Craig Silverman

I'm a journalist, these are my cat pictures. http://CraigSilverman.ca

[buzzfeedcanada]

Canada, according to other Canadians 

[breakingblog]

If you’re thinking about buying an Android Wear watch, your Breaking News app will pair with it perfectly out of the box.

We’ve been playing with the LG G watch, which just shipped earlier this month. After pairing it with an Android phone running the Breaking News app, all our favorite...

[craigsilverman]

Ignore the watch for a moment: what's notable here is how well the BreakingNews folks have designed their product to work in the new world of smart and connected devices.

[craigsilverman]

[craigsilverman]

Tons of new cars have been unloaded from ships but aren't being sent on to rest of Canada, due to grain shipments being given priority on the railroads. So they sit here in Nova Scotia.

[craigsilverman]

Owner of the Miami Heat has his boat in Halifax right now. (at Halifax Waterfront)

[craigsilverman]

#novascotia (at Crystal Crescent Beach)

[craigsilverman]

No more waffling, big Canadian media

This has in many ways been a horrible summer for big Canadian media.

CBC announced massive cuts. TorStar killed The Grid. Bell cut lots of jobs (and this has reverberated in places like CTV Montreal). Rogers has been cutting people on its publishing side, and elsewhere. Postmedia continued to deliver pretty dismal quarterly results in terms of revenue growth. TorStar, too. Even promising mobile Sports information company The Score cut six staffers from its feature desk.

But it has also been an important summer and year-to-date to set the stage for the future of big Canadian media.

Four (and a half) of the biggest players have stepped up and done something I've been waiting years to see: they made a bet.

There is finally a sense of clarity as to how the leadership of these companies think they are going to survive, and perhaps even thrive.

The past four to five years have, in my view, seen a lot of waffling from those in leadership positions at big media in Canada. They have been cutting things and people to try and stay profitable, or even in business, in the face of digital transformation. That is not a sustainable strategy.

But now:

1. CBC. After years of funding cuts and struggles to generate ad revenue to replace those cuts, the CBC has faced facts and embarked on a major transformation. I'll side with Jesse Brown for the moment and say I honestly have no idea what all the gobbledygook coming out of CBC management actually means in terms of tangibles, aside from cutting jobs and in-house production. (I also don't expect them to completely open the kimono right now, or in the very near future. But in the meantime they better get the rank and file on board...)

At least CBC leadership is saying they recognize the challenge and have created a strategy. There is no way to transform the CBC without making serious cuts. In basic terms, they have to do some things, and not do others. They need to make hard choices. This is a huge undertaking, and it's about time they admitted it needs to be done, and start doing it.

2. Postmedia has announced and committed to its "four-platform" strategy. It began the rollout in Ottawa and will continue things in Montreal this fall. People are moving into new jobs to support this. The company is getting its big city papers on board. This is a big, big deal for Postmedia. The company emerged from bankruptcy four years ago years this summer with what it seemed to think were some splashy new apps for its papers. They relaunched Canada.com. And then... nothing.

That's my view, of course. I know that Postmedia Labs has launched at least three new products and there have been other initiatives. (The Vancouver digital folks deserve credit for always trying new things, too.) But I haven't seen anything like the company-wide bet they are making on the "four-platform" strategy. Until now, I didn't see much of anything in the way of a strategy.

Either this new gambit is going to chart a real path for them to grow their digital revenue and audience, or Postmedia is going to be in serious trouble.

3. Rogers spent big, big money to lock up rights to the NHL. This is not just about their TV business. They have paid enough that Rogers has to bring its NHL product into every facet of the company, as much as is possible. It needs to help their publishing division, among others.

This is not just a move related to the Canadian fascination with hockey. Live events are arguably the best defense against Netflix, YouTube, torrents and other things unbundling cable and content. (I'm primarily a Videotron subscriber because of hockey and other live event TV.) But it's not enough to just play defense and try to keep your subscribers by giving them hockey. Rogers needs to find a way to build products that take advantage of its NHL exclusivity and have that set a course for growth. Let's see if the bet pays off.

