Yup, Tarek Fatah spells it out for you in the Toronto Sun.
Maybe one reason the SunPostMedia brand of journalistic hysteria is sinking like a stone is because the vast majority of Canadians recognize this as the rancid fear-mongering bullshit that it is.
It will be interesting to see who buys the Toronto Sun out of the scrap-heap of bankruptcy after that Paul Godfrey engineered trainwreck that's been going on in slo-mo since 2010. After all, the Sun is probably a viable stand-alone title.
I'm thinking it might be a great side project for the Ford Brothers.
Showing posts with label SunPostMedia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SunPostMedia. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Monday, February 8, 2016
"Shadow flipping" comes out of the shadows
Here's a story from CBC about a time-honoured tradition in the world 'o real estate; assigning a contract.
That's where, having sealed an agreement to purchase, you sell that agreement to a third party.
This has been going on since forever, and it's actually where the free-market highway meets the rubber of contract law.
If I'm not mistaken, one of the Vancouver papers broke this and coined the "shadow flipping" meme, and then the CBC ran with it.
This "flipping" happens in virtually every new condo development. Most of the folks who buy at the intro are looking to sell their contracts on.
This story, such as it is, is not about a handful of opportunists looking for easy money; it's about a handful of desperate journalists looking for one last kick at the can.
That's where, having sealed an agreement to purchase, you sell that agreement to a third party.
This has been going on since forever, and it's actually where the free-market highway meets the rubber of contract law.
If I'm not mistaken, one of the Vancouver papers broke this and coined the "shadow flipping" meme, and then the CBC ran with it.
This "flipping" happens in virtually every new condo development. Most of the folks who buy at the intro are looking to sell their contracts on.
This story, such as it is, is not about a handful of opportunists looking for easy money; it's about a handful of desperate journalists looking for one last kick at the can.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Decisions this stupid can only be taken at the very top
I see where the SunPostMedia gang are gonna slice off another 90 journalism jobs for the sake of efficiency.
Because the paper-buying public will never notice that the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Sun have merged newsrooms...
As the think-tank here at Falling Downs has been relentlessly pointing out for years now, the SunPostMedia conglomerate isn't about the news business anymore.
No.
Instead, it's about paying off a couple of hedgies who bought up CanWest debt at pennies on the dollar back in the day.
Yup, those dudes have been working miracles in Canadian journalism ever since!
What's really extra funny, just in case you haven't had enough yet, is that these assholes have the gall to sponsor those galling J-School promos designed to convince idealistic but gullible youth that the once-honourable profession of journalism has a future.
Because the paper-buying public will never notice that the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Sun have merged newsrooms...
As the think-tank here at Falling Downs has been relentlessly pointing out for years now, the SunPostMedia conglomerate isn't about the news business anymore.
No.
Instead, it's about paying off a couple of hedgies who bought up CanWest debt at pennies on the dollar back in the day.
Yup, those dudes have been working miracles in Canadian journalism ever since!
What's really extra funny, just in case you haven't had enough yet, is that these assholes have the gall to sponsor those galling J-School promos designed to convince idealistic but gullible youth that the once-honourable profession of journalism has a future.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Why Kevin O'Leary is not Canada's Donald Trump
Michael Den Tandt is a local boy who made good. He's one of the few professional journalists still drawing a paycheque from that floundering colossus, SunPostMedia, the media empire that just keeps giving back to the hedgies who bought its corporate debt for pennies on the dollar a few years back. Most of what you read in Postmedia properties these days is courtesy of unpaid interns, but Den Tandt is the real deal, and his opinion pieces play coast to coast and are generally worth a look.
Folks who follow this stuff will know that Kevin O'Leary was thinking out loud the other day about throwing his hat into the ring to replace Big Steve in the big chair at Canada's Conservative Party. Today Den Tandt offers an enthusiastic endorsement of O'Leary's delusions of grandeur.
