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April 2008 Archive
Thomson Reuters would like its employees to stop blogging, socializing
In case you’d forgotten or ever cared, 40 per cent of The Globe and Mail is owned by the Thomson family through their holding company Woodbridge. Woodbridge also owns, as the result of last year’s multibillion-dollar merger of Thomson Corporation and Reuters, 53 per cent of the new (and aptly named) entity Thomson Reuters. Lately, this new enterprise has started rolling out its new brand, including a near bottomless, fancy-pants Web site and a full-page ad on A6 of Monday’s Globe. Here’s an excerpt from the Web site:
Corks pop at the CBC after hair’s breadth victory over Global
Among the more hair-pulling, knuckle-biting, rant-inducing items of last week was the CBC’s widely reported announcement (cue the confetti, elephants and brass bands) that for the winter/spring season of ’07–’08 the CBC beat Global, moving into second place among Canadian television networks, just behind CTV. Pardon my Slovenian, but so bleeping what? For CBC Strangeloves to leap up and down in Valkyric ecstasy because they “posted a prime-time share of 7.8 during the winter/spring season, compared with Global’s share of 7.4, relying on BBM Nielsen Media data that were collected from viewers aged 2-plus from October 1, 2007, to April 6, 2008 (7 to 11 p.m.)” thoroughly demeans what is supposed to be a noble enterprise. Quacking on about numbers in this context reminds me of those godawful attempts by various chinless royals to humanize the Crown by appearing on British game shows.
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Push comes to shove for Conrad Black
Conrad Black’s latest misadventure, a lawsuit brought by a Chicago cameraman seeking punitive and compensatory damages issuing from Lord Black’s alleged attempt to remove him from his shoulder, was much reported in the Canadian press recently. Each occasion of its telling included a standard piece of now-hilarious legal bulletproofing: “None of the allegations have been proven in court.”
Gaffe of the Week: Tory hacks caught on tape!
This morning’s on-line version of The Hill Times offers a thorough and thoughtful summary of what, for lack of a better handle, I’ll call the Sparrow’s Folly. I am referring, of course, to the ill-fated effort of the PMO’s media machine to spin the RCMP’s investigation into alleged election finance malfeasance. In events that sound remarkably like the embarrassing jokes told by your Uncle Lester after several too many at Christmas, three Torys—a flack (party spokesman Ryan Sparrow), a hack (Tory campaign director Doug Finley) and a lawyer (Paul Lepsoe)—held a secret briefing in an Ottawa hotel for selected journalists (this after changing the location to put other ink-stained hounds off the scent). They were found out, confronted by the excluded journos and forced to flee down a fire escape. I’m not making that up. Promise.
Why not lionize Canada’s captains of industry? Here’s why
Friday’s cover story in the Globe’s Report on Business magazine is a laudatory profile of Mike Lazaridis—the co-founder of RIM Ltd., manufacturer of the ubiquitous BlackBerry. The piece tells us that Lazaridis’s personal fortune is $3.6 billion and that the company’s market value is $67 billion on revenue of $6 billion last year. Despite this, the profiler (David Fielding) never mentions the fact that RIM has been the subject of an SEC investigation into backdating stock options—hardly a small detail, considering the investigation led to Lazaridis’s partner Jim Balsillie stepping down as chairman last year. Efforts to establish whether the SEC investigation is ongoing proved fruitless. The SEC, as a matter of principle, will not comment. RIM has yet to respond to our inquiries.
