Wikipedia note for international readers: “The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (French: Société Radio-Canada), commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster. Radio-Canada is the national French-language broadcast arm of the corporation.”
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I’m interested in the future of the CBC, and have been for years as a listener and fan. Now I’m an employee, which is awesome. However, it does make me aware that anything I have to say about the current headlines about the organization will be taken with a grain of salt.
For that reason, I’m not actually going to express any of my own thoughts on this, but instead point you to a number of other sources-including statements from government- so you can form your own opinion. This is not comprehensive by any means, but the below links will give you a quick overview.
Globe and Mail – Harper tightening the reins on CBC, Via Rail and Canada Post:
“A section of the budget bill gives the federal cabinet the explicit power to give Crown corporations orders as to how they should negotiate with employees, both unionized and non-unionized. Further, the bill gives the government the power to have a Treasury Board official sit in on collective bargaining negotiations at Crown corporations.”
Globe and Mail – We don’t work for ‘union bosses,’ Tories say, taking aim at CBC, Via, Canada Post
“On Wednesday morning following a Conservative caucus meeting, both Mr. Clement and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty declined to answer questions from reporters. Instead the government position was expressed by Parliamentary Secretary Pierre Poilievre, an MP Prime Minister Stephen Harper often relies on to stir controversy and speak for the government on hot files.
“‘I am not here to take marching orders from union bosses,’ said Mr. Poilievre. ‘I represent taxpayers and frankly taxpayers expect us to keep costs under control so that we can keep taxes down. It is for those taxpayers that we work. Not union bosses.’
“The government said in the 2013 budget that it wants Crown corporations to move to a 50/50 cost sharing arrangement between employees and employers for pensions. It also wants retirement ages at Crown corporations to be aligned with recent changes in the core public service.
“‘Any liabilities from a Crown corporation are passed on to taxpayers. We are the representatives of Canada’s taxpayers and we have a responsibility to ensure that those Crown corporations live within their means and that the costs are kept affordable to Canadian taxpayers,’ he said. ‘Our focus is on low tax, low-spending government that eliminates the deficit on time and on schedule and this is part of the package to make that happen.'”
The Hill Times – Feds threatening journalist independence of CBC under new power over wages, benefits, collective bargaining, say critics:
“Canada’s leading proponent of public broadcasting called the measure a step toward ‘radio Moscow’ after The Hill Times reported on the proposal on Tuesday in the government’s bill to implement the March budget sparking an outcry shortly after the story was posted.
“Ian Morrison, spokesperson for the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, which has for years promoted continued government funding for the CBC as well as its independence from the government of the day, made the comment after news of the Conservative government’s plan created a storm of denunciation on Twitter and also drew strong NDP and Liberal criticism in Parliament.
“‘It’s moving in the direction away from the kind of independence that we need in a democratic society from the public broadcaster, especially at a time of huge concentration of ownership and decision-making in the private sector broadcasting. It’s very troubling. I suppose they might have thought it would slip through and no one would notice,’ Mr. Morrison said.”
Andrew Coyne – The real question that the AG report raises but nobody will ask
“The question many people would ask nowadays about VIA, Canada Post and the CBC is not “why isn’t the government sitting in on their labour negotiations,” but why do these three organizations exist in their present form? Is a heavily subsidized state monopoly really the only way to run a railroad? What does it even mean to maintain a state monopoly on first-class mail, when fewer and fewer people send letters of any kind? What purpose does a publicly funded, general-interest broadcaster serve when broadcasting itself is disappearing, as it were, before our eyes?”
CBC/Radio-Canada’s statement on Bill C-60:
“We are keenly aware of the financial realities facing Canadians. CBC/Radio-Canada has not asked Government for additional funding for many years. In 2012, the Corporation’s budget was cut $115 million dollars as part of CBC/Radio-Canada’s contribution to the government’s Deficit Reduction Action Plan (DRAP).
“Despite the loss of 800 jobs during the financial crisis and 650 jobs as a result of DRAP, CBC/Radio-Canada has managed to preserve and, in the case of regional stations, actually expand the services it provides. We have continued to implement our Strategy 2015, which has been endorsed by the Government. We have continued to develop and showcase very popular Canadian programming across our networks. We are still the only broadcaster with so much Canadian programming in prime time, when Canadians are watching television.
