Just another reason not to

Just another reason not to buy the Sun.

Stump

I don't feel any more sorry that the people working for CanWest lose their jobs than those who had worked for the 3rd Reich.

This is not a crisis but an opportunity for them to get out. I can't imagine that it feels good to be working for that organization.

It's examples set by our "business leaders"....

....such shwon in this thread that (in part anyway) "encourage" gangs. This example says to kids today that there is nothing permanent anymore, and that you never know if you will be working from one day to the next. So why get on that losing bandwagon in the first place? May as well get into the drug business. It's a little risky, and may not last long for any one individual, but the payoff can be big enough to mean something..........

Quote:I don't feel any more

Well, there's a valid comparison... not.

The The

Thanks for the enlightening info, but I thought BC Mary was being sarcastic.

Seems like she's no Rodney Dangerfield either. lol

That's a joke.

Stump has me Stumped!

Stump sez:

I'm not familiar with nowpublic, but.....

Excuse me, Stump are we both talking about the same Canned Waste? You know the one that had daily coverage of Glen Clark's deck, yet considers the Basi-Virk trial barely worth acknowledging, not worthy of having a reporter in attendance. The same Canned Waste that couldn't hardly wait for the next edition to publish more lurid details about Gordon and Judy (now) Wilson, yet doesn't even bother to mention the current state of King Gordon's domestic/romantic/reproductive life, is that impartial mainstream organ to which you are referring?

He also sez:

I agree that news reporting requires more than just opinions, it requires guess what? It requires actual reporters in the field, another vanishing species, as just inserting press releases into the layout is much more compatible with the bottom line. It also makes it much easier for Pee Wee Harper or the Campbell Crime Family to control and manage the message if they actually supply the copy.

Just telling the crew in Hamilton to paste up whatever comes off the wire from Hollywood is also much cheaper, as it is PR for Britny, Paris and this week's feature movie release. This content has the advantage of being FREE, though actually the people who provide it should have to pay to have it published, just like "real" advertising that doesn't pretend to be "news."

I like BC Mary's "NO TEXT" example above, it reminds me of a Canned Waste article I quoted in full over at the House of Infamy. that reported on a train that hit somebody. Here's the entire article (fair use for educational/critical purpose). From the Province:

News Services
Published: Friday, September 28, 2007

A man was struck by a train and hurled down a three-metre embankment yesterday.

He was taken to hospital with undetermined injuries. RCMP and CN police are investigating.

I don't know about you, but I certainly feel informed now!

kootcoot

He was taken to hospital with undetermined injuries. RCMP and CN police are investigating.

I don't know about you, but I certainly feel informed now!

Perhaps that's all the information they had at the time? Did you want them to make stuff up?

As to Global and its impartiality... there are other media outlets in the world. Don't assume I was speaking specifically or exclusively about that organization.

Are you satifsfied with crap, Stump?

Stump, if you were paying attention you might correlate the lack of REPORTERS to the need to publish articles with zero information or make stuff up. Don't you think even a cub reporter could have investigated enough to find out at least the province or town (though CN nowadays could be running over people in states as well) in which the incident occurred?

If you are representative of the potential audience for newspapers, no wonder Canned Waste feels no need to make much of an effort.

As for:

Most CORPORATE (well maybe all) MEDIA (ie. MSM) serves corporate interests. Let's face it, most corporations, like most people are selfish and most concerned with their own agenda. NBC can't seem to be straight about the war in Iraq, because its corporate master GE and Rayethon have too many defense contracts at risk. The Asper Empire supports politicians who enable media conglomeration.

Corporations have the added advantage of being legally allowed to be sociopathic as they have all of the rights of an individual, but none of the responsibilities, except to their shareholders, which are essentially themselves.

'Train hit by man"

kootcoot points out poor investigative journalism.
News Paper states, Man hit by train. Your correct, what it should have stated was, 'Train hit by man" obviously the train was where it belonged, on its tracks, the man was the only one who could possibly deviate from his course. Yup, you know your journalism Kootcoot.

