Rolling Tweets from Fords press hearing

The Toronto Star is being asked to answer for stories about Mayor Ford and his brother Doug at a hearing of the Ontario Press Council today. Rolling tweets link below indicates it is well underway. The council will hear two complaints, one about the Star's "crack video" story and one on the Globe and Mail's anonymous sources-flashback to the high school days of Doug Ford. The Globe's hearing will be held beginning at 1 p.m. The independent press council says the two complaints will stand in for the dozens filed against the newspapers over their coverage of the Fords. At issue, the council says, is whether the newspapers "engaged in irresponsible, unethical investigative reporting." Rolling Tweets 

Star and Globe to defend stories on Fords and drugs

The Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail will answer questions on two separate stories involving the Ford brothers and drugs in public hearings held by the Ontario Press Council on Monday, the Star reports.

The Star will defend its story about a video of Mayor Rob Ford appearing to smoke crack cocaine, while the Globe will speak to its report alleging that Councillor Doug Ford dealt hashish as a young man.

Both the mayor and his brother were invited to file complaints with the press council so they could participate, but both had not as of Friday evening. The hearing would have been an opportunity for the Fords to comprehensively refute the allegations in a public forum.
Mayor Rob Ford and Councillor Doug Ford declined to participate in the forum.

The Town Crier about to be relaunched by new owners -- the paper's former employees

Jennifer Gardiner knew the end was near for The Town Crier when the paycheques stopped.
After 30 years of selling ads for the chain of community newspapers, she knew things weren’t going well for the papers and their parent company, Multimedia Nova Corp. The days were clearly numbered – readers complained about distribution, suppliers weren’t being paid and ad sales were down as salespeople quit in frustration.
But the papers were still profitable, and Ms. Gardiner would sit around talking with co-workers about how things would be different if they could take control of the nine papers themselves and leave Multimedia Nova to the stable of ethnic newspapers that comprised the bulk of the company’s revenue.
She’s about to find out if that’s true: She is one of five employees who have bought the chain of community newspapers at an auction after the sudden bankruptcy of Multimedia Nova this summer. The papers have been serving nine of Toronto’s toniest neighbourhoods, with editions targeted at Bloor West Village, Leaside-Rosedale and the Beach, but were shuttered in May because of troubles at the parent company.
(from the Globe and Mail)

Campaign journalism in the age of Twitter

Interesting New York Times piece:

"In Timothy Crouse’s seminal campaign book, “The Boys on the Bus,” the crusty political reporters settle on the story that they will tell the world at the end of the day.
"For modern political reporters, the end of the day never arrives. There is no single narrative, only whatever is going on in the moment, often of little consequence, but always something that can be blogged, tweeted or filmed and turned into content.

In a study he did while at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard last spring, Peter Hamby, a political reporter at CNN, writes about the extent to which reporters in the bubble — on the bus, on the plane, at the rope line — have become 'one giant, tweeting blob.'”

 

Link(You get a few freebie reads from the Times)      

David Frost, broadcaster and writer, dead at 74

BBC