The Garret Tree
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
  CBC 46: The gutless CBCphobe

Usually it's not worth it paying attention to those who, for no legitimate reason, hide behind anonymity. (I have no problem with lockedout CBC employees who chose to be anonymous or Ouimet who is at least up front about what that blogger is doing)

But one gutless blogger is beginning to really irritate me because he shows up so often on Technorati searches. He (pretty sure it's a he) has only a blog name, "Loyalist" and no e-mail contact.

At least other CBCphobes like Peter Worthington and Andrew Coyne put their names on their writing.

Ever since the lockout began, day after day, Loyalist has been sending cheap shot after cheap shot at the CBC and its locked out employees on his conservative/ Conservative blog "dissonance and disrespect". He even has the gall to grab picket line pictures from Flickr and make his own snarky little remarks about the people on the line including:

The collective intelligence of a picket line can be determined by taking the IQ of its least intelligent member and dividing it by 10
.

So an assignment for all the investigative reporters and web geeks out there. Let's go through the blog, find the internal evidence and technical clues and drag this guy out of his closet (an appropriate analogy, he's also a homophobe)

Why?This hypocrite is a PR man, someone who smiles at us when we are working, calls us and flatters us when he needs us and then goes home and, usually late at night, writes his blog, venting his disdain for most journalists, not just CBC reporters, he gets paid a lot of money to be "friends" with.

He also takes aim at every conservative target, not just the CBC. For example he doesn't like the idea that Air France survivors are purusing a class action suit, thinks biodiversity is a joke (what planet does this guy live on?), calls Michaelle Jean a separatist and says that women in the Canadian Armed Forces are emascualting the troops.

To understand this guy's total lack of logic he says:

1)No one watches the CBC.
2)The CBC, the propaganda arm of the Liberal Party, is solely responsible for orchestrating defeat after defeat of the Conservative Party who are, of course, in his view, the natural governing party for this country.

Huh?
Huh 2? What was happening when Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister?

It's time we found out who Loyalist is, who he works for and put him on our permanent shit list, and take that shit list with us whether we walk back in the doors of the CBC or end up somewhere else.

So let's get started:

General clues:

Many of the blogs are well written. This guy could actually write a column, only problem is the National Post is firing, not hiring.

He monitors all the news services, probably on his employer's dime.

Clue number one.

He's a Journalism school graduate.

J-school grads (of which this blogger is one) are usually quite quickly seduced by union rhetoric about the need to protect the interests of workers--except, of course, when one particular union, its seniority rules and mediaeval trade-guild mentality stand in the way of working for Holy Mother Corp.


Clue Number two. He grew up in rural Nova Scotia.

Clue Number three. He's a flack.

I too was taught by professors who had worked for years at the CBC and thought it was the sine qua non of Canadian broadcasting, even of the Canadian national identity itself. I also was caught up in the same sterile debates about whether journalists were debased by mucking about with the technicians' work, as if we were part of an officer corps who could not be seen fraternizing with the enlisted men.

Many of these debates ended up turning me off journalism altogether. This blog is about as close to the field as I ever hope to come again...


We all talked about becoming great freelancers when we were in school. Few of us had the stomach to survive the uncertainty and gravitated towards PR jobs instead. Perhaps with this lockout, we'll find out who's really cut for broadcasting and who isn't.

Clue Number Four: He lives in Toronto and reads the Toronto Sun.

If people find other clues, send me the URL and I will post them.




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6:39 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC 45: More on the Intranet blog monitor

As was reported earlier, Ouimet leaked the fact the CBC intranet is monitoring the blogs.

Cross posted to original:

Update: August 31. Someone, not Ouimet, has sent Tod Maffin a screen capture of the Intranet blog monitor. Note: Tod says they stole the code for his blog list without credit. Another violation of CBC standards.

But I just noticed one difference in the screen capture that Tod received.

Someone really earned their bonus money. Tod's list only uses first names. This Intranet list has added the full name of any blogger they could identify. (although they appear to have missed a couple of easy ones, where the blog itself identifies the last name and the Intranet list doesn't).

Yes I put my name on all my work, and stand behind everything I have written, whether it is when I employed by a corporation or by myself. At the current moment, I am self employed.

Update: Hours after Tod Maffin's post, apparently the blog monitor on the CBC intranet vanished into cyberspace.

 

2:09 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC 44: Something we can agree on, the Worthington audit
There is apparently one small something both sides in this can agree on: My call a couple of days ago for an independent audit of the accuracy of statements of reported fact in columns by Peter Worthington in the Toronto Sun.

At least this agreement is at the working manager level.

I arrived at the fairly dry Toronto Broadcast Centre this morning to snap pictures of gloomy people walking around under grey skies. (Katrina has passed on)

I took the memory card back to the Canadian Media Guild office to file for the newsletter, then returned to the picket line. On my way back along Front Street a person I did not recognize, a manager wearing one of those new blood red ID badges, quickly said to me, "Hey great idea about Worthington, wish I'd thought of it," and then passed by.

Later I got a chance to talk to someone else who told me that the CBC has been trying for at least a decade to get the Toronto Sun to issue corrections of inaccurate statements in columns by Peter Worthington. The Sun has consistently refused.

This is Sun policy. A few years ago, a senior editor from the Sun agreed to be put on the hot seat at the annual convention of the Canadian branch of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. This editor said, and those present had to agree, that the Sun is usually scrupulously accurate as it can be in its reportorial coverage. (Its AIDS coverage in the 1980s was among the best in the Toronto papers) But it has been Sun policy since it was founded in 1971 that columnists are free to say anything they want; Sun policy that columnists could say anything about the gay community, whether or not it was accurate; Sun policy that columnists can say anything they want about the CBC, whether or not it is accurate.

As I said in my earlier blog, this attitude is no longer acceptable in most daily newspapers in the United States, even with the growing political polarization south of the border. Columnists as well as reporters have been audited for their accuracy and if found to be grossly inaccurate, disciplined by their employers.

Worthington is free in our society to hate everything the CBC broadcasts and hate everyone who works for the CBC. But if he is to be a credible journalist, he must base his arguments on verifiable facts.

I asked my contact if the senior managers would join this idea and simply write on CBC letterhead requesting an independent audit of Worthington's work.

I was told they are probably too busy. What are you doing in there for all that bonus money?

I am sure someone can take half an hour to draft a letter and the senior NCAN management could take a moment to sign it after one those "news in a minute" casts.

(After all the CBC always responds through the Ombudsman, why shouldn't the Sun, whose columnists are always accusing the CBC of bias, not be held to the same standard?)