Not free

Radiohead did not give away their music, they are trying to one-up Prince, who did not give away his latest CD either. Prince made a deal to sell his CD to a London newspaper last summer, which in turn gave away the new Prince CD with the papers sold. Yes, it was "free" to the newspaper buyers, but Prince made more money selling this right to the newspaper than he did in royalties from any of his CDs since Purple Rain -- plus it promoted 19 consecutive concerts in London, which all sold out, and which is where the big money is today for artists. Prince is rolling in the dough from this deal; smart cookie that he is.
So Radiohead offered their music for $1 minimum, plus whatever the buyer wished to donate over the net. Radiohead has not released a breakdown of the results, but since it was done independently of a record label, whatever they got was all theirs, plus it was done to promote a forthcoming Radiohead box set.

TheThe

Thanks for taking time to detail a good response.

If, as I hope and pray, you are a devotee hanging upon my every word (just kiiiddinnnng!), you'll know that I denounce CanWest in its entirety ... frequently, and in detail.

Not journalists (exception: Gary Mason at The Globe and Mail, for his outrageously maudlin pre-judgement of the Basi-Virk trial last Christmas).

I know perfectly well, that the working journalists are under a specific mandate. I've never entirely figured out how that mandate is made clear. I mean, is it an election campaign all the time, in CanWest editorial conferences? Whatever.

A year or two ago, a CanWest editor back-flipped me right out of my socks when I wrote saying "Is it asking too much for a report on yesterday's pre-hearing of the most important trial ever held in B.C.?"

And received a reply from the Editor-in-Chief explaining that, in fact, they had sent a reporter into Supreme Courtroom 54, that the reporter sat through the Basi-Virk BC Rail hearing taking notes, that he returned to the newsroom and conferred with "his editor" who decided that the event was not newsworthy.

Can you believe that? Send a guy out, get his notes, trash the whole idea.

Those two "Fat Paycheques" (to borrow Jan Wong's term) editors didn't seem to see anything wrong with their uncaring actions. What a waste of resources. What contempt for the public.

My beef with CanWest is that they seem completely oblivious to the public's need to know. Worse: I think they deliberately contribute to the lack of awareness as the years roll by.

On the other hand, that horrible Pickton trial has had a whole CanWest section all its own, for months on end.

So I think a bit of focused criticism doesn't go amiss when it's aimed at the whole CanWest empire.

oh yeah? Yeah!

I've been reading your stuff haven't I?

There's your answer.

Satifsfied? (sic)

Daily Vomit

I don't buy either Vanc rag. And the Times-Colonist is even worse. They look for the same dirt about gangs, white racists and transit cheaters. They have the same stories everyday, with only the names changed to posture originality. Mulgrew still sees no evil in court officers, and Palmer only reports corruption in a manner that will be buried in specious denials. Vancouver reporters should be charged with Fraud everytime they call themselves "journalists." They are player pianos in human form. Yech!!!

Save trees: read the internet news sites.

Vibrant newspapers

The Aspers are systematically raping and pillaging the Southam newspapers, stripping away all the extras that readers want and milking the papers for every penny they can. (Picture Scrooge counting his farthings while Bob Cratchit freezes for lack of coal.)

Don't get me wrong: an Internet presence is important as a complementary platform and could enhance profits if done properly. But why should we, the readers, even look at their websites when they treat us with such contempt with their printed products? And why would their websites be any better than their papers?

I wouldn't waste a click of my mouse on their websites -- and I don't know anyone else who would, either. They don't stand a chance of pulling in the numbers of readers on the Internet that they used to have for their printed products.

Sure, we can get most of our national and international news from sites like Yahoo. And it's preferable considering the pathetic quality of the news being put out by CanWest's CNS news service. But there's a lot of stuff we would like to see in newspapers that isn't so easily found on the web, if at all.

Readers buy papers for the extras, not for the news they've heard about the night before on CTV or CBC. It's simple: strip away the goodies, and readers will flee. Duh. It seems the Aspers will have to learn that lesson the hard way -- until they lose financial control of the corporation and it is sold off piecemeal. That day will come, the sooner the better.

Still, one can only hope the ghost of Marley will visit Lenny some night and help him change his ways before it's too late.

No wonder they call him Stump!

Your non-sequitur response indicates that you aren't worth attempting to engage in discussion, though maybe you could find employment as a proof-reader spotting typos. Of course if I thought it would help you UNDERSTAND what you are reading, I would take the time to proof-read my own comments here.

Apparently, you cannot even tell the difference between a newspaper, which we are supposedly discussing here, and my comments on a Tyee thread. Thus, you are satisfied with the mediocrity of the Canned Waste product and don't even see the validity of the criticism myself and
others have stated here, or the relevance of the examples cited. Maybe I should go beyond saying you are satisfied, indeed maybe you think they are great, you certainly stand up for them.

