Attention must be paid to these ideas

Published Sept 12, 2009 in The Globe and Mail, a reputable Canadian news organization, is this readable summary of the situation in which the information tsunami is leaving us: information-rich and attention-poor.

Lots of implications for everyone within the sound of my voice (as the radio preachers used to say). Of special interest for teachers, journalists and other ex-experts.

Interesting comments, for once, on the Globe and Mail site.

Trying to make a killing, again

A Canadian provincial government wants to seize the proceeds from the sale of a book by convicted wife-killer Colin Thatcher.

I say you should decide whether Thatcher makes any money -- not the Saskatchewan government.

You should decide whether he collects a couple of bucks from his tortured retelling of the case, and his literally incredible insistence that he didn't murder JoAnn Wilson.

If you don't think so, then don't buy Final Appeal: Anatomy of a Frame. You will be in good company as you let this flotsam wash past you in the information tsunami.

Thatcher was convicted of killing Wilson in 1983. He appealed, but the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal told him to take a hike. So did the Supreme Court of Canada.

That's guilty, guilty, guilty.

Now that he is out on parole, who cares if a couple of hundred people fork over $35 for his book? That's a couple of hundred people who will see through his delusions of innocence.

It is highly unlikely his book will hit the best-seller lists. This angry author will not get to make a second killing.

But let the readers decide whether the book should live or die.

That's a better chance than Thatcher gave JoAnn Wilson.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E, 2009 style

Check out this outrageous claim:

“In this spirit-numbing information age, we gorge on the Web and on CNN, we cannot free our hands of our BlackBerrys and laptops and cellphones, but, in the end, we know less and less of each other, of our hearts, of our souls.
But Johnny Cash singing I Walk the Line or Hank [Williams] sorrowing through I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry still gives us more insight in three minutes, tells us more about what matters most in our lives, than we get in an entire 24-hour news cycle.”
– Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music by Dana Jennings, Faber and Faber 2008.

Is the Web more up-to-date than Webb Pierce? Has Google supplanted George Jones? Or is Jennings (an editor with the New York Times, by the way) just a country hick?

Down with the P-word! Let's rename newspapers

Newspapers need a new name.

The news part is OK, although perhaps unnecessary. But the paper part is dragging them down.

Dead trees, yuck!

The best newspapers are learning to compete online, using their large editorial staffs to research and present interesting material in a compelling way.

Most of them still publish a dead-tree edition, too. But I don’t know many people who think ink on paper is the future.

(Except my old boss. In 1995, when I was editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, I worked with Red River College and journalism instructor Donald Benham to create a Web site that incorporated text, audio and video. We demonstrated it in the IMAX theatre and impressed lots of folks. Then, when I got back to the office, the publisher ordered me to stop wasting the newspaper’s money and time on this Internet nonsense. But I’m not bitter.)

So let’s dump the P-word. No more paper in the newspaper.

What better word can we create?

And I’m open to suggestions for prizes for the best new name.

What is an information tsunami?

An information tsunami is what we are living in: A constantly increasing blast of information from many media, including new ones that are continuously being invented. It's loud, scary and exciting. And it erodes the ground we thought we were standing on, the authority of more traditional information sources.

As a journalist and instructor in Creative Communications at Red River College in Winnipeg, Canada, I am interested in the consequences of this tsunami. How can we make sense of it? What should we believe? How can we contribute to it? Is there any way to control any of it?

In particular, I am interested in the devices that are used to make sense of the tsunami, such as the forms of fiction and non-fiction writing, headlines and other organizing devices, and the audio and visual elements of messages.

Can you hear me above the crashing? Let's talk -- and maybe have some fun. For example, why are these people laughing?