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The Family (Or most of them)
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The Family
March 31, 2009
March 30, 2009
A spark of intelligence in the stupour of stupidity
Wow.
Now this http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/03/30/f-vp-mallick.html is journalism that people should be reading.
March 24, 2009
DISCOMBOBULATED
ME THEN, WHEN NEWSPAPERS WERE A LIFE-BLOOD OF EVERY COMMUNITY...(a Donn Coppens portrayal)
There have been countless stories, blogs, magazine articles, documentaries and the like on why newspapers are heading the way of the dinosaur, and I don't intend this to be an explanation of that inevitable process of evolution.
What I DO intend it to be is a first-hand, inside-the-locker-room lament of what it's like to see this happening all around me -- its effects on me and news-gathering but also on the community, I fear, as a whole.
I have been stuck on this process for a while. We went on strike in the fall as the company that owns us painted a sky is falling scenario based on what was going on in the U.S. and Eastern Canada.
Newspapers folding because of the internet and a young demographic that just doesn't read the paper any more. Losses in the millions. As a recession reared its ugly head, a monumental drop-off in ad revenue.
We believed, and I STILL believe, that because we are in an insulated market we dominate as the largest newspaper in a province of more than 1 million people, this was overstated.
We still are profitable, although our profit margin has been severely hit. In the wake of the strike, layoffs came, and early retirement packages, and forced buyouts. We lost several reporters from an already very lean editorial team.
Managers who have been here for decades -- some superfluous and very expendable, some not -- have been turfed, including our own editor, who accepted a buyout when they offered him enough to do so.
Entertainment editor, gone. Sports editor, gone. Two day editors, history. At least three young and energetic reporters, from the courts, city hall and general assignment, laid off.
Many more from other departments.
Our space to do what we do -- report news and bring people the larger story, in context, that they can't get on the TV news or on blogs that can only report opinion -- cut back to slash costs.
It's grim, walking around our place. Peoples' jobs have changed. When your staff is compressed, what does that mean? You have to do more. What does that mean?
When fewer people have to do more, the product itself becomes less. Less time is spent on more things.
And this is in the context of trying to adapt to the new internet journalism while at the same time trying to still give the Baby Boomers -- the last remaining vestige of the old newspaper product, 7-day-a-week home deliveries -- what they want.
We're trying to integrate twittering and live web news reporting and a new concept called CoverItLive into how we handle football, hockey and other games, or political conventions, to provide instant news to those that crave it on the Web.
At the same time, we're trying to be what newspapers always have been and what they should be -- to provide more indepth, local news on issues or events or people that any community should care about.
And we're trying to do all that without yet having the skills to do that and without having the staff to do that because of decisions based on the bottom line.
I am now writing less and assigning and supervising more and trying as part of a team to make all this happen, and it's just the early stages, and it's all in a complete state of turmoil and chaos.
It's a bit of a self-preservation mode, but there's a pride involved too and a wonder at how we can keep ourselves relevant to what news consumers need and want at a time when it seems they don't want depth, they want just the facts.
I do lament and, in some ways, resent what the internet and technology has done to our culture and our brains.
My whole professional life as a journalist, every thought I've ever had on the job, has been providing the context and meaning for what people couldn't get just from a 30-second sound byte or a 45-second TV clip.
Anyhow, not trying to lecture. I'm just saying.
Maybe our culture has lost its need for understanding and depth and meaning to things, to learned analysis of what this or that development means in sports or politics or taxation or personalities or whatever.
Maybe all people need is to watch Entertainment Tonight or American Idol or ESPN or TSN Sportsdesks to know all they need to know, or to follow a particular blogger who sits there all day reading what newspapers produce, and then opines.
Hopefully, newspapers and the journalists who work at them -- and I can't begin to tell you how much they care about what they do and are the true pursuers of the news, far beyond the sound bytes and TV clips you hear and read -- can find a way.
Remember what Marshall McLuhan said: the media is the message. The question is, can newspapers evolve into delivering a message that people will want to hear, read and consume.
