Just say no

I took this picture at a Mesa Public Schools building in Arizona on Feb. 18, 2010.

Sorta covers everything, doesn't it?

Another recent prohibition that gave me pause: "Do not reproduce or circulate without permission."

No, it wasn't posted on a conjugal-visit trailer in a jail.

It was at the bottom of an email I received from a journalist.

This is what a newspaper reporter looks like

There are no more print reporters, John White, deputy editor online of the Winnipeg Free Press, told Creative Communications students at Red River College on Feb. 11, 2010.

The Free Press wants to hire a triple-threat journalist who can file breaking news stories by Twitter and write blog entries; deliver live and recorded video hits, and write for the print version of the paper.

This sounds great. It's the kind of stuff our students are learning to do, and it certainly shows where news media need to go.

Too bad it's just for a three-month term. Let's hope the term will be extended -- indefinitely.

A Chinese joke? Should I laugh?

On Jan. 27 Manitoba's Lieutenant-Governor Philip Lee attended a Red River College convocation for the first time.

His Honour addressed the graduates briefly while an aide-de-camp, resplendent in a uniform, stood behind him.

The L-G mentioned that in August 2009 he became the first Chinese-Canadian person to be named the province's vice-regal representative.

Then he recounted a tale of a Grade 3 student who informed his parents that the Lieutenant-Governor has visited his classroom.

Parents: What was the Lieutenant-Governor like?

Child: He was tall and wore a military uniform. But a Chinese guy did all the talking.

Some of the grads and their families laughed. I did, too. But I felt uncomfortable about finding a joke about ethnicity funny, especially at a serious public event. And, as the announcer for the presentation of parchments, I was on stage.

The point of the story, I guess, is that the child (and perhaps, by extension, other Canadians) did not expect a Chinese-Canadian to represent the Queen.

If that is true, such Canadians have not been paying much attention to public affairs. Norman Kwong has been Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta since 2005.

Perhaps Manitoba's L-G could have eased any discomfort in his audience by making the point more explicitly that an accomplished Canadian of any ethnic background can become a Lieutenant-Governor.

Or am I being too sensitive?

In the Chamber, out of the target audience

The Creative Communications Class of 2011 has been blogging about the Manitoba Theatre Projects performance of In the Chamber that they attended Jan. 14, 15 or 16.

The two one-hour performances, essentially monologues, nominally dealt with human factor analysis, a concept that does not guarantee a sparkling evening of theatre.

But IMHO actors Gordon Tanner and Steven Ratzlaff delivered gripping performances of men losing their minds while alienating their implied onstage audiences.

Many of the 70-plus students found the plays challenging; I did, too.

What surprises me about the students' reactions, though, is their frequently expressed resignation: I did not understand this because I am too young. I'm not in the target audience.

Yvonne Raymond, for example, writes:

"But then again, what do I know about these plays? I’m just one of those 20 something-year-olds who doesn’t get ‘grown-up talk’.

And I’m certain I didn’t get the ‘grown-up talk’ because the rest of the non-CreComm-35+ audience was laughing hysterically."

This is not a criticism of Yvonne. She expresses a widespread reaction clearly, even plaintively.

But people who are smart enough to get into CreComm are smart enough to understand just about anything. All they need to do is ask.

So, students; ask those 35+ers what was so funny. Ask about the unfamiliar music and the German-accented voice-over (Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Friedrich Nietzsche).

Don't let the notion of target audiences intimidate you. Come out of hiding and make yourself a target.

The wages of sin

Marianne Faithfull? Isn't she dead? Drugs, maybe?

Not quite, reports pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones.

In 200 or so wicked words in the Jan. 18, 2010 issue of the New Yorker, he notes that Faithfull, a '60s British Invasion icon, still "appears." Not "sings."

Frere-Jones recaps her career and concludes, "Her voice is the sound of sin, finally collecting its wages."

It's enough drive a reader to Romans 6:23 in the King James Version of the Bible.

Easily infuenced by a well turned phrase, I bought Faithfull's latest CD Easy Come Easy Go (Behold, I am RetroMan).

He's right.

Free information -- for a little work

Freedom-of-information legislation can unlock government files but not all bureaucrats know how to use it, Red River College Journalism students have discovered.

Sometimes you need to ask a librarian.

At the start of the Creative Communications term in the fall of 2009, I assigned the second-year Journalism majors to see what secrets they could dig out from the Manitoba government and the City of Winnipeg.

Now the Winnipeg Free Press has published the intriguing results. Wendy Sawatzky, the paper's online content manager, worked with the students to prepare their stories for publication.

Guided by Mary Agnes Welch, the newspaper's public policy reporter, the students paired up to create 11 requests for information ranging from wait times on the city's controversial 311 telephone information system to the workings of its cash-grabbing red-light cameras.

At the outset, the system generally worked well. In most cases the freedom-of-information co-ordinators in government responded to the requests within 30 days as the law requires.

But after that, it was as organized as the Wild West.

Some civil servants helpfully provided the information at no charge. Some said it would cost hundreds of dollars. Some said it was already available free and pointed the students to the source.

The students persisted. Some revised their requests so that the information could be found within the two free hours of searching that the legislation provides.

Then there was the bureaucrat who insisted that the requested information about the ages of people convicted of impaired driving did not exist, and that creating the software to find it would cost thousands of dollars.

That didn't sound right to students Joel Marcoux and Heather McGowan. They dug deeper, and they found an information hero in Leesa Girouard, a librarian at the Manitoba Legislative Library.

She found their answers and charged them 30 cents for photocopying. Oh, and they had to drop 50 cents into a parking meter while they visited the Leg.

Props to the helpful librarian who knows more about how to access information than one of the official guardians.

World's worst book cover

Is this the world's worst book cover? The ugliest? The most geeky?

Clip art, anyone?

What slippery surface is our winsome lass sliding down? A book page? If so, it must have the consistency of wet concrete to sustain those scratches. But why don't her knees or any other body parts leave marks?

Why is her ponytail undisturbed by her fall?

What is she staring at?

How can her Simpsons-style three-finger hands leave four tracks? Why doesn't her thumb leave any?

Poor girl. Even if she breaks her fall, she won't be able to stand straight, handicapped with legs of different lengths.

But the competition for world's worst book cover is tough. Even a brave author can criticize the cover of her own book.

How much harm does a bad book cover do, anyway?

In he case of The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing, it ain't just the cover that's bad.

Page 73: "Any reviewer should be aware of these differences so if they are asked to do a pre-publication review of a book instead of a post-publication review, they will keep the use of such in mind."

Page 106: "Try to review books in the order in which you receive them. This will help in keeping up with deadlines and is only fair to the person who submitted it."

Any more rhetorical questions?