I used to manufacture "stumps" in the woods, and I never ran across an intelligent stump.

o rly?

Actually, if you were paying attention, you'd have figured out I have little or no love for Canwest the corporation. I'm taking you to task for your criticism of the reporters which in my opinion is ill-informed and misplaced.

You clearly have absolutely no idea how a newsroom runs. Your criticism of the content is well-placed. But, putting the blame for sub-standard content solely at the feet of the reporters demonstrates how little you understand about the process of investigative journalism and the amount of support and backing reporters need from their employer to achieve good things in that realm.

You might as well blame the kid pumping gas down at the Esso station for global warming. Unfortunately both problems, (hot air and mediocre reportage) are a little more nuanced.

Blame Canadian Liberalism !

If we're going to continue on the UK comparison, I think it's important to once again blame the Liberal Party of Canada ! :)

Pragmatic, middle of road, "campaign on the left, govern from the right" Liberalism makes it challenging for a variety of editorial viewpoints to flourish in the print media - in fear of been labelled overly biased. As pointed out, the UK doesn't have this problem at all; plenty of editorial "bias"/ diversity makes for plenty of satisfied customers.

Density matters too, I'm in Taiwan right now where there is plenty of choices for your daily newspaper - several with ridiculous yet self evident political biases (even in their English language partner papers). But this is an Island nation a little bigger than Vancouver Island with 23 million people on it.

Is it just me or does it seem that the G&M simply flips a coin when deciding on who to support in a Federal election and THEN writes the pre-election editorial ?

Not entirely untrue

Canadian Liberalism isn't, never has been, liberal.

Many people who like to think it is have been deluded for years about this fact, which you’ve so accurately described, panamajack.

The Liberal party in Canada is a right-wing institution. Always has been and likely always will be.

If Pee Wee does get a majority - and I think he will - and Liberal support across the country falls apart (as I think it is going to) then we are in for very interesting time.

Many naive voters are going to have to decide what (if anything) they actually believe in.

Certainly, more papers of a non-aligned character would be a big help. However, the relevance of print media has been reduced so far and the costs of start-up are now so great that I wonder if there really is much hope. The country is too vast and thinly populated and the shareholders MUST be served.

Tiny places like Taiwan and Britain - where there are many people close together - can and do, work differently.

Stump - Can you Read?

Stump sez:

Do you even read my comments, and if you do, do you actually understand what I'm saying? At no time did I criticize reporters in the least. Indeed I criticized Canned Waste for among other things, DISPENSING with reporters and replacing them with press releases and PR blurbs. Either your reading comprehension skills are poor or you are confusing me with somebody else!

For example from one of my comments above:

A Canadian fifth grader could understand from my comments that I am critical of the Aspers, the management, like Patty Cracker (Patricia Graham) and other editorial staff of the management level such as Lucinda Chodan at the T-C and "Pointy" Kirk La Pointe, managing editor of the Vancouver Stun.

If you are taking issue with my "criticism of the reporters" then you are taking issue with your self created straw man. Are you dense, or just trying to obfuscate and divert genuine discussion?

kootcoot

Perhaps I misunderstood your quote above... it seemed critical of the reporters who work there

If so, I apologize, with the caveat that you seem to be mis-understanding my position as well.

If you want genuine discussion perhaps you could refrain from equating grown-ups with elementary school students?

And this comment:

seems to me to imply that you think the reporters who do work there are deliberately fabricating news.

I put it to you that perhaps your position on the issue was not presented in quite as crystal clear a manner as you have presumed.

How clear can I BE!

ie.

That doesn't imply anything about the REPORTERS who don't exist, or aren't hired in sufficient numbers to ACTUALLY investigate and REPORT. Outfits like Canned Waste find it much more profitable to fire reporters and rely on press releases, of course I already said that.

as to:

I was engaging in word play relating to a current show on GlowBall, another tentacle of Canned Waste. But if the reading comprehension level fits, what can I say?

I would submit that my writing is much clearer to those reading at an adult level than, apparently, yours. But then I'm not trying to obfuscate. However I will admit to engaging in word play, satire and cynical irony, all things that people reading at a certain level tend to grasp. Without a bit of humor, the current state of affairs might require a less civilized response.

or make stuff up.

Stump,

That was your suggestion as an option!

