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Friday December 1, 2023

The Online News Act in Canada, a groundbreaking legislative framework securing fair compensation for news outlets from tech giants like Google and Meta, contrasts with the hot air of opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, who remains skeptical and resistant, raising concerns about fair terms, media sustainability, and the effectiveness of government agreements in shaping the news ecosystem.

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 1, 2023

A Step Forward, Poilievre’s Stance a Step Back

December 6, 2022

In a recent breakthrough, Google and the federal government have forged an agreement over the Online News Act, marking a significant stride towards fair compensation for Canadian news outlets. The deal ensures that Google will continue sharing Canadian news online, accompanied by annual payments totaling around $100 million to support the news industry.

Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, instrumental in the negotiations, expressed confidence in addressing Google’s concerns, emphasizing the importance of finding common ground. The regulatory framework, incorporated into the C-18 legislative framework, is poised to be unveiled by mid-December, showcasing a commitment to transparency and accountability.

News: Ottawa agrees to $100-million deal with Google to keep news on platform  

August 4, 2023

The agreement, a product of extensive talks, not only secures financial support for news organizations but also addresses Google’s reservations about the Online News Act’s structural aspects. Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, expressed gratitude for the government’s responsiveness to their concerns, acknowledging the commitment to address core issues.

However, amid this positive development, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre remains a notable critic. Poilievre has consistently opposed the idea of globalist tech firms compensating Canadians for the content they use to generate profits. His stance, epitomized by a proposed “Online News Don’t Act,” raises concerns about the fair treatment of local journalists.

April 15, 2023

While Google embraces negotiations and financial contributions, Poilievre’s reluctance to support the Online News Act suggests a different vision. The contrast between Google’s willingness to engage in fair compensation and Poilievre’s non-act approach underscores the potential implications for the Canadian news landscape.

The government’s success in reaching an agreement with Google sets a precedent for other countries, showcasing the effectiveness of legislation like Bill C-18. This achievement stands in stark contrast to Poilievre’s skepticism and reluctance to acknowledge the positive impact of regulatory frameworks.

News: Conservatives ran on similar media policy as Liberals, but now claim it’s censorship  

March 2, 2023

As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hails the agreement as “very good news” and emphasizes the support for local journalism, Poilievre’s dissenting voice seems out of touch with the demonstrated commitment to a thriving news ecosystem. It is crucial to recognize the importance of fair compensation for journalists and the potential positive influence of legislation like the Online News Act.

The deal with Google represents a positive leap forward for Canadian media, demonstrating the effectiveness of legislative frameworks. While celebrating this achievement, it is essential to scrutinize and question opposition voices like Pierre Poilievre, who appear resistant to measures aimed at securing fair compensation for the backbone of our information ecosystem – our journalists. (AI)

 

Saturday June 17, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 17, 2023

Reflecting on Father’s Day and the Importance of Taking a Break from the News

May 13, 2023

Father’s Day serves as a reminder to appreciate the important people in our lives and cherish the moments spent with loved ones. In a world filled with doom and gloom, taking a break from the constant barrage of negative news can be crucial for our well-being. Recent events, such as climate change-induced wildfires in Canada, the tragic Manitoba bus accident, rising interest rates, and the ongoing political polarization, highlight the overwhelming amount of negative information that bombards us daily.

It’s no secret that journalists tend to focus on negative news, and political coverage often adopts a cynical or pessimistic tone. This trend has only intensified over time, leading to a decline in trust in the media and an increasing number of individuals avoiding the news altogether due to its detrimental impact on their mood. This negativity bias, rooted in human psychology, causes people to pay more attention to negative information than positive news. Both news consumers and journalists are influenced by this bias, and it poses a challenge for the media landscape.

Fortunately, there are signs of improvement. The rise of diverse media outlets has created a market for good news, catering to those seeking positive stories. However, platforms like Facebook, with their algorithmic structures, can inadvertently reinforce negativity biases, leaving news consumers torn between their desire for positive news and their immediate attraction to negative stories. Striking the right balance between catering to immediate preferences and providing long-term well-being is a challenge faced by news outlets and social networks alike.