Here is the address

Pierre Karl Péladeau
Le président et chef de la direction
Quebecor
612, rue Saint-Jacques
Montréal (Québec)
H3C 4M8
CANADA



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12:39 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC 43: Job score August 31


Job Score August 31. CBC 0 Visitors 3

From the picket line in front of the Toronto Broadcast Centre.

 And a late scoring opportunity, Global is wooing one and possibly more CBC TV national reporters.

Update: CBC 0, Visitors 4

Add a loss to the City of Calgary. Eric Rosenbaum leaves CBC Radio and explains why.


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12:26 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC 42: Say it ain't so , John, February?
John Doyle in the Globe and Mail (I'll link to the post as soon as one of the advocacy groups posts it) this morning says that there may be a return to work in early October, either Monday October 3 or October 10. He says shows dependent on news and current affairs have to get ready and Canadians want Hockey Night in Canada.

Shows depdendent on news and current affairs are probably the comedy shows, like 22 Minutes and Air Farce.

As for hockey I have been hearing the same. The date I have always heard is October 1 a Saturday, an interesting coincidence that Doyle is hearing Oct. 3 the Monday. Why that date? Because Saturday October 1, I am told, is the last date possible for Hockey Night in Canada to mount a respectable show the following Saturday. A friend on HNIC told me "we could scramble to do it in five days, but it wouldn't look that great."

Doyle's pessimistic speculation is that if there is no settlement early in the hockey season, it could be February before we're back, just before the federal election.
Memo to the Prime Minister: If it is February, there won't be a CBC left to cover your election.

Katrina and me update: The towel worked, I got the sleep. There appears to be no futher damage. Now I have to decide whether or not to patch (if I can) or replace the entire section which cost a neighbor with a similar roof $2800.



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7:39 AM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC 41: Katrina

It's 0431 as I start to type this. Outside what Environment Canada calls "post tropical storm Katrina" is sending a steady, sustained, heavy rain (no nasty wind thank the Gods).

Half an hour an hour ago a tapping noise outside my bedroom woke me up. Yes, I have Katrina damage. Extremely minor compared to what has happened in the United States, but there is an ugly yellow stain and one small hole in the ceiling so far, so there's a towel down there right now, (the plastic bucket is too noisy) so I can get another couple of hours sleep before my early morning assignment, photographing for the Guild newsletter whomever is braving the picket line early in the morning.

I heard someone else had roof damage from that storm last week, a couple has a baby due tomorrow and at least two people I know just bought their houses,

Things like this happen in other labour disputes of course. And we do stories about it and we the journalists move on while the strikers/lockoutees also continue with their lives. We never hear about them again unless someone decides to do a "follow-up."

CTV, which is covering the destruction in the southern United States, will move on when their managers decided it is no longer cost effective. CTV is blanketing the Katrina story largely because they are out to prove they are, at the moment, Canada's TV news service. If CBC was not locked out they would have probably sent one reporter. They have at least two from what I have watched plus Tom Clark watching from Washington.

As for the CBC, at least some people are writing to the papers to say how much they appreciate blanket Coronation Street.

I checked both the Environment Canada and NOAA radar tracks. Looks like its the tail end of everything and it will only last a couple of more hours.

But to the game players in Ottawa who started all this, and it is a game, a propaganda sheet mailed to us by the CBC made it clear that this is all tied to what we thought it was, a pre-emptive strike to make sure the Guild didn't strike during the hockey season, once we go back, you've done absolutely nothing for employee morale. Or respect for the leadership of the CBC.

And if you win, having the disposable work force is not going to help save the CBC, no matter what your myriad of overpaid consultants tell you. But by that time, the managers who planned all this will also have moved on and the worker bees at CBC will have to pick up the pieces,

Back to sleep, I hope.




 

4:31 AM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC 40: David Walmsley jumps to The Star?
Late night blogging hot tip #2

Antonia Zerbisias is reporting in her blog that the rumour mill is zapping between One Yonge Street and Front and John--and it ain't because Katrina is over Lake Ontario at the moment--with speculation that one of the CBC's most imaginative senior editors is about to jump from the Corp to the Star.

She says she is: "getting calls and emails from CBC types asking me if it's true that David Walmsley, who just started as Ottawa bureau chief two months ago, is returning to Toronto to join ... drum roll ... the Star."

Zerbisias was unable to get Star management to confirm or deny the story.

If true, big loss for the CBC.

Blogger's note: I'm dropping the Roman numerals. I originally intended to write only two blogs (I and II) and now that I am up to 40, it's easier to track.

And Antonia is also asking for virtual brown envelopes for the stories she is blogging. I have had a couple of those, but brown (or white CBC) envelopes slipped behind my screen door are welcome as well.


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12:15 AM posted by Robin Rowland  
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Tuesday, August 30, 2005
  CBC XXXIX: Blog highlights on CBC intranet

Ouimet, and it is pretty certain now that Ouimet is inside the TBC, posted a hot tip late this evening.

The internal CBC intranet media monitoring service is provided a daily highlight of the blogs.

For those of you inside reading this - and I know you are legion - if you want to read lock-out and lock-in blog highlights, you can go to

http://intranet/corp_en/media/

I wish I would have found it sooner.

For those of you on the outside reading this, if you have a camera and are looking to stick it to the man's home page, you can post a photo on the flicker web site and "tag" it as "cbclockout" and it will apparently be automatically loaded to this web site behind the firewall.


Update: August 31. Someone, not Ouimet, has sent Tod Maffin a screen capture of the Intranet blog monitor. Note: Tod says they stole the code for his blog list without credit. Another violation of CBC standards.



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11:50 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC XXXVIII: The CBC and the Avro Arrow

A media analyst sent me a private e-mail a couple of days ago saying he believed the employees had won the first two weeks of the public relations campaign with the CBC. Today senior management began the counter offensive, with Robert Rabinovitch in the Globe and Mail (behind the paywall; Update leaked and on Our Public Airwaves) and Richard Stursberg in Macleans.

For me, Rabinovitch's op-ed piece in the Globe shows that he is so set on his bean counting (or should I say bean cutting) course that he has just proved the Canadian Media Guild right, he does want a disposable workforce.

Unless something changes in the next few days, these are the Guns of August as I mentioned earlier, and future historians will mark today, Tuesday, August 30, as the beginning to the end of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. That's why I called this post "The CBC and the Avro Arrow." Almost fifty years ago, beancounters in Ottawa destroyed the Avro Arrow. Now beancounters in Ottawa are destroying the CBC. (But will there be someone to do a TV miniseries about these days, say a decade or so from now, as the CBC produced a miniseries on the Arrow?)