Connect the dots

Stump, your comments about the music industry got me thinking. I come from an entertainment background, and because I was immersed in the industry as the internet became popular, I sometimes forget that my experience was quite a bit different than many people, and I mistakenly assume everyone can easily see the connection. In a nutshell, let me try to more clearly connect the dots.

Around 1991 I started paying serious attention to the internet after I did a show in San Francisco and afterwards a marketing VP of a small tech company came backstage to meet the star, and laid a copy of an "internet development suite (called Chameleon)" on me. At that point Netscape was starting to make serious noise, and this tech person wanted me to take a copy of the suite and figure out if we could apply it to our music business, which at the time was generating mega millions of dollars a year for us.

I said sure, and never looked back. Within a year I was using the suite, plus two other beta experiments to design websites for musicians. I lived in Toronto at the time, but in good old Canada I couldn't get music executives interested because they were all concerned that it would destroy their business model, so I went back to the west coast and worked the LA market building sites for studio musicians who did all the tracks for popular acts of the day.

This freaked Top 10 stars out completely because all of a sudden the talent that toiled away quietly behind the scenes had direct access and could cherry pick the star's roster of fans. It was these players that drove the trend and produced free music for university students to consume.

A short time later my first son entered university, and it took me about one semester to realize that students would jump at the chance to use academic servers to share music, so I launched a company that promoted this heavily throughout North America.

It was about this time, late 90's, that Michael Robertson from MP3.com came on the scene and started exposing the charade that was the current music industry business model. All he did was tell the truth about the industry, and made sure that students at every university in the world knew how it worked.

Students got it immediately and started trading music faster than universities could shut down servers. The RIAA went crazy and started writing anti-copy security code. As fast as they created flimsy padlocks, hackers broke it.

Then the tech bubble burst, but as you know, it had zero impact on students freely trading music online. Once consumers figured out the entertainment model they bulldozed it into the ground.

It was the first time the world realized consumers had real power over corporations.

To recap, it was musicians (like today's journalists), frustrated by how they were treated by their employers, who got the ball rolling.

Can it happen again today respective of the news business?

Watch what happens between now and 2010.

It's completely free ...

Kurt, go to Radiohead.com and follow the prompts to download. When you get to the part where they ask "how much?, insert 0 (zero) and save the file. Extract the ten files and enjoy.

It is completely free if you want it to be ... that's the whole point.

Kurt is Right about the main point

Maurice, Kurt is right in his comment though, in pointing out how little of the proceeds go to the musician under the corporate business model of selling CDs. The Prince example with the London newspaper is an excellent example. As is the Radiohead example, ie. that 100% of a small amount is better than 2% of a larger amount that is so grossly inflated that it insults the consumers(especially when you take into consideration often "cooked" expenses taken out of royalties as advances). Your "in the trenchs" point of view is much appreciated, though, at least by this reader. I'm a musician to0, though I haven't ever participated at a level where we were making millions. I do have friends/colleagues who have or do however.

The recording industry seems to forget that all the old hardware and pressing plants that only they possessed are not necessary anymore. If the industry was paying a large amount of the $10 - $20 price of a CD for the "content" it would be different. Everybody with a burner knows that it doesn't cost that much to "produce" a CD.

The industry went into a freak out when cassette recorders became common. Ironically though, record sales coincided with the ability of consumers to "copy" albums. I guess the main difference between then and now is that the product the Corps were promoting was far superior.

It has always been a battle for the artists to get their fair share of the money from the suits. Nowadays, though, the suits don't have the technological advantage and they certainly don't seem very capable of learning how to change their business model or their attitude.

Fortunately the suits are not very important in the actual creation of music and are becoming less and less relevant to its distribution. The current strikes on Broadway and with the Writer's Guild are just another manifestation of the same re-alignment in the creative arts/entertainment business.

Who was it that sang about 500 channels and nothing on? We may yet get to 1000 channels and nobody cares.

Working Memory

I thank you for taking the time to share that info, but it still seems to me that consumers drove the change. Without them, p2p would have been a better mousetrap in a house without rodents.

wonderful news

The decline of the local press in Canada is welcomed news indeed. Here in Vancouver at any decent news shop you can buy real newspapers written by real journalists who write real articles, and do real primary investigative research, for example the London Economist, the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair etc.

