Do Canadian media really need saving from new regulations?
OTTAWA—The ongoing financial struggles of Canadian businesses that have traditionally delivered the news—particularly newspapers and local broadcasters—have generated considerable discussion and consternation over the past month. With significant layoffs, newspaper closures, and testimony before the Canada’s broadcast regulator that the cost of delivering local news is unsustainable, there have been mounting calls for new funding […]
Politics This Morning: Electoral reform should be democratic, say opposition
Electoral reform should not be in the purview of the governing party, but all parties with representation in the House of Commons, says NDP MP Nathan Cullen. “For Canadians to have confidence in the process that we are about to undertake, and for the results to more accurately reflect the broad voices of Canadians, I […]
Readers will determine success of Postmedia newsroom merger, says outgoing Citizen editor
The latest round of cuts by Postmedia News will mean a single newsroom will produce both major dailies in Ottawa, as is the case in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. While the plan has garnered criticism, outgoing Ottawa Citizen editor Andrew Potter said that while the mechanics are “difficult,” he doesn’t think it’s impossible to manage. Ultimately, it […]
Postmedia News cuts 90 jobs, ‘what is changing is how we produce these products’: Godfrey
Postmedia News cut 90 jobs across the country and merged newsrooms in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa last week. The Sun and the Province in Vancouver, the Calgary Herald and the Sun in Calgary, the Edmonton Journal and the Sun in Edmonton, and the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Sun in Ottawa will share newsrooms […]
Political leaders need to fight for our newspapers
TORONTO—A good newspaper, playwright Arthur Miller once said, is a nation talking to itself. So what happens when our newspapers start to die? Will the nation die, too? Full disclosure: I love newspapers. I have been a reporter at two (Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen) and a columnist at three (National Post, Ottawa Citizen and the […]
Your handy, dandy guide to this session’s best Parliament Hill parties
Hillites: prepare to have fun this session because a taste of social Ottawa is coming at you, fast and furious. Given the uncertainty around when the 42nd Parliament would start, many fall events were delayed until the new year, so now after a quiet fall, the winter and spring events calendar is filling up. So, wipe the […]
Canada’s national fabric is paying price for depletion of journalistic resources: Hébert
OTTAWA—Under the guise of a migration to the digital world, Canada’s news media is undergoing the biggest journalistic fire sale of its history. It is taking place on such a scale that it might be more appropriate to call it a liquidation of information-gathering resources and it is happening under the nose of a political […]
Close race, changing polls making for tentative summer campaign plans
Recent polling numbers and events like the NDP surge in Alberta are changing the electoral map so significantly that leaders’ summer strategies are still a work in progress and will remain as flexible as possible to respond to opponents, strategists say. As Parliament winds down and the campaign gears up, the federal parties are poised […]
Vongdouangchanh new HT online, Power & Influence editor, Burgess new HT deputy editor
We have some news in the newsroom. Bea Vongdouangchanh, former deputy editor of The Hill Times who first joined the newsroom in 2005 and had been deputy editor since 2008, has returned after a well-deserved, one-year sabbatical. After travelling through India, Nepal, and Bhutan, and Cuba, North Carolina, and the Dominican Republic along with doing […]
Access to information laws need reform, say authors of how-to book
Canada’s access to information laws are the “ultimate form of democracy,” but they were designed in a pre-digital age with too many rules to allow governments not to disclose information quickly, if at all, and badly need to be modernized, say two veteran Hill journalists who just published a book on the subject. “Information is […]
