ITQ on CBC: How twitter and liveblogging won't just not destroy, but may actually save journalism!

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 2:11 PM - 12 Comments

No, really. Okay, maybe not twitter — at least, not til there’s a decent, free, non-memory-hogging berryclient that will let you sort and filter and stuff. (Right about now, Colleague McGregor’s head is exploding, I can feel the vibrations from here.)

Anyway, if you want to hear your intrepid liveblogger debate Senator Jim Munson on the pros and cons of nearly-realtime journalism, click here for the audio file, courtesy of CBC Ottawa Morning.

The blade in the Governor General's hand

By John Geddes - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 12:56 PM - 15 Comments

So everybody is having fun with the story about Governor General Michaelle Jean eating raw seal. I guess blogging was invented primarily for the mockery of this sort of extravagant gesture.

I stopped chuckling when, in his nicely observed account of the episode, Canadian Press’s Alex Panetta mentions that Jean used an ulu, the traditional knife of Inuit women, to carve her seal.
Continue…

TV On DVD Poll Dancing

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 12:48 PM - 0 Comments

Shout! Factory is running a poll on which of their releases should be followed up with another season set. Despite an attempt by Paper Chase fans to stuff the virtual ballot box, Mr. Belvedere is still in the lead, has been in the lead from the beginning of the poll, and is also apparently beating all these other titles in actual sales. I don’t know why Mr. Belvedere is the most popular show ever, but apparently it is. And ironically, Fox has more or less nuked its classic-film DVD division, meaning that we may never see DVD releases of the original Belvedere movies with Clifton Webb, yet there will almost certainly be more season sets of the indestructible TV series and its star, Roger De Bris.

I — somewhat bizarrely — cast my vote for Blossom because I want more Don Reo shows on DVD (though what I really want is season of John Larroquette), but the music clearance issues make that unlikely in this economy. But if they ever do release the third season of that show, it will contain what I consider one of the most underrated “heartfelt wrapping-up” scenes in TV history.

And, let’s face it: if I want a scene that takes advantage of a particular character’s distinctive speech patterns, that is it.

Number of EI recipients grew by over 10% in March

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 12:27 PM - 4 Comments

Over 65,000 Canadians joined the swelling ranks of employment insurance recipients last March, a 10.6 per cent increase over the previous months. Alberta and British Columbia recorded the steepest increases in the number of EI recipients, 32.1 per cent and 26.7 per cent respectively. In all, some 681,400 people are collecting benefits in Canada. While the number of initial or renewal claims went down slightly (1.9 per cent) in March, the overall number of recipients has swelled by 36.2 per cent since the job market started contracting in October.

The Canadian Press

'That's respect'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 12:27 PM - 15 Comments

Glen Pearson tells a story about Peter MacKay.

 Last week, I received an urgent call from a London, Ontario firefighter who had been on my crew when I was a captain for the department.  His mother had passed away suddenly and the family was in shock.  Worse still, his brother was a helicopter pilot at the Kandahar airbase and they had no idea how to reach him, especially in such a remote region.  “Please help if you can, Glen, the family is finding this really difficult,” my friend said.  I offered to do what I could…

And so I took a chance.  I had Peter McKay’s email address for his Blackberry and I sent him a brief message explaining the circumstances.  As Defense Minister, he was my only real chance of getting things done quickly.  Within 30 minutes he returned my message, stating that he was, in fact, in Kabul, and though it was midnight there, he would get on it right away.  He kept in touch with me through the night, updating me on the progress he was making.

The next day, the grieving helicopter pilot was on his way to his father’s side, his pain somewhat mollified by a respectful military and an able Defense Minister who overcame significant challenges to get him where he needed to be.

Texting—making kids sick?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 12:25 PM - 2 Comments

Doctors are saying that the near constant texting so many teens engage in could be making them ill. Bad grades, anxiety, sleep problems and even injuries to the hand and fingers may all be caused by the over 2,000 texts a month the average teenager sends. With unlimited text plans from many wireless carriers, it’s easy to send messages in class, leading to distraction—or to get them late at night, leading to sleep problems. According to one psychologist, texts may even change how teens develop and grow away from their parents, as they can now stay in near-constant communication with mom and pop. Not enough research has been done to reveal what health risks definitely do or don’t exist, but at the very least, doctors say a ring or a buzz every thirty seconds must be bad for the brain.