Question: Name a powerful division within the CBC. Most people would say NCAN (CBC bureaucrat-talk for News Current Affairs and Newsworld) Buzzzzzzzz. Wrong. How many people outside the buildings know that CBC now has a Real Estate Division, that Rabinovich is running part of the CBC as a mini version of Oxford Properties or Olympia and York? After Rabinovitch took over, he hired consultants who went through every building in the country and in a nightmare right out of Dilbert, this consultant decided how much cubicle space we should be crowded into. Then the "surplus" space was rented out. The most obvious is the Eighth Floor of the Toronto Broadcast Centre which is rented to the Academy of Design.

This is what Rabinovitch means when he says in the Globe:
The only way to maintain and improve service is to make the money CBC has to go further, through internal efficiencies, by generating income from existing assets--from program content to real estate [my emphasis]--and by entering into new entrepeneurial partnerships.


And now to staffing.

I have a staff job. What I and many others find the most insulting about the corporation's offer that we will keep our staff jobs (at least in this round of negotiation.What's next?) is that they forget where we came from. Almost everyone I know at CBC has slogged through casual and contract status, often for years, if not decades. I know what it is like to live in a small roach-filled apartment waiting for the phone to ring. Why should the next generation forgo the ability to buy a house or a condo or a nice car, have a decent vacation, so the CBC can be "efficient?" Especially since the CEP, which represents many in the private TV sector, has shown this morning what we who work in the business already know, there are staff jobs aplenty in the private sector.

"The most successful private broadcasters in the country use a fraction
of the contract work currently used by the public broadcaster," said
Peter Murdoch, Vice-President Media for the CEP. The union represents 26,000
members in the media, including employees at all of Canada's major private
broadcasters.
Murdoch said a quick informal survey by CEP showed that contract work is
not nearly as in play in the private sector as it is in the public
broadcaster.
CTV, CHUM, Global - these are very successful broadcasters who not only
have less contract workers but far fewer labor disputes. (CBC has had five in
the last six years.)
The CBC should rethink its bargaining strategy, get back to issues of
programming, and stop blaming employees for failures of management.


Will those talented employees management wants on perpetual contracts even bother to work at CBC? Will they go to the privates or, as we onced joked, now gallow's humour the dark side, PR?

The Globe subhead emphasizes Rabinovitch's statement that

Taken together, the proposals we have put forward to our unionized employees seek to ensure that the CBC can employ the right people for the right jobs at the right time. It seems obvious, but that is the core of our dispute with our union. Without this ability, our programming will suffer and the CBC will gradually become less relevant and attractive to Canadians.

He then goes on to give the example of hiring specialist producers, using a health care show. The health care show goes on for three years. Then ratings show people are no longer interested in health care. So dump the health care producer and he says

The employee hired for his medical background, should not be able, because he has seniority to transfer into CBC.ca and displace a newly hired producer who was brought in for her knowledge of the cultural scene and for her familiarity with the blogging universe.
This shows Rabinovich's utter and total contempt for his employees and especially the people at CBC.ca. I was the fourth person to join CBC online in 1996. It is now an empire with a couple of hundred people.

I have worked there for almost nine years. Almost everyone who worked at CBC.ca in the early years, when we were building the service from nothing, came from elsewhere within the CBC, from radio and TV news, from sports, from the geeky sectors of the Corp. (I was a casual lineup editor at Newsworld and was about to have my casual status terminated in the 1996 layoffs, but I was needed, I had just co-written the first book on how to do research in the Internet. So I still had a job but I was still a casual). And by the way, my undergrad degree is in cultural anthropolgy, not computer science.

We were crowded into a tiny room that had once been a green room for a tiny TV studio. We adapted every day as the Internet landscape changed. We were just behind CNN and the BBC but way head of the American networks which were hesitating to jump onto the web.

CTV didn't have the guts to create its web service until five years later. And now CTV.ca is going to steal the Canadian audience from CBC.ca and benefit from our work (CTV.ca raided CBC.ca for most of its staff in 2000). The even more gutless Global didn't get its act together until it realized it had to compete with CTV.

One of the most popular sections of CBC.ca/news are the backgrounders, the instant backgrounders, we produce on a daily basis, backgrounders researched and written tied to breaking news. And if CBC.ca was up and running and if you ran a Google link check you would see that this turn-on-a-dime, first-draft-of-history journalism is linked to by sites all over the world.

And note what Rabinovitch says of the newly hired producer: "for her familiarity with the blogging universe." What has this guy been doing for the past three weeks? Who vetted his copy before it went to the Globe? Just how many blogs have CBC lockoutees created in those weeks? Tod Maffin who maintains the list of blogs can hardly keep up.

One of the most talented, award-winning documentary producers at CBC News has a Phd, in what I know not. He has produced docs on all kinds of subjects. It appears that Rabinovich would fire this guy just because the Corp no longer wanted to cover the subject of his dissertation.

Rabinovitch says he doesn't want to mortgage the future of the corporation, but he doesn't want his future employees to have a mortgage.

Perhaps the negotiating teams on both sides should read Sun Tzu's The Art of War. (You'll find a 1910 translation here).

Sun says never put anyone in a position where they have nothing to lose. With the future of the CBC looking bleak, Rabinovitch has just done that.




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9:07 AM posted by Robin Rowland  
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Monday, August 29, 2005
  CBC XXXVII: Blog war notes August 29
Look what PBS announced

Management has decided on its message track on the podcasting now going on and the plans for the future podcasts and news site to come later this week. They're saying it doesn't matter. Me thinks they play down too much.

Podcasting doesn't matter, eh? Look what PBS has just announced (other blogs say the announcement was today but there is no date on the release.) It's called NerdTV.

Beginning Sept. 6, PBS will make available - exclusively over the Internet - broadcast television's first entirely downloadable series, featuring PBS technology columnist and industry insider Robert X. Cringely's interviews with personalities from the ever-changing world of technology.

Later on in the news release PBS says:

Cringely noted, "With more than half of American homes with Internet access now using broadband, computer video - especially downloaded computer video - has become a viable but still little-used option for TV distribution. The strength of this new medium can be found in how it serves niche audiences. This is where Internet distribution shines.

And who are the flexible people doing it here? Ahhh three guesses????

One pop from Poynter

After I posted my note last night asking why the Poynter Institute hadn't covered the lockout and especially the stories that emerged last week, there was one link today on their news page, on the right hand column, where the lesser stories go, linking to the Globe and Mail about the poll if people had missed the CBC.

I also received e-mail from people both in Canada and the United States saying they had e-mailed Jim Romensko about the lockout, the podcasting and the blogs. (I sent an e-mail the moment the CBC.ca story that we were going to be locked out was posted).

This is not a case of pressuring someone to cover a story. After all it is being covered elsewhere. I and the people who wrote to me are genuinely mystified why it is being ignored by an outfit like Poynter.

