Where’s Wayne Thibodeau?

Newspapers Canada are meeting this week at the Delta Prince Edward in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. They are trying to find ways to get their readers back. Newspapers search for great ideas to engage readers.

Charlottetown Guardian news editor  Wayne Thibodeau was at the conference. With a broad smile he said readers should pay to read the news online.

That wasn’t the only place Mr. Thibodeau was Thursday morning. He was also half a block away in court room # 1 of the Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island.  He wasn’t reporting or smiling since he was as a named person in a Human Rights Complaint.

Mr. Thibodeau is alleged to have discriminated against another reporter who is disabled and in a wheelchair. Also in the complaint are his co-worker at the Guardian, Teresa Wright, and the CBC Executive Director of News Donna Allen in what the press have dubbed Pate-Gate.

Pate-Gate was the CBC and Guardian’s ultra-dumb effort to stop new media companies like NJN Network from getting the news to readers with more speed and authenticity.

Paul MacNeill, the editor of the Eastern Graphic, called the affair Pate-Gate writing  “Media hypocrisy that is driving people away from traditional news sources into the lap of bloggers”  Media wrong in Pategate

On Thursday morning Thibodeau was waiting nervously to see if he had been successful in stalling the human rights complaint. Pate spoke to the court for two hours and the motion was adjourned until August 2014.

For the media on PEI, Pate-Gate is a nuisance and an embarrassment, a reminder that old media is not with the times.  They don’t get it.

Most of the new ideas that were presented at the Newspapers Canada conference like blogging stories, reporter videos, and using Twitter and Facebook to publicize stories were being used by NJN Network in 2007.

Adopting new media methods might help the newspapers but being authentic is more important to the younger audience who rarely buy newspapers and get their news on smartphones, tablets and laptops.

And so Thibodeau paced the hallway outside the courtroom, hoping for a get-out-of-jail card.  “The media are not used to being on the dark horse,” said the former Executive Director of the PEI Human Rights Commission. “They like to ride in on a white horse rescuing people.”

You can help NJN Network win this case by donating to our legal expenses.

By Stephen Pate, NJN Network