4. The fourth example is well known: La Presse. They have made a bet on tablets, and on delivering rich multimeiia and content (and ads!) in their La Presse+ app. La Presse's owners can't wait to get rid of the print edition. There is no turning back.

4.5 TorStar has yet to reveal the full details of its bet, but it has done three things this year that signal a strategy is in place, or being developed. So I'm making them a .5 on the big bet scale.

They sold off Harlequin to pay down some debt and to have cash on hand to deploy as needed. Harlequin was a wonderful cash cow for many years, but it seems TorStar realized they need to shed non-core assets and focus on where their future is. That means its journalism business, with the Star being the king of the hill.

Then they shut down The Grid, which was losing money and apparently had no path to profitability. Again, a non-core asset.

They made changes to their Metro operation.

Now, this week, news came out that a Star editor is moving over to lead a tablet edition. I hadn't heard about a Star tablet initiative. I'm personally very cautious about the idea of tablet editions becoming big cash cows for news orgs. But, again, at least the Star is working to bring new things to market.

They are shedding the things they can't keep doing in order to do the things they must. I'm waiting to hear more information about what the company priorities are, and what they will bring to market. But it's clear they are setting the stage for something. (God, at least I hope so!)

Now, there are other big players. I'm sure Bell has a strategy, but I'm not clear on it. This may be more my fault than theirs. Shaw is probably also ready to act, but I haven't seen anything remarkable yet. Quebecor just did a big reorg of their media group, but so far the biggest thing happening at Quebecor is cuts. The Globe has a new top editor in place. What's the plan? What else will they launch for their core business/investor audience?

What's for sure is the bets from CBC, La Presse, Rogers, TorStar and Postmedia will result in countermoves and urgency on the part of their competitors. This is a good thing, though it will likely result in more job losses and other painful things in the short term.

The truth is some these companies will die or go bankrupt trying to decide what to do. Or they will simply cut their way to oblivion.

It's time for the leadership at big CDN media to make their best bet and show they can execute.

Interesting times are ahead.

[craigsilverman]

"... most of the stories on Daily Mail are just great stories you may not have seen anywhere else, they appeal to anyone anywhere."

That’s a statement from Taylor Lorenz, the head of social media for MailOnline/The Daily Mail, in a pleasant and unchallenging interview with Capital New York.

She is talking about the organization that (just off the top of my head) recently invented a story about George Clooney that it had to retract, apologized to J.K. Rowling for false accusations, and also published what my Poynter colleague Kristen Hare deemed a "fictional account of a real trial."

Oh, and last year MailOnline's global chief marketing officer admitted that they sometimes publish made up stories.

Yes, great stories you won't see anywhere else! Because they aren't true.

I and others at Poynter have long been cataloguing the plagiarism, scraping, fabrications and otherwise unethical work by MailOnline. (Also see here.) It could be a full-time beat if someone wanted to sift through the hundreds of items published by the site each day.

Aside from the fabricated material, there are also MailOnline stories about things that actually happened, which are often lifted from other sites.

It was only relatively recently that MaiOnline began including hyperlinks back to other media sources when the site used their reporting. There are still times when no link is offered. The site is also frequently called out for plagiarism and other offences.

Let me also say for the record that I think MailOnline has gotten better with giving credit, and it doesn't seem to commit plagiarism as frequently. I'd love to see both trends accelerate. And I think holding MailOnline journalists' and executives' feet to the fire is one way to do that. They still have real work to do to elevate the quality of their work, and they shouldn't get a pass to make questionable statements like the one above.

Just the other day, for example, the site was called out for ripping off the concept and images curated for a Business Insider story about the escapades catalogued by the Rich Kids of Instagram Tumblr:

There’s nothing proprietary about the idea of curating some of the more gaudy images from that Tumblr. This admittedly isn't important, original journalism. But MailOnline’s approach was simply to take the same images that the Business Insider reporter chose for her story and fill them in with new captions, and some additional information about the Tumblr. Sure beats having to choose your own images, or come up with your own idea. And there's no link/hat tip offered to Business Insider.

So, no, “most” of the stories on MailOnline are not “just great stories you may not have seen anywhere else.”

They are often stories you may very well have seen somewhere else, or even stories that aren't true.