Breaching the wall and finding Doyle

I also recieved a number of e-mails from people who like to read John Doyle. Turns out that Google News breaches the Globe and Mail pay wall. Simply Google John Doyle and Globe and Mail. You go folks!



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8:29 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC XXXVI: Time to escalate the blog war

For 34 years the people who work at the CBC have had to take it when hate was dished out from the CBCphobes. The only people who could answer were CBC communications. And those responses were usually bland and came from committees of at least a couple of managers and a communications person. (I once saw three managers in a meeting with Ruth Ellen Soles trying to decide how to respond to an issue).

I say 34 years because the hate campaign against the CBC really began with the founding of the Toronto Sun.

Now we have a window of opportunity. The lockout means we are no longer bound by CBC communications policy. We can finally answer back. It's time to escalate the blog war....but to do it rationally and to use the system, and not lower ourselves to the level of those who hate us.

Toronto's gay community always responded to the hate dished out by the Sun. It's a campaign that the Sun has largely abandoned. It's time for CBC lockoutees to take a hint from that campaign and fight back.

One of the most inaccurate, sloppy and nasty pieces of junk journalism I have seen my 30-year career appeared in today's Toronto Sun by columnist Peter Worthington.

Worthington has been telling Canadians what he thinks of them for all those 34 years, he was one of the founders of the Sun. He is entitled to his opinion. But if a columnist wants people to accept his arguments, he must base them on accurate facts.

In his column Worthington says:

The CBC is notoriously anti-military--except when our soldiers are accidently killed by American bombs.

The CBC ignores our troops in the Balkans and Afghanistan and rejects "unbiased" documentaries that record the work they do.

The fact is that CBC and often only CBC has consistently covered the Canadian military. (Note: these statements are based on memory, since I don't have records that are locked in the Toronto Broadcast Centre, but they are as accurate as I can make them--and I am admitting this)

Last year, The National broadcast the show from Kabul. Peter Mansbridge went on a patrol with Canadian soldiers. Correspondent David Common has been in Afghanistan at least twice. Common is a one man band Videojournalist, doing everything himself. He not only filed TV items, he sent me, as CBC News photo editor, still photos of Kabul that I used in a couple of photo galleries.

Dan Bjarnason and cameraman Brian Kelly were onboard HMCS Windsor when the sub made its maiden voyage from Scotland to Halifax.

For the past two years, CBC.ca has published columns from a Canadian serviceman named Russell Storring who was in Afghanistan, then back at Petawawa and is now in Khandahar and is, in one way, since there is no place for his column, locked out like the rest of us.

CBC News Sunday shot, produced and aired a documentary about the Canadians in Kabul.

And when Canadian Coyote reconnaissance units were the first NATO troops to enter Kosovo, the CBC was there, while the other networks who were too cheap to send their crews, depended on video news releases from the Department of National Defence.

Worthington also says:

As for news bias, in the recent Iraq war, the CBC withdrew its staff from Baghdad when bombing began and wouldn't allow reporters to be embedded with attacking troops for fear they'd be suscepitble to military "spin."

What nonsense

Instead, the CBC used American footage of the war and added its own "spin" as to what was happening. Not only cowardly but, that's dishonest journalism.


If there ever was a dishonest report, it is Worthington's.

Yes, the CBC did withdraw its crews from Baghdad. But so did many other news organizations.

The fact that news management decided not to embed was hotly debated among the locked out staff and many, including myself, disagreed with that decision. And, it turns out, embedding might not have been a good idea anyway, since the U.S. military had a priority list for embedded journalists, and it is unlikely the CBC and other Canadians would have got anywhere anyway. Some small market US reporters never left the United States, the units they were assigned to never deployed because the first phase of the war ended so quickly

But there were CBC reporters in the war zone.

Patrick Brown was in the northern, Kurd region of Iraq, with David Common as his field producer. Margaret Evans from radio was also in northern Iraq. Paul Workman and a CBC crew, along with other news organizations skeptical of embedding, crossed the border between Iraq and Kuwait soon after the invasion.

For someone like Worthington, who has sat behind a desk for at least 30 years, to call "cowards" reporters, producers, camera people and editors who have served in war zones in the last few years, some of whom I count as friends, shows the kind of person Worthington really is.

So what should be done?

The solution comes from the south of the border. These days if a reporter or columnist in the U.S. writes a piece, like Worthington's Monday column, that is full of inaccuracies, management usually begins an audit of that reporter's or columnist's work,as was done at the New York Times and USA Today and an increasing number of papers.

It is time that Sunmedia, Worthington's employer, institutes an external independent audit of the accuracy of statements of fact in Worthington's columns for the past several years. (Since Worthington was once an executive of the chain, an outside audit would be free of hints of conflict of interest.) If Sunmedia won't audit the reporting of facts in Worthington's columns, then it should be done by a journalism school.

Note: This is little different than a complaint to the CBC ombudsman, the CBC at least listens to complaints from Canadians. The Sun chain usually dismisses in a snarky little comment in the letters section.

I will accept the results of any such audit and I am sure everyone else would as well.

Update: Worthington's column has been posted on CBC Watch, and there are comments.

To Contact Quebecor, which owns Sunmedia, here is the contact us page.

The president and CEO of Quebecor is Pierre Karl Péladeau.





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5:04 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBCXXXV: "They don't give a rats ass"

John Doyle in the Globe and Mail has been mining sources and has spoken to at least one National reporter who has been approached by a rival network. He says the same thing that I've heard, no one is prepared to move yet. (Get the paper at your corner box or variety store. The online version is behind the pay wall)

His source says:

I'm terribly conflicted to tell you that for the very first time in my career, I'm seriously thinking about my other options. It's hard to maintain a true passion for and dedication to public broadcasting when none of the folks at the top give a rat's ass about it.
We know this morning they don't give a rat's ass. I'm switching between CNN and CTV Newsnet's live coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Earlier today the Newsworld was taking the BBC. At this moment they are taking the local satellite uplink from an NBC affiliate in Mobile, Alabama. So the Canadian public broadcaster, paid for by the taxypayers for a Canadian voice, is using British and American feeds for a hurricane. If things were normal Newsworld would take a live feed from NBC or CBS, but David Common or Chris Brown or Neil MacDonald would also be in the storm zone.

(By the way anyone in television in the U.S. will tell you that a station's reputation, not always fairly, depends not on how good it is, but its market size. Mobile is the 62nd market in the US TV market.)

The current Environment Canada storm track now shows Katrina's eye (by then likely a tropical depression) churning through the middle of Lake Ontario on Wednesday further east than yesterday's track. After sideswiping Toronto, now it is likely to pass close to Montreal. If Katrina "wobbles," as the wind driven reporters are now saying in their live hits, the hurricane could hit Ottawa.

