HuffPost Canada’s murder by BuzzFeed
A few weeks away from a decade
Huffington Post Canada launched May 26, 2011, as the first international edition of an eclectic venture powered by the liberal vanities of its founder, who had sold it to AOL. What became HuffPost was recently acquired by BuzzFeed, which cited a $20 million loss in 2020 as the driver of cuts, like leaving Canada after staff filed to unionize.
The logic of the media moguls
Torstar newspapers published an op-ed by Corus Entertainment CEO Doug Murphy, who says legislation is needed to help fairly compete with foreign platforms, which would also underwrite news. Another new lobbying argument published by the Globe and Mail comes from Jamie Irving, whose family owns almost all print media in New Brunswick.
Mayor John Tory’s motion to support local journalism. Toronto city council will surely back the mission of former Waterloo Region staffers asking municipalities to support a path toward more government help. Meanwhile, as more scrutiny arrived for The Epoch Times, it received a $445,000 federal grant, along with the wage subsidies.
The new signals of the past
Peter Mansbridge’s The Bridge recently started airing on SiriusXM, providing another avenue for his self-produced podcast. And now a similar approach is being tried by Bob McCown, who’s expressed his ambition to turn a spurning by Sportsnet into his own empire. But the new AM radio venue for the Bobcat is a small frequency in Mississauga:
A strangely obscure return to cable news for Ashleigh Banfield. The rise of the Winnipeg-born journalist from working local western Canadian stations to becoming MSNBC’s woman in Kabul made her the subject of fascination back home. But her comeback is proving trickier at U.S. channel NewsNation, which has fallen into turmoil.
Finally, chip off the old tongue
The Juno Awards announced the shortlists for a 2021 ceremony based in Toronto. But it will largely remains as sheltered in place as 2020’s edition, which had a last-minute upheaval. Aside from six nominations for the Weeknd, the dance category highlights the fact that Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed’s daughter had a Cancon radio hit:
