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Herbal supplement company sues Kamloops Daily News
The Kamloops Daily News has been sued by Strauss Herb Company over an April 2 column by Russ Reid.
The company says Reid’s column gave readers the impression Strauss was knowingly trying to sucker customers into buying a worthless product, according to a story by Kamloops This Week reporter Tim Petruk.
According to Petruk:
The column was in response to a KTW front-page story nearly a month earlier — in the March 6, 2012 edition — titled Strauss claims victory, describing the fact Strauss Heart Drops had received natural-health designation from Health Canada.
In its statement of claim, Strauss took particular issue with one paragraph of Reid’s column — which stated Strauss “has refused to reveal its formula and put standard specific information about the ingredients on its product label.”
Reid went on to compare Strauss to 19th-century snake-oil salesmen and New York Ponzi-scheme con man Bernie Madoff.
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The Kamloops Daily News responded, in documents filed last week, with a counter-claim against Strauss, alleging false advertising and seeking orders from the court that Strauss stop making exaggerated claims about its products.
The newspaper also denied any malice in publishing Reid’s column and claimed it was a matter of public interest — specifically citing reader comments under the column when it was published online, including a number of “intemperate remarks” from a user traced back to a Strauss computer.
As the story notes, none of the claims have been proven in court.
The Daily News published an unbylined story on the lawsuit with the headline “Paper responds to Strauss lawsuit.” (Although, I usually just quote snippets of stories, what with copyright and all that, I’m going to reprint in full since it’s pretty much a press release. If that’s a problem, let me know.)
Lawyers for Glacier Media, the Kamloops Daily News and a retired city doctor have filed a response to a lawsuit from a Kamloops company alleging defamation and libel.
The legal documents were filed in B.C. Supreme Court Friday, in response to a lawsuit from Strauss Enterprises (the Strauss Herb Company), and Peter Strauss, Brian Kettle, Bill Carey, Don Schulz and Robert Jackman of the company.
Strauss’s lawsuit, filed earlier this year, names Glacier Media Inc., The Daily News, Dr. Russ Reid, editor Mel Rothenburger and publisher Tim Shoults.
Strauss claims it was defamed in a column authored by Reid, who wrote about Health Canada’s awarding of a natural product number to Strauss Heartdrops. The article was published in The Daily News last spring.
The Kamloops Daily News and the other defendants have filed a response in which they deny that the column has the meaning claimed by the plaintiffs, and some of the defendants have challenged Strauss’s advertisements.
It’s not known when the case will reach court.
Rothenburger, incidentally, was slated to retire Sept. 14, two days after the news of the lawsuit was made public.
Trio of B.C. reporters up for CAJ award; job openings
Items of note, including three jobs not posted on Gaulin:
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Kamloops This Week reporter Tim Petruk, Vancouver Courier reporter Cheryl Rossi, and XTra! correspondent David P. Ball have all been named finalists in the Canadian Association of Journalists awards for community journalism. A pair of reporters in Ontario are also up for the award. Tim is nominated for his 28 Seconds series about the police shooting of a Kamloops man. Cheryl is up her her profile of an outdoor non-profit that works with high school students facing problems in class. And David was nominated for his article on the uneasy relationship between the police and the gay community.
The awards will be handed out at a gala April 28 in Toronto.
Also, the Courier‘s Barry Link, along with Nanaimo Daily News editor Cale Cowan, each won Jack Webster Foundation fellowships to attend a week-long seminar at the Poynter Institute.
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Speaking of Cale, he wrote a sweet little vignette about why the job of a newspaper reporter isn’t the fifth-worst job on the face of the planet.
Newspapering has meant that the past 23 years have been filled with days that are never the same; interesting people coming in and out of my life; the chance to travel; to live in four different provinces; and to write for a living.
Who gets to do that?
If you were one of the few reporters to come across the survey, read and scoff about it here. (Our profession’s poor rating has more to do with job prospects than the actual job.)
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Staying in Nanaimo for a second, here’s a News Bulletin story on Merv Unger, who won the Eric Dunning Integrity Award at the Ma Murray Awards. Merv was the News Bulletin‘s first editor and also served as a city councillor.
“I’ve seen changes from very strict rules in journalism where news reporting and commentary were separated stringently. If you were a reporter, you had no opinion,” he said. “That has evolved all the way to today where I think one of the biggest dangers is advocacy journalism, where people take on causes and do not present an unbiased picture.”