And me now, as layoffs abound, advertising plummets, news-gathering resources shrink, people are slinking around wondering whether they're next in line for the scrap heap.
There have been countless stories, blogs, magazine articles, documentaries and the like on why newspapers are heading the way of the dinosaur, and I don't intend this to be an explanation of that inevitable process of evolution.What I DO intend it to be is a first-hand, inside-the-locker-room lament of what it's like to see this happening all around me -- its effects on me and news-gathering but also on the community, I fear, as a whole.
I have been stuck on this process for a while. We went on strike in the fall as the company that owns us painted a sky is falling scenario based on what was going on in the U.S. and Eastern Canada.
Newspapers folding because of the internet and a young demographic that just doesn't read the paper any more. Losses in the millions. As a recession reared its ugly head, a monumental drop-off in ad revenue.
We believed, and I STILL believe, that because we are in an insulated market we dominate as the largest newspaper in a province of more than 1 million people, this was overstated.
We still are profitable, although our profit margin has been severely hit. In the wake of the strike, layoffs came, and early retirement packages, and forced buyouts. We lost several reporters from an already very lean editorial team.
Managers who have been here for decades -- some superfluous and very expendable, some not -- have been turfed, including our own editor, who accepted a buyout when they offered him enough to do so.
Entertainment editor, gone. Sports editor, gone. Two day editors, history. At least three young and energetic reporters, from the courts, city hall and general assignment, laid off.
Many more from other departments.
Our space to do what we do -- report news and bring people the larger story, in context, that they can't get on the TV news or on blogs that can only report opinion -- cut back to slash costs.
It's grim, walking around our place. Peoples' jobs have changed. When your staff is compressed, what does that mean? You have to do more. What does that mean?
When fewer people have to do more, the product itself becomes less. Less time is spent on more things.
And this is in the context of trying to adapt to the new internet journalism while at the same time trying to still give the Baby Boomers -- the last remaining vestige of the old newspaper product, 7-day-a-week home deliveries -- what they want.
We're trying to integrate twittering and live web news reporting and a new concept called CoverItLive into how we handle football, hockey and other games, or political conventions, to provide instant news to those that crave it on the Web.At the same time, we're trying to be what newspapers always have been and what they should be -- to provide more indepth, local news on issues or events or people that any community should care about.
And we're trying to do all that without yet having the skills to do that and without having the staff to do that because of decisions based on the bottom line.
I am now writing less and assigning and supervising more and trying as part of a team to make all this happen, and it's just the early stages, and it's all in a complete state of turmoil and chaos.
It's a bit of a self-preservation mode, but there's a pride involved too and a wonder at how we can keep ourselves relevant to what news consumers need and want at a time when it seems they don't want depth, they want just the facts.
I do lament and, in some ways, resent what the internet and technology has done to our culture and our brains.
My whole professional life as a journalist, every thought I've ever had on the job, has been providing the context and meaning for what people couldn't get just from a 30-second sound byte or a 45-second TV clip.I've always considered my job, and any newspaper journalist's task, to bring the reader inside the dressing room to talk to Wayne Gretzky after he broke Gordie Howe's scoring record or Mario Lemieux when he retired or the Gimli Glider incident north of Winnipeg.
You just can't get that stuff anywhere else but in what has been a traditional newspaper, and I don't mind saying that of course, I'm biased.
You can't get writers who regularly spend time with such people or covering such events to tell you what it means in a contextual way, or how those people feel. Five hundred words will tell you more than a 45-second clip ever will.
What, we only have 45 seconds of our lives to give to something we're interested in?
You can't get writers who regularly spend time with such people or covering such events to tell you what it means in a contextual way, or how those people feel. Five hundred words will tell you more than a 45-second clip ever will.
What, we only have 45 seconds of our lives to give to something we're interested in?
Anyhow, not trying to lecture. I'm just saying.
Maybe our culture has lost its need for understanding and depth and meaning to things, to learned analysis of what this or that development means in sports or politics or taxation or personalities or whatever.