“All of this is possible because of the support of Canadian taxpayers. CBC/Radio-Canada values and respects that support. To demonstrate that it is using those resources responsibly, it reports to Parliament and Canadians, the CRTC, and the Auditor-General of Canada. In February 2013, the Auditor General’s special examination confirmed that CBC/Radio-Canada manages its assets efficiently and economically.
“CBC/Radio-Canada supports the Government’s goal of ensuring that compensation and benefits are aligned with the private sector. That is why, for the past several years, the Corporation has used an independent Human Resources advisor, Mercer, to benchmark what we pay our employees compared to the industry in which we are required to operate. Salary increases at the Corporation have averaged 1.9% over the past seven years. Salaries in the private sector have increased an average of 3% over the same period.”
You may also be interested in some other commentary about CBC in recent years:
Yesterday I was on Facebook when one of those sidebar ads popped up trying to get me to “like” a page. You know the ones- “Joe Blow likes Super Cola” followed by a picture of Super Cola and a big like button for you to click.
Only in this case it wasn’t Joe Blow and Super Cola. It was a journalist liking a politician running in the provincial election.
My assumption is that the journalist liked the politician’s page because he/she wants to cover the campaign from all angles. Social media is a big part of elections now. It makes sense to follow things this way.
Of course, I know this because I’ve considered the dilemma of interacting with politicians on Facebook. I’m not convinced everyone else will react the same way I did.
It would be easy for someone to see this sidebar ad and think the journalist is actively supporting the politician. After all, it doesn’t say “Journalist is following Politician for research purposes.” It says “Journalist likes Politician.” Positive language that sounds very close to an endorsement.
This might not be problematic if you only saw “likes” when you visited someone’s profile. Upon visiting this journalist’s page you can clearly see that the “likes” extend to every candidate, party, and party leader in the election. If there’s a bias to be had, it’s equally distributed.
Unfortunately, this information does not stay quietly tucked away. It is forced out into the open. I saw the information, out of context, in a sidebar. Not only does it tell me that this journalist “likes” a single politician without letting me know about all the others, it subtly encourages me to “like” the politician as well- almost acting as a peer-to-peer endorsement.
This isn’t a problem on other social media. On Twitter you “follow” people. Following just means you’re interested in what’s happening, not that you “like” it. But in Facebook, everything has to be a positive interaction. You “like” pages. You “friend” people. There’s no room for relationships that aren’t glowing reviews, ready to be packaged up and presented as advertisements for your other “friends” to see.
See also:
A couple of people have interpreted my post “Prince George is super racist, apparently” as a denial of the existence of racism or as an attempt to minimize the impact of racism in Prince George because it’s not demonstrably worse here than anywhere else. That was not my intention (I thought the line “It exists, and it’s terrible,” established that, but apparently not). So, once again, racism is real, it is harmful, and it should be confronted whenever possible.
My issue was the way in which a newspaper article about a racist incident didn’t stop at reporting on the occurrence of a racist incident. Instead, it widened the scope and settled upon quoting someone saying that Prince George is the most racist and bigoted place he’d ever been in Canada, based on purely subjective experience and without any form of qualification or challenge.
I’m trying to imagine this happening in other circumstances. You can have an article about a car accident without going to a pullquote about someone who thinks drivers here are just the worst- far worse than anywhere else they’ve visited. You can have an article about a murder without portraying the entire city as violent. So why does an article about a racial slur need to have someone call the entire city one of the most racist and bigoted, without qualification?
It would be nice if we could easily conclude Prince George is the most racist city in Canada because someone yelled at protesters and there were racial slurs in a workplace. If we could, it would mean the rest of the country would be havens of tolerance, completely free of even verbal racism. Unfortunately, that is not the case. For example:
My point isn’t to imply that any of these locations have particularly bad race relations compared to the rest of Canada, either. It’s to demonstrate that racism of the sort in the Citizen article (and worse) occurs across the country. Using the methodology of the Citizen/person quoted I could come to the conclusion that each and every one of these places is an outlier, the most racist and bigoted in Canada. More reasonably, I could conclude that it’s a problem not limited by geography, and what’s occurred in Prince George is, sadly, not unique.
Does that make racism OK or diminish the experience of those subjected to it? No. But drawing the conclusion that Prince George is uniquely bigoted and racist- and publishing a newspaper article that forwards that viewpoint without qualification- not only unfairly tarnishes the city in comparison to others, it fails to acknowledge the extent to which racism exists throughout the country.