Study: Bad News: Negativity Increases Online News Consumption  

November 1, 2022

A study published in Nature Human Behaviour shed light on the influence of negative news headlines. It revealed that negative words in headlines increase click-through rates, while positive words decrease them. This research suggests that people are more likely to consume negative news, particularly in the realms of politics and economics. Although this bias is not solely the fault of journalists and editors, it raises ethical concerns and contributes to audience anxiety. The online news environment, with its fierce competition for attention, and the optimization of headlines for engagement further perpetuate the prevalence of negative news.

To gain a comprehensive understanding of the trajectory of news media sentiment, researchers have compared the sentiment and emotional undertones of news content over different time periods. A research project analyzing 23 million headlines from popular news outlets in the United States between 2000 and 2019 found that mainstream news media headlines have gradually become more negative over time. Headlines with negative connotations have become more prevalent, while those with positive undertones have decreased. This shift in sentiment is noticeable across various news outlets and can be partially attributed to ideological leanings, with right-leaning media consistently portraying more negative headlines.

Emotional undertones in headlines have also experienced a notable change. The proportion of anger and fear has nearly doubled, while sadness and disgust have seen a smaller increase. Emotionally neutral headlines, on the other hand, have become less common. Interestingly, the increase in anger-inducing headlines is more prevalent in right-leaning outlets, while the surge in fear and decline of emotionally neutral headlines are observable across media outlets regardless of their ideological leanings.

Essay: I Thought I Was Fatherless. Then I Realized What a Father Was.  

June 5, 2012

The reasons behind this phenomenon are multifaceted. Financial pressures to maximize click-through rates, driven by declining revenue in the media industry, likely contribute to the increasing negativity and emotional intensity of headlines. Additionally, crafting headlines to serve political agendas, veering away from fact-based objectivity, may also play a role. While the higher occurrence of negative and angry headlines in right-leaning media is noteworthy, the exact causes are open to speculation and require further research.

It is undeniable that news consumption can be disheartening in today’s world, and the extent of negativity depends on what sources one follows. As researchers continue to delve deeper into the impact of negative news content on readers and democratic institutions, it is essential for individuals to recognize the toll it can take on their well-being. Father’s Day serves as a reminder to prioritize spending time with loved ones, creating warm and positive moments that provide respite from the constant influx of negative information. By finding a balance between staying informed and nurturing our personal relationships, we can foster a healthier and happier mindset. (AI)

 

Thursday March 2, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 2, 2023

Google is stealing from Canadian newspapers and advertisers

June 26, 2019

For 15 years, we’ve all been hearing a fake story about why newspapers around the world are dying. It goes like this — the internet killed the news, with old, slothful media companies being unwilling to adapt to new technology. The closer you look, the less sense this story makes. There are plenty of new media companies, everyone from the Huffington Post to BuzzFeed, digitally native firms with deep pockets and clever managers, who can generate huge amounts of web traffic, but aren’t able to sell the advertising to monetize it. And there is still advertising, lots of it. It’s just that the money for those ads isn’t going to the newspapers on whose sites they sit.

The real story of why newspapers are suffering can be found in an action in January by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, when the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, along with eight U.S. states, filed a suit to break up Google’s advertising business. According to American enforcers, the search giant has unlawfully engaged in “monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products,” basically the software plumbing underneath most online advertising, and thus, the revenue that newspapers rely on. Google inflated its profits, redirecting advertising revenues from newspapers to itself.

June 12, 2019

It’s a complex story, but at the heart of it is what looks like theft. Most of us think of Google as a search engine, and it is. But Google has many other lines of business. This particular suit involves display ads on the open web, which are what you find on the Wall Street Journal or ESPN. These ads are bought and sold in an unusual manner. If a user goes to the site of a newspaper, unbeknownst to the consumer, a highly complex financial market kicks into gear. Newspapers no longer sell most of their advertising directly but have become integrated into a giant set of global auctions. In these auctions, advertisers bid for the right to place their ad not into a specific newspaper, but in front of a specific user. Money then changes hands, from the buyer of the ad to the publisher, with a set of middlemen each taking a cut. This happens in a split second, billions of times a day. At this point, online advertising is far bigger than the stock market in terms of the number of transactions.

Well, guess who runs the software to manage this financial market? Google. And guess who takes the lion’s share of the revenue? Google.

