Son One and I listened to the Toronto Star’s John Honderich on Metro Morning this morning.  He was on to provide the company’s spin on letting go a whole bunch of employees and cutting back at Canada’s biggest newspaper.

Two things.

First: and Son One said it best, as he listened to Honderich say that a paywall was a good idea, because the New York Times had had success with a paywall. “But you’re not the New York Times,” said Son One.  That said it all, I think.  Smart kid.

Two: the media – and others in the business of selling content, in the way that media does – DID THIS TO THEMSELVES.

The example I like to use is compact discs.  Remember when the music industry introduced them, more than three decades ago?  The industry claimed that digitization was the way of the future, and that the public wouldn’t mind re-buying all the music they already owned, in the form of vinyl or tapes.  That was a lie, of course.  It was just another grubby money grab.  Everyone knew it, too.

The music industry’s cynical ploy – their greed – ultimately was the thing that destroyed them.  By pushing a medium that promoted digitized content, they had handed the keys to the vault to citizens.  Enter Napster and the like, who figured out how take digitized content, and shop it around this cool new digital medium called “the Internet.”  R.I.P., music industry.

I have never illegally downloaded music – not ever.  Not once.  For me, it’s an ideological position: I’m a (bad) musician, and I fervently believe unauthorized downloads hurt most the kinds of bands I love, guys like the ones I saw last night at the Horseshoe.

But there was schadenfreude to what the music biz did to itself, of course.  And I had, and have, no sympathy for the corporate geniuses who slit their own throats with the digital money-grab.  They were greedy, and they richly deserved what they got.

The news media’s self-immolation was different, but the result has been the same.  When the opportunity came along to digitize content, they seized on it with glee.  Except – unlike the music industry mavens – they gave their content away.  They made it free.

The Internet was designed to be free, of course.  So the news media deserve credit for how they sort-of embraced that, at the start.  But they deserve no credit at all for never figuring out how to make money off the Internet.

After years of watching themselves bleed all over the floor, they have now decided (mixed metaphor alert!) to shut the barn door long after the horses – and the cows, and the sheep, and any farm animal that moves – have left.  They’re gone, baby, gone.

IT’S TOO LATE.  IT’S OVER. YOU ARE DEAD, LIKE DINOSAURS, YOU JUST DON’T KNOW IT YET.

Digitization changed the world.  It gave birth to amazing new things. It has also killed off some things.

They’re not coming back.

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Seein’ ’em late tonight at the ‘Shoe, with Teenage Bottlerocket.  Ramonesy pop-punk perfection.

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There are no bylines in the Toronto Star’s print edition today.  Journalists there have pulled their bylines, as their collective agreement permits, to protest cuts and layoffs earlier this week.

You can debate whether it is an effective tactic or not.  Personally, I mourn for the loss of every newspaper and every newspaper job.  Our democracy is diminished by the slow death of newspapers – which, whether I like it or not, is fully underway.

The byline strike got me thinking existentially, however.  It reminded me of something that happens to me – and perhaps to you – all the time.

It’s the disappearing of journalists.  For years, you see them on TV, hear them on the radio, read them in newspapers.  And then, one day, they are abruptly gone.  Firings, layoffs, health, retirements, whatever.  Whatever the reason, they’re gone.

And here’s the thing: I forget about them.  People who had been so important to me, every day and for a long time, simply get forgotten.  They disappear, and I don’t notice.  Occasionally, something happens and I am fleetingly jarred into remembering them, and their writing.  But, most of the time, I don’t remember anything at all.

With the exception of a few voices who I will always recall – Jay Scott, Dalton Camp, Peter Gzowski, Lester Bangs, a small number of others – I actually don’t remember most of them when they disappear.  I just don’t.

This, I think, says more about me than the forgotten.  Maybe it says something, too, about how transitory journalism really is.  One minute you’re a big deal, the next minute you don’t exist.

So, selfishly, I ask: when I one day shut down this web site – and I will, I will – will most of you remember it?

I doubt it.

 

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I’ve thought Ontario has been heading towards one all along. Now my Sun colleague Chris Blizzard is prognosticating the same thing, albeit for different reaons.

Bonus: you also get to read about groundhogs being hung by their testicles!

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We were there.

Is it worth taking in?  I’d say yes.  Now, as Olivia herself said: “It’s just a movie,” but it was a pretty good one.

“They took some artistic licence,” she added.  “Jack and I didn’t kiss that much.”  That got a few laughs.

Anyway, it’s worth seeing.  It tells the story of one of the most remarkable election campaigns in anyone’s memory – and it tells the story about a pretty remarkable fellow, too.

