Many weeks of intense effort have culminated in the launch of the new Blackburn News website. Â It’s a regional hub combining the news-gathering efforts of all of the radio stations in the Blackburn chain; London, Windsor, Chatham, Sarnia, Leamington and Wingham. Â If you follow one of those stations’ news departments on Twitter you’ve noticed the logo and name have changed to Blackburn (market). Â …
A colleague recently said to me, “Every biker that rides past me acts like an a**hole!” Â …
An occurrence in St. Thomas yesterday morning made my day as a newscaster. Â …
Everybody makes mistakes. Â In days of old they would largely go away except for those who actually witnessed them. Â But thank you Youtube for making them live on forever! Â This has to be one of the best ever. Â …
There are some real dinosaurs in the journalism game. Â I just can’t understand the way some of them cling to the “way things have always been done” and refuse to realize that the world is being shaped by young geeks and we’d better fall in line or get left behind. Â …
At the bottom of virtually every media release from police there is a paragraph where they act like the teacher who makes the whole class stay after school because one kid was chewing gum. Â …
Free-FM offers a text alert system for a one-time charge of .50. Â It’s brand new. Â You’ll get a text in case of severe weather or a major breaking story. Â We’ll also text the morning’s top two headlines.
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This city’s best known TV news anchor was recently arrested on assault charges. Â I wrote a blog last week about not judging him until the facts are in. Â But the issue today is whether or not his arrest qualifies as “news”. Â There is no question that it does to every media property in this city except its largest daily newspaper and I and my media brethren feel a) the paper made an incomprehensible decision to not run the story and b) unfairly and now publicly judged by them because we aired the story. Â …
I couldn’t have planned this better. Â …
We watched a rerun of last season’s Saturday Night Live which included a parody of an old, out-of-touch newsman, Herb Welsh, who misses the point of stories and rants at the news anchor for being “a can of hairspray”. …
I’m following Owain Yoeman on Twitter. Who, you ask? …
What a location! Everyone knows Free-FM’s studios are on the most happenin’ street in London but even more is happening than we anticipated. Richmond Street is alive with the good, the bad and the frustrating. …
A Toronto Sun columnist made some comments on the weekend about the use of the word “exclusive” by media and the 24-hour-news channels’ purported penchant for claiming they’ve broken stories that were already cracked by someone else. …
I’m no genius. I’ve made mistakes and will likely make a few more. But there are a few fundamentals about the news business that too often get forgotten in this era of budget restraint and I find it deeply disappointing.   …
“I would trust a citizen journalist as much as I would trust a citizen surgeon.” Morley Safer …
This irks me as a broadcaster and as a person. …