Canada essential has a sycophantic press that underpins the intellectual insecurity of the country the sooner it either dies out or is replaced by the real thing, the better for all concerned.

interpretation wonky

It might be in our interpretation of the word "drive" Stump.

From my experience, indie musicians drove the change while consumers went along for the ride. I suppose I see it like this because for about three years there was a small group of us in North America trying very hard to get the public to catch on to the MP3 thing, which they didn't really understand until Napster came along. Shawn Fanning founded Napster when he recognized that indie musicians were trying to get their music to fans directly and bypass the major labels. Granted, Fanning wasn't trying to help musicians as much as he was himself or consumers, but the end result was the same.

Today, journalists have to jump into the breach and do the same as indie musicians because their employers have zero incentive to do it.

Respective of the NEWS business, we are once again in the position where a small group of internet publishers drive the change, while consumers are still for the most part only along for the ride.

For example, commenting on The Tyee is great, and in some respects it is historical, but until commenters do something with this new tool and the information that supports it, they are not driving anything. Boycott mainstream news and all their advertisers and then you can lay claim to driving the car.

It's dangerous to fool yourself into thinking that the impact The Tyee has respective of the big picture is yet significant. It isn't anywhere near critical mass, although in this era of exponential change it could happen tomorrow, but until we hit that tipping point, the publisher, David Beers is driving the car, not commenters.

The Tyee for the most part is a local publication, although occasionally we see international comments. You have to start somewhere, and local is it, but when you start to think about big fish little pond it comes into context.

All publications like The Tyee need to bridge the gap between local and international if they expect to grow to the next level and truly drive change.

It's the reason the 2010 Olympics movement is in such a precarious position. There is tremendous opportunity to take the local social challenges we have respective of 2010 and turn them into stories the whole world will want to hear. Think local act global is the driving force for my blog, www.OlyBLOG.com because it is a proven concept.

Hopefully none of us is so naive here that we think our Olympic issues are peculiar to Vancouver/Whistler. Too many Vancouverites like to think they are special. We are not. Almost every host region in the free world goes through exactly what we are experiencing, and the reason this happens is because Olympics organizations partner with local mainstream news media to fool the local public. (The Vancouver Sun newspaper, as of last June, is now an official paid Olympic booster.)

Consumers don't drive the change. More accurately, they force it. Independent internet publishers actually do the driving.

Access to music or news - same difference

I agree that Kurt nailed it when he said Radiohead gets to keep all the spoils - although they do have somewhat higher costs formally carried by major labels.

Ease of distribution leveled the field relatively quickly in the music industry and it is doing the same to improve the news business.

Access to music is better today, and access to news will be better tomorrow.

disagreeing

I appreciate your ability to disagree with folks respectfully W.M. I know I could well to emulate that approach more often.

I look forward to p2p news-sharing breaking the mass media stranglehold.

Euro Press

Yes, Robert Fisk, based in Lebanon, writes for The Independent.

British, like European press in general, appears 'better' to we North Americans because, refreshingly, it writes from a nonAmerica-centric perspective. Not familiar with the levels of media monopolization that exist there as compared to here - but the writing one can find there appears fresher, dynamic and more lively, taken out of the usual pro-American, pro-Israel slant we're fed here.

Enjoying everyone's comments regarding this topic - per usual. Extremely disappointing to hear of Canwest's latest move on its local newspaper front. Agree with all who claim it's nothing to mourn or be concerned about as both local rags ceased being respectable papers long ago. This may be absolutely true - however, they are still the only (print) game in town, and perhaps being old school, I do still glance at each daily, if only to attain an iota of local news - doing my best to ignore the Hollywood trash content, the acute Liberal bias and other fluff news reporting (case in point - Feenie spread.) I balance it out by a more careful peruse of The G&M for national/international news and writers like Mark Hume's good reporting on local BC news and listening to the CBC. Other than some remaining good journalists from 80's and 90's - Stephen Hume, Vaughan Palmer..(trying hard to think of others.....) very little remains of these 2 papers of old. And even excellent writers like Stephen Hume have been exceedingly marginalized in their writing topics and output in recent years. Should they disappear, that would spell the death knell for my own continued glancing at these rags.

It's all true - print media in Canada has reached an all time low. It should be criminal if it weren't such an accepted state of affairs.

I even miss The Georgia Straight of old and--god, how I REALLY miss Terminal City, circa early to mid '90s! At least they were some counterpoint to what The Sun and Province would spew out.