Oh, how the times have changed.
My fat ass graced or disgraced the U of G campus for a few semesters back in the early eighties. I made my contribution to campus life by penning a few diatribes for the Ontarion and subsidizing the campus pubs to the best of my ability.
Alas, it seems that was not nearly enough.
According to reports from legit media sources, the Student Union at UG had collective kittens over a Lou Reed tune that has been an anthem among queerish folks for close to fifty years.
Take a walk on the wild side indeed!
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Showing posts with label Ontarion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ontarion. Show all posts
Saturday, May 27, 2017
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Journalism is over
But journalism schools are not. Not yet, anyway.
Sooner or later the young keeners who want to become the next Oriana Fallaci or I.F. Stone will have to face a new reality. There is no place in contemporary journalism for that kind of reportage.
Me and the Farm Manager travelled to Port Elgin today for Pumpkinfest. We go for the cars, not the pumpkins. It costs five bucks to see the pumpkins. The cars are free. It's one of the finest free car shows you'll ever get anywhere.
Thirty years ago I was doing a bit of writing for my college paper, the Ontarion. Interviewed the President of the Ontario Veterinary College for a story. By the time I got home there was a message on my answering machine from his secretary; he'd like to see the story before it came out. As in he'd "like to see" it or else.
Or else what?
He was the top dog at the most prestigious school at U of Goo.
I was a dumbshit undergrad with writerly pretensions.
He wore a Rolex.
I wore a Timex.
Or else what do you think?
Big turn-out of vintage muscle cars today, and also a lot of old pick-ups. My spirits were buoyed by the FM's attraction to a number of fifty's era trucks. I can almost see myself bringing home a mid-fifties hot-rodded F-100 and getting away with it...
Almost.
Nice turn out of sixties and seventies muscle cars; Super Bees, Road Runners, and so forth. What a shame that you can go to your local Subaru dealer and buy a car off the lot that will smoke those "muscle cars" in the quarter mile, never mind what they'll do to you in a corner.
There were a number of big block Chevys on display, including a supercharged Chevelle with wheelie bars. You can go to your local Dodge dealer and order up a four-door Dodge Charger that will leave your supercharged Chevelle with its wheelie bars twenty car-lengths behind in a drag race.
On the way home I stopped at the Korean variety store and picked up my Saturday Globe and Mail for $5.25. Joked with the guy behind the counter about when it might become a six dollar newspaper.
Probably next month, we agreed.
When I related that exchange to the FM, she rejoindered, "journalism is over."
And she's right.
Would Bernstein or Woodward get past their unpaid internship today? Or Seymour Hersh? I doubt it.
Helen Thomas had a great thing going till she ran afoul of the winds of political correctitude.
If those winds are strong enough to silence a veteran journo like her, imagine how they must intimidate some newbie hoping to impress on her unpaid internship.
We've still got a few folks speaking truth to power. Gideon Levy and Robert Fisk come to mind. But by and large the media space is now occupied by complacent and compliant J-school grads who will tweet and blog and Facebook according to their employers expectations.
The Farm Manager was right.
Journalism is over.
Sooner or later the young keeners who want to become the next Oriana Fallaci or I.F. Stone will have to face a new reality. There is no place in contemporary journalism for that kind of reportage.
Me and the Farm Manager travelled to Port Elgin today for Pumpkinfest. We go for the cars, not the pumpkins. It costs five bucks to see the pumpkins. The cars are free. It's one of the finest free car shows you'll ever get anywhere.
Thirty years ago I was doing a bit of writing for my college paper, the Ontarion. Interviewed the President of the Ontario Veterinary College for a story. By the time I got home there was a message on my answering machine from his secretary; he'd like to see the story before it came out. As in he'd "like to see" it or else.
Or else what?
He was the top dog at the most prestigious school at U of Goo.
I was a dumbshit undergrad with writerly pretensions.
He wore a Rolex.
I wore a Timex.
Or else what do you think?
Big turn-out of vintage muscle cars today, and also a lot of old pick-ups. My spirits were buoyed by the FM's attraction to a number of fifty's era trucks. I can almost see myself bringing home a mid-fifties hot-rodded F-100 and getting away with it...
Almost.
Nice turn out of sixties and seventies muscle cars; Super Bees, Road Runners, and so forth. What a shame that you can go to your local Subaru dealer and buy a car off the lot that will smoke those "muscle cars" in the quarter mile, never mind what they'll do to you in a corner.
