It's Intersession time!

On May 11 a small but select group of students will begin taking my Intersession course Editing Print and Online Media.

In the newsroom at the Princess Street campus of Red River College in Winnipeg we will work on improving our skills at organizing and editing material for ... yes, print and online media.

You can register for the course until the day it begins. There are no prerequisites other than a good understanding of English, so you do not need to be a Creative Communications student to join us.

The students who have registered so far have completed the first year of CreComm. As part of that curriculum they have created the blogs that are listed on the right side of this page.

One of their assignments will be to blog at least weekly on a topic related to the course, so you will be able to follow the public part of our learning.

Another assignment is Spot the Screwup. Students look for mistakes online, on billboards, on bus boards, in all kinds of print media. Then they fix them.

It's a dishearteningly easy assignment. Guess that means there will always be jobs for editors.

Thinking like the government

Drivers in Manitoba renew our licences annually and get a new picture taken every four years.

The annual renewal date arrives four months after the driver’s birthday. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s better than everyone renewing licences and government-run insurance on Feb. 28, Soviet-style, as we had to do until a few years ago.

So six weeks ago I trotted down to my friendly neighbourhood insurance office, for that is where you go to renew licence and insurance in Manitoba.

Signed the papers, confirmed the payments.

Asked whether I had to take a new picture. No, they said. You’ll get your new licence within a month. Great.

Three weeks later I received voice mail from another insurance agency, whose door I had not darkened for at least three years and which is unconnected with the one I have been dealing with. You need a new picture for your driver’s licence.

Bombarded with solicitations from around the world, I did what any rational Canadian would do. I deleted the message and forgot about it.

OK, maybe I uttered an epithet about call centres.

Six weeks after my application, no new licence. The temporary one is expiring.

Head down to friendly neighbourhood insurance office. Explain problem. Get two workers puzzling over computer.

You need to take a picture. The other agency left you a message.

Why would they leave me a message? Why didn’t you? That I would have paid attention to.

Dunno.

Take off glasses. Remove smile. Assume neutral expression. Take picture. Sign in three places. Receive another temporary licence.

Wait three weeks, they promise.

At least the government isn’t charging me more money.

Just my time.

A 46-point plan

Help! I'm drowning in red tape!

Or I would be, if I were a student applying for a summer job with Canada's federal government.

First, there's the acronym FSWEP.

That's the Federal Student Work Experience Program. Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

Then there's the helpful guide for university student applicants published by Parks Canada. The opportunities in this department sound exciting, and I'm sure they will be well paid.

But a 46-point guide?

My favourite point is 45: "YOU'RE FINISHED!"

That's a snare and a delusion. There is indeed a Number 46. It refers you back to the beginning of the process.

Check it out.

Parks Canada

Riding Mountain National Park of Canada

Guide for university student applicants.

Applying for employment at Riding Mountain National Park through the Federal Student Work Experience Program (FSWEP).

1. Go online to http://jobs.gc.ca.

2. Click on “English”.

3. Click on “Students” on the left hand side.

4. Click on “Federal Student Work Experience Program (FSWEP)”, the second bullet point.

5. Click on “Apply on-line”, the fifth bullet point.

6. Click on “FSWEP Campaign 2009-2010”

7. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Apply Online”.

8. You are now on a page called “Login to your File”. Since you haven’t got one, click on “Create Account”.

9. Fill in the personal information requested. (The PRI is for internal usage; you can leave it blank.)

10. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Continue”.

11. Fill in your home address information. To be screened in for Riding Mountain National Park indicate that your Area of Residence is in “Central & Northern Manitoba”.

12. At the bottom of the page, click on “Continue”.

13. Fill in your work address or other address information. If you don’t have a secondary address, leave everything blank.

14. At the bottom of the page, click on “Continue”.

15. Select a password and a security question and click on “Continue”.

16. Write down your Applicant Number and password (it will allow you to access your file again at a later date) then click on “Continue”.

17. Select “I confirm” and click on “Continue”.

18. Click on “View My Jobs File”.

19. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see your My Jobs file. You’ll have to complete all sections marked by a red X before submitting.

20. To do that, start by clicking on “FSWEP Criteria”.

21. Answer the questions on that page and click on “Save”. Complete both dates, when you will be available for full time work and when available for part time work.Note that many of our jobs will have a “part time” component to them either at the beginning of the term or at the end. We strongly encourage you to select a date for which you will be available for part time work or your application will be screened out of our job searches which have a part time component to them.

22. Click on “Résumé”.

23. Copy your résumé and paste it into the box provided. (Don’t worry too much about the formatting; the content is what we need to see.)

24. Click on “Save”.

25. Click on “Work Location”.

26. Select “Manitoba” and click on “Continue”.

27. Select the areas of work in Manitoba that you’d be interested in. Riding Mountain National Park is listed as such

28. Click on “Save and Continue”.

29. Click on “Back”. This will bring you back to your My Jobs file.

30. Click on “Education”.

31. Select your highest level of education, whether you’ve completed it or not. (Ex. If you are currently finishing your first year of university, click on “University”.)

32. Click on “Add”.

33. Fill in the information requested. Under “Academic Level”, select “University Credits” if you are in university but do not yet have a degree.

