CBC Adopts Blogging Only News Room Journalistic Bigotry?

Stephen Pate – CBC has used the “blogger” word as an epithet like the “N” word for Blacks.  All the while they are converting their own operations to the internet/social media format, according to the Globe and Mail story below and their own promotion. The CBC is engaging in a form of journalistic bigotry.

Media Co-op reported that CBC Fredericton engaged in a public flogging of journalist Mile Howe using “blogger” as “N” word.

Information Morning host Terry Seguin and guests Philip Lee and Dan Leger claimed that Miles is a “blogger” and questioned his credentials as a journalist. At one point Leger even calls Miles a “hot-headed fanatic.” We deplore the use of this kind of language towards any journalist, let alone one with the tenacity and work ethic of Miles Howe. Media Co-op

Five years ago CBC Charlottetown held a public hanging of this journalist. I was condemned to lose my Press Pass for the sin of being a “Blogger”.  Local blogger kicked out of press gallery read the teasing headline without explaining what discredited me as a journalist, other than being a blogger.

Forget for a minute our Canadian values of a free press, freedom of expression and the rule of law. Discrimination against someone with a disability is against CBC policy and against the law. That does not seem to faze CBC President Hubert Lacroix one iota.

Old Media is shrinking

CBC Hamilton’s blogging only format is the beginning of CBC’s modernization. If they don’t change from brick and mortar, the CBC could disappear. They are caught up in technology revolution that plagues newspapers, radio and TV around the world.

CBC side-step the word “Blogger” so they can continue to use it as an epithet. CBC Hamilton Executive Producer Rick Hughes has coined the cozy term “digital-only service“.

This digital-only service is unique in the CBC, unique in Canada. What isn’t unique is how we see our mission: to reflect the community, to hold our politicians and decision-makers accountable, to foster intelligent debate and discussion on important issues, to entertain you and to tell your stories — all in the most creative ways possible.

Old-style local news meets new media in Hamilton, Ont

By SIMON HOUPT HAMILTON — The Globe and Mail

The CBC had a problem. Three years ago, the public broadcaster trumpeted a new strategic plan that promised deeper connections to local communities across the country.

In the document titled Everyone, Every Way, it pledged to beef up its offerings in under-served places such as Kitchener-Waterloo, Kamloops and Saskatoon. But with a notoriously stretched budget even before cuts in 2012 to its federal funding, and facing an increasingly fickle, tech-savvy audience, it knew it had to find new ways to reach Canadians.

CBC Hamilton is a news station that is on neither radio nor TV, a tiny and relatively inexpensive digital-only start-up which the network’s senior management is watching closely for clues on how to engage audiences across the country. If the operation has shown impressive promise since opening in May, 2012 – its fledgling audience has grown by more than 10 per cent each month – it has also come up against the limitations of a digital-only approach for media organizations that don’t want to indulge in crass click-baiting tactics to attract more users.

Staffed by a crew of seven journalists, most of whom appear to be in their 20s and 30s, the Hamilton operation is set up in a storefront on a downtown strip in the midst of a revival, down the block from a funky vinyl record shop and across the street from a long-shuttered fur store…And there’s a startup mentality, too, with everyone doing everything: These reporters conduct interviews, edit audio  and post them to the site.

“What you won’t ever hear is, ‘That’s not my job,’ or ‘That’s not how we do things,’ which is often what you’ll hear in well-established newsrooms,” said Rick Hughes, a former editor with the Hamilton Spectator newspaper who joined CBC Hamilton as its executive producer last May. “We’re trying to make up the model for digital-only.”

A successful model exists already. High-profile operations such as Huffington Post and Buzzfeed have attracted the attention of millions of readers, not to mention hundreds of millions of investment dollars, with hot-button stories that readers feel compelled to share.

Featured image credit Peter Power/The Globe and Mail. For the rest of the story see the Globe and Mail.

Well that sounds like a blog to me.  Research and write your own stories, make video and audio files, post them on the internet and share them on Facebook and Twitter.

Follow me on Twitter at @sdpate or on Facebook at NJN Network and OyeTimes.

By Stephen Pate, NJN Network