I think Michael's got it right that O'Leary is not Trump, even though they superficially have that same "blow-hard" persona. Where I think he's got it wrong is in how they're different. True, O'Leary has yet to disgrace himself with xenophobic clap-trap geared to the prejudices of the baying masses. Instead, he is a man of principles.
And that's the problem. His principles are the tried, tested, and manifestly failed pillars of the Thatcher era; welfare state too generous, unions too powerful, government too big, and taxes too high. We can only bring back prosperity by slashing and burning and cutting taxes.
It's a recipe that hasn't worked since the Thatcher era, and there's no reason to think it will work with just a little more slashing, burning, etc.
So while Trump fill stadiums with his rancid appeals to emotion, it's hard to imagine O'Leary doing the same with his appeals for more austerity.
Not only that, but what really makes Trump important is that he threatens the very foundations of America's sclerotic two-party system. He's the only candidate telling the public that the system is broken. O'Leary leading the Conservative Party would be a more engaging personality bringing you four or five more years of Big Steve.
And who needs that?
Folks who follow this stuff will know that Kevin O'Leary was thinking out loud the other day about throwing his hat into the ring to replace Big Steve in the big chair at Canada's Conservative Party. Today Den Tandt offers an enthusiastic endorsement of O'Leary's delusions of grandeur.
I think Michael's got it right that O'Leary is not Trump, even though they superficially have that same "blow-hard" persona. Where I think he's got it wrong is in how they're different. True, O'Leary has yet to disgrace himself with xenophobic clap-trap geared to the prejudices of the baying masses. Instead, he is a man of principles.
And that's the problem. His principles are the tried, tested, and manifestly failed pillars of the Thatcher era; welfare state too generous, unions too powerful, government too big, and taxes too high. We can only bring back prosperity by slashing and burning and cutting taxes.
It's a recipe that hasn't worked since the Thatcher era, and there's no reason to think it will work with just a little more slashing, burning, etc.
So while Trump fill stadiums with his rancid appeals to emotion, it's hard to imagine O'Leary doing the same with his appeals for more austerity.
Not only that, but what really makes Trump important is that he threatens the very foundations of America's sclerotic two-party system. He's the only candidate telling the public that the system is broken. O'Leary leading the Conservative Party would be a more engaging personality bringing you four or five more years of Big Steve.
And who needs that?
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Pot-addled hillbilly beats Globe and Mail to story by two years
James Bradshaw has an interesting story about SunPostMedia's inexorable slide into bankruptcy in the business pages of today's Globe and Mail.
Ha! I've been banging on that for well over two years.
What I'd like to see a real journalist like James Bradshaw do is a story about the financing the Godfrey team used to buy the former Canwest assets. If there really was $950 millions in cash involved in that purchase, which I don't believe for two seconds but which was widely reported at the time, the new owners would have been running a virtually debt-free company.
PostMedia and now SunPostMedia may be Canada's largest conglomeration of news platforms, but first and foremost it's a cash cow being milked to death by two or three unscrupulous hedge funds. In an ironic case of deja vu all over again, what Bradshaw wrote about the company today is almost identical to what was being written about Canwest in the year or two before it went tits up.
Headline of the future; "Paul Godfrey fronts investor group to buy former SunPostMedia assets out of receivership."
Ha! I've been banging on that for well over two years.
What I'd like to see a real journalist like James Bradshaw do is a story about the financing the Godfrey team used to buy the former Canwest assets. If there really was $950 millions in cash involved in that purchase, which I don't believe for two seconds but which was widely reported at the time, the new owners would have been running a virtually debt-free company.
PostMedia and now SunPostMedia may be Canada's largest conglomeration of news platforms, but first and foremost it's a cash cow being milked to death by two or three unscrupulous hedge funds. In an ironic case of deja vu all over again, what Bradshaw wrote about the company today is almost identical to what was being written about Canwest in the year or two before it went tits up.
Headline of the future; "Paul Godfrey fronts investor group to buy former SunPostMedia assets out of receivership."
Thursday, August 20, 2015
A bold new approach to the news
I see where StunnedPostMedia is really pushing the envelope. It's now considered newsworthy for a news commentator to admit they don't know what they're talking about.
