Journalism

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  Melt, baby, melt

  Peter Stockland

  May 29, 2012

  Even people who haven't read, never mind bought, a newspaper for years would agree it's not a pretty sight. Most would also agree that the looming disappearance of substantial local daily newspapers is a sad and serious thing. Simultaneously, dabbing at their tears, they rush to embrace the abundant forms of e-content commonly blamed for rendering print publications irrelevant.

  Standing outside the newspaper industry looking in is like watching a plastic bag tossed into a fire pit. It is unable to so much as burst into multi-colored flame. It will just shrink and shrivel until it eventually melts away.

  Even people who haven...

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  A Convivial Culture

  Ray Pennings

  May 9, 2012

  Convivium might just have been Father Richard's favourite word. There are other candidates—winsome and egregious come to mind—but he loved that word, convivium. He was the only one I knew who used it in ordinary conversation but, of course, his conversations were rarely ordinary. "Convivium" strictly means "to live together," but it connotes a banquet or feast, indicating that a certain supply of rich food and fine wine are, if not required, at least desired.

  The second issue of Cardus's newest publication enterprise, Convivium, is off the press and Father de Souza's "Sea to Sea" column includes an account of a conversation he had with the late Father Rich...

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  A little thin, isn't it?

  Brian Dijkema

  May 4, 2012

  I've read the report, and its content is not what makes it noteworthy. I'm reasonably certain that you could find a bunch of similar-calibre papers from C-range students in first year political science courses in universities across the country. No, what makes it noteworthy, and the reason it made front page news, is that it was produced by something described as a Christian church.

  The United Church of Canada's recent report on Israeli and Palestinian policy made front-page news this week. But Shimon Fogel's ...

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  The NY Times on Chapter and Verse

  Ray Pennings

  April 13, 2012

  But the desire of classical liberals to think of themselves as above the fray, as facilitating inquiry rather than steering it in a favored direction, makes them unable to be content with just saying, You guys are wrong, we're right, and we're not going to listen to you or give you an even break. Instead they labor mightily to ground their judgments in impersonal standards and impartial procedures (there are none) so that they can pronounce their excommunications with clean hands and pure—non-partisan, and non-tribal—hearts. It's quite a performance and it is on display every day in our most enlightened newspapers and on our most progressive political talk shows, including the ones I'm addicted to. "observed that when we accept the conclusions of scientific investigation we necessarily do so on trust (how many of us have done or could replicate the experiments?) and are thus not so different from religious believers, Dawkins and Pinker asserted that the trust we place in scientific researchers, as opposed to religious pronouncements, has been earned by their record of achievement and by the public rigor of their procedures. In short, our trust is justified, theirs is blind."

  The March 26th edition of the New York Times included a column by Stanley Fish which cogently captured a core issue which makes...

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  Please, do my job for me

  Brian Dijkema

  April 4, 2012

  Perhaps this is because our modern methods of communication force them to interact with the public through means—newspapers, television, radio, the internet—which, for any number of reasons, have become purveyors of mindless barbarism. Of course, this is not new. George Orwell noted some time ago "that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language" and that journalism was right at the heart of it.

  Politicians like to talk to the public like they're children. Because of this, the tenor of our politics resembles that of a kindergarten class deciding who gets the last red smartie on a rainy day.

  Perhaps this is because our modern methods of commu...

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  Making this up as we go along

  Peter Menzies

  March 9, 2012

  I am uncertain as to whether the living are then asked to verify their credentials to disprove the false report that they are dead but am quite certain "the source" of the original report is never asked to verify proof of death. If that was the case, after all, the report would never have taken place because there is was never any truth to it. Worse, otherwise perfectly sane journalists and commentators quote other unsourced media as their source, somehow thinking that if they deflect the sourcing they can avoid responsibility should the "facts" prove to be false. For example, Menzies News might report "Twitter is reporting" or "online sources (likely Facebook) are reporting" that blah, blah, blah. Apparently the modern journo thinks that if he/she is merely passing along someone else's false information ("I'm not sayin'; I'm just sayin' Twitter's sayin') there is no degradation to their reputation.

  The great tension in journalism has always been between the dueling commercial needs to be first and to be accurate. In the current on-demand world, the balance has shifted decidedly to the former, which has led to bizarre situations in which well-known peo...

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  Publisher's Letter: Will Christopher Hitchens Matter?

  Peter Stockland

  March 1, 2012

  Even on his death bed, the anti-theist crusader could not see the power that being changed can give.

  Novelist Ian McEwan's requiem for his friend Christopher Hitchens is the most revealing of the published farewells to the anglo-American controversialist who died of cancer in December.

