Licensing journalists? Non, merci

The Quebec government’s proposal to regulate journalists is a bad idea.

Christine St. Pierre, the province’s communications minister, is inviting comments on a proposal, based on the Rapport Payette, that would discriminate between journalists whom she and her fellow Liberals deem legitimate and others, such as mere bloggers.

No, thank you.

There are already laws to control damage caused by any news medium, principally the law of defamation. Penalties are quite stiff in Canada – as I hope some irresponsible bloggers will discover.

A defining strength of journalism is that it does not kowtow to governments or special interests. Journalists are responsible to their audiences, which are not shy about criticizing any online, published, or broadcast work.

Just look at user-generated content such as the comment sections of any news medium.

Governments do not shrink from making such criticisms, either. That’s fine.

But they should not control who writes what.

Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says,

Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;

(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication …

What could be clearer than that?

“Everyone” includes bloggers, tweeters and users of other media.

Of course, Section 33 of the Charter allows governments to override these rights for five years at a time.

Quebec has employed this “notwithstanding clause” to justify controlling commercial communication, with the province’s French-language sign law. 

Fortunately, controlling online publication is much more difficult than controlling physical signs on buildings.

One of the wonderful aspects of social media and other “new media” is that they are difficult for anyone to control.

Dictators in the Arab world are learning this lesson the hard way.

Quebec should not emulate them.

Shiny new students and instructors

I’m looking forward to the new Creative Communications semester, which begins on Aug. 29 with a bunch of shiny new instructors.

Joanne Kelly will be my new colleague in the Journalism part of the program. One of our innovations will be an e-textbook for first-year students, consisting of five chapters of The New Journalist: Roles, Skills and Critical Thinking from Edmond Montgomery Publications. Yes, it’s Canadian.

The projected price is under $30, less than half the price of the entire dead-tree text – which we would not use completely, anyway.

In late September students will watch Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times, at Cinematheque.

I’ve seen it, and it’s well worth watching.

A bit of journalistic history, a bit of social media, and the beautiful new Times building, all seen though the eyes of a former crack addict, now a Times reporter.

Afterward, students will be able to discuss how Watergate and the Pentagon Papers relate to WikiLeaks and Twitter.

Also this year, the Manitoba election on Oct. 4 will generate a couple of assignments and will give me an opportunity to rail against the lack of civics lessons in Manitoba’s public schools and universities.

No worries, though: the CreComm curriculum will make up for it.

Other highlights include the city council and Remembrance Day assignments, back by popular demand.

And that’s just Journalism, one of seven required courses.

In co-operation with Advertising, Public Relations and Creative Writing instructors, some of them shiny and some slightly shopworn (but we’re all good friends; really!), the J instructors will work with the first-year students on their weekly blogs.

Students and instructors will also use Twitter and LinkedIn social media.

It will be a busy year – two years actually, for the whole program.

Abandon your lives, all ye who enter here!

Unpaid 'internships' = exploitation

Here’s hoping you can tear yourself away from the efforts of Rebekah Brooks and her enablers, Rupert and James Murdoch, to destroy the reputations of all journalists.

Let’s discuss another disgraceful topic: unpaid internships at profit-making companies for graduates of journalism schools and other professional programs. They’re very popular these days. There’s even one in Winnipeg journalism.

As my colleague Melanie Lee Lockhart explains, there are good reasons to volunteer for organizations that you support, where you can make a difference.

And many post-secondary educational programs include brief unpaid work placements or internships. These are actually courses for which students receive credit.

Creative Communications, the Red River College program where I teach journalism (damn the Murdochs!), includes two three-week work placements. Instructors match students with employers and survey both sides after each placement to ensure that everyone involved receives value from the experience.

Then the students graduate and look for paying jobs. Paying jobs, just like the ones held by their employers.

Unfortunately, there is a growing trend in Canada toward unpaid internships for students who have graduated.

We pay ’em in experience and networking, these companies say.

Well, pay ’em in money, I say. The experience and networking already are important elements of these traditionally low-paying jobs.

Have the bosses of these students renounced their pay cheques? Are they giving away their entire product at no charge?

Didn’t think so.

Companies engaging in this abusive practice are extremely short-sighted. In a rapidly changing world where workers already exhibit little loyalty to employers and where skills are easily transferable, why would they want to alienate the smart young people on whom their success depends?