There were a number of big block Chevys on display, including a supercharged Chevelle with wheelie bars. You can go to your local Dodge dealer and order up a four-door Dodge Charger that will leave your supercharged Chevelle with its wheelie bars twenty car-lengths behind in a drag race.
On the way home I stopped at the Korean variety store and picked up my Saturday Globe and Mail for $5.25. Joked with the guy behind the counter about when it might become a six dollar newspaper.
Probably next month, we agreed.
When I related that exchange to the FM, she rejoindered, "journalism is over."
And she's right.
Would Bernstein or Woodward get past their unpaid internship today? Or Seymour Hersh? I doubt it.
Helen Thomas had a great thing going till she ran afoul of the winds of political correctitude.
If those winds are strong enough to silence a veteran journo like her, imagine how they must intimidate some newbie hoping to impress on her unpaid internship.
We've still got a few folks speaking truth to power. Gideon Levy and Robert Fisk come to mind. But by and large the media space is now occupied by complacent and compliant J-school grads who will tweet and blog and Facebook according to their employers expectations.
The Farm Manager was right.
Journalism is over.
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Journalism is... doomed
I see where Carleton and Ryerson and Postmedia remain major sponsors of the Journalism Is... PR campaign designed to entice gullible youth into a journalism programme.
Wonder how that's working out?
I don't imagine Postmedia will remain a corporate sponsor of this campaign for much longer. Postmedia Networks has sacked more journos in Canada than any other employer over the past few years, so the brazen hypocrisy of their sponsorship is eventually going to contaminate the entire campaign.
Journalism used to be an honourable profession, one that I contemplated committing to at one time. Had a few stories in the Ontarion back in my U of Goo days. It was all fun and games when you're getting high with the Downchild Blues Band, but write something critical about the Big Dogs at the OVC, and all of a sudden "journalism" got downright creepy.
Yup, the Rolex crowd didn't waste any time letting me know what I had to change in my stories.
Oddly enough, the hippy dippy rebels running the Ontarion at the time were more than a little ambivalent about exposing the bullying of those Big Dogs. Truth be told, I pretty much knuckled under too.
So it was with some mixture of nostalgia and bemusement that I read Marsha Lederman's impassioned paean to the profession in today's Globe. Marsha's getting the A2 space these days, so obviously the big dogs at the Globe are on board.
According to Marsha, professional journalism has forestalled many a catastrophe in these times. For instance, it was only the professional journalists at the Toronto Star who short-circuited the second term of mayoral nightmare Rob Ford.
Maybe.
What I recall of that fiasco is that the "professional journalists" were pretty much as cringe-worthy as Fat Ford himself. Ya, on one side you've got this dude with obvious substance abuse problems, and on the other side, the side of virtuous professional journalism, you've got folks buying up videos of Ford's drunken rants to better facilitate the mayor's public shaming.
JournalismIS... that?
I'd like to think not.
Wonder how that's working out?
I don't imagine Postmedia will remain a corporate sponsor of this campaign for much longer. Postmedia Networks has sacked more journos in Canada than any other employer over the past few years, so the brazen hypocrisy of their sponsorship is eventually going to contaminate the entire campaign.
Journalism used to be an honourable profession, one that I contemplated committing to at one time. Had a few stories in the Ontarion back in my U of Goo days. It was all fun and games when you're getting high with the Downchild Blues Band, but write something critical about the Big Dogs at the OVC, and all of a sudden "journalism" got downright creepy.
Yup, the Rolex crowd didn't waste any time letting me know what I had to change in my stories.
Oddly enough, the hippy dippy rebels running the Ontarion at the time were more than a little ambivalent about exposing the bullying of those Big Dogs. Truth be told, I pretty much knuckled under too.
So it was with some mixture of nostalgia and bemusement that I read Marsha Lederman's impassioned paean to the profession in today's Globe. Marsha's getting the A2 space these days, so obviously the big dogs at the Globe are on board.
According to Marsha, professional journalism has forestalled many a catastrophe in these times. For instance, it was only the professional journalists at the Toronto Star who short-circuited the second term of mayoral nightmare Rob Ford.
Maybe.
What I recall of that fiasco is that the "professional journalists" were pretty much as cringe-worthy as Fat Ford himself. Ya, on one side you've got this dude with obvious substance abuse problems, and on the other side, the side of virtuous professional journalism, you've got folks buying up videos of Ford's drunken rants to better facilitate the mayor's public shaming.
JournalismIS... that?
I'd like to think not.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)