  Its revelation lies in McEwan's perspective next to Hitchens as ...

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  Private lies and public causes

  Peter Stockland

  February 28, 2012

  Murphy, famous for his acerbic commentaries on CBC Radio and TV as well as in the National Post, doesn't suggest for a moment that we become a nation of muffle-mouths. So, no more comparing advocates of gun control to Hitler. No more comparing anyone alive today to Hitler. Full stop. . . . . . . . .

  Rex Murphy makes the point in the first issue of Convivium magazine that we should all breath deep and turn down the rhetorical heat way down.

  Murphy, famous for his acerbic commentaries on CBC Radio and TV as well as in the National Post...

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  Straying from our triangles

  Peter Stockland

  February 22, 2012

  My post should have acknowledged that some of the big boys of print aren't going down without a fight, either. When I say oversized I mean 9x11 format, 156-page colour saturated magazine bling. When I say sumptuous, I mean a book that begins with a spread opener Rolex advertisement and finishes with a back cover for Patek Philipe. And when I say style, culture, and travel, I mean the entire universe of subject matter that can be shoehorned into those very wide headings.

  I blogged here recently about the way small magazines are challenging the pusillanimous acquiescence of mainstream media before the Internet onslaught.

  My post should have acknowledg...

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  Religion, and the CRTC's Paternalistic Leftover

  Ray Pennings

  February 21, 2012

  Last week, the CRTC denied a request from Crossroads Television Systems (CTS) to amend its licence. Currently, Crossroads must provide at least 20 hours a week of "balanced programming" between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. CTS sought relief from that provision on economic grounds. It asked that its quota of "balance" be measured over the entire broadcast schedule rather than simply by prime time hours.

  Among the annoying foibles of our era is the tendency to forget the lessons of history. Even more annoying, however, is misusing them.

  Last week, the CRTC denied a request from Crossroads Telev...

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  The Vanity of Foxes

  Robert Joustra

  February 10, 2012

  Last fall, a stone's throw from Parliament Hill, Father Raymond de Souza made a case that launching journals, and writing and editing them, is the work of foxes. He didn't say foxes. But he did say it "requires a certain boldness of spirit. Another word for that is vanity. You can't be a columnist without being a little bit vain.

  Atop my bookshelf sits a stuffed hedgehog, in perpetual birthday euphoria, named Archilochus. Among the more fecund maxims of his namesake—a Greek poet of the seventh century B.C.—is the now famous: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big...

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  Small becomes all

  Peter Stockland

  January 31, 2012

  In addition to being able to say truthfully how much it influences influencers, he was clearly pleased by the significant dollar value of advertising revenue it generates each year. It's an understandable reflex. There is a tendency to associate "niche" publications positively as specialist, selective, coterie catering, or negatively as small, obscure, audience averse—a Royal Family philatelist semi-annual, for example, whose cover stories target the demographic excited by postage stamp images of the Queen with one eye half closed.

  Late last week I was chatting with the editor of a Canadian think tank publication who sounded apologetically proud of how well his magazine is doing.

  In addition to being able to say truthfully how much it influences influencers, he was clearly plea...

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  What it means to remember

  Peter Stockland

  November 22, 2011

  Yet its very treatment spoke volumes about the robotic mindlessness of modern media bigotry toward Christian faith and Holy Scripture. The winner, a nine-year-old from Salem, Oregon, took home $100,000 in prize money. It was the second year in a row that Olivia Davis has won the competition. According to her mother, quoted in the story, the youngster spends four hours a day in the summer on Scriptural memory work.

  It was handled as an oddball newspaper wire story to be played as filler back behind the truss ads, as we used to say.

  Yet its very treatment spoke volumes about the robotic mindlessness of modern media bigotry toward Christian faith and Holy Scriptu...

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  The New York Times' (and America's) Rejection of Faith

  Brian Dijkema

  October 20, 2011

  The article, written by Karl Giberson and Randall Stephens, covers much of the ground previously covered by Mark Noll in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. The charges are familiar to many in the evangelical world: evangelicals reject science and are marked by "simplistic theology, cultural isolationism, and stubborn anti-intellectualism" and a sub-culture which is parasitic on the mainstream of American life. The only reason it's in the NYT is that it flatters the prejudices of the readersip. A more nuanced view of evangelicals, like the one Alan Wolfe wrote for The Atlantic some years ago, would never be run in the NYT.

  The New York Times published an article this week opining on the evangelical rejection of reason.

  The article, written by Karl Giberson and Randal...

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