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The Vanderhoof Omineca Express is looking for a new editor. Former editor Hannah Wright, who did a fantastic job on the Cody Alan Legebokoff case, returned to the UK over the winter due to visa issues. She hopes to return, according to a January Twitter post.
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The Oceanside Star is looking for a reporter. Two-person newsroom. Small town (Parksville). Pretty nice location.
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And this is a pretty premiere gig, as far as mid-sized community papers go: the many-award-winning Whistler Question needs a new editor. Pretty decent gig. Also, this is a pretty spectacular headline: Nipples aren’t for chewing.
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Kristian Rasmussen is the Columbia Valley Pioneer’s newest reporter. Read his introductory column here. P.S. What’s the consensus on the website’s background, particularly behind the text?
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Finally, the 2012 Canadian Community Newspaper Awards will be announced today at a gala in T.O. Winners will be posted online afterwards. See the full list of finalists here. And if anyone is in Toronto and can send me anything of note, please do so by emailing bclocalreporter@gmail.com.
Thanks.
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Finally, stay tuned for a major-ish announcement about this blog. Post should be up around 11 a.m.
Weekend reading
It’s always slow over the Christmas-to-New-Year’s year-in-review fiesta, but, briefly, here are two stories deserving to be mentioned.
First of all, Kamloops This Week’‘s Tim Petruk went to jail to speak to a man suspected of murdering his ex-girlfriend and stabbing an undercover cop. Tim’s been consistently leading the way on this story and this latest coup shows that sometimes it pays off to send a hail-Mary-ish letter to a guy in jail in the faint hope that he’ll invite you over to chat.
And second, the Richmond Review‘s Martin van den Hemel apparently broke the story that Gregor Robertson’s foster son is facing serious drug and gun charges. Stories about a politician’s family are often dicey: it seems weird that certain stories become newsworthy just because of a tangential link to a prominent person. But this one is clearly fair game, given the seriousness of the charges.
Accused killer of Observer Louise Phillips commits suicide; roundup
Here’s a rare roundup from the interior. Treasure it.
The man accused of murdering Salmon Arm Observer office manager Louise Phillips has died after shooting himself in the head with a nail gun. James Phillips, Louise’s estranged husband, was out on bail when he shot himself.
Just a news tip to the Black Press headline writers: an interview with a politician at election time isn’t exclusive.
Penticton Herald headline: “Kidder pulls out guitar to end candidate’s forum.” But the story, which is otherwise fine, says nothing about a guitar. I’m confused.
Not in B.C., but worth mentioning anyways: A tiny newspaper serving a Mohawk First Nation in Ontario Quebec has been nominated alongside the CBC, Radio-Canada, Calgary Herald, Vancouver Sun and Hamilton Spectator for a major public service journalism award. The Eastern Door was nominated for a series of articles that revealed that the Mohawk Council was sending eviction notices to non-natives. The notices were cancelled after the stories ran. The paper has two reporters and its editor is also the publisher.
He told J-source:
“Some business people said, ‘Hey maybe you shouldn’t be so hard (on the council). I said, ‘We’re talking about peoples’ lives here. If it costs (the newspaper) a few dollars, then…’”
Superb.
A beauty from the Kamloops cops via Tim Petruk of Kamloops This Week:
“A male had made rude comments towards a female outside that downtown location — and she proceeded to give him a jersey pull and punched him numerous times,” Aird said in explaining the jersey pull, a very effective strategy employed the best fighters in hockey.
The woman is then alleged to have pushed the man’s head into a wall.
Stories like that will have me doing more roundups soon.
Kristi Patton of the Penticton Western News has a terrific piece of court reporting:
The jury of a kidnapping, unlawful confinement and assault trial got an inside look at the tribulations of life in the South Okanagan drug world.
Drug stashes in the streets of Oliver, a home invasion by men threatening with a shotgun, paranoia causing people to bounce from home to home, addicted family members and beatings by upper-level drug dealers all came to light in the Penticton Supreme Court last week.
Photo of the week comes from… drum roll please… 100 Mile House publisher, sales manager, and spot news photographer-extraordinaire Chris Nickless, who got a cracking shot of a roaring fire in Lac La Hache. Chris won a CCNA in 2009 for his photography, so this isn’t out of the ordinary.