The New York Times

Ending automatic citizenship

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 12:24 PM - 2 Comments

A US congressman has submitted a bill that would change an American policy to automatically grant citizenship to any child born in the country. The legislation would only grant citizenship to newborns with at least one parent who is an American citizen, permanent resident, or who is serving in the US military. US Rep Nathan Deal and his supporters say the new law would discourage women from going to the US to give birth, having an “anchor baby” that can sponsor them as permanent residents later in life. Critics of the proposed change say it will do little to curb immigration, but that it will make many children born in the US stateless, in effect making illegal immigration worse. Deal is not expecting his bill to become law any time soon, but says birthright citizenship is archaic and that US immigration policy needs reform.

The Associated Press

Another great day for democracy

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 12:21 PM - 32 Comments

This, no matter your attitude, affiliation or occupation, is bad news. If true, the nation’s broadcaster would seem to have decided that a single hour of political coverage each day is too much for its viewers. Try to imagine CNN making the same decision.

Parliament and the intellectuals

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 11:54 AM - 37 Comments

“Dispelling ignorance should be the first duty of the intellectual.”

That’s the opening line to Adrienne Clarkson’s introduction to Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis, edited by Peter Russell and Lorne Sossin, reprinted in today’s Post.

I couldn’t agree more, which is why the fourteen essays in the book are in many ways so disappointing. There are some highlights (especially Ned Franks vs Andrew Heard on whether the GG made the right decision in granting Harper’s request to prorogue), but for the most part the book is beset by a problem that is basically a corollary of Coyne’s third rule, to wit:

In any sufficiently large group of academics, the more complete the agreement the more complete the error.

And so you have the essays in Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis, a dozen or so academics in total agreement that there were two central problems during the Madness of last fall: Harper’s perfidy, and the public’s ignorance. One after the other, the essays take turns berating Harper for his behaviour and condescending to Canadians about their constitutional befuddlement. The possibility that there was something else at work, or at least, another side to the matter, is considered only to be dismissed.

The upshot, as I argue at some length in a forthcoming issue of the LRC, is that far from dispelling ignorance, this book only creates more of it.

Obama's first Supreme Court pick

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 11:54 AM - 1 Comment

Obama’s first nomination to the US Supreme Court is  Sonia Sotomayor, an experienced appellate judge based in New York. With only one woman (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) out of 9 on the current US Supreme Court, everyone expected a female appointment. Sotomayor,  54, was a heavy favourite because if confirmed, she would become the first Latina on the court (her parents were Puerto Rican.) She has a compelling life story: she grew up in a housing project in the Bronx, her dad died when she was young, and she went on to graduate from Yale Law School.

During her Senate confirmation hearings, which are expected to be held in July, undoubtedly there will be some questions about comments that Sotomayor once made about the impact her gender and ethnicity has on her judging.

Most relevant to evaluating her nomination is her record as a judge. Scotusblog has summed up her most important opinions here.

(Of course, first impressions can be deceiving. The somewhat brittle Samuel Alito was widely expected to be the more hard-line conservative judge, and the boyish John Roberts who so charmed senators with his talk of judges as “umpires” and not policymakers, was expected to be more moderate. But Jeffrey Toobin recently made a compelling argument in the New Yorker that things turned out rather differently.)

Here is a link to a controversial article about Sotomayor quoting unnamed detractors. And here is a website set up by conservative critics that accuses her of reverse racism in one case. No doubt much more to come. Below are the nice things that the White House had to say about Sotomayor today.