March 21, 2018

There’s a decade-plus-long backstory to this scheme. In the mid-2000s, Google transitioned from its role as a search engine into the main intermediary of all online advertising. In 2005, Google had a lot of advertisers that were buying its search ads. It also started to let smaller websites put strips of ads up and gave them a share of the revenue. Ad industry insiders at the time realized that advertising was transitioning from a Mad Men-style set of local, regional and national markets to an automated set of marketplaces.

Google’s strategy wasn’t to remain a search engine, but to expand and control all online advertising. But the firm had a problem. It couldn’t break into the market for the space on big established publisher sites, because that market was already controlled by another near-monopolist, DoubleClick. DoubleClick had 60 per cent market share in the software used by publishers to manage how they sell ads on their site, or what’s known as an ad server. So, Google’s then-CEO, Eric Schmidt, did what every good monopolist does when in a lax policy regime: he bought his rival — DoubleClick — in 2007. (Continued: The National Post) 

 

Nice work, but to be brutally honest…

AmateurI spend quite a bit of time reviewing work from people who want to see their artistic skills put to print. Often, they’re those with a knack for drawing and have proven themselves to be good artists. Some of them actually aspire to draw editorial cartoons and have banked up a number of examples over a period of time proving a genuine passion. The portfolios they let me peek into may or may not be good, but at least they have an idea of what editorial cartooning is about.

Alan-Ruiz-Editorial-CartoonOthers, however, approach me on how to get their work printed after proving themselves not only to have little experience in editorial cartooning, but really not having much exposure to newspapers in general. Oh, yes their email attachments of landscape paintings and charcoal renderings of celebrities from 10 years ago indicates a firm interest in art, but how does it relate to editorial cartooning?

drake_sketchMy response to many is often in the same tone as the one I sent recently below. It received no reply, no thanks for my time, just crickets – which is standard. But rather than let it vaporize into the emailsphere I thought I share it here, and maybe others will take something from it:

Dear aspiring editorial cartoonist,

It’s great that you’re trying your hand at editorial cartooning.  Satire is a wonderful way of blending one’s artistic skill with a rant about something and getting a response that provokes laughter, scorn, or a bit of both.

I see by your attached samples that you are someone who has taken quite a bit of time illustrating.  The landscape paintings, and illustrations of fruit baskets and pencil sketches prove that you’re someone with an artistic passion.  If you’re like me, you’ll know that with every successful creation are 1 to 10 others that were abandoned or crumpled up and sent to the bin. Like painting, editorial cartooning requires a lot of practice and crumpled up pieces of paper. You should see my attempt at painting – lots of unfinished canvasses and others with the quality of paint-by-numbers pieces.

In terms of editorial cartooning, I think, based on the one editorial cartoon sent, that if you really want to get mass print publicity, you need to practice more, loosen up your rigid lines, perfect your lettering, establish a style, and explore technology that allows cartoonists to quickly colour their work beyond using pencil crayons. What editors want to see are bodies of work by prospective freelancers that confirms consistency and experienced quality.

I would also suggest using websites like Pinterest.com, Deviantart.com, and toonpool.com to peruse the works of others and places to post your own work for easy upload, display, and comparison. Share your work on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I looked at your website and each of your email attachments, but the tendency I’ve come to realize is that many editors don’t bother taking the few moments to examine website content or attachments.  The aforementioned sites are way more convenient and are also a great way to invite constructive criticism, but it means embracing online activity which I know can be repulsive for some.

As for being bounced around the newsroom from person to person trying to get attention, it’s the unfortunate nature of this industry beast. The people you’ve already emailed to are higher up editors with their fingers on many buttons – illustration is not really one of the buttons. The Entertainment & Life editor also controls many buttons, and one of them is deciding on the odd commission piece that appears in their section.  Again, as I stated in my previous email to you, there’s not much of a budget for paying illustrators, which has turned off a lot of artists, hence the tendency for editors is to avoid humiliating artists by paying little and choosing to run stock photos/illustrations instead. Also, the turn around time for completing work is so short that it’s too much of a challenge for too little in return, and that’s not only from the view of the artist, but the editor as well.

I wish I could give you more positive advice. As a guy with no buttons to press except readers’ reaction, I’d love to see more illustrations in the paper, and more women drawing editorial cartoons. All I can offer are suggestions for anyone aspiring to get their work published is to practice, promote and persist at getting attention.

Good luck,
 
Graeme