The search function on Black Press websites is HORRIBLE. I rarely use all caps, but it’s that freakin’ bad.
Reporter out.
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This blog is still a one-person show, so any help would be great. It’s easy, quick and the pay is shite. E-mail bclocalreporter (at) gmail (dot) com.
Have I made an error? It wouldn’t be the first time. Leave a comment and I’ll shamefully update the post.
We’re making inroads into our census of B.C. community newspapers, but there are still a lot of blanks in the Journo-lust Spreadsheet. How many journalists work at your paper? How often do you come out? Who’s your publisher? Participation is free! The benefits unlimited! The exclamation points boundless!
Where are we now?
Here’s my last post of 2010. Enjoy.
Check out this great series/feature/year-end wrap-up by Kamloops This Week:
Instead of just recapping the year’s most important stories, the paper updated them with “Where are they now”-style pieces. Actually, that’s the tag line for the stories.
I counted 11 stories in total, all which try to bring a new angle to something that happened earlier in the year. There’s an arts page, for which Dale Bass asked local entertainers what they’re up to now, an update by Tim Petruk on what the paper’s 2009 newsmaker has been doing (aside from not being president of the university), and two stories by Jeremy Deutsch on the stalled building plans for two very, very different venues–hint, one involves veils, the other bikinis.
Here’s the start of one unbylined article, which gives a sense of the direction of the pieces:
Months of outrage, protest and finger-pointing all came to ahead on a blustery March night, when the president of the Aboriginal Cogeneration Corporation (ACC)stepped into Kamloops for public forum at Thompson Rivers University.
Failing to sway the public’s disdain for a planned gasification project, only a few days later ACC president Kim Sigurdson said his company was abandoning its plans in Kamloops.
As the year draws to a close, there is little sign of the ACC in the city — and the public outrage has all but fizzled.
According to officials with the Ministry of Environment (MOE), the ACC is now looking at a site near Golden, by the Alberta-B.C. border, to set up its plant.
It’s a great idea and one that adds value, rather than just filling space. Of course, it also takes time so…yeah…
Changes
Lots of newspapers, including the aforementioned KTW, take a page from Time and crown their newsmaker of the year around this time. I like those stories but I love what the North Shore Outlook has done.
The Outlook spotlights a handful of people who have made change — changemakers, in other words — over the past year. And if most of the copy is borrowed from past papers, which it may or may not be, that doesn’t really matter. At this time of year — actually, at any time of year — it’s good to remind people that their New Year’s Resolutions don’t have to be about their weight.
Wow, that last line was sappy. Now, off to drink away 2010.
Night of the Long Blades
The plan was to not post anything more (aside from an open thread to come later) on this blog until I return from Christmas. Then I was directed to a video titled “Night of the Long Blades” on the Kamloops This Week website.
The video opens with:
The Kamloops Long Blades Festival, what was supposed to be a fun gathering for family and friends, turned into a heated competition between Kamloops This Week’s Marty The Reporter Hastings and speed-skater extraordinaire Chelsea Reith after Hastings challenged her to a race. What follows will go down in short-track history.
Then KTW reporter Tim Petruk tries to stifle a laugh while interviewing a suspender-bedecked Hastings. (Nice microphone, by the way.) (Marty The Reporter got his start taking a pounding in the wrestling ring from TWA champion Seth Knight.)
“I’m expecting to dominate this race. You can take one look at me and see that I’m in peak condition and have been for months,” Marty tells Tim. “I’ve been training for this. I’m ready to go, I just hope she is.”
Marty stretching
Cut to a video of Marty doing jumping jacks and Reith talking smack about her opponent’s weight. Apparently Marty hadn’t trained enough because he couldn’t fit into a skin suit.
OK, that’s enough typing for me. I’m going to eat turkey.
Just watch the rest of the video.
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Help keep this blog running for weeks to come by becoming a link farmer. It’s easy, quick and the pay is shite. E-mail bclocalreporter@gmail.com. Also, take the poll on the right. It’s free. Lucky you.
Have I made an error? It wouldn’t be the first time. Leave a comment and I’ll duly update the post.
We’re making inroads into our census of B.C. community newspapers, but there are still a lot of blanks in the Journo-lust Spreadsheet. How many journalists work at your paper? How often do you come out? Who’s your publisher? Participation is free! The benefits unlimited! The exclamation points boundless!
