Sunday, August 28, 2005
CBC XXXIV:Not a peep out of Poynter
Two weeks ago tonight, the clock was ticking down to the lockout. The Canadian Media Guild had already said publicly and on the record that the CBC was about to lock out 5,500 employees. CBC.ca covered the story, quoting the union, and CBC management was in the fourth floor newsroom objecting to that coverage, a sign of things to come in the next few hours.
It's been two weeks and there hasn't been a peep out of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. And that, I find, is somewhat surprising.
For those who don't know it, the Poynter Institute is the premiere professional journalism institute in the United States. It monitors the industry and offers courses for professional development. And all those courses have some sort of ethical dimension.
I, and other CBC employees, have attended Poynter courses over the years or attended conferences where Poynter had a major role. (For the record, I was teaching at Ryerson at the time. Ryerson paid the minimal fee that Poynter charges--it is supported by a wealthy foundation-- while the CBC agreed I could go on company time. For most others the CBC pays for both). Poynter people have attended journalism conferences and held seminars in Canada.
(That is one of the good things about the CBC, it does pay for professional development of its staff employees, something most journalism organizations in Canada don't even bother to consider. The only other company that I know that does it regularly is the Toronto Star. When I see other Canadians at conferences or training [some of which I pay for myself using my author's hat] they are paying for it themselves or a sympathetic editor has scrounged the money from a discretionary budget.)
If there is an issue in journalism, it is usually discussed on the Poynter website, either in the news section or in columns or in guest columns. Although the lockout was covered by the New York Times, the online pages of The Guardian and Business Week, and by the wire services, there has been nothing on the news page run by Romensko. And almost all my journalistic friends in the US say the first thing they look at when they get to the office in the morning is Romensko.
None of the columnists who have their fingers on the pulse of American journalism have done anything either. (Note one of Poynter's online columnists is a locked in CBC manager, so it would be a conflict of interest for him to write about it, but there are two online columnists, the second is at a journalism school, no conflict of interest there, and there are other columnists for ethics and television and everything else. The manager, Jonathan Dube, did file a generic column on August 24)
(Disclosure: I once wrote a guest column about historical reconstruction in narrative.)
I don't really expect Poynter to offer indepth coverage of the details a labour dispute (although Romensko seems to thrive on internal gossip from the US media).
But Romensko and Poynter have covered Canadian issues before. Most recently Romesko reported that CP allowed reporters to use "fuck" in copy when appropriate (picked up from CTV.ca) and the fact that Jocko Thomas still checks in with the Toronto Star desk (picked up from the Ryerson Review of Journalism)
But what have they been missing?
No "Only in Canada, you say, pity," in this case, because they do cover Canada.
So why the deafening e-silence from St. Petes?
Technorati tags
journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout
10:27 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
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It's been two weeks and there hasn't been a peep out of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. And that, I find, is somewhat surprising.
For those who don't know it, the Poynter Institute is the premiere professional journalism institute in the United States. It monitors the industry and offers courses for professional development. And all those courses have some sort of ethical dimension.
I, and other CBC employees, have attended Poynter courses over the years or attended conferences where Poynter had a major role. (For the record, I was teaching at Ryerson at the time. Ryerson paid the minimal fee that Poynter charges--it is supported by a wealthy foundation-- while the CBC agreed I could go on company time. For most others the CBC pays for both). Poynter people have attended journalism conferences and held seminars in Canada.
(That is one of the good things about the CBC, it does pay for professional development of its staff employees, something most journalism organizations in Canada don't even bother to consider. The only other company that I know that does it regularly is the Toronto Star. When I see other Canadians at conferences or training [some of which I pay for myself using my author's hat] they are paying for it themselves or a sympathetic editor has scrounged the money from a discretionary budget.)
If there is an issue in journalism, it is usually discussed on the Poynter website, either in the news section or in columns or in guest columns. Although the lockout was covered by the New York Times, the online pages of The Guardian and Business Week, and by the wire services, there has been nothing on the news page run by Romensko. And almost all my journalistic friends in the US say the first thing they look at when they get to the office in the morning is Romensko.
None of the columnists who have their fingers on the pulse of American journalism have done anything either. (Note one of Poynter's online columnists is a locked in CBC manager, so it would be a conflict of interest for him to write about it, but there are two online columnists, the second is at a journalism school, no conflict of interest there, and there are other columnists for ethics and television and everything else. The manager, Jonathan Dube, did file a generic column on August 24)
(Disclosure: I once wrote a guest column about historical reconstruction in narrative.)
I don't really expect Poynter to offer indepth coverage of the details a labour dispute (although Romensko seems to thrive on internal gossip from the US media).
But Romensko and Poynter have covered Canadian issues before. Most recently Romesko reported that CP allowed reporters to use "fuck" in copy when appropriate (picked up from CTV.ca) and the fact that Jocko Thomas still checks in with the Toronto Star desk (picked up from the Ryerson Review of Journalism)
But what have they been missing?
- The podcasts that are now going on for more than a week have been covered by CNET, mentioned by Steve Rubel in Micropersuasian and discussed widely in the podcasting community.
- The growing number of blogs by locked out employees. And the blogging community has been blogging our blogging. For the latest list see Tod Maffin's CBCunplugged
- The debate over the future of public broadcasting in Canada.
- Our plans for the alternative news service that will launch later this week. While there have been smaller online efforts in labour disputes before, this is the first attempt in history to build a national news service based on the web, from scratch, in two weeks, with borrowed equipment, in a borrowed office.
No "Only in Canada, you say, pity," in this case, because they do cover Canada.
So why the deafening e-silence from St. Petes?
Technorati tags
journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout
10:27 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
