newspapers

In January, the Globe and Mail appointed longtime editor and correspondent Sylvia Stead its first “public editor”. What say we pause right there, before we go any further? The job of “public editor” is one most closely associated with the New York Times, which has had five different people doing the job since it created a post with that title in 2003—soon after the Jayson Blair fabrication scandal. The function of the public editor at the Times, as the title suggests, is to advocate for journalism ethics, fairness, and proper practice on behalf of the paper’s readership, dealing with concerns and challenges as they arise.

Was a Globe front-page story featuring its new owner’s prized asset a conflict of interest?

Friday’s big American media story was the resignation of Washington Post weblogger and conservative-movement specialist Dave Weigel, who came under pressure when gossips obtained some of his tart-tongued and borderline nutty private e-mails to Journolist (a controversial private online club for young liberal media personnel which itself collapsed amidst all the chaos and poo-flinging). By a weird happenstance, Canada’s most remote, reclusive correspondent actually knows Weigel slightly. In February 2008, at the peak of the presidential primary campaigns, I spent a week slouching around the Washington offices of Reason, the libertarian magazine where he then worked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWNIryDCMBE

The Globe and Mail came up with a plan for surviving the newspaper revolution. It didn’t include its editor.

Our News Hall of Fame hasn’t inducted anyone since 2001

Newspapers around the world are in free fall, but B.C.’s little-known media baron has a model that just might point the way to the future

Drowning in debt, Canwest still suffers for the loss of its visionary founder

Newspaper circulation in the U.S. continues to collapse. “Now at a record rate.” Kind of a good news/ bad news day for Rupert Murdoch: His Wall Street Journal is the only top-25 paper to gain even a sliver of circulation over last year; but his New York Post loses one-fifth of its circulation in a single year.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer prints its last edition tomorrow. But it’s not shutting down: it will continue publishing online — the largest American newspaper to go paperless to date. But stay tuned: the San Francisco Chronicle may be next.

I love newspapers so much I work at one. It gives me no pleasure — and causes considerable anxiety — to wake up each morning and hear about layoffs, losses, bankruptcies, and so on in the industry. Things are looking so bad it is starting to make my previous ambition to be an academic look like a smart career move. In short, I stand to lose a lot if this business craters and my employers stop employing me.