The CBC is also a newspaper?


Why is Heather Mallick on the CBC payroll?
Does she contribute anything to broadcasting?

8 Comments

  • Dwight Williams says:

    It isn’t a newspaper, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have at least 25-50% of the means in place to run one already.

  • Allan says:

    Well … yeah.
    I thought it all just happened … by magic.
    Like this blog.

    Next you’ll be telling me there’s no Santa.
    But there’s an old saying: you can fool most of the people … most of the time … … won’t be fooled again!

  • Anonymous says:

    Sorry, but LOLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!

    There are whole teams of people who only write online news for the ceeb. They don’t do TV or Radio.

    And other teams of people who only make webpages.

    You only just noticed?

  • Allan says:

    Finally, something more.
    Proof of intelligent life at the CBC.

    Behind the scenes at Tea Makers, the monkeys jabber and rush about bumping into each other to keep creating the best blog in the universe. At staff meetings over banana dacquires we discuss our progress and plan the next slight against George and the incompetence of the captioning dept.
    But at the start of each day, Ouimet gathers us all together to remind us why we do what we do.
    I rarely listen. Too busy looking at pictures of boobs, and seeing what’s the latest app that’s come out for the iPhone.
    But I recall something about how it all seems futile.
    Until someone comes along and posts a comment revealing that there still exists a shred of decency at the CBC. It’s rare, but it’s what we live for.

    I’ve been wanting to address this issue for a long time, but give me a sec.
    (“Micheal, would you mind holding this bong? I have to write something serious.”)

  • Anonymous says:

    “I sense a mood of smugness at the CBC.
    I realize that conceit is a kind of built-in component of the business of broadcasting and working in the media.
    Happens in law, psychiatry and other professions.
    There’s still that -‘ we’ve got the tools, so we’re more powerful than you. We’re bigger, we win.”

    This passage makes me laugh. Sounds a bit like those letter writers who are filled with contempt for the CBC – and yes, every single letter/complaint is read by people who actually bleed when cut. A great number of CBC journalists are casual/temp/parttime workers who are constantly worried about job security and who, day after day, wear the same tatty clothes bought several years ago at Value Village. Trust me, no one on the production end of news feels powerful or smug. I do hope you were referring to the fat cats at the corp who hide out in their offices or just attend meetings, and not the lowly news grunts who do the actual work.

  • Allan says:

    As for your snide remarks …
    Are you suggesting that the web is no country for old men?
    Or that I appear to be a newbie who has missed something?

    Remembering
    I still remember Take 30, though not as clearly as Znaimer, Paul Soles and Adrian remember it.
    I do remember watching the Vancouver Sun being put together using actual lead typesetting. The last year it was done.
    And I seem to remember being on a Blogging team on national television a long time ago.
    Does that make me too old or too young?

    I seem to remember writing for several publications. Laying out, using Letraset and glueing one of the papers together, taking it to the printers, and standing on the street distributing it. The one the Beatles had a subscription to.
    I seem to remember getting a call from Charles Olsen saying he was amused by one of my inadvertent remarks in print, and William Deverell making an effort to pass along a note saying that he enjoyed my review of one of his readings, that it was better than most.
    I seem to remember starting my own newspaper, and magazine, and not getting beyond the first issue, after gathering all of the content and advertising myself.

    EA fired for incompetence
    Some of the more progressive newspapers are indeed getting into multi-media. The Toronto Star posted my exhausted joy over getting one of the first iPhones.
    Some of their videos and audio bits are great, and some not so great, technically speaking. But they’re new to it, and in time they will get better. Some of their little reports are actually quite outstanding.
    The CBC has yet to come even close to having something like the NYT’s David Pogue and his video segments. They’re ahead of the CBC. Does that mean the CBC is incompetent because here’s something in their field that is being done better by the NYT?

    Convergence and demographics have nothing to do with each other.
    It’s called understanding what words mean.

    I don’t associate the word geniuses with the three men you’ve named.
    I actually see them as quite ordinary, and easily replaced,
    Rabinovitch is not missed, and the new guy seems even better at the job. An improvement.
    Will the CBC become less intelligent, progressive and efficient when Stursberg leaves?
    Care to take a guess?

    Have I looked at a newspaper website lately?
    You mean the CBC?
    Or are we talking The Guardian, Bloomberg, Reuters, TMZ, Perez, Gawker and dozens more just using StumbleUpon?
    Have I looked closely at a newspaper website lately?
    You mean the code, the CSS, or logging in and posting.
    You mean seeing my comments and those of my friends broadcast on CNN LIVE?
    Are you talking Facebook, MySpace, Twitter? Posting to YouTube?

    I admit it. I don’t know everything.
    Maybe I should be studying the mind of Tod Maffin and his many futuristic ideas and vision for the CBC, so that finally I can be … really with it.

    Oh wait, I just remembered. I’m already doing that!

