Saturday, March 14, 2009

PAPERS DOWN. AND IN THEIR PLACE...?


The list of disappearing newspapers is becoming encyclopedic.

Halifax Daily News

San Fransisco Chronicle

Seattle P.I.

Rocky Mountain News

Christian Science Monitor

The L.A. Times and the Chicago Sun Times have filed for bankruptcy.

Lay-offs in all media, but especially daily print, are daily, commonplace and heartbreaking.

What does this mean for you and me?

Much. A great deal.

It means that there are far fewer reporters and real journalists who can dig deep in those stories that need public exposure.

I am not a reporter. Never have been.

I'm a columnist, an observer, a talk show host. I see the passing parade and hiss or applaud. My role is to express my reaction to the world and get you and me engaged in a dialogue about the issues.

I do not hang about City Hall, poking in all the dusty corners.

Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people who do exactly that and who enjoy doing that and who are darned good at that can find work.

This means that you and I are increasingly less informed. The "official story" becomes increasingly unchallenged.

Which means that you and I are swallowing more and more horse swill as the days pass.

The Globe & Mail has written a marvelous several-page piece that asks the question:

Is democracy written in disappearing ink?

The other night I was standing in the many wrap-around windows of an apartment in downtown Vancouver. I found myself focusing on the beautiful old Sun Tower building on West Pender, and, behind it, the current Vancouver Sun building at the foot of Granville Street.

I had the same reaction that I had last year when I was in the advertising offices of the Sun, on the umpteentieth floor in the sky.

"Don't they know this is going the way of the dodo bird? Shouldn't they all be looking for other work?"

The Globe article studies in detail the inroads of the Internet and the erosion of the city newspaper financial model. But it also pints out starkly the unique role of the city daily print edition -

informing the public, animating civic culture and holding government accountable?


Blog Land is full of trenchant opinions (and pure, unadulterated idiocy), but opinions have to begin with facts and information.

So far, very few on-line papers or zines have been able to match the city daily.

Almost none have become crucial partners in the city's culture, sponsoring health and arts and sports and cultural events.

I have no idea what the coming years will bring us.

But let's be honest.

98% of the blogosphere is as productive and interesting as all those millions of teenage girls on their cells saying over and over again, "So, I'm like...and my mom's like...and I'm like..."

HOLD THAT THOUGHT - I'M AT THE OLYMPICS


The criminal justice system will be on hold for 10 weeks before, during and after the Gordon Games.

RCMP and other police will be too busy on security assignments to testify in local courts.

This peculiar news raises another other questions.

Will policing in general be "on hold" at the same time?

Does this make the calendar period from January 15 to March 26, 2010 a great time to commit murder, robbery, rape and other public mayhem?

The other day we pointed out in this space (DISRUPTION) the disturbing and undemocratic power now given to VANOC.

This is what I wrote:

"VANOC is now apparently the highest form of government in the land, unelected though it may be. VANOC can close streets, re-route traffic hire or buy buses by the freight load and do just about any darn thing it wants to in order to make its famous Games work."

How little I knew in the dark days of Thursday.

Now we learn that VANOC can close the court system (such as it is) and throw a major bone to all the scofflaws of the earth.

COME TO VANCOUVER IN 2010 AND ROB, & KILL. THE COPS ARE BUSY. THE COURTS ARE CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS.

(By the way, I suddenly remember that when I posted "DISRUPTION" on Thursday a guy from a local ad agency sent me an email.

This what he said.

"Dickhead!"

That kept me laughing all day.

Imagine a guy in an ad agency, whose entire life and source of income are supposed to be creativity. His family spends that fortune to send him to Quick Quip School, where he graduates with Honors, especially in the Fast Comeback category.

And what he comes up with when he disapproves of something is "Dickhead!"

Sharp, buddy.

I'm intuiting that what he didn't like was my slagging the Games. I realize that it is practically a criminal offense in this part of the gulag these days to not be in full cheerleader mufti, pom-poms afurled.

"Dickhead!" The man's a genius. No doubt the agency's Creative Director. Don't you want this guy lading the next new client pitch.)

What VANOC can also do is make it against the law for you to protest, no matter how humbly, the riotous financial and social costs of the these Gord games.

I've been thinking about standing at the corner of Georgia & Granville at noon - just before I leave for Melbourne, of course - with a placard that says,

"SO I DON'T WELCOME THE GAMES. SO ARREST ME ALREADY."

Does any one in the room remember voting for VANOC in any public election of any kind?

This has become the greatest example of taxation without representation that I can recall.

Shut down the streets, shut down the police, shut down the courts, shut down mom-&-pop businesses. Close the schools.

THE MIDDLE EAST IN A NUT SHELL


Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said yesterday, "We will never recognize Israel."

That is all you need to know.

D.K.