Don’t be passive and don’t accept it. But don’t imagine it’s limited to here, either.
If you have your company name in your Twitter handle, you might want to reconsider. Here’s an example of why.
Dayleen Van Ryswyk was going to run in the current provincial election as a member of the NDP.
Then this happened, and she was removed from the party.
By the next day, she had decided to run as an independent.
Among whatever other logistics go along with that transition, she was met with this one:
Like so many others, Van Ryswyk tied her Twitter identity to the brand she represented, landing on @Dayleenndp. I’ve seen the same done for pretty much everything: political parties, TV stations, restaurants.
If you are going to use your Twitter account solely as part of that brand, and have no plans on taking it with you when you go, this is fine. But if you are using Twitter like many are, there’s a good chance you are merging private interests with public ones. And you might want to extend your online relationships beyond the one you’ll have with your current employer.
It doesn’t have to end on bad terms. People retire. Companies fold. You move on, and do so amicably. If I tied my Twitter handle to my job, I would have had at least three since I joined a whole four years ago. There’s no hard feelings tied to those departures, just life. But I didn’t have to change my Twitter name.
Keep it broad. First name, last initial. First initial, last name. Throw in a middle initial, maybe. I’m lucky to have an uncommon last name, so it’s easier for me than most. But even if you’re one of many John Smiths out there, I’d advise you to think of a more personal, and permanent, identifier than your current job title.
Here’s a quote I saved recently from Ryan Holiday:
“An entrepreneur friend of mine remarked to me recently that if someone invented the nightly news today—or a show like Brian Williams’ “Rock Center”—we’d all think it was a great idea.
“Think about it: Instead of having to follow all these different news sources, you could just tune in, get a digest of all the important stuff that happened, and you could trust that it had been verified, that it was balanced and high-quality, and would all be well-produced.”
His point is that because the nightly news came first, and 24-hour news/social media came second, the assumption tends to be that the latter is better. But just think how great it would be if instead of having to be constantly tuned and plugged in, you could just sit down for an hour a day and get all that information, filtered and vetted in an easy-to-understand way. Or have it delivered to your doorstep every morning to browse through while drinking coffee.
I was reminded of this yesterday when news of the Boston bombings broke. The first reaction, of course, is “how awful” but the next reaction (that, if I’m being honest, came at almost exactly the same time) was, “Now we’re going to get to see footage of crying people for the next twenty-four hours.”
It’s a difficult thing to reconcile. On the one hand, you WANT that information, and you want it as it comes. This is especially true if you or someone you know is directly affected by the event. But at the same time, not that much new information is coming out very quickly, so you wind up wallowing in emotional depths, re-watching the same footage, and most invasive of all going to victims and finding out “how do you feel?”
There is no easy answer for the media. Jamie Weinman sums up the conundrum well:
“In a strange way, the logical thing would be for them to move on to other stories and come back to the Boston attacks when more information comes in. But that would seem insensitive. So they have to stay on Boston nonstop, even though they have no news about what happened or who did it.”
His whole column is well worth a read, and the essential point is TV networks and everything that goes along with them are currently stuck in this pattern. But just because makers of media are stuck in this cycle, it doesn’t mean consumers have to be.
I made a conscious decision yesterday to pull away from the footage and the websites and just come back to the coverage once in the evening and once more this morning. And it worked. I felt informed without being overwhelmed.
News is like water or electricity: it’s constantly flowing, available at all times. Behind-the-scenes people are working to keep it going so that it’s there when you need it. But that doesn’t mean you have to leave your taps on all the time, drinking it all in. Turn it off, step away, and come back when you need it. It’s healthier that way.
photo: “open 24 hours” by aubergene
I’ve added a mixtape page at andrewkurjata.ca/mixtapes.
When I was younger, I used to hang out in the living room, hand poised over the “record” button on the cassette player, ready to press down when a song I liked came on on the radio. I would do this over and over again until I had filled up ninety-minute (or, in some cases, two hour) tape with songs I liked. Then I’d label it and it would be added to my collection. I made a good two dozen of these, including a few hip-hop mixes by hooking up the audio input to the TV and recording MuchMusic’s RapCity. These were pretty good. Better still was when I would dub my absolute favourites, in an actual chosen order, onto another tape. These I would listen to over and over again.
Once the internet entered the scene, the mixtape took on a less important role in my life. First I was able to start making CDs, then iPod playlists, and now most of my listening is done through streaming.
