Dead right

Former National Hockey League coach Pat Burns has joined the long list of people whose obituaries have been published prematurely.

"They're trying to kill me before I'm dead," The Canadian Press quotes Burns as telling TSN columnist Bob McKenzie.

Yes, Burns is ill. But he's not dead yet.

Other victims of premature obituaries include Ronald Reagan and Bob Hope.

Many news media have prepared obituaries of important people for use when the time comes. And to hockey fans, Pat Burns is an important guy.

Today, with retweeting and other methods of instantly circulating information whether it is right or wrong, it is more important than ever to obey Rule No. 1 in journalism.

Get it first, but first get it right.

I want to vote! Where am I?

Politicians and pundits frequently complain about low voter turnout in Canadian elections.

So how about making it easier on the poor voter?

All Manitoba communities are holding civic elections on Oct. 27. In 2006, the last Winnipeg civic general election, just over one-third of eligible voters went to the polls: a measly 38 per cent.

Winnipeg, home to about two-thirds of Manitobans, is divided into 15 wards. Every eligible citizen can vote for a city councillor in one ward, and all citizens can vote for mayor.

That’s where it gets complicated. What ward are you in?

The City of Winnipeg website invites you to find your ward and your poll location by entering your address. That’s fine. But what if you want to learn more about the ward, for example its boundaries?

The short answer is that there is no good place to do that.

The city offers several ward maps, but they lack the street names that would be familiar to most residents.

Some incumbent councillors provide maps of their wards, for example Jenny Gerbasi's of Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry. Their quality varies.

Complicating this search are the names of the wards. Many wards cover several neighbourhoods, so they sport hyphenated names such as River Heights-Fort Garry.

But wait! There’s more!

River Heights-Fort Garry includes the neighbourhood of Linden Woods (or Lindenwoods; there does not appear to be an official spelling).

Michael Kowalson, who is running against incumbent John Orlikow, has created his own name for the ward: River Heights-Fort Garry-Lindenwoods.

In an email exchange on Sept. 12, Kowalson told me,

I have chosen to include Linden Woods in my campaign material as many residents of Linden Woods are not aware they are part of the River Heights Ward. Most residents of Linden Woods do not think of themselves as living in River Heights or Fort Garry in the conventional sense.

I believe that Linden Woods is a very distinct and important neighborhood within the city and should be recognized as such. There are many important issues facing the Linden Woods area (as is the case with all neighborhoods in the City) and I hope all residents will come out to vote on October 27th.

Kowalson’s triple-barrelled ward name may be more accurate than the official one, but it’s confusing. It looks as if he and Orlikow are running in different wards.

No wonder lots of citizens can’t be bothered to vote.

Gimme my Timmies, the frozen stuff

I admit it. I’ve dropped a few bucks at Tim Hortons (yes, we have no apostrophes today, although of course we should).

It doesn’t hurt that my employer has seen fit to install a Timmies outlet in my workplace. As the only purveyor of double-doubles in Winnipeg’s bustling Exchange, this one ought to change its slogan from “Always Fresh” to “Always Busy.”

My sons accuse me of having visited every Tims outlet in Canada. They are wrong, of course. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

But, after extensive research and coffee rental I can report that the cleanest Tims I have ever visited is in Cochrane, Ontario. Best-laid-out parking lot, too.

At the other end of the spectrum on both counts is the one in Vanderhoof, B.C.

Blind River, Ontario is no screamin’ hell, either.

But what really gets me worked up (especially after a couple of cups of joe) is that Always Fresh business. It is, to put the matter politely, at variance with the facts.

The doughnuts, bagels, Timbits – highly nutritious all, no doubt – are not fresh. They are frozen.

This is no urban legend. Why, it says so right in Maclean’s magazine, whose apostrophe is a rakish maple leaf. At least they have one.

The Sept. 13, 2010 Maclean’s reports on a proposed $1.95-billion class action lawsuit that is splitting the chain’s management and the franchisees who rake in the dough. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Once a journalist, always a cheap-shot artist.)

