Lord Black;

I find the Star a banal, middle-brow newspaper which is the bearer of some interesting traditions of reform advocacy and some lively writing; but in the current crisis of the industry and in the hands of its present and recent leadership it has atrophied, and is now like a decrepit Jurassic monster, with failing sight and palsied limb that yet comes snorting out of the undergrowth occasionally in pursuit of some misconceived or conjured cause. Some of the reporters are competent but most of the columnists are nasty, as dull as dried parsley, and many of them can’t write.

h/t David Southam

Beneath Yellowstone, an extremely very massive volcano…

A team from the University of Utah have told the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco that Yellowstone’s magama chamber is 2.5 times larger than previously thought.
It is an underground cavern measuring some 55 miles by 20 miles and containing between 125 and 185 billion cubic miles of molten rock.
If it blows it will wipe out America – and have enormous impacts on the rest of the world.

Massive.
h/t north of 60

Media Malpractice: “With the full support of the Star, I will stay on the city hall beat while pursuing this action.”

David Lynn Painter “teaches in the new media journalism and public relations master of arts programs at Full Sail University…”
Falls for fake story on satire site.

Sarah Palin Arrives in South Korea for Mandela Memorial http://t.co/MpK0wfmmAG

— David Lynn Painter (@davpaint) December 11, 2013

There have been 34 question periods in the House of Commons since the throne speech on Oct. 16 […] All told, Trudeau skipped 22 question periods — or about one in three.

Tip o’ the hat to expert tom.
UPDATE! SDA gets results! “All told, Trudeau skipped 22 question periods — or about two in three missed.”

@SketchyTheClown Hi Dave, Josh from the National Post, is there a number I can reach you at? jvisser AT http://t.co/CVCABE7a9K

— Josh Visser (@joshvisser) December 3, 2013

h/t John Groves

...maybe it is just a matter of social media turning our existences as pundits into a sweaty, crowded hearth in which we all sit in a big circle and echo each other all day. I quite enjoy it, but a mind-pummelling stream of "FordSenateFordFordSenateFordNigelWrightFordFord" may not be healthy.

Do tell.

Scott Crick, Town Councillor in Morris, MB; (Update – link changed to original blog post, to enable reader feedback.)

– A wingnut paper publisher does something stupid. The entire Town is accused of racism and makes the national news, even though this was one idiot’s opinion, and he himself had only been a resident for two years
– The community is accused of homophobia when a restaurant fails, even though this is the fourth restaurant to fail in four years in the same space. As part of the coverage, the WFP interviews local citizens, and publishes the opinions of an elderly senile gentleman, and someone who has lived on a Hutterite colony almost all of their life. Of course, the people who had no issue weren’t published. Oh yeah, let’s also quote George out of context.
[…]
My word, be a journalist for a change. Interview those who are of a visible ethnic minority who live in Morris, and ask them about racism. Ask them how Morris compares to other places they’ve lived – I’m pretty sure I know the answer, as I’ve seen nothing in Morris to equal the racism and homophobia I saw growing up in Winnipeg. Maybe talk to a restauranteur, show them the seating capacity, give them the rent and utility bills, and ask them how they could make this space work. I’m pretty sure they couldn’t. Maybe throw on that the average plate prep time is 1hr, and limit their menu to specialty cuisine. I’m a professional finance person, and I can’t make the math work.
So, I think we’re pretty justified in having a siege mentality, 100% created by an sensationalist media. Equally unfortunate how far the journalistic standards of the WFP have fallen, where selling papers and getting web hits are more important than facts or the truth.
This isn’t a siege mentality. It’s fighting back against character assassination.

h/t Todd

. @CBC admits it paid taxpayer's money to @ggreenwald for access to Snowden's documents but won't say how much. #NSA #NSAFiles #cdnpoli

— Alistair MacDonald (@macdonaldajm) November 29, 2013

“…the end of CBC as we know it”.

Without the anchor of hockey exclusivity, and a Saturday night package that routinely drew audiences that doubled and tripled the CBC’s viewership for even its strongest non-hockey programs, the public broadcaster is about to see its reach fall off a cliff.

Pollspotting: Would you like to see Don Cherry stay with Hockey Night in Canada?
UPDATE

The Prime Minister’s Office has slammed the door on any bailout for the CBC to make up for lost advertising revenue from hockey broadcasts.
“CBC already receives significant taxpayer funds,” PMO spokesman Stephen Lecce wrote in an e-mail. “We believe they can operate within their existing budget.”

For your own good, mind you;

Multiple news outlets held off on reporting the news of secret talks between the United States and Iran for months, it was revealed on Sunday.
After news broke of a nuclear deal between Iran and the West on Saturday night, the Associated Press and Al-Monitor both disclosed that the US and Iran had been engaged in unannounced negotiations since at least March.
The AP then revealed that it had known something about the talks for about that long…

Via Instapundit; They never stop rewriting history.

Oswald was a Communist. Not a small c, “all we are saying is give peace a chance and let’s support Negro civil rights” kind of Communist, but someone so committed to the cause (and so blind to the nature of the USSR) that he actually went to live in the Soviet Union. And when that didn’t work out, Oswald became a great admirer of Castro. He apparently would have gone to live in Cuba before the assassination if the Cubans would have had him. Before assassinating Kennedy, Oswald tried to kill a retired right-wing general. As near as we can tell, he targeted Kennedy in revenge for Kennedy’s anti-Castro actions.
The attempt to at best distract us from who the killer was and why he killed JFK, and at worst to pin the blame on entirely innocent people for inciting Dallas opinion against JFK (or perhaps to imply that the right-wingers plotted the assassination), even though those innocents were exactly the type of people Oswald hated, is just pathetic, and the Times and Post should be embarrassed for publishing these pieces. The Post piece is especially embarrassing because it explicitly links Dallas “right-wing extremism” circa 1963 to the modern “Tea Party,” as if to say, “if the Tea Party had been around in 1963, one of its members would have killed Kennedy.”

More.

Who’s Katherine Monk? Postmedia columnist says Rex Murphy hates Trudeau because he’s too ugly to “get laid”. (h/t EBD)

The Grassy Knoll Times.

How ironic that the same media tearing at #RobFord is this week celebrating a womanising, drug-addicted American president as a hero.

— Katewerk (@katewerk) November 15, 2013