(Oh, and we were invited.)

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Free speech is terrific, of course, as long as it’s being exercised in the abstract, or it doesn’t adversely affect you and yours.
That’s why – if you were gay, or a woman, or even just sane – and you came across Bill Whatcott stuffing one of his filth flyers in your mailbox, you could be forgiven for wanting to punch him out.

I know I would. In fact, if I had caught Whatcott trespassing on my property, dropping off one of his propaganda pieces containing graphic images of dismembered fetuses – or one of the ones showing close-ups of the diseases he falsely claimed you get from being gay – I would have been tempted to rip him a new, well, you know. (He seems to be preoccupied with those orifices, like most gay-haters.)

But, being Canadians, none of us are known to have put Whatcott in a hospital for spewing hate. Instead, we’ve arrested him in Saskatchewan (six times) and Ontario (20 times) while the Americans have once. We’ve put him in jail for awhile, too, for causing trouble around a Toronto abortion clinic.

Last week, however, Whatcott hit the big time. In 2005, you see, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal fined Whatcott $17,500 for dropping his gay-hating pamphlets in people’s mailboxes.

In 2010, the province’s Court of Appeal overturned that decision, saying that spreading lies about gays “must always be open to public debate.”

Really? Well, no, said the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, which took the Court of Appeal decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. They were joined in their action by various provincial attorney generals, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the United Church and B’nai Brith – more interveners, in fact, than in any other case in the country’s history.

Whatcott was a pathetic loser, a loathsome jerk. But his case attracted a huge amount of attention because many sensible people feared that if the high court struck down Saskatchewan’s Human Rights Code, every other provincial prohibition against hate would soon fall, too. And then all we would have left to deal with extreme expressions of hate would be the criminal law.

After deliberating for 18 months, the Supreme Court last week released their unanimous decision. Whatcott, they agreed, had propagated hatred. He had betrayed “the inherent dignity owed to all human beings.”

The need to combat actual hatred, the Supreme Court declared, is no small thing. It is “pressing and substantial … Hate speech rises beyond causing distress to individual group members. It can have a societal impact. Hate speech lays the groundwork for later, broad attacks on vulnerable groups that can range from discrimination, to ostracism, segregation, deportation, violence, and in the most extreme cases, to genocide.”

They were right, of course. Hateful words always precede hateful deeds.

But offensive speech isn’t always criminal speech, which is why it was critically important, as a society, we maintain a non-criminal legal tool to deal with the likes of Bill Whatcott.

Without the protection afforded minorities by modest human rights codes, all that we would have left is throwing the haters in jail. And that’s not the way to go.

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Spotted by my colleague Paulo.  This is crazy.

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With Sandra Pupatello, the Ontario Liberals would have had a big win in Windsor; without her, they won’t. The Ontario NDP will cruise to victory there, as things stands now. So sayeth 308’s polling synthesis model.

In London West, where Chris Bentley had big numbers in the past – and where the Ontario PCs once ruled supreme – it is the Ontario NDP that is seen as “the most likely to win.”

The discussion of both by-elections is here.

What’s it all mean? You know what it means.

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As regulars know, I spend a lot of time in hockey rinks.  Two of my boys play in the GTHL, and one of them was seriously injured a few weeks ago in a tournament in London. His hip was fractured, his spine was bruised, and the other leg was injured, too.  No call was made on the hit.

As I dropped my son off at St. Mike’s this morning, and watched him hobble into school on his crutches, I got mad again.  And then I heard on Metro Morning that lots of people are also getting fed up with this outrageous situation, and that Angus Reid had done a poll about it.

Here’s a slide from their deck; the link is under it.

I plan to write more about this in the Sun.  In the meantime, I will pledge my vote to any political party or candidate that deals with this effectively, right now.  I’ll help them out, too.

Is anyone prepared to do it?

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From the Times:

“The results were both surprising and disturbing. Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.

In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.”

As some of you may recall, I refused to permit comments on this web site for many years.  I was concerned about vicarious libel liability, one, and – two – I simply thought comments, particularly unmoderated ones, had turned the Internet into a cyber-sewer.  Despite that, or because of that, one guy even created an unaffiliated web site for people to comment on what I (and others) posted.

I eventually decided to accept comments, with rules, when I was persuaded that I could effectively moderate what was offered up.  The unmoderated streams at places like the Globe and Sun News are libel time bombs waiting to happen, and I’ve told friends in both organizations as much.  We’ll see if I’m right.

In the meantime, take a look at this study about nano-commenting.  It’s interesting.

And, of course, if you want to comment, go ahead.

Just be nice.

 

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