David Akin in a public photo he posted to Picasa.David Akin
Fox News of the North has its first television host: David Akin resigned this morning as a parliamentary reporter with Canwest.
Mr. Akin is now poised to join Sun Media as the Ottawa bureau chief and be a television host. He has a background in television, having worked for CTV.
His resignation from the news service comes as The Globe reported this morning that former Harper communications director Kory Teneycke is overseeing the operations of a 24-hour cable channel that is to emulate the very popular Fox News network in the U.S.
A senior Ottawa source says that Mr. Teneycke, who left the PMO last year and did pundit stints at CTV and most recently and controversially, at CBC, "has mused with others in general terms about hosting programs."
"His time at CTV and CBC will certainly give him insight into how different news-channels work," says the source.
Indeed, the idea of the new news channel is, according to the Globe report, "a shot aimed directly at CBC and CTV, which for years has dominated the all-news format in English Canada."
Meanwhile, Mr. Akin is a prolific reporter, operating on all platforms - he Twitters, he blogs, he has a Facebook page, he appears in the Canwest newspapers and he is on television.
Sometimes, however, his eagerness to be out first lands him in trouble. Last February, he was pinned as the source of reports that Canadian singing icon Gordon Lightfood had passed away.
That was wrong; Mr. Lightfoot was very much alive. And Mr. Akin later explained on his blog that he was simply "re-Tweeting" an alert that he had seen or that had been reported to his news service.
So really, he wasn't the source of the misinformation; rather, he was simply passing along what he had read.
This morning, Mr. Akin - reached by the Globe through Twitter and email - wouldn't confirm exactly what his new role would be, saying instead that Quebecor, the owner of Sun Media, would saying something "shortly."
"I'm sure you can appreciate that it's probably best left to them to say anything about their plans but, yes, I resigned today from Canwest," he wrote.
Who's next?
( Photo by David Akin posted to his Picasa gallery)