PR: Good; Journalism: We’ll see

The Winnipeg Police Service and the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs did a very smart thing today. Most importantly, they did it together.

They appeared on the same stage – the media room at police headquarters – to discuss a difficult case.

Evan Maud, a 20-year-old Aboriginal man, told reporters on Dec. 8 that he was grabbed by two police officers on Dec. 3 and left outside the city without a coat in -20 weather.

News media across Canada jumped on the story of the alleged “starlight tour.”

That term was made famous by some unfortunate actions by police in Saskatchewan. A public inquiry there into the death of Neil Stonechild found the credibility of some police officers was lacking.

But that was Saskatoon 20 years ago. This is Winnipeg today.

Today the chiefs of the Winnipeg police and Manitoba’s Aboriginal people co-operated in the announcement that Maud has been charged with public mischief for making a false report.

Like anyone in Canada who is accused of a crime, Maud is innocent until proven guilty.

The participation of Manitoba Grand Chief Ron Evans beside Police Chief Keith McCaskill signals a welcome retreat from the knee-jerk cop-bashing that has sometimes accompanied allegations of police misconduct in Manitoba.

Dare we hope for more public co-operation between these two leaders and their constituencies?

Congratulations to these two and to their public-relations advisers.

Now it’s the duty of journalists to give this event as much publicity as they gave the original story.

Truth in obituaries

The growth of online obituaries and related material such as Facebook memorials is breathing new life into the hoary tradition of obituary writing.

The traditional newspaper obit is highly formatted: After a brave battle with Disease X, Person Y passed away peacefully, surrounded by his loved ones …

Then come the dates, birth and marriage prominent among them. Those dates are more likely to be true than most of the other stuff.

But now the traditional taboos – suicide, unpopular diseases such as AIDS, even a prickly personality – are themselves dying.

On Dec. 4, 2010 The Globe and Mail published a wonderful example of the new, more honest obit writing about Christopher “Dexter” Bates, who died of cancer at 44.

He was not one to suffer fools ­ and he saw them everywhere ­ but people gravitated to Chris and he made lifelong friends. He could be thin-skinned, but he was hardheaded too, and he never heard a piece of advice he couldn't ignore. Twenty-odd years of addiction took a heavy toll on his health and many of his personal relationships, but his extraordinary intelligence, charm, and dry humour will be greatly missed by those who knew and loved him.

So when you are asked to help compose an obit, as eventually you are almost certain to be, write honestly.

You can help write the obituary of dishonest obituaries.

It's over

One of the wonderful things about Hiroshima by John Hersey is its ending. Actually, both its endings.

Hersey's 1946 book about the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 concludes by quoting an essay by 10-year-old Toshio Nakamura, who survived the attack that killed something like 100,000 people.

The next day Toshio and two friends went looking for their mothers.

"But Kikuki's mother was wounded and Murakami's mother, alas, was dead."

Try forgetting that line, or the story that it wraps up.

Forty years later Hersey published a new chapter following up on the lives of the six people he originally interviewed.

It closes by reporting on Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who is over 70.

"He was slowing down a bit. His memory, like the world's, was getting spotty."

Three words, "like the world's," move the story back into its historical context and into our lives.

The book is over but the story isn't.

Not too sick to blog

Is there such a thing as being too sick for social media?

Apparently not.

A couple of weeks ago a student emailed me saying he was sick and would miss my class. Nothing wrong with that; we want sick students to get well as quickly as possible, and we don’t want them to make their classmates sick.

But within a couple of hours this student posted a new blog entry. Several tweets followed in short order.

When I inquired about his health, he said he had decided to blog from home to be productive.

Now, we don’t expect sick people to be productive. We expect them to work on getting better.

That usually means resting, perhaps seeing a doctor and taking medication.

It means refraining from daily activities even if they can be done sitting or lying down, such as blogging and tweeting.

I can only conclude that this student was not sick of anything other than my class.

A disrespectful headline

In all the servile coverage of the British royal family's wedding plans for Prince William and Kate Middleton, I am pleased that nobody has published a headline such as

Royals select latest brood mare

Same old job description: Produce an heir and a spare

That would be disrespectful.

Here’s some honest feedback

Are books dead? I say no.

Are book publishers dead? That’s a tougher question.

Is literacy dead at book publishers? Apparently so.

At least it lies whimpering in the gutter at McGraw-Hill Ryerson, according to an email notice of a survey conducted by the venerable Canadian company in October 2010. The message I received announced:

This customer survey has been designed to help McGraw-Hill Ryerson refine our skills and knowledge in order to offer you the best customer experience possible.

Our shared purpose is to be the leading learning solutions provider source:

- dedicated to excellence

- recognized for our collaborative learning solutions

- enabling instructor’s to provide the best learning experience possible for their students.

We ask for your honest feedback.

OK, here's some.

Please translate into English: "the leading learning solutions provider source."

Please learn to use apostrophes properly: "instructor’s."

Then you can ask me to fill out a survey. Or to buy a book. Preferably one written in proper English.

A mighty voice, barely heard

Almighty Voice and His Wife, a compelling piece of theatre playing in Winnipeg, lacks only one thing: a good-sized audience.

It’s a double retelling of the story of Almighty Voice, an Aboriginal man killed in 1897 by the Northwest Mounted Police in Saskatchewan. His original offence: Killing a cow owned by the government.

The first act tells the story conventionally, ending with the death of Almighty Voice.

The second act imagines Almighty Voice and his wife as characters in a Victorian entertainment, tormenting each other while singing and dancing their hearts out but ultimately unable to escape their original story.

Derek Garza as Almighty Voice and P.J. Prudat as White Girl inhabit the characters brilliantly, particularly when they don whiteface for the second act.

The play, written by Daniel David Moses and directed by Michael Greyeyes, is serious but not depressing. There are liberal doses of the sidesplitting humour and wordplay that characterize much Aboriginal drama. Think of the possible meanings of Chief Magistrate, for example.

Oh yes, there’s sex, too.

What a shame, then, that many of the seats in the Rachel Browne Theatre in downtown Winnipeg were empty at the Sunday matinee that I attended.

Get your tickets from Theatre Projects Manitoba for $20, less for students.

Almighty Voice and His Wife plays in Winnipeg until Nov. 14 and in the J.R.C. Evans Theatre at Brandon University on Nov. 17 and 18.