Category: Media

Honderich’s hypocrisy

Canadian Politics / Media / PoliticsOne Comment

Loading

In late January, the Toronto Star published a lengthy opinion piece by board chair John Honderich, titled, “We should all be very concerned by the crisis facing quality journalism.” But just in case you thought this was really just about journalism and not a political screed, there’s the telling subhead: “The Trudeau government has either ignored or rejected virtually all the recommendations proposed to help support newspapers. What particularly stings is that the vast majority would not cost taxpayers anything.”* Honderich is the chair of the board of the TorStar corporation. His Wikipedia page says he worked at the Ottawa ……… click below for more ↓

The death of community newspapers

Collingwood / Local history / Media2 Comments

Loading

In 1857 – a year before Collingwood was incorporated as a town – John Hogg launched the Enterprise. The first local newspaper started its presses. In 1870, David Robson launched its first competitor: the Bulletin. In 1881, the Bulletin was sold to William Williams and J.G. Hand. William’s 17-year-old son, David (later a town mayor), joined the paper in 1886. After the Great Depression, citing financial reasons, the two papers merged: The Enterprise-Bulletin was born. It printed its own paper, as well as being a printer for community events, flyers, brochures and even personal publications. In the 1960s, owner Jack ……… click below for more ↓

Kong and his films

Culture / Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Media / Pop Culture4 Comments

Loading

Kong: Skull Island is the 19th movie in my collection about apes.* Or at least ape-ish creatures (not including those about cave people or yetis). We watched the recently-released Kong: Skull Island this past weekend, even devouring all of the special features on the second disc. I give Kong: Skull Island second place in the great ape/Kong pantheon because it’s well done, fun, action-packed, and not nearly as bloated as Peter Jackson’s 2005 epic. Despite some lukewarm or critical reviews, it’s worth watching and collecting if your taste are in any way similar to mine. Films of this ilk are meant ……… click below for more ↓

Cultural appropriation is the new gluten free

Arts / Critical Thinking / Culture / Media / New Age Codswallop / Political fadsLeave a comment

Loading

Like food fads, political fads wax and wane as the gnat-like attention span of their followers gets diverted by the Next Big Thing. Political Correctness has of late given birth to Cultural Appropriation just like the gluten-free food fad gave rise to lectin-free food fad. All such fads are fuelled by the earnest desire of some people to avoid thinking and follow the crowd over the intellectual cliff. They’re not about analysis, research, and objectivity: they’re about being on the Latest Thing bandwagon. All fads teeter on a basic misapprehension; sometimes it’s a fabrication, other times a misunderstanding, and other ……… click below for more ↓

Tough Times for Print Media

Culture / Media / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Loading

It’s not like the halcyon days when I first started writing for newspapers, back in late 1969. Today, print media is struggling to survive in a world dominated by digital media and mega-corps owners (although not so hard it can’t pay its CEOs and executives several million dollars while they slash real jobs).* Print media has long been losing its advertising share, a trend exacerbated by the internet. Newspapers now have about 11% share, compared to about 35% for the internet, according to a Globe and Mail story. A Pew Research study in 2015 showed newspaper advertising in the USA dropped 4% ……… click below for more ↓

The News: A User’s Manual

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Media / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Loading

Alain de Botton attempts in his small book to give us a guide, to provide some larger, meaningful context, to the news we get 24/7 these days. I don’t think he succeeds very well. In part it’s because he sees news as something grandiose, world-moving, world-shaking. I’m more familiar with the local aspect; a much smaller scale. It may not appear to have the majestic sweep of international news, but it isn’t any less relevant. We are focused, collectively, on the US presidential campaigns and the interpersonal battles between Trump and Clinton. It’s a great drama of Homeric or Shakespearean proportion (albeit ……… click below for more ↓

Amateur layout and bad ads. Again.

Collingwood / Ethics and behaviour / Fonts & Layout / Media / Publicity & Communications / Social Order & Disorder / TypographyOne Comment

Loading

I see the Town of Collingwood is still letting the EB layout its full page of ads in the paper.  Tragic. Embarrassing. Cringe-worthy. The latest back page mashup has as its first ad the worst of the worst sort of ad layout, the sort only amateurs would create. It’s too wide for any human being to comfortably and efficiently read. Then there’s the second page with its fat partner in layout crime. It’s embarrassing for a municipality to be thus represented. The only saving grace is that no one reads the EB any more, so not very many people see how bad it ……… click below for more ↓

Where Have all the Readers Gone?

Books & Reviews / Culture / E-books & E-readers / Literature / Media / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Loading

No, it’s not a remake of Pete Seeger’s famous 1955 anti-war song. That’s the title of an article that appeared in the Globe and Mail this week, by Peter Denton, lamenting our overall slide into image-based information with the “…intellectual attention span of squirrels…” * It grabbed my attention from the headline, but I stand at odds over his conclusions and his figures. Denton worries that people are reading less and sliding towards “personal illiteracy”: It’s not that e-books are taking over, either. People hardly buy books any more. Even fewer read them. My e-book sales are almost non-existent and ……… click below for more ↓

Lessons from the paper

Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Media / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications4 Comments

Loading

There’s a story on page B2 of the January 1 Enterprise Bulletin (not online yet*) that offers us three lessons. Two lessons on how the local media fails us, one on cringe-worthy political ineptitude. Those lessons are: How far the credibility of the paper has fallen; How little respect there is for real reporting and investigative journalism in the local media; How pusillanimous and dysfunctional council has become. Let’s start with number one. The article on page B2 is headlined “Business centre strategic board takes flight.” Now you might think you were reading a light piece about the development of the Clearview Aviation Business ……… click below for more ↓

The Gauche in the Machine

Advertising / Collingwood / Council / Marketing / Media / Public relations / Publicity & Communications5 Comments

Loading

Rudibus ex machina: criticizing Collingwood’s latest newsletter feels a bit like punching a puppy. Or commenting on the sloppy grammar of local bloggers. Both are far too easy, like catching fish in a barrel, and I feel guilty when I even think of doing it. But since your tax dollars are at work, it needs to be done. Someone needs to stand up and say this is not the standard  we expect from a $55 million-a-year corporation. This might be a good runner-up in a high school contest, but it is not a professional product appropriate for municipal communications.* This ……… click below for more ↓

Where Have The Real Heroes Gone?

Language & Grammar / Media / Words & etymologyLeave a comment

Loading

Heroes, it sometimes seems, have been relegated to legend and myth. There are none left, none of the sort I used to associate with the name. Not in the media, anyway. The word has been so abused in the media over the last century, tossed about in such a cavalier manner that it has lost its former credit; it has become debased language, its pith cored for showy effect, like glitter, like so many over-used superlatives have been. Its strength drained away. Calling someone a hero today has the same punch as a teacher saying a child “lives up to his ……… click below for more ↓

Happy Talk

Culture / Language & Grammar / MediaOne Comment

Loading

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWjNlBko70] A recent study proved an old notion – the Pollyanna Hypothesis – that there is a “universal human tendency to ‘look on and talk about the bright side of life’” according to a team of scientists at the University of Vermont. The story was reported on Science Daily recently. Reading through newspapers, magazines, websites, music lyrics and movie titles in ten languages, the researchers concluded that “probably all human language skews toward the use of happy words.” That struck me as counter-intuitive. Maybe it’s just my own experience with local media and bloggers, but I would have thought they’d find more negativity, especially ……… click below for more ↓

Back to Top