The only answer I can see is, “Because we can.”

So that’s why I don’t recommend that a student take an unpaid job on graduation, or even for the summer between school years.

It’s exploitation.

Good reporting kills bad reporting

The fully justified death of the News of the World because of its bad journalism is due in large part to the good journalism of The Guardian, one of its British competitors.

For two years Guardian hack (to reclaim a proud old term) Nick Davies has been uncovering the illegal and immoral phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid.

Before today, NOTW journos and bosses issued the usual semi-apologies. A few low-level heads rolled.

Now that we know the hackers also attacked the voice mail of 13-year-old slain Milly Dowler, Murdoch has killed the paper, effective Sunday.

Before then, he also needs to fire News International CEO Rebekah Brooks.

In the least believable statement by a corporate executive since … oh, maybe something by former Enron chair Kenneth Lay, Brooks told NOTW staff:

We were all appalled and shocked when we heard about these allegations yesterday.

I have to tell you that I am sickened that these events are alleged to have happened.

Not just because I was Editor of the News of the World at the time, but if the accusations are true, the devastating effect on Milly Dowler's family is unforgivable.

“Appalled and shocked.” Yeah, right.

Good on Nick Davies and the Guardian.

Why blog? A lament

My colleague Kenton Larsen, a loquacious, sagacious and occasionally salacious, not to mention ubiquitous (but not mendacious. Never mendacious!) blogger, laments the cessation or at least the pausing of blogging by Creative Communications students now that their semester is finished, and I concur with his argument about the value of blogging as practice writing – in fact, it’s all practice until somebody gets a job or gets paid for writing; as Samuel Johnson is quoted, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."

Define money broadly as professional experience and I think Dr. J is in agreement with Kenton, who writes:

What makes the blog assignment a “professional” endeavor is that it gives potential employers a sense of how well a person can write, how often, “voice,” style, interests, sense of humor, anxieties, etc.

As for the returning CreComm students who are still blogging weekly, 10 of those are fulfilling a requirement of my Intersession editing course. Last blog entry is due tomorrow, folks!

Perhaps the non-bloggers don’t need money.

Or could it be a simple case of scolionophobia?

Editing Shakespeare

Who’s afraid of William Shakespeare? Not the adventurous Winnipeg thespians Shakespeare in the Ruins.

The 18-year-old theatre company has done a serious edit on a pair of the bard’s historical plays, condensing them into two hours of swashbuckling, punning fun.

Judging from Saturday night’s performance of Henry IV Parts I and II, I think Will would have endorsed their cuts and thrusts.

The company’s Sarah Constible trimmed the 53 characters of Part II (plus a handful more from Part I) and approximately six-hour running time to multiple roles for nine actors including herself.

The resulting performance maintains the high energy for which the company is renowned.

Constible’s edit deserves a lot of the credit for keeping the action coming while retaining space for the guts of Shakespeare: his rich language, especially that of poet-buffoon Sir John Falstaff.

This staging certainly fulfils the company’s ideal: “Our ongoing commitment to making the works of Shakespeare accessible and enjoyable for everyone (through clarity of text and unusual environmental staging).”

In the last couple of years SIR has withdrawn from the promenade-style performances that originated in the ruins of the St. Norbert monastery.

Now they stand and deliver under a tent on a parking lot in Assiniboine Park. It’s less adventurous than their earlier settings, granted, but I was pleased to see a dozen or so preschoolers clinging to the outside of the fence, giggling and shouting during the battle scene.

A 400-year-old adult play that grabs kids? Now that’s good editing.

Editing carrots and parsnips

Inspired by my students' growing definitions of editing, here is a garden-variety blog post.

I have been editing parsnips and carrots in our Back 40 (square metres, not sections).

The seeds of these root vegetables are too small to plant individually, so you sprinkle them in a row, then stand back and watch 'em explode.

The result is a row of  tiny plants, competing for room to grow.

Unless they are thinned out, you'll get a mass of roots too skinny for human consumption.

Because we want crunchy, delicious carrots and shapely, tasty turnips for roasting, I thinned out those delicate growths, leaving fewer than half to compete for nutrition and sunlight. The losers go into the compost, of course.

This summer I will thin them several more times: ruthless, Old Testament style editing.

As Lyle Lovett says, Joshua Judges Ruth.