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- Categories: General, Newspapers, Egos, Over the Border, Magazines
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Peter C. Newman weighs in on “Robber Baron” and Conrad’s prison publishing
Peter Newman, my colleague and Black scribe extraordinaire, dropped me a line this morning. Always a joy, especially since parts of the message are well worth sharing:
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- Categories: General, Black Watch, Egos, Over the Border, Books
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Rosie DiManno’s profoundly wacky campaign against Robert Baltovich
This past Wednesday, the Toronto Star gave Rosie DiManno space to vent her long-standing grievance with Robert Baltovich. Today I’ve asked Derek Finkle, whose book on the subject is a cornerstone of Baltovich’s public defence, to respond. Herewith is his guest blog:
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Determined to be more Toronto-centric, the Toronto Star cuts 120 Torontonians
What with the heavy artillery in New York’s newspaper war continuing to boom and crash (the Journal’s managing editor, the unfortunately monikered Marcus Brauchli, has pitched himself over the side to leave room for Murdoch’s handpicked capo, Robert Thomson, to run the show), now might be the moment for a quick review of one of Canada’s somewhat more tepid skirmishes. The latest “news” concerns the Toronto Star’s recent round of layoffs. Included in the 120-odd who were shown the door was the entire Internet production staff. This in turn led a snarky union rep to spit back,“[The Star’s] message to the world is that they’re all dedicated to the Internet, but then they lay off the whole department.” Well, yes. Despite the element of futility after the fact, the rep’s got a point.
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Rays of sanity in an otherwise crazy campaign
A few days ago, in response to my post on the Clinton-Obama debate in Philadelphia, the following note from Princeton politics professor Peter Meyers was forwarded to me. It read in part:
Newspaper war update: The New York Times cannot be bought
Not surprisingly, Arthur Sulzberger is already up on his hind legs denying that the New York Times is for sale. Mike Bloomberg also issued a denial. That should put a stop to all those nasty rumours.
Times 2, Journal 1: Murdoch takes a page from Conrad Black’s “The Art of Newspaper War”
Newsweek’s latest has a mammoth take out on New York’s newspaper war. Titled “Murdoch, Ink,” the dek on the article reads, “With a redesigned Wall Street Journal, mogul Rupert Murdoch is launching an old-fashioned newspaper war against The New York Times. Not since William Randolph Hearst took on Joseph Pulitzer have we seen such a fight.” And from there on in, it’s all Rupert all the time, punctuated by a series of delicious quotes straight from the horse’s mouth.
Bill C-10 sucks, report Ang Lee, Trailer Park Boy
Following in the footsteps of Sarah Polley’s C-10 protestations, it’s practically the march on Montgomery these days up Ottawa way. Robb Wells, better known as the comically Machiavellian Ricky on Trailer Park Boys, went before the CRTC last week to demand more Canadian content on our TV screens. While he was at it, the Star reported that he took an overdue shot at cable maven Jim Shaw, the Alberta tight-ass whose complaints about Trailer Park Boys merge with C-10 to form a nexus of idiocy.
Conrad Black roundup: A finger, a fiction, a fallacy and a foundation
While things may be workaday at Florida’s FCI Coleman, the last several news cycles have seen an eclectic array of press coverage. It was announced over the weekend that David Chidley’s oft-printed photograph of Conrad Black flipping the bird to a gaggle of preying vermin during the Trial of the Millennial Epoch has won a Canadian award for spot news photograph of the year—trumping, I might add, 2,200 other entries. Dare I say that the photo and its recognition neatly capture the essence of our national press’s love-hate obsession with Prisoner #18330-424? We loathe and mock him. We bait him. And yet we yearn for, if not his affections, at least his attention. And God bless him: he always seems to return the favour in spades.
Is Martin Newland’s freshly launched paper The Guardian or Pravda? They report, you decide
Martin Newland, Ken Whyte’s former deputy honcho at the National Post and head honcho at The Daily Telegraph during the reign of Lord Black of Coleman FCI, is starting up the latest thing: a big-time daily newspaper financed by United Arab Emirates petro-dollars. The Times of London reports that:
Hillary Clinton: one part Susan B. Anthony, one part Carly Simon and one part Joe McCarthy
In the aftermath of what was, by just about anybody’s estimation, a rout of Barack Obama in Wednesday night’s primary debate, Hillary Clinton moved to the horsey hills of Philadelphia college country to conduct a town hall in front of an adoring crowd at Haverford College (the oldest college of Quaker origin in the United States—who knew?). Hillary kicked back in front of a mostly female audience, sharing a stage with her mother and daughter and, for the better part of 90 minutes, conducted a sisterly love-in whose subtext was “Sisters, we certainly kicked some ass last night.”