In a digital world, you can access any song you want, make playlists of unlimited length, and constantly change the order of the songs in that playlist according to how you feel at that given moment in time. I do this all the time. But recently I’ve rediscovered a love of the limits of mixtapes.
When I’m working as the producer at CBC and I’ve assigned someone to put together a tape piece, I always tell them to make it as long as it needs to be. What I mean isn’t to make it as long as possible, but to make to make it the right length. More often than not this means shorter than you initially think. I just posted a bunch of quotes about this.
A 60 minute mix of absolute favourite songs will always be better than a six-day-mix of a bunch of favourites. There’s probably tons of gems in the six-day-mix, but the 60 minute one has had some real thought put into it. It’s even better if the person making it knows that you can’t skip or rearrange the songs, and has given consideration to flow and mood. A good mixtape is stronger than the sum of its parts.
Every two weeks I make a mix of songs for my CFUR radio show Almost Mainstream, and I do put consideration into it, but it’s not quite the same as a mixtape that relies completely on the music to tell the narrative. It’s my favourite songs with consideration to flow, but it’s also got a DJ (me) explaining what’s going on. It’s related, but not quite the same. Sometimes a radio show can be turned into a mixtape and vice versa, but mostly they’re separate beasts. I like making my radio show, but I miss making mixtapes. The pilot episode of Almost Mainstream was designed as a mixtape, as was my End of the World special and, to a certain extent, my favourite albums of 2012 episode– and they are three of my favourite hours I’ve made. So I’m going to start making mixtapes again. Here are my rules:
What’s the point? Mostly it’s fun. I loved making mixtapes, I like listening to them, and I enjoy interacting with music. I’m also interested in developing a closer relationship to songs I like than what I have now, which (thanks to the internet) has been hit “love” and move on. The consideration required for a mixtape means you’re listening to songs a lot closer, and a lot more. I think this is a good thing. And finally, mixtapes are awesome memory archives. I still have some of the cassettes I made in high school, and they bring me back immediately. The same goes for my episode 0 mix from 2010. It’s an edited musical diary. I’d like to be able to put on a mix five or ten years from now and be transported back to today. It’s a fascinating exercise.
Anyways, that’s that. I don’t have any set times on when I’ll get these mixes up but when I do they’ll be going on Mixcloud. If you’re interested in making mixtapes, I recommend using it as a place for sharing them and if you want to hear mine when they go up, here’s my profile. I’ve also made a mixtape page here.
If you haven’t seen this “educate First Nations” letter, it is here and there are stories about it here, here and here.
Basically, it says First Nations achieved nothing of any value because prior to European contact they lacked things like a written language and astronomy and medicine.
Most of this is just straight-up wrong (scurvy, anyone?), but I don’t think it’s accurate to portray it as just some out-there rant from a lone racist. I say that because I also don’t think you’d have to go very far to find a more than a few people in your own life who believe many of the points made in this letter.
The reason for this is not because we are surrounded by a whole bunch of people who are actively being racist. It’s because as a nation we are woefully ignorant of our own history.
The dominant narrative in Canada is that anything of any value that’s more than 150 years old came from other countries. Anything prior to Confederation that “Canada” did was actually done by the British or the French, and the power players all called foreign soil home.
This narrative completely ignores awesome things like the Iroquois Confederacy or the pictorial record-keeping of the Albertan plains or the complex clan culture of the Northwest that persists to this day. It ignores the many technologies and discoveries that were shaped by this land, and brushes aside the notion that the upper half of North America has anything to contribute to world history.
Obviously, this harms perceptions of Aboriginal people more than anyone, but I think it harms perceptions of Canada and Canadians as a whole, as well. Think about how we present our country to new immigrants: we acknowledge their diverse backgrounds, and then invite them to adopt the history of this place as their own. But once we get back two hundred years or so, that’s the end of that and we have to start looking to Britain and France. “Our” story is in foreign lands and dominated by people who never even set foot here. Puts us in pretty poor stead vis-a-vis other countries.
So why not extend the geographical history further back and start adopting the achievements of First Nations as something to be celebrated by all Canadians? The oral histories persist. The physical records persist. The tools and modes of transit and geographical knowledge persists. In many cases, the political systems and languages persist, albeit tenuously. Why can’t all this be my history, too? John A. Macdonald is as much my ancestor as Deganawida, which is to say I have no blood relationship to either. The kinship I feel to them is purely in the form of the stories of what they did and how that shaped the place I call home- so let’s start putting them on more equal footing. Let’s tell all the stories of all the achievements of all the people who’ve lived here. Let’s educate everyone.