Maybe all people need is to watch Entertainment Tonight or American Idol or ESPN or TSN Sportsdesks to know all they need to know, or to follow a particular blogger who sits there all day reading what newspapers produce, and then opines.
Hopefully, newspapers and the journalists who work at them -- and I can't begin to tell you how much they care about what they do and are the true pursuers of the news, far beyond the sound bytes and TV clips you hear and read -- can find a way.
Remember what Marshall McLuhan said: the media is the message. The question is, can newspapers evolve into delivering a message that people will want to hear, read and consume.
March 23, 2009
Why Canadians Think SOME Americans are the Dumbest People on Earth
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Comedian+Edmonton+cancelled+over+joke+about+military/1419573/story.html
March 15, 2009
THE TRAILER PARK BOYS STRIKE AGAIN
ONE OF THESE MEN IS INCAPABLE OF CONSUMING LIQUOR.Unable to control his tiny brain while imbibing, prone to pontificating about things he thinks he knows about, slurring his speech...
Basically, unfit to drink.
And why is he leaning in to the picture when he's virtually in the centre of the frame anyway?
March 8, 2009
I dunno, I know I'm hardly blogging at all, I feel so out of touch, but I wonder if it's more that the world isn't out of touch, out of time, out of space, past some sort of equilibrium that seemed to exist before.
So let's analyse this: Bush was among the most despise of U.S presidents, all the hope and future has been put into Barack Obama's hands...and all he's getting is grief from the Refuckin'publicans and even democrazies and media?
Why aren't people writing about how horrid the Bush years were and what an almost impossible task that Obama inherited, and how he cannot possibly be expected to right all of Bush's wrongs in an instant?
Hey, I'm just like everyone else, washing their clothes on a Sunday so they can be clean for Monday and the week ahead. I'm just trying to pay my bills like everyone else. But how can anyone avoid the world's larger problems?
Hey, I've got a giant zit on my right cheek. Is that more important?
I can't believe how the media has abandoned its need for context and is just jumping on what the politicians want it to say. CNN should be ashamed of itself.
Bush and his phoney bunch of cronies are totally responsible for everything that is happening now, this all happened under their watch, and it might be argued with their approval, if not as a result of their economic policies and bent.
Yet Obama is paying the political price.
I can't believe it.
All of the world's current problems are as a result of globalization, free trade, a world economic order that's totally about making money and f*ck whatever other problems result or are ignored as a result.
Anything that's designed to preserve things the way they were or could be or guaranteed jobs and useful things for people to do is called protectionism, and all that is promoted by the big corps that don't care about anything except bottom line.
It's all about doing away with $17 an hour jobs and replacing them with $2 an hour a jobs a half a world away. It's all about whatever is cheapest is best. Before we all know it, we're all going to be Chinese.
That's not a racist sentiment against China. It's a sentiment that we are not Chinese. Variety is the spice of life. What the super corps have decided is they don't care about that, they value the bottom line more than they value us as North Americans.
So let's analyse this: Bush was among the most despise of U.S presidents, all the hope and future has been put into Barack Obama's hands...and all he's getting is grief from the Refuckin'publicans and even democrazies and media?
Why aren't people writing about how horrid the Bush years were and what an almost impossible task that Obama inherited, and how he cannot possibly be expected to right all of Bush's wrongs in an instant?
Hey, I'm just like everyone else, washing their clothes on a Sunday so they can be clean for Monday and the week ahead. I'm just trying to pay my bills like everyone else. But how can anyone avoid the world's larger problems?
Hey, I've got a giant zit on my right cheek. Is that more important?
I can't believe how the media has abandoned its need for context and is just jumping on what the politicians want it to say. CNN should be ashamed of itself.
Bush and his phoney bunch of cronies are totally responsible for everything that is happening now, this all happened under their watch, and it might be argued with their approval, if not as a result of their economic policies and bent.
Yet Obama is paying the political price.
I can't believe it.
All of the world's current problems are as a result of globalization, free trade, a world economic order that's totally about making money and f*ck whatever other problems result or are ignored as a result.
Anything that's designed to preserve things the way they were or could be or guaranteed jobs and useful things for people to do is called protectionism, and all that is promoted by the big corps that don't care about anything except bottom line.