Dispatches from the surreal calamity of last night’s Democratic leadership debate
Last night, in a massive Philadelphia museum devoted to the American Constitution, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hammered away at each other—gladiators in the great Democratic political contest. The debate itself, part of the run-up to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, took place in a smallish TV theatre and was moderated by ABC correspondents Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Outside that small room, though, in a massive cathedral of spin, looking out 30-foot-high windows at Independence Hall, a thousand journos banged away at laptops, murmured into microphones and adjusted their ties and blouses before the camera. This horde represented an array of newspapers, Web sites, blogs, and radio and TV stations bearing a Dadaesque constellation of acronyms from throughout the world—ABC, NBC, CBS, WLS, WLAY, WABC, WDKA, WSYR, BBC, CNN, C-SPAN—most of which were repeated out along 6th Street, where satellite trucks stretched into the distance like a futuristic trailer park and news helicopters floated above. It was American madness pure and thick, and I wandered through it, as Leonard Cohen would say, like a lost Canadian.
Litigiously yours, CanWest
Recently, I reported on efforts by The Wall Street Journal to buy up copies of a parody version of their publication titled My Wall Street Journal. Despite the slightly sinister implications, the whole absurd fiasco was essentially found comedy. Not so hilarious is the lawsuit against a parody version of The Vancouver Sun brought by the Aspers, owners of media behemoth CanWest. The parody satirizes the Sun’s avowedly pro-Israel editorial bent. In addition to the folks who actually produced the thing, the Aspers are going after a Palestinian activist named Mordecai Briemberg. Here’s his description of his liability in the matter:
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The Rezko affair resurfaces after testimony about Obama and Auchi
You may remember that, five weeks ago, I wondered out loud why one of Rupert Murdoch’s lead investigative reporters, The Times of London’s James Bone, was sniffing around the Chicago corruption trial of Obama fundraiser Tony Rezko. Moreover, I linked Rezko to the Iraqi-born British billionaire/Bond villain Nadhmi Auchi. Murdoch had, at one time, thrown in his lot with Hillary Clinton and I put two and two together. Now, you may also remember that hard on the heels of that post came not one but two missives from Bone asserting that, in linking his reporting to Murdoch’s political interests, your loyal correspondent was full of shit.
What does Mosley’s Nazi sex video say about The Globe and Mail (and vice versa)?
The Globe and Mail, good grey lady that she is, has always had a difficult time reconciling the earnest, sober-sided aspect of its news coverage with the more tabloid aspect of its soft commentary and features. Regarding the latter, the Globe’s take invariably aspires to be cleverer than thou, which is to say that even while they examine the salacious undersides of life they do so with a “jaundiced” eye. But sometimes it’s difficult to keep all those balls in the air.
Wall Street Journal’s parody paranoia proves that truth is stranger (and funnier) than fiction
Here’s a reason to get up this morning. A who’s who of New York satire—including Richard Belzer, Andy Borowitz, Tony Hendra, Joe Queenan and writers from The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live and The Onion—has, of late, created My Wall Street Journal, a parody of its sober namesake. The front-page headline? “Bush Abolishes Death, Taxes; Move Will Benefit McCain.”
NYC newspaper war now playing out in the Post, Observer and Vanity Fair
Over at the Department of Double Standards we find Vanity Fair media columnist Michael Wolff writing one of those self-fulfilling-prophecy pieces about how dim-witted the Sulzbergers are. The item is in the May issue and muses on how the family will inevitably sell The New York Times to Warren Buffett or the Washington Post Company or Michael Bloomberg or the highest bidder. And that whoever gets it will deserve it more than the Sulzbergers because whoever it is isn’t—how to put it?—as stupid as the Sulzbergers.
Can Rupert Murdoch steal the thunder of Microhoo?