BUT if you look at the US storm track from the National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Service, the "five day storm cone" shows Katrina is taking aim for Toronto Wednesday and then arriving on Parliament Hill at about 1 a.m. Thursday.

(Note these tracks are often updated and may have changed if you click later in the day. Also I find that the Environment Canada track doesn't work well Firefox, so use Explorer)

So, if the US storm track is correct, how is the CBC going to serve the Canadian taxpayer? Even if they get a manager on the roof of the Toronto Broadcast Centre, the audience in Canada's largest market will be watching CTV Newsnet, CP24, the Weather Network and Global.

Quick note: If the person John Doyle spoke to is the same one my sources indcate is being wooed, it will be a major loss to the CBC. Doyle is right when he says "the longer the lockout lasts, the more plausible the scenario becomes...[that CBC stars] will sprint to a competing broadcaster."

But there is an indication this morning that this could be longer and nastier than everyone thought.

Doyle says
In another few weeks--or heaven forbid, months--it's the veterans and household names that will be giving serious consideration to career options at the competition
.

At the same time, manager Ouimet says:

People are wondering how long management is willing to "let this last." Well, I've laid my hands on the contingency plan and it goes on for days and days and weeks and months. You would be surprised.


Ouimet also says of the managers who had a briefing for locked in staff last week

They are not stupid brutes, these people. Cathy Sprague [from Human Resources] is as sharp as a tack and refreshingly straight-talking, and all questions were answered in real language. All concerens were openly and honestly discussed.

I have to laugh when I hear people say that these guys are short-sighted and spineless. This is just not true. Their long-term vision might not match yours, but they have one. And they are tough, make no mistake about that.


Ouimet is right. They do have a plan, a long term plan. This was obvious last spring when the news of management's application for conciliation suddenly appeared in our mailboxes one afternoon, starting the clock ticking to the lockout. This whole thing is driven by a timetable, a detailed plan and that is why I believe the Guild is right when it says management is refusing to negotiate.

Question?: Does this long term plan also mean a long-term plan for the CBC mandate? If there is a long term plan for the future of the CBC, I doubt that it has been floated with the Prime Minister's Office or the Heritage Department. Time for the Heritage Committee in the Commons to return early. While it is unlikely and inappropriate for the committee to ask for the details of the CBC plan in labour negotiations, the committee should call Robert Rabinovich and Peter Stursberg and demand answers about their long term plans for the corporation itself.

Reading assignment: For whomever inside the CBC who wrote that long term plan. On your way into the building, drop by Chapters up John Street and buy Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August. It's all about how strict adherance to war plans caused the carnage of the First World War. (John F Kennedy said it was because he read The Guns of August he was tough, but cautious during the Cuban Missile Crisis). Yike, that plan started in August, their plan started in August.

The Globe and Mail doesn't get it: Want proof that the Globe and Mail doesn't get the web? John Doyle is still behind the pay wall. Want to drive visitors to your site and get them interested in what else is there? Make Doyle public.



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7:33 AM posted by Robin Rowland  
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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?

And I am sure there are ethical issues galore in all of this.

No "Only in Canada, you say, pity," in this case, because they do cover Canada.

So why the deafening e-silence from St. Petes?



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10:27 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC XXXIII: Hurricane warning
Hurricane warning: Katrina, a Category Five Hurricane, is about to hit New Orleans. The CBC is getting its coverage from the BBC.

I just saw a storm track on a Buffalo TV station that calls for what will be left of Katrina to be over Buffalo and then Toronto sometime Wednesday, with heavy showers starting on Tuesday.

The Environment Canada storm track at this moment 1830 Sunday is a bit different, with the hurricane over Ohio on Wednesday morning, crossing Lake Ontario and landing around Kingston. (Note this is a dynamic web page so the track may change for those who click later)

So who is going to cover this story for Canadians? Global and CTV, that's who. CTV.ca and CNN.com and BBC.co. uk with CBC.ca using wire copy. CFRB and 680 News, that's who. In a city that got a multi-million dollar whack from just one hour long storm a week ago.

Watch for for wall to wall live coverage on CTV Newsnet (and in the Toronto market CP24) while Newsworld runs the Antiques Roadshow and the Nature of Things.

This is more than crazy, it is certifiably insane. Not just in terms of losing the audience, but in terms of public service from a public broadcaster.




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6:36 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC XXXII: The CBC "cult" and the public sphere

Conservative columnist Andrew Coyne is at his worst with his column in the National Post reprinted in CBC Watch.

Coyne, who has his own blog, is one of the few conservative bloggers who has anything intelligent to say ( The best, in my view, is ex-pat Brit, openly gay, conservative, Republican skeptical Andrew Sullivan. Most are anonymous and most just repeat arguments that are the web equivalent of the screaming matches now too common on US news shows.)

Coyne makes the usual, and some would say, valid argument (mirroring one in the United States over PBS) that the private sector can provide alternatives. He also reports on the problems with the mandate and what government hasn't done with the CBC.

Coyne, of course, is not very consistent with his criticism of public broadcasting, a quick search on his blog reveals:

While I'm praising the CBC

Coyne does not tell his readers at the National Post how often he, himself, feeds at the CBC trough. He appears on the current affairs portion of the National on the At Issue panel, and occasionally on Newsworld. He also came to the Toronto Broadcast Centre a few months ago and took part in an internal seminar on blogging and how it would affect the future of news. In fact, I venture to suggest, that with the lockout (and it is a lockout, not a disguised strike as Andrew Coyne maintains) continuing and the future of the CBC in doubt, a small but significant portion of Coyne's package of freelance income is disappearing.

Then he turns around and talks about "the extraordinary reservoirs of self-delusion that sustain the public broadcasting cult," probably referring not only the CBC, but PBS, NPR, the BBC and every other civilized country on this planet.

Of course, Coyne works in a major urban centre with all its advantages. The argument pales when it comes to people who live outside big cities. The private sector is abandoning the rest of the country because there is no profit in small stations with local news and rookie DJs, it's the Broadcast News headline service and syndicated talk shows, music chosen by a consultant in LA.

(This isn't only happening in Canada, there were news stories from California at the time of a recent tsunami warning that with so few private radio stations that broadcast news that the cops and fire departments had go out and blast the warning on loud hailers. I now have the image of some poor soul listening to Rush Limbaugh or a syndicated playlist as a huge wave crashes into a house).

The original idea for this blog was to only write about my book The Sonkrai Tribunal, the writing process and related issues. (Note get back to the edits Robin) My late father was a prisoner of war on the River Kwai Railway of Death. On the Burma Thailand railway, human lives depended every day on cooperation, so the conservative obsession with individuality (which failed or made things worse in these circumstances) has always been a mystery to me. It's how I was brought up, with tales of that cooperation, of building slave communities in the jungle.