Watch this.
This is news?
Watch this.
This is news?
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Plump white politicos shake their booties to lure black votes at Toronto's Caribana/Carribean carnival
Where exactly did that "Carribean" stuff come from?
This party has been around forever and it's ALWAYS been Caribana...
Not "Carribean."
Be that as it may, the Toronto Sun, flagship of the SunPostMedia conglomerate, National Post pretensions notwithstanding, is full-on with the new nomenclature, as you can see here.
And what up with those two roly-poly white guys trying to snag a few votes here?
No harm in trying, I guess...
This party has been around forever and it's ALWAYS been Caribana...
Not "Carribean."
Be that as it may, the Toronto Sun, flagship of the SunPostMedia conglomerate, National Post pretensions notwithstanding, is full-on with the new nomenclature, as you can see here.
And what up with those two roly-poly white guys trying to snag a few votes here?
No harm in trying, I guess...
Friday, July 10, 2015
Another reason why SunPostMedia is destined to tank
Conrad and Paul can quibble all they want, but when something this dishonest and retarded shows up in one of their most prized titles, they have cause for concern.
The unpaid intern who wrote this story seems to think that a farming operation with a gross market value of two million dollars is a "big business." This in a climate where the average Toronto house price is over a million.
Where a 50 acre hobby farm commands a million.
Family farms with a 70 cow herd are "millionaire farming companies."
(By the way, this is exactly the kind of story that will kill Big Steve in Conservative-voting farm country, so thanks for that.)
And they're making it rich on the backs of the poorest of the poor, who don't realize that every variety store in the land offers a carton of milk for less than the price of an energy drink!
It's easy to see what the game is here. Those marginally literate people (that's what they call their readers when the MBAs are designing strategies) can be easily swayed by tall tales of millionaire dairy farmers living large on the backs of the poor...
Yes, we may be a nation of imbeciles, Mr. Godfrey, but did you really think we're that stupid?
You see Mr. Godfrey, it's not just declining ad revenue that's sinking the good ship SunPostMedia.
It's the egregious bullshit that you insist on publishing and insulting your readers with.
The unpaid intern who wrote this story seems to think that a farming operation with a gross market value of two million dollars is a "big business." This in a climate where the average Toronto house price is over a million.
Where a 50 acre hobby farm commands a million.
Family farms with a 70 cow herd are "millionaire farming companies."
(By the way, this is exactly the kind of story that will kill Big Steve in Conservative-voting farm country, so thanks for that.)
And they're making it rich on the backs of the poorest of the poor, who don't realize that every variety store in the land offers a carton of milk for less than the price of an energy drink!
It's easy to see what the game is here. Those marginally literate people (that's what they call their readers when the MBAs are designing strategies) can be easily swayed by tall tales of millionaire dairy farmers living large on the backs of the poor...
Yes, we may be a nation of imbeciles, Mr. Godfrey, but did you really think we're that stupid?
You see Mr. Godfrey, it's not just declining ad revenue that's sinking the good ship SunPostMedia.
It's the egregious bullshit that you insist on publishing and insulting your readers with.
Conrad Black and SunPostmedia CEO Godfey spar on conference call
Paul and Conrad are two guys who have led charmed lives, although I have to give a tip of the cap to Conrad for making his charmed life way tougher than it needed to be.
Judging by this story, it would seem that Conrad still has some skin in the game after being divested of his empire.
And as for Godfrey, he's way underpaid to be the figurehead at PostMedia cum SunPostMedia. Since the resurrection of PostMedia out of hock a few years ago, the reason for keeping the corpse alive has been to mollify the bond-holders.
Like Conrad?
Judging by this story, it would seem that Conrad still has some skin in the game after being divested of his empire.
And as for Godfrey, he's way underpaid to be the figurehead at PostMedia cum SunPostMedia. Since the resurrection of PostMedia out of hock a few years ago, the reason for keeping the corpse alive has been to mollify the bond-holders.
Like Conrad?
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