The Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; Atlanta Journal-Constitution; CanWest, Canada’s biggest media company – pick almost any major media outlet in North America, or the world for that matter, and there have been significant cutbacks in newsrooms.
Those of us in the PR industry have lamented the loss of so many talented journalists. Some of them [...]

The Ryerson Review of Journalism has an interesting story about the dying art of writing tabloid headlines – classics like the New York Post’s “Headless body in topless bar” from 1983 and inadvertently funny ones like “Grandmother of eight makes hole in one.”
Variety, the entertainment industry newspaper, has been famous for its distinctive “slanguage” headlines [...]

This week has been a bit of a sad one for me – as of Monday, the business section of my beloved Washington Post ceased to exist. Struggling financially like so many other news outlets, the paper moved its ever-shrinking business coverage to the A section and relegated the stock information to the website. I [...]

Anyone who works for or closely with media outlets will be well aware of the onslaught of bad news about . . . the news business. As organizations cut their advertising budgets, newspapers, magazines and electronic media outlets suffer. It seems that every day there’s yet another story about a publisher or network cutting stuff, [...]

As the end of 2008 quickly approaches, the media will no doubt remind us of the top stories of 2008. From Obama fever and the economic crisis to Britney’s meltdown(s), you can be sure these items will make “the list.”
What about Canadian news? What will stand out to you? The October election or maybe the [...]

Career public relations professionals inevitably consider media interviews with a different ear and eye than regular folks. It’s no secret that we help to prepare spokespersons to help them make the most of an interview. Only a gullible person thinks that they don’t need to prepare for an encounter with a journalist. After all, good preparation [...]

I have been watching the Democratic National Convention – the coronation of Barack Obama. Much has been written over the last decade or two about the irrelevance of the major parties’ conventions, how they don’t really mean anything since nominees are almost always decided through the primaries system.
But ever since I campaigned for George McGovern [...]

The Globe and Mail’s Christie Blatchford – who is reporting from the Olympics in Beijing — has written an interesting perspective on the impact on journalists of blogging and other new media delivery. 
The full column can be found here.  Here’s an excerpt:
It is not true that anyone can write. It is not true that anyone [...]