Globe And Mail axes Tabatha Southey, Leah McLaren: Canadaland

Ahead of a major overhaul of the paper coming later this year, The Globe and Mail has let go of “a number of” longtime, high-profile freelance columnists, including Tabatha Southey and Leah McLaren, Canadaland reports.
Link to full story -- worth a read!

Man acquitted in impaired driving case after York Region police let news crew film him

The Star's Jacques Gallant writes:

A man was acquitted of a drunk driving charge after a Newmarket judge found his rights were violated when police allowed a TV camera operator to film him giving breath samples and speaking to a lawyer on the phone.

Ontario Court Judge David Rose wrote that there was no evidence to suggest York Regional Police placed any restrictions on a Global News TV crew on the night in question in 2016 after approving their presence at a RIDE check in Richmond Hill.

Concluded that Kunal Gautam’s rights to counsel and to be free from unreasonable search and seizure were infringed, Rose threw out the breath samples and acquitted him.

Full story

Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against New York Times thrown out

A federal judge on Tuesday tossed out a defamation lawsuit by Sarah Palin against The New York Times, saying the former Alaska governor failed to show the newspaper knew it was publishing false statements in an editorial before quickly correcting them.

The written ruling by Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said the lawsuit seeking unspecified damages “fails on its face to adequately allege actual malice.”

“What we have here is an editorial, written and rewritten rapidly in order to voice an opinion on an immediate event of importance, in which are included a few factual inaccuracies somewhat pertaining to Mrs. Palin that are very rapidly corrected,” the judge said. “Negligence this may be; but defamation of a public figure it plainly is not.” (AP)

Full AP story

Globe and Mail cutting weekday Arts, Life, Sports sections: Canadaland says

The Globe and Mail plans to reduce the number of sections in its weekday print product starting in December, CANADALAND has learned. News and Report on Business would survive as standalone sections, with Life & Arts coverage folded into the former and Sports into the latter, as part of a larger redesign of the paper.
Final details remain undecided, but several sources connected to the paper expressed concern that the changes would result in a net loss of arts coverage.
While the impact on Monday-Thursday arts content would likely be minimal — given the limited space that it currently occupies — the loss of the standalone Film section published on Fridays in the Greater Toronto Area would be more difficult to offset elsewhere in the paper. Deadlines, however, would be later for “A” section content, allowing for more timely arts news and reviews.
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The Village Voice wasn’t a victim of the internet but of greed: Michael Hollett

NOW mag's founder Michael Hollett's piece in the Star about the Village Voice (except):

"The Voice got in a bloody battle with the cowboys at the hugely successful Phoenix-based weekly, the New Times. The New Times were more loud mouth libertarians than liberals, prepared for a death match for alt-media supremacy. Both companies and their backers were committed to buying as many alt weeklies as they could.

"The fight between the Voice and the New Times ripped the heart out of the alt weekly world. When we should have been savoring the glory years before the internet’s assault on our young readers, we were consumed by which of the two companies was courting us.

"The once anti-monopoly, anti-mainstream media were lining up to be consumed. After the late ’90s crash, the two companies pushed the limits of U.S. antitrust laws, agreeing to shut down competing papers in shared markets."

The whole story