It's all about doing away with $17 an hour jobs and replacing them with $2 an hour a jobs a half a world away. It's all about whatever is cheapest is best. Before we all know it, we're all going to be Chinese.
That's not a racist sentiment against China. It's a sentiment that we are not Chinese. Variety is the spice of life. What the super corps have decided is they don't care about that, they value the bottom line more than they value us as North Americans.
March 1, 2009
Film Crew Invasion
I KNOW I HAVE POSTED BEFORE ABOUT MY SON, EVAN, AND HIS NEW-FOUND LOVE OF ACTING.
He performed as one of the two lead characters in a Charlie Brown school play at Christmas, and he loved it...loved the singing, the bit of dancing, getting into the character.
And for Evan, who's a bit like Charlie Brown himself, that wasn't such a tough challenge.
His ascent in the entertainment world has been incredibly fast, however. Because now he's in the movies. And he and his film crew invaded my apartment for some live takes that were full of laughs.
This collection of four Grade 11's and one Grade 12 are putting together some sort of school film, with the Grade 12 fellow as the director. I gathered they don't have a name for the film yet.
But they walked over with their camera and tripod and microphone and invaded my bedroom and living room and his bedroom for some footage. They were OK with me taking some snaps.
The film seems to be all about a young guy who never cleans up his room and gets into constant trouble with his dad for that (hmmm...sounds a lot like real life).
In the end, though, as far as I can understand, he cleans up his room, gets back in his dad's good books, gets the scholarship he's been waiting for and gets all his privileges restored to him.
During their time here, I had to move to different parts of my apartment to get out of their way. Harumph.
I urged the crew to actually go into Evan's room and see what a mess it was.
They razzed him endlessly and while I'm not sure of this, I think my suggestion caused the director to incorporate that scene into the film.
What I also know is these young guys were laughing like crazy all the way through as they did take after take after seemingly endless take...
Until, finally, they left.
Evan is second from left below and his best friend, Jeremy, is on the far right, foreground. The tallest guy in the back and second from right is Colby, who I coached in basketball with Evan years ago.
It needs to be added that Evan -- who worked until 3 a.m. Saturday morning, started filming at about 9:30 that morning and had to work again last night -- slept in this morning and I just got a call from Jeremy asking where he was.
He performed as one of the two lead characters in a Charlie Brown school play at Christmas, and he loved it...loved the singing, the bit of dancing, getting into the character.
And for Evan, who's a bit like Charlie Brown himself, that wasn't such a tough challenge.His ascent in the entertainment world has been incredibly fast, however. Because now he's in the movies. And he and his film crew invaded my apartment for some live takes that were full of laughs.
This collection of four Grade 11's and one Grade 12 are putting together some sort of school film, with the Grade 12 fellow as the director. I gathered they don't have a name for the film yet.But they walked over with their camera and tripod and microphone and invaded my bedroom and living room and his bedroom for some footage. They were OK with me taking some snaps.
The film seems to be all about a young guy who never cleans up his room and gets into constant trouble with his dad for that (hmmm...sounds a lot like real life).
In the end, though, as far as I can understand, he cleans up his room, gets back in his dad's good books, gets the scholarship he's been waiting for and gets all his privileges restored to him.
During their time here, I had to move to different parts of my apartment to get out of their way. Harumph.
I urged the crew to actually go into Evan's room and see what a mess it was.
They razzed him endlessly and while I'm not sure of this, I think my suggestion caused the director to incorporate that scene into the film.
What I also know is these young guys were laughing like crazy all the way through as they did take after take after seemingly endless take...
Until, finally, they left.
Evan is second from left below and his best friend, Jeremy, is on the far right, foreground. The tallest guy in the back and second from right is Colby, who I coached in basketball with Evan years ago.
It needs to be added that Evan -- who worked until 3 a.m. Saturday morning, started filming at about 9:30 that morning and had to work again last night -- slept in this morning and I just got a call from Jeremy asking where he was.
Doh. Some things never change.
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