One more, from a mentor: “Start as close to the end as possible.”
Conversation is something I value on the internet. It has its challenges, but it is amazing how we are able to share ideas with so many different people.
Earlier this month I took part in a discussion on letters to the editor for the internet age. It got me thinking about how to bring the conversation that happens around some of my blog posts into the blog itself. I appreciate the fact that people take what I write and share their thoughts in different forums, but I think there is some value to consolidating some of them into one place. So that’s what this post is going to be: a round-up of feedback on my posts.
For comments made in public places (Twitter, Disqus, Google+), I’m linking to the original. For Facebook comments, I’m not linking and am only going to do initials because I have no idea what the privacy settings were supposed to be.
Thanks to everyone who read, shared, and commented. Here’s edition one.
Roller discos and recovery centers: how much control should you have over your neighbourhood? »
Thank you for this post. I love the Haldi neighbourhood – the wilderness, the great people (on whatever side of this debate they lie, we have some awesome neighbours), the close proximity to the city features, etc… However, as a resident of this neighbourhood since 2003, and one of several ‘young’ families here, we bought in an area of town that has not had an elementary school, nor had any plans for an elementary school, since before I arrive. So I have to question, who in the past 10 years has bought property here with the idea that an operational school was down the road? I would also argue that people in this neighbourhood have reacted to the idea of a recovery centre, not questioned (e.g., “But having questions about where the recovery centre …”).
I do believe that we need to explore the reaction beyond the NIMBY statements more deeply – many residents have reacted to this proposal. However, many others have been silent, or supporting the recovery centre proposal in quiet non-assuming ways.
Bill Owen ∞
Tom Flanagan and the Outrage of the Internet »
Thank you.
Crap. There goes my productivity today…
All I’ll be thinking about today is about stars, technology and history. Thanks for nothing! 😉
Tariq Piracha ∞
Stompin’ Tom’s Battle »
great tribute and your take on his ethos is perfect
Grant Potter ∞
Google Reader is Joining Google + (What Should Have Happened) »
Incorporating #Reader into Google+ is an obvious idea. Now that I’ve found feedly.com (which seems great so far), I’ll visit Google sites maybe 10% to 20% fewer times per day. It’s no big deal for me, and I won’t be signing any #SaveGoogleReader petitions, but it seems like Google should want me to spend more time on their sites.
Andrew McNabb ∞
Well at least that would have made some fucking sense.
Dave Alderson ∞
Digitial Archives »
I still keep a memory box. I put physical objects in it. Always have. I have things dating back quite some time. The exact time and place isn’t critical. The memories the objects trigger are. Touching them, smelling them, feeling them, it’s almost magical as I’m transported back. A digital post or email doesn’t have the same effect.
One grand goal of peggsite is to organize things by month, then at the end of the year you would get a physical “commonplace” book. I have several in real life and they are probably my prized possessions. Certainly what I would grab in a fire. Not my hard drive.
Kirk Love ∞
Did you know Prince George has a university? »
I wonder how many local restaurants are pissed off that Nancy O’s gets press all the time, and they don’t? 🙂
M.C. (on Facebook)
this coverage is condescending, because it’s so shallow and tokenist. token northern coverage, gee, that’s great! they finally noticed us. maybe they’ll ask us to the prom!
J.S. (on Facebook)
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Thanks again to everyone who took the time to read what I have to say here. I will start collecting feedback again, and when there’s a reasonable amount I’ll do this again.
As always, this is my website, my opinions, they reflect no one else’s, and are subject to change.
There’s been a smattering of interest in Prince George in Vancouver media lately, with both the Vancouver Sun and Global Television doing features on the city that are decidedly positive. They might be a little late to the party, though.
The first big thing to spread around was an article in the Vancouver Sun this February. Titled “Affordable Prince George offers family balance,” it goes through a laundry list of reasons Prince George is a great place to live. It starts with a story about people helping out a recently-transplanted Vancouver family when their car broke down. Then it informs people that the city has a university, malls, sports (even judo!), and is pretty easy to drive around.
