News That Gladdens My Heart

Despite its oft-proclaimed demised, print journalism seems to be alive and well, at least in the GTA. As reported in today's edition, The Toronto Star is enjoying record readership:

The Toronto Star retains its title as the most-read newspaper in the Greater Toronto Area, with more than 1 million readers a day, according to the latest survey by the Newspaper Audience Databank, known as NADbank.

The Star’s weekday readership stands at 1,005,300 in the Greater Toronto Area. That is an increase of 4.1 per cent from the same period a year ago, the NADbank 2011/12 Mid-Year Study shows.

The survey also shows that combined print and online readership of the Star in the GTA stands at 2.3 million adults. That’s up 0.8 per cent from a year earlier.

This is especially good news, as it is without doubt an affirmation of the public's appetite for quality journalism, journalism that combines a social mission (The Atkinson Principles) with excellent writing, investigative journalism that results in societal improvement, and real integrity.

Unlike The Globe and Mail, now collapsing under the weight of inept management, a plagiarism scandal, and a narrow political agenda, The Star continues to make its way in the world with the intention of improving it, amply demonstrating that it can inform, entertain, and better our world without resorting to sanctimonious self-promotion, posturing, or propaganda.

It is one of the reasons I look forward to getting up each day.

Words Fail Me

This, from our enlightened cousins to the south.

H/t Let Freedom Rain

Social Media and Margaret Wente

About two years ago, I wrote a blog post explaining why we cancelled our subscription to The Globe and Mail. At the same time, I sent an email with a link to the post to Globe editor-in-chief John Stackhouse, suggesting that if he wanted to know why he had lost a long-term subscriber, he should read my post.

Later that evening, I received a response from Stackhouse which I have never discussed in this blog, simply because I regarded it as private communication. While I am not prepared to reveal the content of the letter, I will tell you his closing observation, which was something along the lines of, "You seem to prefer the smaller world of the blogosphere. Sad."

Well, it would seem that the world of bloggers is not so small after all, given it was Medi Culpa's analysis of Margaret Wente's plagiarism that has created something of a firestorm within the world of journalism, shaking to its foundations the once proud Globe. In his column today, The Star's Tim Harper addresses the role it plays in journalists' lives, and how it forces everyone to be very careful in how they write.

Of additional interest is a brief profile of Professor Carol Wainio, the blogger behind Media Culpa.

Oh, and Torontoist has some thoughts worth perusal as well.

Linda McQuaig on Neo-Conservative Contempt

There are some columnists whose work I am loathe to miss. For example, over at the Globe, unlike some people I could name, Lawrence Martin writes with precision and integrity, never failing to take to task the endless abuses heaped upon the electorate by the Harper regime.

At the Star, amongst many others, there is Linda McQuaig's monthly reminder of the injustices of a system that exploits the poor and enriches the elite. In her latest piece, entitled Mitt Romney blurts out the truth about neo-conservatism, McQuaig lacerates the self-serving practices and rhetoric of the hugely-entitled while discussing how traditional conservatism has been supplanted over the past 30 years, borrowing an insight from John Kenneth Galbraith when he described this “modern” conservative as engaged in “the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

Although using Mitt Romney's recent gaffe revealing his contempt for about half of America's citizens, she also asserts,

Modern conservatism — or neo-conservatism — has infected Canada too, coming to fruition under the Harper majority government, which has intervened aggressively on the side of corporations against working people, and dismantled vital environmental protections in order to enrich energy mega-corporations.

Thought-provoking material from a writer always worth reading.

Promoting Hatred In NYC Subways

It is hard to believe that a people that have been so dehumanized, disparaged and persecuted throughout much of history should think that this is acceptable.

'I Am Not A Crook'

In words eerily echoing Richard Nixon's famous "I'm not a crook" declaration, Globe and Mail plagiarist Margaret Wente truculently writes the following in her still extant column:

I’m far from perfect. I make mistakes. But I’m not a serial plagiarist. What I often am is a target for people who don’t like what I write.

With Wente's dishonesty being aided and abetted by an editor-in-chief who has lost his way and regards the situation as "a private matter between employer and employee," the entire debacle amply demonstrates how far Canada's 'newspaper of record' has declined since John Stackhouse assumed the top position.

A Celebration of Literacy

Despite its rather lengthy history, yesterday was the first time my wife and I attended Toronto's Word On the Street, a celebration of books, literacy, and the dispelling of ignorance. As a retired English teacher and keen observer of the political machinations that envelop our society, it was very heartening to see so many thousands of people, many families with their children in tow, recognizing the crucial role that reading plays in a balanced and productive life.

This morning's Star reports the following:

Amidst the myriad of folks of all ages swarming Queen’s Park Circle for the Word on the Street Festival are parents like Stephen and Tara Palmer.

For them, it’s vital that twins, Tristan and Jacqueline, 4, develop a lifelong love of reading as early as possible.

“I think to be successful later in life in the field they choose to be in, (our kids) are going to need those skills. They’re going to need those skills to be basically happy people in society, to be well-rounded and to be able to think for themselves. The only thing you really own in this life is your mind,” said Stephen Palmer, 39, of Scarborough.

A profound observation: The only thing you really own in this life is your mind. When you think about it, that observation cuts through all of the propaganda we receive on a daily basis about the keys to fulfillment lying in the next purchase, be it the newest IPhone, the newest car, or the biggest house. Indeed, if we really can think for ourselves, we will inevitably conclude that constant growth and expansion through consumerism really is unsustainable.

And that was certainly the message of two of the 'rock stars' of ScotiaBank's Giller Prize speakers' series yesterday at the festival. On a tour together, Canadian icon and renowned scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki, and Jeff Rubin, the economist who has now written two books projecting our future as our energy costs rise, both agree that 'smaller' is an inevitable part of what awaits us.

Listening to these two men, and the intelligent questions that ensued after their presentations, made me realize even more acutely how blinkered and Manichean the Harper regime's outlook is. While regarding people like Suuzki as the enemy of the economy, the regime ignores the fact, as he pointed out, that a healthy biosphere is essential to a healthy economy, and that the two are really part of the same equation. For his part Rubin allowed that he would not expand the development of the tarsands until Canada had extracted much more of its value by refining the bitumen in Canada instead of exporting it away to be done in the U.S., thereby denying the creation of good jobs here.

Both men said much more, but I came away from the festival, having listened to other speakers as well, with the renewed conviction that an informed and literate electorate is the only real weapon against those who would further enslave us through our collective ignorance.