I have always said that I despise conservatives who have never had anything more than a toothache and then tell people who have suffered to "get over it"

It appears, the toothache analogy was apt. In last week's New Yorker, (the Aug 29 issue, tattooed guy on the cover) Malcolm Gladwell examines the decaying state of the US health care system and begins asking why the poor have such bad teeth. The brief answer is that they spend their spare money on health care, so they can't afford to go to the dentist (which of course makes their health worse).

The big picture comes from a theory from economics called "moral hazard," which I had never heard of until I read the article. It seems to be strange combination of American individualism and that fact that most economists believe that world is a spreadsheet, not a planet.

Gladwell calls "moral hazard" an American obsession. A dangerous obsession, because it is behind not only the attack on public broadcasting here and in the US, it is behind the growing attack here on public health care in Canada.

Gladwell gives the example of an uninsured American with a broken hand who couldn't even afford a cast, so the doctor wrapped the hand in an Ace bandage.

What the theory (which originally came from studies of insurance) comes down to, it seems, that anything that supports an individual as part of a community, in the public sphere, is economically wasteful and, in conservative terms, immoral.

According to this idea, as Gladwell points out:

...those with health insurance are overinsured and their behaviour distorted by moral hazard. Those without health insurance use their own money to make decisions about insurance based on an assessment their needs. The insured are wasteful. The uninsured are prudent.

Yeah, and when I was an underpaid casual at CTV back in 1993, with no extra money for that sort of thing, and I had cancer, (and I did) what would I have done if we had a health care system like the United States? Most likely I wouldn't be writing this blog, my ashes would mixed with the sand on a BC beach. (And it is the way I was treated as a casual, mostly at CTV, with no health benefits beyond OHIP, that I strongly oppose the casualization of CBC).

If anything is a cult, a dangerous cult, it is this idea that public sphere is wasteful. It goes beyond whether or not you like the programming on CBC, it is simply this cult's conventional wisdom that to provide a public service to Canadians, whether it is CBC radio in the North or making sure a casual with cancer gets health care, is a waste of the taxpayers' money. What's next, roads and sewers? Am I, as an individual, going to become responsible for whatever meterage of water, sewer and road is outside my house?

One last note. The British and Australian POWs I describe in The Sonkrai Tribunal set up a society of survival, where cooperation and a buddy system kept men alive.

As part of this research, I found out about another POW camp (where some of the same unfortunate men ended up later in the war) with largely American prisoners. In this camp (unlike some POW camps with many Americans) the rugged individualism, every man for himself, anything for a buck, attitude prevailed. Because of that men died who may have lived.

The result was a society always on the brink.

The outcome was a secret postwar court martial. I obtained four thousand pages of documents on that trial under the Freedom of Information Act. I hope to write about that someday, but for now, the current book is taking up my time and again, so far, publishers have shown no interest in a "bad news" book about US servicemen.

The real moral hazard comes from the destruction of the public sphere in society.

Update: A comment on CBCwatch also points out that Coyne gets paid for his appearances on CBC TV.

Another comment recognizes that the satellite services are growing and inevitable and then says:


Out of 175 new [satellite radio] channels only 6 will carry Canadian content. It is only a matter of time before this pattern will transfer onto the TV screen as well.

How then can any new emerging Canadian actors, writers, directors, singers or other performing artists hope to survive, let alone break through?

In truth, this will accelerate a process already begun. Artists will have to write, sing or perform material so neutral that no one could tell if they came from Newfoundland or California.

The only question remaining is, does anyone care?



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10:02 AM posted by Robin Rowland  
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Saturday, August 27, 2005
  CBC XXXI: Now we know ...blame the Republicans

The "Huh?" blog of the day that showed up on a search is the theory that the American Republican Party wants to take over the CBC. So that's why we're locked out, blame Dick Cheney.

A New York blog called Media Needle reprints another blog about the increasing Republican domination of National Public Radio (for those unfamiliar with NPR it's roughly the equivalent of CBC Radio).

"Morse" an anonymous blogger says:

I didn't hear this segment on NPR, but it's a sad indictment of what used to be the last balanced media outlet in the country. What's next on the Republican agenda? Maybe infiltrating the CBC?

I'm not sure if this guy even knows about the lockout, there are no other references to CBC on the blog.

The original post he is referring to is on Rising Hegemon, a pro-Democrat blog, about the appearance of a Republican analyst on an NPR program.

The world is getting too weird.




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6:26 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC XXX: The Guardian is covering the blog war
Just got an e-mail to say that The Guardian in the UK is now covering the blog war. You'll find it in the Online Slog column by Jane Perrone.

She singles out this blog and me, which is why I am getting e-mail about it. She also mentions the Guild Ontheline website but unfortunately calls it a strike site.

Good summary of the issues as far as blogs are concerned. No mention of the dispute over the BBC, but perhaps the blog watch column is not the place for it.

And you as you would expect in a quality British broadsheet, some of the most intelligent comments on the issue I have read so far among blogs that allow comments.

One makes it clear how needed the CBC is in rural Canada.

And Perrone quotes the Toronto Star on how the no-chatter sports coverage could change the way TV handles sports, and a couple of the comments agree.




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1:32 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC XXIX: All's fair in love, war and lockouts

More from the "do you want your old job back" department I mentioned yesterday.

TVO's Studio Two is trying for a hot, hot launch of its new season on Monday August 29. The current affairs show had already announced they'd brought the staff back early because of the CBC lockout. It now seems they're doing more than just stealing a march on the Corp, they are hoping for that hot season launch to grab current affairs deprived viewers. So Studio Two began calling former TVO employees now locked out at CBC and offered short term deals to boost the staff for that launch. At least one producer accepted that offer. There may be more if the lockout drags on.

The most interesting story I heard last night, and at this point let's call it good gossip from a reliable source, is that some of the senior producers in the French arm of the CBC, SRC, are extending the hand of friendship to locked out CBC Francophone or bilingual employees, if they want to return to Quebec and fill empty spots temporarily. Most of these offers are personal from former bosses. But the word is that at least one talented technical person is being wooed with a staff job, to come back, with the family, to la belle province.

That gets me a little worried. Are the top ranks at SRC just helping out folks, or do they have an idea that this mess is going to go long and they're poaching?

(I went out last night to get away from all this, including the blog, cause I had to get out of the house and not to go the TBC, and because friends are saying they like the blog but I am doing a lot of posts.

But you can't get away from this. You go to a bar, you meet friends and they ask you how you are doing. Then, reliable source you've known for some years comes up to you on the street and gives you a tip.)