    In summary …
    Please continue to contribute your thoughtful remarks to The Tea Makers.
    We all sincerely appreciate it very much.

  • Allan says:

    Yeah, old grandpa here doesn't get it.

    You obviously have issues with Allan. But let's put those aside for now and deal with the topic.
    I guess it was Jesus who first turned me on to word games. They can be endless fun. And just plain endless.

    The CBC is not a newspaper.
    I never delivered the CBC on my bike, and I never had my fish & chips wrapped in the CBC.
    The CBC is not a newspaper and the Toronto Star is not a television station.
    And while the videos I see on the New York Times website are often better than anything I see on the CBC, the New York Times is not a television station. And though video and audio are also used by the New Yorker, it is also not a radio station.
    When the day comes that the New York Times stops printing and only does video reports over the web and that becomes their primary source of income, then you could say that it is very close to being a television station.

    The website CBC.CA is also not a newspaper.
    It is a website that is fueled by and is a reflection of the two broadcasting divisions of the CBC. Podcasts are copies of previous broadcasts.

    The Huffington Post is not a newspaper.
    The Drudge Report is not a newspaper.
    Neither one comes close to the traditional definition of a newspaper, even if you left out the newsprint.

    To say that "the CBC IS a newspaper, and that's why the CBC may be around when a lot of newspapers are dead." is a logic and a statement that asks a lot from the reader.
    Putting aside the fact that the CBC could not survive without government funds (and was never intended to) while all newspapers must, the CBC is not in competition with newspapers.

    All media comes down to eyeballs and advertising, when it's not meant to be solely a work of art.

    Even if all of television and radio and newspapers converged on the web, and no one ever again wanted a TV set unless it could get the web, and I could get TV and the web on my T-shirt, there's still no assurance that the CBC will survive amidst all others who participate in media enterprises.

    I sense a mood of smugness at the CBC.
    I realize that conceit is a kind of built-in component of the business of broadcasting and working in the media.
    Happens in law, psychiatry and other professions.
    There's still that -' we've got the tools, so we're more powerful than you. We're bigger, we win.
    We have all the equipment to be a major player on the internet, the ultimate media platform of tomorrow. We control the flow of thoughts, ideas. We set the parameters, and draw the lines.
    Not you, with your cheap little personal computer.
    Go ahead and add a webcam. You'll never be able to compete with George, and his next guest, Ashley Simpson.'

    But the fact is that the CBC is by no means the only ones who can do As It Happens. They’re just the only ones who can do it without commercials.
    The program itself is fairly easy to do.
    I saw a guy doing it in Vancouver in the early Sixties, just sitting there in front of a microphone with a log distance expense account and calling Africa and Washington. Is that so different from As It Happens? Cut the AIT budget by 90% and what are you left with?
    One person being smug instead of twelve.

    If the CBC is going to pay Heather Mallick to do something, it should be for something that goes toward broadcasting, otherwise it's just an arts grant to someone who is a friend of a friend of somebody.
    Why, really, is she there?
    She's still going to be censored whether she's on the air on the page, so it can't be an issue of free speech. Is it just because the CBC has so much money that it can afford to be nice to Heather Mallick? That Heather's harangues are so interesting that she deserves to sit under the cozy CBC umbrella. Then put her on the air so that we can all get a look at her. Involve her in the business and mandate of the CBC in a way that enriches the largest possible audience. The audience that's paying for all those cheese & wine receptions every afternoon at the TBC.

    It's only 2009, and the CBC makes money from broadcasting, not from being on the internet. It spends money on the internet that it will never see again.
    It shouldn't be creating web pages that can't pay for themselves, and positions for columnists as if it were handing out honorariums.
    It should simply get on with the business of broadcasting, broadcasting on the internet.
    Canada has lots of newspapers, in metal coin boxes, and on the internet.
    Every decision, every expense, at the CBC should be directed toward fulfilling it's commission as a broadcaster, the reason it was created.
    Not pretending that it's a newspaper, that no one asked for, and when it can't make any money as a newspaper.
    On the internet.
    Ever.

  • William Findlay Maclean says:

    Poor Allan

    Too old to be part of the 21st century. To young to remember CBC Viewpoint.

    Of course the CBC is also a newspaper. And “newspapers” are sending photographers and reporters out to shoot video. Newspapers are doing audio slideshows with audio that would get a CBC radio EA fired for incompetence.

    Has Allan actually looked closely at a newspaper website lately?

    It’s called convergence. It’s called demographics. Every study shows that the 30 and under demographic gets 90% of their news from the web.
    The web gives the viewer radio, TV and the newspaper all in one. That’s why they like it. And that’s why the CBC IS a newspaper (and one thing one can say about the CBC, it may be mismanaged but newspaper management makes people like Perrin Beatty, Robert Rabinovich and King Richard Stursberg look like geniuses.
    Maybe that’s why the CBC may be around when a lot of newspapers are dead.

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