It was Superman’s day job—when he wasn’t foiling villainous plots to divert the sun or otherwise pervert the natural universe, Superman would don a pair of spectacles (for which he took a not inconsiderable amount of ribbing) and sit out town council meetings. This was done in the hopes of getting the inside scoop on the zoning bylaws facing commercial properties adjacent to county-run parking lots in Metropolis’ downtown core. Many have followed this noble path—not running around in pyjamas (except to fetch the morning paper when the family dog couldn’t)—but journalism. The legendary, straight-talking Edward R. Murrow made a war-time generation equate a ...
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Just as Reader’s Digest announces that its US operations will be filing for bankruptcy, the British newspaper The Independent has a fascinating story about one magazine owner who seems to be getting it right in this cyber-crazy world. The venerable magazine—which I loved to read when I was about 10 or 11—insists that employees and its various media products won’t be badly affected by the plan aimed at restructuring its debt. But it is just the latest in a series of print media to run into very stormy seas lately, so the success of Monocle and Wallpaper* is that much more surprising—and encouraging. Winnipeg-born ...
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It's always strange to be away from your usual media sources for a few days, and then to come home and catch up. It's even stranger to find that what has been reported corresponds very little to what you've been experiencing. That's what I feel this morning, having just arrived back home from the New Democratic Party convention in Halifax. The headlines in The Globe and Mail and Le Devoir today both suggest that some how delegates were robbed of the chance to discuss a name change for the party, specifically dropping the "New." An oxymoron, supposedly. Not in keeping with the idea that ...
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Oh, no! The Times made a mistake? Since when does that ever happen? I find it so aggravating when writers rush. I know, that in real journalism, a story could be due anywhere from one day to two weeks from the time it is assigned, but I suppose because I am such a stickler for proof-reading--when it really counts, anyway--I am aggravated someone on a professional level would not. I just cannot bring myself to rush something. And there is the little fact stories still have to come through some editor of some sort, eventually. What happened to that? I blame more than just ...
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This morning I had intended to draw your attention to a scary piece in The New Yorker of May 25 by Elizabeth Kolbert , “The Sixth Extinction,” but a CBC radio program about the crisis in journalism these days intervened. The Kolbert story—which suggests strongly that humans are the cause of what may become the sixth massive extinction of life forms on earth—as well as a recent article on costs in US health care by Atul Gawande , “The Cost Conundrum,” are the very best sort of intelligent investigative journalism. In both cases, the writers must have spent months on the stories, building on ...
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