Dan Zeidler passed away suddenly Tuesday. He was only 56.
Zeidler began working at CBC as a teenager in 1968 doing summer relief, becoming staff in National Television News in 1971.
He left Toronto in the mid-1970s to work in Thunder Bay, moved to Edmonton as Senior Editor, and then to Vancouver. He took a leave from the CBC in 1989 to join The Newspaper Guild’s International staff and later moved to CWA/SCA Canada and was based in Winnipeg, where he worked until his death.
He was active in unions and was among the group of 12 CMG members who were locked out in 1972 for supporting a NABET strike. This group became known within Union circles as “the Dirty Dozen.”
Zeidler leaves his wife, Hortense, and his sister. The funeral will take place on Saturday November 3 at 2 pm at the Thomson “in the park” Funeral Home, 1291 McGillivray Blvd, Winnipeg. In lieu of flowers, the family is asking that donations be made to the Winnipeg Humane Society or to a charity of your choice.
You’re welcome to share your messages of condolence and your memories of Dan here in the comments, or email drichmond@cwa-scacanada.ca and the messages will be posted on the CWA/SCA Canada website.
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| Obits | Posted at 6:03 pm (31 Oct 2007) |
CBC’s network briefly blocked employees from from visiting social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace this morning. Also, some personal blogs, like John Gushue’s and the popular anonymous Teamakers blog were not accessible.
John Mang, operations manager for B.C. radio said: “It looks like was was a technical glitch. It was certainly unintentional. One phone call and it is being fixed.”
Ray Carnovale, head of CBC’s I.T. confirmed that and said the blockage “may be something going on external to us.”
All regions should have access to all those sites again.
What I think was interesting was just how fast news spread in the Corporation. I was on-air at the time and was getting dozens of CBC folks emailing me within the space of an hour. It spread quickly within the Vancouver radio newsroom and, presumably, others.
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| I.T., Workstations and Desktops | Posted at 10:27 am (31 Oct 2007) |
If you’re a journalist, researcher, or editor using Facebook, you may want to heed this warning from one of our own, a reporter in Vancouver.
For an inexplicable reason, last week Facebook disabled my account.
They say they have a policy of not permitting harrassing, threatening, obscene messages, or spam.
I of course didn’t do any such thing. I have always clearly identified who I am, who I work for, and so forth. Been completely transparent. Each message I have sent has been individually written, not “spam”. (I actually haven’t used Facebook that much.)
I have “appealed” my disabled status to Facebook. They have now responded that I am prohibited - they don’t tolerate anyone sending UNSOLICITED MESSAGES!
I’m not sure what we, or I, can do about this. Facebook won’t reveal to me what the message was, or to whom, which caused them to disable me.
I have responded to them that of course many journalists use Facebook for this purpose. And I have never harassed anyone. Anyway…this is just to warn you all who DO use Facebook for finding people - beware!
A bit later…
The PR person decided to re-instate me.
She said I had been “disabled” because I had posted very little information about myself, no photo or profile available, and WAS ONLY USING FACEBOOK TO “SOLICIT” contacts. That I wasn’t using it for private purposes (eg to connect with my own “friends”). Which is true.
So the lesson is…
- Make your photo and even profile available - if you are going to use Facebook for journalistic purposes; and
- have your own friends.
She warned me that if I only use Facebook to solicit people for ‘business purposes’ I will be disabled again. Journalists are NO EXCEPTION.
Guess to keep clean I’ll have to start messaging you all on the Facebook cbc network.
But this does have implications for those who have Facebook accounts and who only use them for finding people for CBC stories. Be warned.
Are you using Facebook for journalistic purposes? If so, do you find it valuable?
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| News & Journalism | Posted at 10:09 am (31 Oct 2007) |
If you’re a host and dream of becoming an icon of Canadian broadcasting, turns out it’s pretty simple to do — at least on a computer. And one ex-pat now living in the U.S. has done just that. Steve Barker, who now calls Portland OR his home, made this George Stroumboulopoulos icon for his Mac computer.
Now, whenever he clicks on that icon, it takes him directly to the video streaming file of The Hour.
Talk about branding. Imagine how many times a day this guy sees Strombo, which serves as a fantastic reminder. An icon right on our listeners’/viewers’ desktop. You can’t buy that kind of advertising.
This is a cool idea. It wouldn’t take us much time (a day, max) to make icons for our top radio and TV shows and put simple instructions on how to link the icons to the streaming or podcast file of the latest episode.
Anyone? Bueller?
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| Fanatical Fans, Personalities | Posted at 7:37 am (31 Oct 2007) |
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| Bloopers | Posted at 2:30 am (31 Oct 2007) |
The deadline to enroll in the CBC’s 2007 Payroll Savings Plan Program or make changes to your existing plan is tomorrow, Wednesday.
I’m going to make a page here listing all of CBC’s blogs (which hopefully one day can migrate to something like www.cbc.ca/blogs).
On this day in 1966, Vancouver-born actor John Drainie died of cancer at age 50.
Sometimes I just don’t get eBay.
Redesigning a web site, especially one with as many eyeballs as CBC.ca gets, isn’t easy. You’ll never please all the people all the time. And while most reviews of the latest redesign have been positive, one bone of contention heard is about the weather-box in the upper-left corner. Presumably the designers wanted something there to balance out the ad.