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9:33 AM posted by Robin Rowland  
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Friday, August 26, 2005
  A job at the CBC (chairperson's job that is)

Although the posting for the job of CBC Chairperson has apparently disappeared from online postings, it was published in the Canada Gazette and so I received the following by e-mail from a friendly source.

NOTICE OF VACANCY
CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
Chairperson (part-time position)

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada's national public broadcaster, was created by an Act of Parliament on November 2, 1936, and now operates under the 1991 Broadcasting Act. As a federal Crown corporation and member of the Canadian Heritage Portfolio, the CBC is responsible for providing, in both official languages, national radio, television and Internetbased services to all regions of the country. The CBC provides a wide range of programming that reflects Canadian attitudes, opinions, ideas, values and artistic creativity and is specifically mandated with the responsibility of reflecting the realities of Canada’s multicultural, multiracial and Aboriginal communities in its television and radio programming.

The board of directors is responsible for the fulfilment of the purposes and the management of the business, activities and affairs of the corporation. The chairperson is primarily responsible for the effective operation of the Board and ensures the proper conduct of the board meetings in such a way that the corporation carries out its mandate and objectives effectively, provides good value for the funding provided by taxpayers, remains viable and holds management accountable for its performance. The chairperson also ensures that the Board reviews, approves and monitors the corporation’s strategic direction.

The successful candidate must have a degree from a recognized university and experience in the field of broadcasting. Significant experience managing at the senior executive level in large, complex private or public sector organizations as well as significant board experience, preferably as a chairperson, are also essential. In order to achieve the corporation’Äôs objectives and carry out its mandate, the chairperson must be a person of sound judgement and integrity and must have superior interpersonal and communications skills. The ideal candidate must be able to develop effective relationships and trust with the Minister and her Office, the Deputy Minister, the corporation's senior management, and the CBC’s partners and stakeholders and be able to act as a spokesperson in dealing with the media, public institutions, governments and other organizations.

The preferred candidate must be knowledgeable of the CBC’s mandate and have financial literacy. The chosen candidate must also have an excellent understanding of global, societal, and economic trends, stakeholder concerns, the Government's current policy agenda, and how all of these relate to the CBC. Knowledge of the roles of the chairperson, the board of directors and the President and CEO and of effective board processes is required. Proficiency in both official languages is an asset.

The Government is committed to ensuring that its appointments are representative of Canada's regions and official languages, as well as of women, Aboriginal peoples, disabled persons and visible minorities.

The board of directors meets seven to eight times per year at Headquarters and various CBC production offices located across Canada.

No person may be appointed or continue as chairperson if the person is not a Canadian citizen who is ordinarily resident in Canada and/or if, directly or indirectly, as owner, shareholder, director, officer, partner or otherwise, the person (a) is engaged in the operation of a broadcasting undertaking; (b) has any pecuniary or proprietary interest in a broadcasting undertaking; or (c) is principally engaged in the production or distribution of program material that is primarily intended for use by a broadcasting undertaking.

The selected candidate will be subject to the principles set out in Part I of the Conflict of Interest and Post-Employment Code for Public Office Holders. To obtain copies of the Code, visit the Office of the Ethics Commissioner's Web site at www.parl.gc.ca/ oec-bce/site/pages/ethics-e.htm.

This notice has been placed in the Canada Gazette to assist the Governor in Council in identifying qualified candidates for this position. It is not, however, intended to be the sole means of recruitment. Applications forwarded through the Internet will not be considered for reasons of confidentiality.

Interested candidates should forward their curriculum vitae by September 2, 2005, in strict confidence, to the Director, Portfolio Affairs Office, Canadian Heritage, 25 Eddy Street, 3rd Floor, Room 88, Gatineau, Quebec K1A 0M5, (819) 994-8097 (fax). Further details about the corporation and its activities can be found on its Web site at www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/home.asp. Bilingual notices of vacancies will be produced in alternative format (audio cassette, diskette, braille, large print, etc.) upon request. For further information, please contact Canadian Government Publishing, Public Works and Government Services Canada, Ottawa, Canada K1A 0S5, (613) 941-5995 or 1-800-635- 7943.

A brief comment:

Note the paragraph on the mandate:

The CBC provides a wide range of programming that reflects Canadian attitudes, opinions, ideas, values and artistic creativity and is specifically mandated with the responsibility of reflecting the realities of Canada’s multicultural, multiracial and Aboriginal communities in its television and radio programming.

That is also a definition of public broadcasting in Canada. It is also a service that cannot be provided by the private sector. So why aren't we doing what we are supposed to be doing? And can that job be done by temps?



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7:43 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC Lockout XXVIII: "There will be hell to pay"

NDP leader Jack Layton, his wife, Olivia Chow and Ontario MPP Marilyn Churley visited the picket line outside the Toronto Broadcast Centre this morning. The quote of the day from Layton's speech; "If this is still going on when the Commons resumes there will be hell to pay."

There are developments today on all political fronts.

Susan Delacourt in the Toronto Star reports heavy pressure in the Liberal caucus to bring a settlement.

And Canadian Media Guild officials say they are hearing that Conservatives in rural ridings, especially in the West, are getting an earful from their constituents about what has happened to CBC Radio. With a lot less or even no news on private radio and a lot of the shows syndidcated by satellite, CBC Radio is quite often the only service that serves rural Canada. Layton also mentioned the same complaints in his speech, telling an audience of several hundred locked out CBC staff that satellite syndication doesn't serve Canadians.

Notes:
What is the big announcement?

There is a new manager who has started blogging, "Charlie" on the Quietly Typing blog And no one is sure if this one is legit or not. The early consensus on Ouimet's Tea Makers is that Charlie is a phony.

I am no longer sure Charlie is entirely phony. Charlie's second post claims there will be a big announcement from the CBC next week:

Rumour has it that the corp will be making a major announcement next week. Details are sketchy, so I won't get into any speculation at this time. However, the anticipated announcement is rumoured to have very little, or nothing to do with negotiations


There may be something to this. A friend I met on the picket line this morning, who just returned from Quebec, without knowing about the blog, mentioned to me that there are similar rumours swirling through Place Radio Canada about some big announcement.

(So Charlie could be a manager or could be someone from Montreal pretending to be a manager).

Possiblities mentioned on the line.

A new chair for the CBC? Coincidently Tod Maffin says that job has just been posted with the close for applications Sept. 2. So next week is too soon for the new chair. (Interestingly the online version of the posting seems to have been removed soon after Tod's blog story appeared)

A replacement for Slawko. Possibly? (also mentioned in the comments on Quietly Typing)

Something unexpected?

I also note that the comments on Quietly Typing accused Charlie of raising paranoia. Could be, could be the rumour in Montreal started as disinformation (how's that for paranoia). We'll just have to wait and see if there is anything to it.

