With the departure of Jennifer McGuire, CBC announces plan to restructure

The following are excerpts from a memo sent to CBC staff on Feb. 27 from Barbara Williams, executive vice president of English Services, published by J-Source.

 "What we are introducing today is a shift from a siloed traditional media operation to a truly audience-centric, content company. . . .
"I have spent a significant part of the past year travelling to locations across the country. I’ve seen first hand the vital role Local Services plays in communities. And the incredible power of our journalism on radio in all communities. I also came to realize that we are doing journalism in three different spaces, with three groups and three structures and that they are not always as connected as they could be. We can work better together by bringing our journalism under one division. One CBC."
The full memo as published by J-Source

(I guess we will have to wait for the Globe and Mail's John Doyle to find out what it all means.)

Head of CBC News Jennifer McGuire leaving CBC

CBC's editor-in-chief of news, Jennifer McGuire, is stepping down after more than a decade in the role and leaving CBC at the end of this week, CBC announced Thursday on its web page.
As general manager and editor-in-chief of CBC News since May 2009, McGuire has been responsible for English language news content and programming across the public broadcaster's different platforms: radio, television, digital and social.
She was responsible for the multi-anchor revamp of The National that has recently been abandoned.
The CBC announcement says that the broadcaster " underwent major redevelopment initiatives during her tenure, including the reinvention of CBC Radio 2, the integration of the broadcaster's television, radio and digital news operations, the rebranding of CBC Newsworld into CBC News Network and the revamp of flagship TV newscast The National."
 

Anne Kingston has died at 62

Anne Kingston, book author, magazine writer and former columnist at the National Post, has died at age 62.
Born and raised in Toronto, she was diagnosed in December with an aggressive cancer. She died on Wednesday in a Toronto hospital. Kingston had started teaching a course at the University of Toronto on the #MeToo movement and the media in September and was continuing her long tenure as a senior writer at Maclean’s magazine.
National Post obit

McClatchy newspaper chain files for bankruptcy

McClatchy, the second-largest newspaper group in the United States, is filing for bankruptcy. The publisher — which owns 30 newspapers around the country, including The Miami Herald and The Kansas City Star — is not going out of business, however.
McClatchy’s Chapter 11 plan, if approved, will cede control of the company to Chatham Asset Management, making it the latest newspaper chain to be taken over by a hedge fund or a private equity firm as local newspapers have struggled to survive due in part to dwindling ad revenue.
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Christie Blatchford dead at 68

Christie Blatchford has died at age 68. She was undergoing treatment for lung cancer.
Canadian Press obit

'Some people were confused' about media-licensing comment, says Guilbeault

The minister responsible for overhauling Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications sectors tried to reassure Canadians Monday that the federal government is not preparing to license news outlets.
“Let me be clear. Our government has no intention to impose licensing requirements on news organizations nor will we try to regulate news content,” Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault told reporters at a news conference he called Monday morning. In an interview aired over the weekend, Guilbeault had said the government would ask media outlets to be licensed.
“We are committed to a free and independent press, which is essential to our democracy,” the minister said Monday.
“Our focus will be and always has been to ensure that Canadians have access to a diversity of high-quality and credible news sources.”
His weekend remarks sparked a social-media firestorm, fanned by the Opposition Conservatives, over the prospect of the government using licensing requirements to censor news.
Full CP story