“What’s ‘Jian’ about? What’s the name? It’s a French name?”

- Paul McCartney gets familiar with Jian (at 0:20)

“I hope I’ve found the right place to congratulate CBC News, Ottawa, for what I witnessed today on the 6 o’clock TV News: A talented young man presenting a report on the University of Ottawa’s plans for land it had devoted to a community vegetable garden.”

- Patrick McDougall gives Brian Hicks some props

“i am also being railroaded in some shitty cbc obsessed thread right now because jian ghomeshi had the audacity to be friends with some of my friends, egad! twerps who aren’t part of any scene whatsoever have no idea how people’s lives in the city actually are. i bet they just go to work and go home and talk to each other on the internet about other people living lives slightly out of the ordinary with a bunch of a fame sprinkled on top.”

Raymi muses on
fame, Burlington, and The Tea Makers

“There was a clear contrast between journalists who were using Twitter and journalists who weren’t. Journalists giving on-the-ground reports were far more accurate than those in newsrooms like (Peter) Mansbridge or Ann Rohmer. They thought they were doing value-added voiceover, but they really weren’t tied in to what was really happening.”

- Jesse Hirsh,
Coverage of the G20 proved Twitter’s news edge

“In prep for hosting Dora Awards tonite. There will be outfit changes. I’m finally becoming the brown male Shania Twain of awards shows.”

- Jian Ghomeshi

“so the Johns basically admit that the nature of the media beast is to keep feeding it the same old spicy story. not much respect for their readers/viewers and not much respect for the seriousness of the issues (political/economic/legal).
must be nice to work in ‘spectacle’ while the rest of us hold power accountable and build a real democracy. same old stale response – ‘we’re giving people what they want’ rather than ‘hmm, how can we play a constructive role here and make free speech mean something?’”

- littlefishes on John Cruickshank & John Tory on Q

“I still do not know how the government of Canada is going to spend over a billion dollars to do what the United States did in Pittsburgh last year for $30 million and what the British did two years ago in London, a much more difficult city to secure than Toronto, for a mere $50 million.

It would seem to me that these questions should be the fodder and the lifeblood of everyone who calls him or herself a journalist in Canada. So far we have not seen or heard of any of the investigation and the resulting reportage that I for one, expected from our fourth estate.”

- Howard Bernstein, Where’s the Scandal?

Kirstine Stewart, the general manager of CBC’s English television operations, reacted in the Globe to Blackett’s comments by saying “Nobody can ever question the quality of what we do here in Canada, creatively or otherwise.” Surely this is a much more revealing and intriguing comment than Blackett’s. Does she mean that questioning the quality of Canadian television and film is literally impossible? Or just that criticism is inherently objectionable, a malum in se? And at the risk of appearing to take sides, I must ask: which attitude ultimately seems more healthy and likely to encourage improvement—Blackett’s, or Stewart’s?

- Colby Cosh Merde, as the minister sees it

“I sit here as a government representative for film and television in the province of Alberta and I look at what we produce, and if we’re honest with ourselves.… I look at it and say ‘Why do I produce so much shit? Why do I fund so much crap?’”

- Alberta Culture Minister Lindsay Blackett
at the Banff World Television festival