Whatever you might imagine Conrad Black is up to today—washing floors, dishes or laundry, mowing a lawn or teaching a fellow inmate to speak French—spare a moment to empathize with the resentment and envy his Lordship must feel at the prospects of his tormentor and vanquisher Mighty Murdoch. I’ve argued before in this space that it was Rupert who knocked over the first domino leading to the great man’s demise. This morning in The Globe and Mail, Black biographer Richard Siklos (whose sage counsel led my thinking in this regard) writes about the many complex scenarios revolving around the current Internet-based plays that will shape the broader media landscape for the foreseeable future.
Sarah Polley warns that Bill C-10 may look good at dinner, but we’ll regret it in the morning
Sarah Polley is in Ottawa today along with a lot of other “Canadian stars” telling the Senate to amend Bill C-10 so as to prevent Tory hacks from yanking film financing after the fact if the content bothers their constituents. Questioned on CBC-TV this morning, Polley said, “Ultimately there are gaps in the thinking here.… Of course, over a dinner party this sounded good, but when we really look at it, it really does amount to censorship…and we will stop at nothing until these provisions are dropped.”
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Sandra Martin: Superstar obituarist or Grim Reaper?
Beryl Plumptre is dead and that matters. We know this—in part, at least—because Sandra Martin, the Globe and Mail’s lead obituarist, tells us so. Martin is part of a recent phenomenon: the superstar obituarist. Apparently, it’s been the rage in the U.K. since at least 2006, when the BBC reported that:
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Defining Darfur: Is it genocide?
Writing in yesterday’s Globe, the always engaging Jennifer Wells discussed the other politically charged movement of the moment that may disrupt Beijing ’08: Darfur. Wells interviewed Ellen Freudenheim, a consultant for a non-profit called Dream for Darfur that is dedicated to holding corporations sponsoring the Olympics accountable in light of China’s decidedly sinister involvement in Sudan.
Conrad Black’s Homer Simpson moment
In case you hadn’t heard, timing is everything. Last November, I reported the contents of a long piece from Law.com describing in depth the diminishing enthusiasm at the DOJ for the prosecution of corporate crime. Further evidence appeared this morning by way of a page-one headline in The New York Times: “In Justice Shift, Corporate Deals Replace Crimes.” It seems that, rather than seeking criminal indictments, the DOJ is seeking to mete out justice on the cheap.
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Gaffe of the week: Stupidity is stupidity, whether you’re Tom Lukiwski or Jeffrey Simpson
One of the stranger excretions during the Lukiwski news cycle arrived yesterday courtesy the Globe’s big-foot national affairs columnist, Jeffrey Simpson. In avoiding discussing the actual issue—and the content of the tape at the centre of it, in which MP Tom Lukiwski takes a rather dim view of gay men—Simpson combines a sort of boys-will-be-boys apologia with an extended swipe at the NDP. To wit:
Stephen Brunt and The Globe and Mail unwittingly adhere to Godwin’s Law
Page A13 of today’s Globe and Mail contains the most odious, egregious example of Godwin’s Law I’ve seen this side of the bathroom wall. Devised by Wikimedia’s current in-house counsel Mike Godwin, Godwin’s Law, in case you forgot, posits that “as a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
Mark Penn’s sleaze machine links Clinton to Canada
Yesterday’s coverage of Hillary Clinton tossing her chief strategist, Mark Penn, includes—shock of shocks—a Canadian angle. Penn, acting in his role as CEO of global flacks Burson-Marsteller, was jettisoned for personally servicing a contract with the Colombian government that would help grease the wheels for a pending free trade deal with the States (a deal that Hillary, in an effort to suck up to working-class voters, has repudiated vociferously). Turns out that Burson-Marsteller is the same outfit that contracted with a Canadian company, Spin Master (yes, that’s really their name), to do damage control over a toy they were distributing.
The myna bird call of Barbara Amiel
Barbara Amiel’s latest pensée in the pages of Maclean’s—besides perfunctory references to her new dog and the shortcomings of Barack Obama—contains a sentence that reminded me of something I’d read before. Now, usually when my memory is jogged like this, it means Amiel is repeating something penned earlier by her own good self, since doctrinal and rhetorical inconsistency aren’t among Lady Black’s more evident sins. Not this time, however. The recollection bothered me enough that I followed my nose—and voila!