Continue…

War Museum puts up nearly $300,000 to buy auctioned war medals

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 11:52 AM - 0 Comments

The federal crown corporation that oversees Canada’s War Museum has stepped in to buy nine Canadian military medals that were being sold at auction. The medals, including a Victoria Cross, were originally awarded to Robert Shankland of the famed Valour Road in Winnipeg. The sale of such medals has been the subject of controversy, raising fears that Canadian military decorations could be sold to foreign buyers and taken out of the country. The NDP has introduced a bill that would bar similar sales of medals.

Ottawa Citizen

First Octo-Mom, now Octo-Mel

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 11:51 AM - 0 Comments

Mel Gibson confirmed the rumour that his girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, is pregnant with their first—and his eighth—child during a guest appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night. The actor, who is in the midst of a divorce from his wife of 28 years, couldn’t resist a tasteless joke about his latest foray into fatherhood: “I guess I’m Octo-Mel,” he told Leno, before stretching his lips out in an attempt to imitate Nadya “Octo-Mom” Suleman.

People

Michaëlle Jean: The new Sarah Palin

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 11:31 AM - 31 Comments

Gawker, Manhattan’s painfully misanthropic snark machine/blog, has crowned poor Michaëlle Jean the “Sarah Palin of Canada” after our governor general ate a seal’s heart on camera. Commenting on Jean’s questionable photo op, in which she gutted and tucked into the seal carcass as a show of solidarity for Inuit hunters, Gawker noted how Jean was similar to Alaska’s white trash princess in other ways: they have questionable taste in glasses, they rule over frozen landmasses, they like their meat raw and bloody.

Gawker

En matière de langues officielles

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 11:18 AM - 15 Comments

So far in the last 10 minutes, the Office of the Leader of the Opposition has sent me six different versions of the same press release, asserting that the government is negligent in official-language matters.

The confusion seems to stem from considerable difficulty figuring out how to write “negligent” in French. The variations so far are amusing. I have to assume more are on the way.

Hey, remember that $3 billion "slush fund" that almost triggered an election? Liveblogging Vic Toews at Govt Ops

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 10 Comments

Anyone else getting a creeping sense of deja vu from the description of today’s meeting? I swear I’ve liveblogged this before, although last time, it was John Baird assuring the opposition that there was no need to pester the government for details on Vote 35, or, more specifically, the $3 billion in short-order stimulicious spending goodness with which it would shower the land. I guess we’ll find out how that went, huh?  And aren’t you glad we’re past the era of empty bluster and don’t-push-me-on-this-I-swear-I’ll-turn-this-Parliament-around-and-go-home brinksmanship?

Check back at noon – yes, noon, they’re spending the first hour in camera – for full liveblogging coverage.

11:41:22 AM
And still more deja vu — I’m *sure* I’ve sat disconsolately in front of this very same closed committee room door in the past, although really, when you venture into the bowels of West Block, it really *is* a series of twisty little passages, all alike. I’m not alone out here, at least — not by a long shot — although the minister has yet to make an appearance, there are a half dozen civil servants of varying degrees of visible stressedness huddled by the wall; I’m almost positive I’ve liveblogged at least a few of them during past infrastructurecentric committee meetings, but it’s so hard to associate names with faces when you get stuck sitting behind the witnesses.

Anyway, there’s some rather tense and self-conscious banter going on between the members of what I assume is the designated Toews greek chorus, but I’ll spare you the details. Gotta save something for the parry and thrust of the floor debate, right?

Continue…

Heart and gum disease linked

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 10:59 AM - 0 Comments

Coronary heart disease and periodontitis share several similarities: both are characterized by chronic inflammation, and are associated with the same risk factors, including smoking, diabetes and obesity. What’s more, there are similarities between the bacteria in the oral cavity, and those in coronary plaques. Even so, their exact link has been a mystery. Now, researchers at the University of Kiel have found a gene linking the conditions, the BBC reports. The gene, which can be found on chromosome 9, has already been associated with heart attacks; in the latest study, it was found in a group of 1,097 patients with heart disease, and in 151 with aggressive, early onset periodontitis. In both conditions, the genetic variaton was the same. “Now we know for sure that there is a strong genetic link, patients with periodontitis should try to reduce their risk factors and take preventive measures at an early stage,” study leader Dr Arne Schaefer said. “In the meantime, because of its association with CHD, we think that periodontitis should be taken very seriously by dentists and diagnosed and treated as early as possible.”

