Gonzo hypocrisy; zero journalism

The crap that's showing up on CBC of late is beyond fake news, beyond ridiculous, and beyond even a caricature of actual "news." Here's what I believe lies at the root of the problem. As an occupation, the journalism profession has been shrinking for decades. Since the 1980s something like three-quarters of all mainstream journo jobs have disappeared, the kind of jobs with real salaries, benefits, and career paths. While the jobs disappeared, university journalism programs kept pumping out fresh grads - into a zero jobs economy. That's where the government decided taxing Google and Meta would raise the money required to provide at least temp employment to all these budding journalists. And here we are. A news environment dominated entirely by press releases from activist groups, think tanks, corporations, and govt spokepersons. Where's the "journalism?" Whatever happened to "afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted?" Whatever happened to "speaking truth to power?" I'll tell you what happened. When you come out of Carleton or TMU or any of the others with that shiny new degree, or, God forbid, even a Masters and $100k in student loans, what are you gonna do in that bullshit fake job? Speak truth to power? No way! You'll do everything you can to get a pat on the head and get noticed by power, because the only possible hope you have of ever paying down your student loans and having a life is if you get into a rare paying slot at the Globe or the CBC, and "truth to power" ain't gonna take you very far up that road!

Urban Outfitters offers employees opportunity to work for free!

Hey, you don't get a chance to do that everyday!

Well, actually lots of folks do. The publishing industry and the advertising biz are chock full of unpaid interns. Then there's the 70% of university faculty known as "adjunct professors" who are working for something right next to free.

So I guess Urban Outfitters isn't exactly tilling virgin soil here.

But, I suspect it's gonna work out swell for them. Lots of employees will be keen to show their commitment to the organization. After all, who can be against "team building?"

Only somebody just begging to be "outsourced," that's who...

This is more or less the other bookend for those folks who proclaim that raising the minimum wage would hurt poor people.

Be a team-builder; work for free!

Those black folks on the plantations weren't slaves; they were team-builders!

71 year old hottie rapes paramedic in ambulance

Memo to unpaid interns at PostMedia; don't be wishy-washy with your headlines. That "sex with elderly woman" stuff isn't going to get you on the payroll.

On the other hand, if you spin this story just a bit, you'll get the headline featured above. That's going to generate some page views, my dear working-for-free friends!

And especially when you're working for a bankrupt entity like PostMedia, those page views will make all the difference between getting a paycheck, or not.

Pot-addled blogger beats Postmedia to Savile-Ghomeshi parallels by two weeks

Which is quite an achievement, considering the story is barely two weeks old!

The unpaid interns at Postmedia have this story floating around today. There are parallels between the Jimmy and Jian stories? Forsooth! Who knew?

The unpaid interns at Falling Downs had it nailed two weeks ago, that's who.

Tossing the baby out with the bathwater; Ontario cracks down on internships

Have to admit that the think tank here at Falling Downs has been whining as long and as hard as anybody about the injustice of unpaid internships.

And an unpaid internship is an injustice. As a matter of principle, anybody who works for somebody else should be paid for their work.

That said, the practice of unpaid internships seemed to be sailing along nicely, well under the radar, until the inevitable happened; one or two idiots wrecked it for everybody.

While there may be something to be said for Steven Spielberg taking on a few unpaid interns etc, it was only a matter of time before opportunistic money-grubbers took advantage of things. Suddenly you had major league hospitality chains offering "internships" to clean cutlery and bus tables.

Isadore Sharp's Four Seasons chain even got in on the action!

So the folks who offered genuine opportunities, in film and publishing and advertising and so forth, got caught in the backlash when the luxury hotels and the big restaurant chains started offering "internships" for folks who might be wanting a chance to make a career in cleaning hotel rooms or bussing tables.

Looks like a case of an over-eager bureaucracy using the proverbial hammer to swat a fly.

Socialist union threatens job opportunities for new graduates

Don't let that "Association" bit in their name fool you; the Canadian Intern Association is a "union" plain and simple.

And what does this union have its knickers in a twist over? Why, the time-honoured practice of giving recent graduates a chance to work!

Yes, many generous and community-minded conglomerates across the land give recent graduates the opportunity to gain some work experience by hiring them as interns. Interns are unproven products of a highly suspect education system, and the internship experience is a valuable tool in separating the wheat from the chaff so to speak.

That's true for both the intern and the employer. After a year or two working in an unpaid internship, an aspiring journalist may conclude that working for this or that particular media conglomerate isn't everything it's cracked up to be. They are then free to go on their way with a reference and some valuable work experience on their CV.