Times 2, Journal 0: The newspaper war heats up over Tom Cruise, Bear Stearns and Murdoch’s henchman
In a feature piece last Monday, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz offered an overview of Manhattan’s current newspaper war: The New York Times versus The Wall Street Journal. Interviewed therein was the Journal’s new publisher—former Times of London editor and Murdoch henchman Robert Thomson—who took the opportunity to aim several broadsides at his uptown rival:
Conrad Black regains passport, home, jewellery; dignity pending
Not that it’ll do him much good, at least for the moment, but Conrad Black, courtesy of Amy St. Eve, just got his passport back. He also got the liens on his Palm Beach boîte lifted and $1.6 million in jewellery and antiquities returned.
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Edward Greenspon locates the cornerstone of democratic society—it was under his desk
From the sensational annals of staggering self-importance, we find Globe editor-in-chief Edward “Don’t Call Me Eddie and for God’s Sake Don’t Call Me Ted” Greenspon in an on-line town hall talking about the vital differences between blogging and journalism:
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Gaffe of the week: Harriet Harman fails to make friends, meat pies
On the spectrum of completely absurd utterances by clearly addled politicians, this one’s off the charts. Caught on camera wandering around her constituency surrounded by cops (right in front of the police station) and wearing a stab-proof vest (thereby indicating to her South London constituents that they are in fact living in Beirut circa 1985), the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman, offers the following to the BBC:
American election predictions from Conrad Black
The Globe reported on its Web site yesterday that Lord Black of Crossharbour has sent a Dear Paul letter to Paul Waldie (the Globe’s lead Conrad reporter), assuring him that, despite his current condition, he continues to assert his stalwart, undying commitment to being, well, himself.
Happy 80th birthday, Chatelaine—you could use a good party
So Chatelaine, Canada’s premier women’s magazine, is having a mad old party tonight. The Windsor Arms Hotel will be packed to the gills with publishing types, there to celebrate Chatelaine’s 80th birthday, a new design and a new editor. It’s all sweetness and light these days at the Rogers-owned publication, having just put a rough patch behind it (four different editors in four years and the rest of the Canadian media running plenty of who’d-a-thunk-it stories—including David Hayes’s hereabouts two months ago). None of the roughness seems to have made a whit of substantive difference, though: the magazine still has a circulation of 550,000 and $50 million-plus in revenue. All of which suggests that the rough patch was set off by Chatelaine managers who—looking at a slight drop in PMB numbers and believing that change solves everything—made a classic, fundamental error: “It ain’t broke but we’re going to break it anyway.”
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15 laugh-free years in, The Royal Canadian Air Farce is mercifully pulled from CBC
In a memo from the Department of Waywayoverdue, the CBC announced today that it’s dumping the relentlessly unfunny Royal Canadian Air Farce. And, in typically Canadian fashion, it was all made to seem as if it wasn’t really ending so much as continuing:
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The gorier details of the Hollinger Five
For those of you who continue to be interested in the gorier details of the Hollinger Five, last night, a financial Web site called Seekingalpha.com posted the transcript of Sun-Times Media Group’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call with investors and analysts from March 11 of this year. Among the juicier bits: CEO and president Cyrus Freidheim Jr. reports that “During 2007, Mr. Black and his associates were advanced $48 million in legal fees under the company’s indemnification provisions. The company is attempting to recover advancements related to guilty verdicts but must continue to make advancements for their appeals.”
“This is my life”
Whether you’re Liberal or Conservative, Republican or Democrat; no matter how high-minded your campaign; no matter how clever your tactics; whether you’re running for parliament, city council, president, senate, congress or dog catcher—in the end, there’s only one thing that matters in electoral politics: money. And getting it—even giving it—can be pretty unpleasant (just ask Eliot Spitzer’s dad or Tony Rezko).