I’ll admit, around the paragraph it starts listing out the musicians who have come to the city (Elton John! Avril Lavigne!) I always have to double-check this isn’t a paid advertisement. It reads like an official pamphlet (Costco! Canadian Tire! Lakes!) with a couple of anecdotes to round things out. Literally the most critical thing in this article is the fact that it’s somewhat cold in winter. I love Prince George and all, but it surprised me that a newspaper article has so little interest in pointing out the challenges- the whole “most dangerous city” thing springs to mind. I mean, I’m not saying you have to dwell on it, but maybe acknowledge it? It’s that sort of balance that separates newspapers from brochures.1
Prince George Citizen editor Neil Godbout had a similar reaction. Around the time that first article appeared, Vancouver Sun associate Fazil Milhar came to town and talked about how it was time for the story of the north to be communicated to people in the Lower Mainland. Godbout’s take:
“While the positive press in recent days is appreciated, it’s going to take more than a couple of patronizing stories to change the Lower Mainland’s view of us yokels up here in the frozen hinterland and it’s going to take more than a sales pitch and a pat on the head to convince northerners that Vancouver residents are suddenly educated about the merits of Northern. B.C.”
It’s an interesting question: are these stories positive or patronizing? Well, I was able to interview Fazil Mihlar about why the Sun is publishing the articles and his take on Godbout’s criticism. You can listen to it on the Daybreak North website. Briefly, he does want to educate people about the north because he thinks it’s an important part of British Columbia’s economic future and is not well-understood by many in the southern part of the province. He doesn’t think the stories are patronizing or even necessarily positive, but that they are providing a more nuanced view than is normally presented, and there are plans for more critical stories about the challenges of northern life in the future. Have a listen.
So there’s the Sun. But now there’s a video put together by Global TV called “Prince George revival.” The description: “Prince George also suffered from forestry’s shrinking fortunes, but its University is leading a recovery.” The video plays as follows:
Like the Sun articles, it is technically accurate. The news hook is that Global is painting these developments as part of a recovery (it also profiles Kamloops and the Northwest). But all this would have been more timely if Global had copped onto these changes anywhere within the last two decades.
Seriously, aside from Nancy-O’s (which has only been around three years) this could have been made at any point in the past ten-fifteen years. Downtown has continuously shown signs of recovery. I wrote it about it in the university newspaper almost decade ago. On that note, I went to this recovery-leading university almost a decade ago, and it had already been open most of my life. And the real-estate prices? Not exactly groundbreaking.
Neither the Sun series nor the Global video are harmful. They seem like a well-meaning attempt to show Prince George in a positive light (and maybe sell ads to northern businesses happy with the coverage, another interesting Godbout suggestion2). It may be a much-needed antidote to some of the more negative attention the city has received.
But the whole thing bothers me a little bit, and here’s why I think that is: there’s nothing new here, and it doesn’t really capture the local flavour.
First, there’s the nothing new angle. Awesome that you discovered this stuff now, but where have you been? The fact that the existence of UNBC is presented as new/surprising information is troubling. UNBC is consistently ranked highly in a number of categories, regularly does groundbreaking research, and has been a central part of the north (and by extension, the province) for over a decade. But the angle for the Sun and Global is basically “There’s a university in Prince George- who knew?”
Then the complete lack of local flavour. There’s room to list off the fact that KISS, Elton John, and Willie Nelson have breezed through town, but not a single mention of any of the local artist and entertainers that regularly perform here- or that there is, indeed, a vibrant local arts scene at all. Global starting at Nancy-O’s is a nice touch, but Nancy-O’s is one of the biggest supporters of local arts acts around, and you don’t see that. Being able to say that Nickelback has come to town does not exactly set you apart. The fact that on any given night there are a variety of competing arts events to choose from does. It would be nice to have that reflected.
Is it condescending, as Godbout says? I don’t know. I hope these pieces are just the beginning of these outlets deciding they want to pay more attention to the province outside of the Lower Mainland, and these stories are just the launch points to more in-depth coverage. In other words, I hope that five years from now the existence of UNBC is presented as something regular readers of the Sun and watchers of Global should know about, rather than a surprise. Links:
It is apparently World Poetry Day, and I saw some people posting their favourite lines from various poets. The first thing that sprang into my mind is this one:
“Fort George Park is half graveyard, half love letter.”
It is from this poem by Prince George poet/musician Jeremy Stewart. It pops into my head at least once a week. It probably doesn’t mean anything to anyone outside of Prince George and even then you have to have a very particular relationship with the city for it to resonate. But it resonates for me, and the fact that it’s for such a specific audience is what makes it special. Universal art is wonderful, but so is the stuff that’s hyper-local.