(Details and tips always welcome at the e-mail address in the right hand column)

Talent raids

Not much to report in talent raiding.

A number of people report getting offers of short term casual work mostly from friends, work that will help fill the gap. Others have had "if you want your old job back, we'd really like to have you" calls. No one, it seems, is ready to make a move yet. (I have had one of the former offers, but for now my other time is spent trying to get the edits done on The Sonkrai Tribunal.)

Nothing more on the foreign correspondent talent raid, so I have no knowledge at this point if the job offers were even considered or if any of those involved are now in negotiations with a prospective employers.

In conversation today, however, I was told that the offers I reported earlier this week may not have been new but they may have been long standing invitations that have been renewed with the rise of Al Jazeera and the lockout, just like the people I mentioned in the first graph, who are getting calls from friends.

If there is no sign of movement in negotiations by Labour Day, when almost everyone from CBC Toronto will likely march in the annual parade, then there may be some moves on the job front.

Update 8:23 Friday

Any good reporter knows that a good camera person is worth their weight in gold.
CBC lockoutee Camera guy found an ad for camerapersons for Al Jazeera and has already sent in his resume. Closing date for the camera jobs is September 5.

But the e-mail address appears to be generic folks, (no spam style) internationaljobsATaljazeera.net

Thanks for the tip!

Note there other jobs on the site on their internatonal TV jobs index page, including ironically two at CBC, including a national reporter's job in Ottawa that expired on August 16. There are also two SRC correspondent's jobs posted on the site, one for Paris and one for Washington, both also expired. So check the dates on any ads elsewhere.




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5:01 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC lockout XXVII : Notes of a blog war correspondent 7

Brief notes today, since I have a full agenda downtown at the TBC and elsewhere. I usually pick up some news on the picket line, if I hear anything, I will post, otherwise probably one commentary on a related issue this evening.

Podcast again

The Hobson and Holtz report podcast followed up their earlier report on the lockout podcasting plans in their Thursday 'cast.

I know a number of people at CBC Radio whom I respect are expressing doubts about our podcasting plans.

Well folks, in the it's already happening so you better live with it department, I suggest you listen to the whole show either live on the computer (it's an hour) or save it (right click,save target as)for later listening.

It's well produced, kind of laid back, and it welcomes contributions from its listeners, and sometimes includes items with production as well.

This may be heresy, but as I listened I had a thought. If Peter Gzowski was still around today, he would be the world's best podcaster.

(Disclosure: The podcast gives plugs to my site and to Tod Maffin).

Support

Most of the anti-CBC comments on blogs and sites use simple, direct and not-too-nice language. Here is a site that wants the CBC back in the same way

Falling off the news agenda

When we had the meeting at Metro Hall to discuss the alternative news site, some people wanted to continue the outreach and activism effort saying the alternative news site would take away from that. Others, however, warned that we all know how fast a story can fall off the news agenda. It's already happening. I have seen nothing new under CBC on Google News since lunchtime Thursday.





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7:39 AM posted by Robin Rowland  
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Thursday, August 25, 2005
  CBC lockout XXVI: Flexibility, innovation and Vblogging

Who says we're not flexible and innovative?

As one of our union negotiators keeps telling the other side, "you get 90-day ideas from 90-day people and five year ideas from staff people."

Well I really hope it never comes to this. (And if it does it will be weeks, not years)

But at today's Toronto tech meeting for the CBCunplugged alternative site, we had a brief discussion of Vblogging. That's on the very bottom of our to do list, but it's there, just in case.

Yipe! some of my friends who last week had never even heard of podcasting may say. "What is Vblogging?"

Vblogging, of course, is Video blogging.

One site, vBlog Centra1 says

Videos, even low quality ones, make a blog much more interesting. When you put video in your blog you get a videoblog, or vblog, for short. They are also known as vidblogs, vlogs, or vogs
There's been streaming video and video clips on the web for 10 years. But now cheap cameras, inexpensive servers and the pace of technology has meant that the video blog is coming up fast, very fast.

Vloggers even had a small convention in New York last January. You can see some of the convention video here.

If you have a Mac, you'll see better stuff on the macTV Videocast site and note Mac has tied this to Itunes, one of the legitimate sources of music for Ipods. (and so there is a connection with podcasting)

Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion has created an index of his posts on Vlogs, including a story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Registration required) on how American Christians have leaped on vblogging to spread their word.

And here is what Wikpedia says on Vlogs

Quote:

There is a small but growing number of vloggers who feel that videoblogging transforms the Internet into a medium in which people can communicate audiovisually through personal video posts and globally network with people as well as to create new independent programming and content not controlled by major broadcasting networks or cable outlets. These practices revolutionize online communication.

The alternative news site is going to be text, followed by audio. This is sort of retracing the evolution of the media. A text site (print) followed by audio (radio) and there is a lot of work to be done on that, a lot of work. After radio, of course, came television.

There are a lot of talented people out on the street from CBC television. If someone can do a vlog from their living room or a small church can use it to spread their gospel, imagine, just imagine, what the producers, camera people, artists and technicians of CBC TV could do with this--if we had to.



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10:42 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC lockout XXV: An issue of balance

I don't go to the CBC homepage very often at the moment. But one of my browsers is, for now, set to go to CBC and I just noticed this.

The generic corporate logo and front page for CBC.ca are gone. Instead the CBC.ca front page carries the CBC News banner.

On the right side, not under a corporate logo, but under a news banner, is one link. To CBC management's side in this dispute.

I have absolutely no objection, if the CBC, as a corporation, wants to direct visitors to a site that gives the corporation's point of view, just as the Canadian Media Guild site, which is a union site, directs visitors to its point of view. The CMG is not saying it is a news site.

Most of the employee blogs which are tracking this dispute, including mine, (which borrows the code from Tod Maffin) include links to both the CBC and CMG sites.

But for CBC News to have that one link and only that link is a direct violation of CBC journalistic standards on balance and fairness.



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7:23 PM posted by Robin Rowland  
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  CBC lockout XXIV: Who is hardest hit?

So who is hardest hit by the lockout?

A lot of people. But for this purposes of this blog I am going to single out a handful of managers.

I am told there are a couple of the out-of-town managers locked into the Toronto Broadcast Centre, (and perhaps more) whose partners are locked out members of the Canadian Media Guild back home in "the regions."

So CBC upper management has torn apart families in a double way. Not just the problem where one is a member of management and the other the locked out Guild. The CBC has sent one parent thousands of miles away and left the other partner to deal with all the problems at home. "Where's Daddy? When's he coming home?"

At least the US military in Iraq sets up video links for separated families. The CBC can't do that, even though the technology is right there, all the regional centres are shut down tight.

There are several management-union partnerships i