BBC News

What Terry Olayta might have said, had she made it to committee today

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 10:55 AM - 6 Comments

… based on what she told the Philippine Reporter last week, that is:

Terry C. Olayta:
(Coordinator, Caregiver Resource Centre)
Ruby Dhalla destroyed herself through her own actions and behaviour towards this complaint against her. She threw herself down the drain. All the evidences she produced are evidences against her and her family and served her own destruction.

Example: The letter showing that her mother paid cash, the letter admitted the worker received the documents from her brother Neil. Is that not stupid? Whether it’s Ruby, her mother or brother who returned those documents it’s still within the turf of Ruby Dhalla, the government official who should not be ignorant of the law.

We already had waited enough, brainstormed enough. We the caregivers here at the Cross Cultural have always been prepared to show up at Queen’s Park or to Labour and the Federal, to fax barrage, call the offices, continue the awareness education information.

ITQ is trying to find out just why she and the other witness scheduled for the second hour didn’t make it to this morning’s meeting. We’ll keep you posted!  Our bet: Overzealous Hill security; that, or nobody bothered to give them the details of when/where to show up. Yes, it would be much juicier if it involved one of those shadowy pro- or anti-Ruby conspiracies that, we’re assured, are orchestrating the show from behind the scenes, but we’re betting on Occam’s razor carrying the day.

An end to sofa government

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 10:53 AM - 5 Comments

David Cameron wants to overhaul British democracy.

But it’s not just by decentralising power and reforming parliament that we can redistribute power away from an over-mighty executive. We need to end the culture of sofa government, where unaccountable spin doctors in No 10 – whether it’s Alastair Campbell or Damian McBride – toss around ideas and make up policies not to meet the national interest but to hit dividing lines or fit the news cycle. So we’ll put limits on the number of political advisers, strengthen the ministerial code, protect the independence of the civil service, and ensure that more decisions are made by cabinet as a whole.

Much more at the Guardian’s New Politics project. Read and imagine what it’d be like if we were having as serious a discussion in this country.

"Could I try the heart?"

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 10:37 AM - 2 Comments

“Could I try the heart?” This question from Governor General Michaelle Jean must surely rank as a the least predictable quote of the day. The Queen’s representative in Canada uttered the words in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, where, on the first day of an Arctic trip, she “gutted a freshly slaughtered seal, pulled out its raw heart, and ate it.” In this vivid report, Canadian Press tells us that she chowed down on raw seal as a gesture of solidarity with Inuit hunters.

The Canadian Press

Tweeting the firing of Ed Greenspon

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 8:35 AM - 14 Comments

Since it “doesn’t matter” which platform readers use to get their information, let’s reimaginationate yesterday’s already-historic Crawley memo as something a bit more… oh, I don’t know…jiggy. Original:

Reimagination-inspired teamwork during the last four years has reinforced the value of a more collaborative way of managing our business.  By drawing on the collective strengths of the team, we are all better able as individuals to contribute to the success of The Globe and Mail.  With that objective in mind, I have reviewed the composition of the Executive Team, and identified priority areas for improvement.

New skills and different styles of leadership are needed to take The Globe and Mail to levels of achievement which meet the ambitions of our shareholders, to cement our standing as the best in Canada at creating high-quality content for consumption on whatever platform is most desirable for our readers, users and advertisers.

We are building on a position of strength not enjoyed by many of our competitors. The executive changes outlined below are intended to ensure that The Globe and Mail is in the prime spot to take advantage of the market opportunities that will arise when the recession eases.

To deliver the required results, I am adding one extra position to the senior team and changing responsibilities and reporting lines in three other parts of the business.

Ed Greenspon, who has been our Editor-in-Chief for almost seven years, is stepping down and is succeeded by John Stackhouse, the Editor of Report on Business since 2004.