Seek out your local artists- they’re telling your story the way no one else can.
Join the movement.
So at my job (the views of which are in no way reflected in this blog at any time!) we have a listener line where we encourage people to call in and share their opinions on the stories of the day. It is 99.99% of the time fully appropriate commentary, and often gets aired. But every once in a while there is a call that is either purposely or inadvertently racist, prejudiced, or in some way offensive. In those cases, the call is deleted and heard by no one outside of the person who checked the voicemail.
This form of filtration occurs at most media outlets. For the most part, the approach to offensive comments is to not air them, not publish them, and generally give them no voice. The Globe and Mail‘s commenting rules state: “Personal attacks, offensive language and unsubstantiated allegations are not allowed.” CBC.ca bars “any of Your Content that is offensive and likely to expose an individual or a group of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability is prohibited.” And so on.
But in the age of social media, the people who hold these points of views don’t need to go through traditional media- not even the comments section of their websites. They freely publish their opinions on blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter.
And so a new tactic has sprung up: round up the most offensive of these tweets and comments and show them to the world. The Gawker network posted a round-up of racist tweets following Obama’s re-election.1 Similar galleries of tweets and screenshots from Facebook and Reddit went up yesterday following the Steubenville case (in which two teenage boys were found guilty of raping a sixteen-year-old girl). Commentators decide to focus on the alleged promiscuity, drunkenness, and moral character of a young girl who was raped- putting as much or more blame on the victim as they do on those charged with an actual crime.
@MattBinder, whose tweet I posted at the top of this, runs a website called “Public Shaming” that regularly posts screenshots of people saying ignorant things, ranging from not knowing where Baltimore is after the team wins the Superbowl to straight-up ranting over the fact that the new Pope is Argentinian and African-American First Lady Michelle Obama was at the Oscars (note: they do not use politically correct terms like “Argentinian” and “African-American”). A sample from his site this morning, on Steubenville: “I honestly feel sorry for the boys in the Steubenville trial. That w***e was asking for it.” From Obama’s inauguration: “The only reason police would arrest someone who assassinated Obama, would be shooting a c**n out of season.” Lest we get too smug thinking this is limited to the United States, at least a couple of the blame-the-victim tweets are from Canadians, and during the Idle No More movement a Manitoban newspaper had to shut down its Facebook page because the racist comments were getting out of control.
These are the sorts of things that the traditional media filters weed out. I get why the decision would be made to not publish them: you don’t want your outlet to give wider voice to bigots. But at the same time, because these sorts of comments are actively filtered by the de facto public forums, it’s easy for the wider audience to be completely unaware of their existence. The newer approach rounds up the offensiveness and puts it front and center for all to see. Instead of burying these viewpoints, it forces us to confront them, and the fact that other people- our fellow citizens- are the ones who hold them.
The Globe: “We will not allow our site to become a haven for personal attacks and offensive behaviour.” Ie: If you believe this horrible stuff, you can’t say it here.
Binder’s approach: “If you believe this horrible stuff, you do us a great service letting us know.”
I’m honestly not sure which is more effective.
Yesterday, on yet another piece of advice from Frank Chimero’s blog (the first being this), I started creating a music diary using Rdio. The idea is simple:
“make a new list of frequently listened-to songs each month, and ledger them into a playlist without worrying about how it all sounded together.
“Sticking a song to a month and year turns it into a more spacious memory palace.”
I started with March, and then went back and did January and February 2013 (I did this by looking last.fm, which keeps track of almost everything I listen to- the difference with these new playlists is I filter out the stuff that has no meaning and get to add things that last.fm misses). As soon as I started compiling January the value of this practice became obvious: I was transported back to random moments in time in January, from the obvious (like concerts) to the simple like cooking a particular meal.
I’ve always found music to be an incredible memory-gate for me. Hearing a song can take me back to anything from walking down a particular street on a Saturday while I was in high school to road trips with my parents to trying to fall asleep and listening to the radio. So this makes complete sense: a listenable archive of memories.
