next month, for online content. The system will allow casual surfers a certain amount of free content and targets instead the 15% of "heavy users" for a monthly sub fee. Right now, according to the report, the site generates…
Most freelancers are familiar with the concept of moral rights: the right to claim authorship of their work, and the right to not have it distorted or "folded, spindled and mutilated" in such a way that it would damage the author's reputation.US publisher HarperCollins has recently started talking about morals of another kind. The company wants to…
A tentative settlement worth approximately $5.5 million was reached on behalf of freelancers with a group of publishers including the Toronto Star Newspapers and Rogers Publishing. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice will consider the tentative settlement in April.Many Canadian freelance writers have heard of Robertson v. Thomson, a 2006…
The CRTC is proposing to loosen some of the only rules we have related to broadcast news content in Canada. The current rules say that broadcasters cannot air "any false or misleading news." Period. The change, scheduled to come into effect on September 1 of this year, would limit that prohibition to situations where the false or misleading news…
CMG freelance branch president Don Genova provides an update on activities in the winter edition of the union's newsletter here. The branch is busy meeting with CBC management to improve the ways freelancers are contracted at the public broadcaster. It is also welcoming new members to the fold, in the form of writers represented by the Canadian…

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