Courtesy thelastminute via flikr NB. This is the second part of a two-part post on new models for political journalism. In my last post, I highlighted how Bloomberg Government (BG), a subscription-based news service that will offer a more in-depth coverage of policy and politics in Washington, D.C., could have a transformative influence on political journalism in Washington.  According t... [More]

NB. This is the first part of a two-part post. Bloomberg News has announced its intent to move into the Washington media market by launching Bloomberg Government, a subscription-based news site which will take a unique approach to producing political news stories by employing both journalists and public policy experts. This is a significant development for both political journalism and the futur... [More]

Since August 12th, we have published a series of posts about the composition of the 40th Parliament, taking a closer look at the MPs we have elected. Our aim for this short project was to ask questions about the assumptions held about our MPs. How do our Parliamentarians compare to the average Canadian? The first couple of posts in the series found that, in fact, our MPs do not accurately r... [More]

Image: Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The Toronto Star On October 4th, the Literary Review of Canada hosted Peter C. Newman at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, where he spoke to a crowd of about 150 people in anticipation of his contribution to this month's edition of the magazine. Newman, the author of such classic works of Canadian journalism as Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years and The Cana... [More]

We know many of our readers are also avid podcast listeners. At Samara, we listen to podcasts, too. They're a great way to catch up on what we missed on CBC or TVO while we were doing other things, like working on the next report about our MP exit interviews. Since podcasts are such a great way of getting informative and interesting information, we made our own. Now you can listen to our work f... [More]

Embassy Magazine, Canada's foreign affairs news weekly, published an interesting article this week about the close relationship between the Prime Minister's Office media relations team and Canada's ethnic media. Effectively, Carl Meyer discloses that private meetings between the Prime Minister, his cabinet and invited news outlets, like the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada, take ... [More]

NB: This is the final in our series of posts on the men and women who make up our 40th Parliament. It's easy to assume that only a few of our MPs do anything. After all, given the focus of our media, why would we believe any different? The cameras are trained on the front benches and our pundits use most of their columns to speculate about the Prime Minister, the party leaders and prominent ca... [More]

NB: This is the next in our series of posts on the men and women who make up our 40th Parliament. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been addressing some of the discussion that stemmed from The Accidental Citizen? about the backgrounds and demographics of our Members of Parliament. In our first post on the 40th Parliament (you can see the whole series here), we broke down the House by the n... [More]

Some of the discussion about The Accidental Citizen?, including that which occurred over at Maclean's, raised a bunch of questions on the backgrounds, demographics and tenures of our Members of Parliament - what they are, how they've changed, and what implications that may have on our politics.  So we promised to do a little digging and get back to you. Our first post was on the general ... [More]

The response to the essay I posted yesterday has been fascinating. From the comments on the Samara blog to those on Aaron Wherry's Beyond the Commons post and all places in between (well, just Twitter, really), I've read the reactions of supporters, detractors and those who've used my argument as a point of departure. I thank anyone who's jumped in for their contributions. This is an importan... [More]

As coverage of the debate over the long form census continues into its second month, media dialogue appears to have reduced the matter to the old tried-and-true narratives, in lieu of a more substantive public discussion on why the census is important and what it says about our country and the citizens who live here. Below is a three-part essay that summarizes the media discussion to date, highli... [More]

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to our Best of Canadian Political Writing list, so far. The suggestions for books to add continue to rush in. We received a raft of responses the day before Canada Day, which was impressive considering how much work Canadians must have been trying to squeeze in before the long weekend. Over 80 books have been suggested through emails, tweets, posts on our... [More]

On Canada Day most Canadians take a moment to reflect on their country and share a sense of pride while watching a parade, or if you're lucky, a fireworks display. And since it's a holiday, there's usually time for a little reading. Here at Samara, we're unabashadly interested inthe public life of this country and our reading often reflects that. So you can imagine our surprise when we learne... [More]

On May 25, 2010, the Canadian Journalism Foundation hosted a panel, “Keeping an Eye on Journalism”, about the role of the ombudsman in Canadian journalism.  Jeffrey Dvorkin, former NPR News ombudsman, moderated the panel, which consisted of John Racovali, The National Post’s assistant managing editor, Kathy English, The Toronto Star's The Toronto Star’s public edi... [More]

Hearing news executives talk about the future of journalism is pretty standard these days. But hearing them talk about why the future’s bright for journalism is far less so. Much has been written about the crisis in the news business. Newspapers have cut their staffs. Some have closed their doors. Circulation is declining, and the web has destroyed advertising revenues. Unsurprisingly, pes... [More]