34. At the bottom of the page, click on “Continue”.

35. Select your Specialization Groups and click on “Continue”.

36. You are now on a long page of specialisations. Don’t be intimidated! Just pick (at most) four specializations that match your strengths. If you pick more than four, the system will ask you to get rid of some until you have only four. Please note that we do not screen by Specialization when selecting candidates.

37. Click on “Save”.

38. Click on “Back”. This will bring you back to your My Jobs file.

39. Click on “Languages”.

40. Fill in the requested information about your language proficiency. Click on “Save”.

41. Your file is now complete! IF YOU CHOOSE, you can complete the final three sections, “Employment Equity”, “Skills” and “Departmental Programs”.

42. If you do not want to complete these extra sections (or, after you are done with them), click on “Submit Application”. This is very important! Nobody will ever see your application unless you click on “Submit Application”!

43. Click on “I Agree”.

44. Click on “Continue”.

45. YOU’RE FINISHED! If you would like to review your file, you can click on “View”.

46. You can always access your file and make changes by using your username and password, selected at the beginning of the process.

Crawl out from under your rock

I usually don't agree with judges who order news media to reveal their sources.

But I do support a ruling that Internet anonymity is not absolute, made by a judge of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia on April 14, 2010.

The judge ordered Google and The Coast, a weekly newspaper, to reveal to Halifax firefighters the identities and IP addresses of seven people who allegedly defamed them in anonymous comments on The Coast's website.

Whether or not a court finds that any comment in this case was defamatory, the ruling highlights the unfairness of anonymous comments.

Why should I be able to publish online any opinion of you that I feel like, and then hide under my rock of anonymity?

In a broadcast or print format I would have to identify myself, and rightly so.

And no, I still don't think news media should be forced to reveal their anonymous sources.

There is a clear distinction. Battles over anonymous sources involve facts that the sources provide, which are then checked by journalists before broadcast or publication.

Most anonymous web comments are notably fact-free. They are opinions, often breathtakingly ignorant ones.

Unlike mine, of course.

Why I don't read Yann Martel

Yes, I know I would be a better person if I read Yann Martel: Life of Pi, What is Stephen Harper Reading? and now Beatrice & Virgil.

And I'm not exactly sure why I don't.

Something about the topics, maybe? Animals on a raft ... sarcasm about a surly leader ... a writer trying to publish his latest book.

Nothing wrong with a little postmodernism. (Can you be a little postmodern? Or is it like being a little pregnant?) Anyway, what could be more fascinating for an author than writing about his writing?

I wish you all the success in the world, Yann. May you increase in wealth and fame. Not that you're doing badly in the fame department already.

It's just that I often go for stuff over which the news media fawn a little less. Stuff I can decide on for myself.

In the last couple of weeks, for example, I have read and enjoyed Kaspoit!, a crazed piece of fiction that consists almost entirely of dialogue, with few descriptions and almost no verbs. Oh yeah, it's about a serial killer on the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.

Want postmodern? Look closely at the signs in the cover picture.

Then there was Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker-in-Training by Tom Jokinen, a hilarious tale of a few months the author spent working at a Winnipeg funeral home -- incidentally, the place that arranged my parents' funerals.

And A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr, who has received his share of adulation, and rightly so. This is Kerr's fifth novel featuring Bernie Gunther, an anti-Nazi German policeman and member of the SS who somehow survives the Second World War and flees to Argentina.

Gorgeous description and dialogue in all five. I expect to revel in more of the same when I read the sixth, If the Dead Rise Not.

I also zipped through 88 Men and 2 Women, an anti-capital-punishment memoir by a former warden of San Quentin prison.

Then, for a break from crime and death, I read a couple of Dashiell Hammett stories.

So Yann, as the human resources departments say when you don't get the job, it's not personal.

I'm just going in a different direction.

P.S. Not all reviewers worship Beatrice and Virgil. Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times of April 13, 2010, for example, scorns it as "misconceived and offensive" and as "this disappointing and often perverse novel."

Maintiens le droit

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have apologized to the mother of Robert Dziekanski, who died after Mounties attacked him with a Taser at Vancouver airport in 2007.

It's about time. Dziekanski's unjustified death has damaged the reputation of the RCMP and our country.

Let's applaud Paul Pritchard, whose video of Dziekanski's death kept the issue in the public eye and prevented a coverup.

It's funny to recall the debate over the video two years ago. CBC invited me on air to discuss the burning question: Should broadcasters air the video? It wasn't shot by a journalist!

The answer then and now is: Of course they should. It's news.

Get used to it, journalists.

Upholding the law.

You have arrived at your destination

The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski's not-so-love letter to America, contains a couple of creaky plot devices and extended product placement.

But look past those, and the usual goofs, to the movie's use of the GPS system in the Luxury European Automobile driven by Our Hero, the ghost. The GPS, apparently living in the past, re-creates a recent trip.

The ghost tries to make his own way but eventually submits to the route advocated by the nagging, unflagging monotone. And discovers ... OK, no spoilers.

How long before the talkative GPS becomes a movie cliche?

Perhaps it will outlast the technology. After all, some movies still feature pre-digital, pre-call-display telephone answering machines that play messages while they are being recorded.

Come to think of it, that device is too handy to abandon just because it's obsolete.