That reference and that work experience can go a long way in beating out all the other candidates for the next unpaid internship.

Likewise, if you're a financially shaky media conglomerate struggling to pay off those bondholders who restructured you a few years ago, those unpaid interns are a blessing from the heavens! They get a reference, you get free labour for a year or two.

That's called a win-win in my world!

But as always, no sooner has the free market created a beautiful and efficient job distribution mechanism that truly works, than the whining socialist party-poopers are banding together trying to wreck it!

One can only hope that the Harperites collectively stop their ears and ignore the bleatings of these socialists.

Why "destination dining" won't lift your stagnant local economy

In his recent brain-wave on bold economic initiatives, ATB senior economist Todd Hirsch posits that struggling local economies should entice celebrity chefs to open restaurants in their communities, to take advantage of the burgeoning new phenomenon of "destination dining."

This is a subset of culinary tourism discovered, or made up by Hirsch, wherein people of means fly to wherever to try out the latest offerings of a celebrity chef.

The reality is that the more famous the celebrity chef, the more likely it is that a goodly percentage of his employees are being severely screwed over. Read up on this lawsuit brought against uber-celeb chef Gordon Ramsey.

At least those folks were being paid something. Here's a peek into the kitchen of famous NYC pizza joint Roberta's. The writer apparently has no clue why anyone would object to working for nothing;

 Plenty of two-, three-, and four-star restaurant kitchens routinely take on volunteer labor, sometimes dozens of aspiring cooks at a time, to the point where there's a fair chance that a few of those behind the line, cooking your dinner, aren't actually on the books.

So Mr. Celebrity Chef comes to town, hires dozens of aspiring cooks to work for free, and this helps the local economy how?

Come on Hirsch, enough with the nonsense!

Postmedia Networks and the forty foot pole

Back in 2010, when the late Izzy Asper's media empire was in its death throes, a wake of bond vultures got busy buying up Canwest debt at peanuts on the dollar. They installed seasoned political operative Paul Godfrey as their titular figurehead and before you knew it, Canada was rocking a brand spanking new media conglomerate under the PostMedia banner.

As an investment by the vultures, the new entity has thus far honoured at face value the obligations the vultures bought up for peanuts. As a newspaper chain, it has the most readership of any media conglomerate in Canada. As a viable investment for regular folks it's been dead in the water and circling the drain since the get-go.

That's why the news that somebody paid real money, albeit not a lot of it, for almost 20% of the company left me flabbergasted. Everything at the former Canwest that can be stripped, looted, or outsourced has been, ages ago. They're an industry leader in the exploitation of unpaid interns. Their real estate is long gone in sale-leasebacks. What's the attraction? There is no possible upside by standard investment metrics.

But I think I've got it figured out.

The 11 millions Ed Mule paid for his 20% share of Postmedia is pocket change. It got him a coast to coast newspaper network with big schlep in Ottawa and some of the provincial capitals. This isn't a financial investment; it's an investment in a bully pulpit.

If you want to guide Canadian public opinion to happy thoughts about trade agreements, pipelines, tar sludge, Iran... whatever, what better way to do it than with the nation's biggest newspaper network?

As a potential profit centre, Mule has vastly overpaid for his slice of Postmedia.

As a PR platform he practically got it for nothing.

Talking to Uncle Sid

First of all, Sid ain't my uncle.

I don't think, technically speaking, he's even an "uncle" to the Farm Manager. Maybe a second cousin once removed or something.

Anyway, I ran into Sid at the family get-together about a month back.

Usually I only run into Sid at family funerals.

So I grabbed Sid's hand for a good old farm-style handshake, "hey good to see ya Sid... I only see you at funerals!"

I should mention that Sid is 87 years old. Still goes to his office at his law practice every day. Still got all his marbles, and they're all rolling in the right direction.

I think he does real estate law mostly. You can probably do that till you're 150. After all, what can go wrong? The title searchers do the title search. The lien checkers check for liens. The legal secretaries and assorted unpaid interns do the rest.

When all those folks have done all your work, you give it the stamp of approval and off you go!

Now that's just a general rant about real estate lawyers. I don't mean for a moment to suggest that's how Sid rolls.

But Sid is one savvy dude. When I mentioned about only seeing him at family funerals he rejoinders, without a moment of hesitation, "ya I know! Everybody I know is dead!"

What a great guy to have a beer with!

Here's to ya, Sid!