My only regret is that I didn’t start doing this earlier, which isn’t the first time I’ve had this thought in recent weeks. A while back I was updating my resume (a good practice to do every once in a while) when I noticed I didn’t have my exact graduation date on hand. LinkedIn has the month but not the day. “No problem!” I thought. “I’ll check Foursquare.” Of course, then I realized I didn’t use Foursquare back then so couldn’t go to the archives and find the day I headed up to UNBC for convocation. Flickr, my other go-to archive, wasn’t much help either, because I didn’t start using it until 2010, a year after I graduated. These two services have become like a personal Wikipedia: I can check what the weather was like on a particular day by looking at a photo, or remember exactly when it was that I went to that restaurant by looking at my stats around it on Foursquare. Twitter and Facebook updates are also good reminders of what was going on x number of years ago, and LinkedIn is the start-point for any new cv I make.
My life, and the life of pretty much everyone, is being divided into two parts: pre-digital and post-digital. The post-digital world is easy to track, tag, and file away for easy reference when our memories fail us. The pre-digital world is increasingly inaccessible- who wants to drag out old calendars or boxes of unsorted photos to try and get the exact timing of certain events (assuming you can even find them in the first place)?
I’m of two minds of this. On the one hand, I have a pretty poor memory so I’m glad of the ability to have something like Timehop email me every day to let me know what my past self was doing, or to be able to take a trip through Flickr and Rdio to trigger memories that would otherwise be hidden away. There’s a good chance I wouldn’t have a better memory if I didn’t have these digital archives. Previous generations of my family who weren’t surrounded by computers tell me they’ve always had trouble remembering things, too.
On the other hand, it worries me that my post-digital life is so much more accessible than my pre-digital one. The memories that weren’t digitally photographed or carefully recorded through status updates are no less important than those that were- but they occupy a far less prominent place in my life because they aren’t bolstered by online storage. Photographs replace the mind’s eye, the written word trumps the oral retelling, and our computers become the authority on who we are.
Ad nauseam
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April 30 2013 | ∞
– Paul Miller, “How my creativity got killed”
– Owen Williams, “Too busy consuming to create”
– Mohandas Gandhi
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there is a lot of good stuff out there. Like, a lot. Blog posts, Soundcloud tracks, albums with 8.1 out of 10 on Pitchfork, “featured reads”, investigative journalism, must-see TV, award winning novels. It’s all great, and more of it is being created every day. But there’s no way you’re going to skim even the surface. You’re barely able to get through your Facebook feed in the morning, let alone read the entire newspaper.
So why do we add to the noise? Why do we tweet, Instagram, write Facebook rants and generally contribute to this mess? I personally help create two-and-a-half hours of radio every morning, plus another hour every other week, plus a blog post every few days, plus who-knows-how-much other content I try to push on you through my Twitter and Tumblr feeds. Who’s looking at it all? Who is this all for?
Faced with the deluge of information that is the year 2013, I constantly have two contradictory instincts. One is to shut up. The other is to say something.
The shut up comes from the feeling that there’s already so much good stuff, why bother? What the heck is the point of me writing this post when there are literally Pulitzer Prize-winning features a click away? Have you seen Breaking Bad yet? There are literally hundreds of things out there that I think are way better than what’s on offer on this blog, and I’m the one who’s writing it, so why even bother?
The say something comes from the feeling that even though there’s all this good stuff out there, there are still things I want to read and hear that don’t exist. There are articles that articulate parts of what I’m trying to express with this post, but I still haven’t seen anything that encapsulates my feelings exactly. I suppose I could spend hours trawling the internet, copying and pasting snippets until I get close, but even then I don’t think it would do the trick. These thoughts are weighing on my mind, and this blog has become the best way for me to get them out and discover if they mean anything.
And that’s why anyone and everyone should create. Even if it isn’t destined to become one of the “top ten things you should read this year” or a must-see/listen/tweet of the day, it will mean something to you. Music, movies, radio, writing- these are all means of self-discovery. And you’d be surprised how often things you don’t think will resonate with anyone else actually will. It turns out that even though there’s a lot of stuff already out there, people are always ready to discover something new.
But even if you put it out there and no one responds, move on. It’s nothing personal. You’re building the tools and the skills to make something even better the next time around. And every time you do that, you’re learning more about your craft and about yourself.
By all means post status updates, like your friends’ photos, retweet and reblog and heart and share. But take time away from the noise and sit down and craft something that will last longer than the few seconds it takes to read it on a cellphone, something that strives to improve upon the silence.
Shut up and say something.
Filed under: Best Of, meta, misc, personal | Discussion