Improved, Web 2.0 version:

Teamwork ftw!! ShakingUp Exec Team. $4shareholders=changes. Bye Eddie! lolz Stack=newBoss

Mad About Ruby Redux: Liveblogging the Citizenship and Immigration committee

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 10 Comments

ITQ can’t quite figure out how, exactly, they fit into the ostensible mandate for this committee, which covers “ghost consultants and migrant workers”, but never mind the details — bring on the disgruntled caregivers! Check back at 9am for full liveblogging coverage.

On the witness list today:
Canadian Live-In Caregivers Association:
Tristan Downe-Dewdney

Caregiver Resources Centre
Terry Olayta

Filipina Women’s Association of Quebec
Evelyn Calugay
Delia DeVeyra
(For Colleague Wherry’s take on the last meeting, which featured appearances by Ruby Dhalla and the angry ex-nannies, click here.)

8:43:51 AM
Good morning, Oliphantia — wait, that’s not right at all, is it? Good morning, faithful and steadfast ITQ committee junkies! I’ve missed you — and my beloved committees, of course — so much. Well, maybe a titch more the former than the latter, but never mind that.

Anyway, after missing out on the main event earlier this month due to a previously scheduled appointment to liveblog a former prime minister on the witness stand at Old City Hall, ITQ is about to have her first experience with the recently reenergized Citizenship and Immigration committee, the members of which likely couldn’t believe their luck when one of the juiciest scandals to hit the Hill in ages fell right into their collective lap earlier this month. Ruby Tuesday may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean this committee is going to give up its moment in the spotlight.

9:03:04 AM
And – bang goes the gavel, courtesy of David Tilson – who, I’ve been assured, is considerably less cranky in his new role as chair than he was during his tenure as official Ethics committee curmudgeon.

Continue…

At the Globe, content is platform-agnostic

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 8:26 AM - 24 Comments

No, nobody actually said that, but that’s clearly one jargon-laden inference a reader can draw from all the other jargon in this morning’s Stackhouse announcement.

“Content is platform-agnostic” is one of the things journalists tell one another, dying a little inside each time, when they want to seem all webby and forward-looking. It means the words don’t care how you read them, and what it really means is, eventually we hope to boil the whole product down to a moving headline crawl at the bottom of a fast-food restaurant’s digital menu. That’s the meaning of these highlights from this morning’s article:

“But news organizations can also seize upon new opportunities to expand online and into mobile platforms, he said.”

“The move is part of a broader set of changes at The Globe and Mail designed to expand the newspaper’s digital strategy.”

“Amid the flux in the media sector, the public’s appetite for news and information remains strong, regardless of how it is delivered, Mr. Stackhouse said after addressing staff.”

And my own personal favourite:

“It doesn’t matter if it’s detailing the recession or covering a war in Africa or social trends in India. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a 5,000-word story in a newspaper, or a tweet or a blog. The basic challenges are the same: finding out information that matters to people.”

Well. I hate to spoil the party, but here’s a fun fact, direct from the Inkless labs of one of the Canadian media’s first bloggers: Yes, it actually bloody does matter whether it’s a 5,000-word story or a tweet.

Or it used to.

So many heart puns

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 at 12:05 AM - 23 Comments

Michaelle Jean guts a seal, eats its heart.

Your move, Paul McCartney.

Ignatieff on an election, EI and socialism

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 11:58 PM - 6 Comments

The Liberal leader hasn’t scrummed after QP as often as his predecessor. Which is probably a decent trick—the less automatic an appearance in the foyer, the more relevant it initially seems when you do show up. (Jack Layton, on the other hand, is there everyday. Though in his situation, that’s probably necessary.)

At the same time, he’s also a gotten a bit better at the weird ritual—Let’s all crowd in cozy next to each other and shout questions at another human being! Whee!—though he surely benefits from a favourable comparison with Mr. Dion.

Anyway. Since the 11 o’clock news reduced this to a sentence or two, here’s today’s appearance. As Susan Delacourt notes, there’s at least one decent attack ad in here. Perhaps from now till the end of this parliamentary session, we’ll try posting a “scrum of the day.” Try to contain your excitement. Continue…