Correction July 22, 11:50 am ET: I originally and incorrectly called Lorenz the social media "editor" for the Mail. She is actually the head of social media for the organization.

[craigsilverman]

“The media landscape continues to be impossible for a start-up.”

So, that's former Grid editor and publisher Laas Turnbull, talking about the demise of his publication. About 20 people lost their jobs this week. It sucks.

Now, can we deal with the insane above quote?

Issue one: Was The Grid a startup?

Prior to being rebranded as The Grid, the paper was an alt-weekly called Eye. It was owned by one of the biggest media companies in Canada, TorStar. Several years ago, they changed the name, design and editorial focus and installed Turnbull to build a new team with a new vision.

But they had an existing base of customers in terms of  readers and advertisers. And The Grid was owned and operated by a publicly-traded company.

There is of course such a thing as incubating a new product within an existing company. And there is something to be said for rallying staffers around the idea that they are a startup within a big org. Steve Jobs did it with the Macintosh project at Apple. Postmedia does it with their Postmedia Labs project.

But when The Grid was Eye, it was a weekly paper and a website. When it was The Grid it was... a weekly paper and a website. Albeit with a new name and a different voice and focus.

I'd argue that The Grid may have had a better chance if it really was treated as a startup. As in: okay, the alt-weekly is dying, so what information do the young, urban people of Toronto need to live a better life in the downtown core?

If you want to answer that question and solve that problem, I don't think you make a weekly paper.

But that's where the ad dollars for Eye were. So of course they needed to keep the paper. This is exactly the same conundrum that daily newspapers face.

The Grid was not a startup. I've worked at three of them, and in none of those cases did we start with an existing customer base and years of a previous product to work with.

Issue two: Is it impossible for a media startup?

Well, shit, I helped launch one that ultimately died. So I can identify with the feeling of failure and frustration. (But I also founded a very small one that still lives on and had a very small but satisfying exit.)

Even if we're generous and allow that perhaps Turnbull was speaking about Canadian media startups, or even Toronto media startups, this is still a crazy statement.

First, it's crazy because The Grid was not a startup. Second, look at The Score or WattPad, who are kicking ass while being in Toronto. Or ScribbleLive.

Or look around the world at the amazing number of media startups. I don't want to have list a bunch because, holy shit, that's a silly exercise at this point.

What's undeniably true is that it's incredibly difficult for any startup.

But this is in my opinion still the best time — ever! — to launch a media startup. The cost of entry, the opportunity to go after broad or finely sliced digital audience(s), the ability to iterate quickly, the money available from incubators and angels and institutional investors...

In fact, now that Turnbull and a great group of people are unemployed, this might  be the perfect time to do that media startup he's been talking about.

Correction: I initially misspelled Laas Turnbull's first name as Lass. Apologies. And thanks to Kim Pittaway for spotting the error.

[dansinker]

Community is at the core of what we do at Knight-Mozilla OpenNews—helping to build and strengthen the community of people writing code in journalism. And community is a big part of what has made Mozilla successful—the global community of contributors that has helped to build the Firefox...

[craigsilverman]

Kind of a big deal...

[craigsilverman]

At Camp Nou to watch Spain's first World Cup match, and to ogle FC Barcelona's trophies. (at Camp Nou)

[craigsilverman]

Ferran Adria, the genius chef of elBulli, takes the stage at #GENsummit to talk innovation.

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Here at #editors14 in Italy, where this gigantic screen makes me feel like reenacting that famous Apple ad during the next presentation. #thinkdifferent

[craigsilverman]

A matter of priorities. #latergram

[craigsilverman]

"When you write a 600-page book drawing on a humongous mass of disparate data, you are bound to make thousands of judgement calls and adjustments. Keeping track of and documenting them almost takes more time than actually finding and analysing the data."

From a nice blog post about the FT-versus-Piketty debate, "What the Piketty-Financial Times Affair says about journalism and academia."

[craigsilverman]

Where I'll be for the next three days. #c2mtl

[craigsilverman]

Something about the look on our six-month old's face in these pics strikes me as  meme-worthy. Don't mess with skeptical baby.