The article recalls the scandal in 2003 when Ron Joyce, co-founder of the chain, revealed that its food was not fresh but, in the magazine’s words, heated up from “frozen globs of dough trucked in from a factory.”

The current battle features the assertion that the “Always Fresh” system of reheating frozen food has cut into the franchisees’ profits.

Check out the Maclean’s story. It’s on the long side, but if you start reading it when you line up at my local Tims, you stand a good chance of finishing before you taste your Always Frozen food.

What is journalism?

Check out the blog list on the right side of this page. You will find 16 posts by second-year Journalism major students in my Creative Communications class on the topic What is Journalism?

Their opinions and examples will give you a perspective on the huge range of journalism today -- all sorts of journalism in all sorts of media.

Yes, some media are declining. Think of print-only newspapers or traditional hour-long television newscasts. But even those "old" media are sprouting vibrant new online growth.

In short, it's a great business today for smart, curious, energetic young people, people such as these bloggers.

Judges are people, too. So let's see them

A recent conflict in a Winnipeg courtroom demonstrates again why cameras should be allowed in the courts.

In a murder trial on Aug. 30, sheriff’s officers alerted the judge that family members of the accused had complained someone was using a cell phone to record images of their relative.

The Winnipeg Free Press reports what Justice Glenn Joyal, associate chief justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench, general division, said next:

"If anyone takes a picture in this courtroom ... you'll be out of here so fast your head will spin," said Joyal. "So think twice. I won't have a lot of patience or tolerance for this type of thing."

Why are photos forbidden in the courtroom? Well, because judges say they are. Courtrooms were around before cameras.

Of course, there are legitimate concerns, for example identifying witnesses or accused people who are under 18 or whose identities need to be protected for other reasons. No reasonable person would argue about that. Restricting pictures of such people would be quite simple.

But this is a visual age. People, including the taxpayers who pay for the justice system, should be able to see what goes on in the courts.

News media have repeatedly offered to work with justice officials on demonstration projects that would open up the courts to television and still cameras, with restrictions to maintain decorum.

Such coverage would demystify the legal process and reduce the incentive for citizens to try to take their own unauthorized shots.

Judges, who are forbidden to answer criticism publicly, would benefit from such openness. It would reduce the amount of unfair criticism by ignorant columnists, bloggers and other commentators (not that such stuff ever meets your eyes, dear reader).

Jeffrey Oliphant, a former top Manitoba judge, has supported the idea of such projects. In fact, Oliphant’s public inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair was televised live, with no ill effects on anyone.

But we deserve to see criminal trials, too.

A Shaw oddity

Have you seen the Major Tom commercial on Shaw promoting the company's high-speed internet with wi-fi?

Yes, that Major Tom. The star of David Bowie’s 1969 tune (and powerful ear worm) Space Oddity.

Shaw’s Major Tom blasts off, floats in space and grins. Looks as if he’s having a peak experience.

But Shaw misses the point of the song.

This is not a space frolic.

Listen to the whole lyric. Something is going horribly wrong.

In the part that Shaw doesn’t play, Ground Control tells Major Tom, “Your circuit’s dead; there’s something wrong.”

Major Tom’s last words: “Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do.”

Perhaps this message of catastrophic technological failure and impending death is not what Shaw wants to associate with the services it is selling.

Major Tom ain’t coming back. Neither should this commercial.

Low and behold

Don’cha just hate it when somebody says or writes would of instead of would have or should of instead of should have?

You do? Good. Me, too.

Spurred by the writing of people who should know better, I am compiling a list of phonetic spellings and related oddities.

Here are some of my favourites, supplemented by suggestions from my colleagues Kenton Larsen and Chris Petty, avid readers and writers both.

Case and point (instead of case in point)

Doggy dog (dog eat dog)

Low and behold (lo and behold)

Run the gambit (run the gamut)

Pour over (pore over)

Two reasons to be aware of such mistakes and to fix them: They jar the reader, and they reveal the writer’s ignorance.

A couple of suggestions to prevent such mistakes: Read more. And when you write something, read it aloud before publishing it.

You could also trying looking up words. That’s why God made dictionary.com.

Got other examples? That’s why God made the Comment feature.

Merry malaprop-ing!