Sympathy for the mogul

In the spirit of Thin Air, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival that runs next week, please allow me to introduce a wonderful author. He’s a man of former wealth and current fame.

Or reintroduce: A Matter of Principle is Conrad Black’s fifth book, the second instalment of his autobiography. Black has published over 3,500 pages between hard covers, and many more in essays, letters and legal writs.

He's Canadian, too – or he was, until he renounced his citizenship to sit in the British House of Lords.

Twenty years ago Black was the boss of Hollinger, one of the world’s largest newspaper groups. Today he’s in a Florida prison, convicted of defrauding investors.

Reading his latest opus to review it for the Winnipeg Free Press, I find myself again loving the writing but not the writer.

One of the most seductive elements of Black’s writing is its vitriol.

“Raising children is a good formation for dealing with editors and journalists. They are fiendishly clever at promising compliance with the wishes of the owner, appearing to give superficial adherence while in fact continuing in their exceptionable practices.”

When shareholder groups began to sniff around the corporate payments that have sent him to jail, Black sought support from associates who, he claims to believe, had approved them.

“I encountered a pandemic of amnesia.”

Come for the schadenfreude, stay for the literature.

A Matter of Principle: It’s a helluva book.

Living and dying for journalism

For their first blogging assignment, the Journalism majors in Creative Communications are asking: What is journalism?

To take only two examples of their thoughtful answers:

“Journalism isn’t chained to a format.  It will always be helping people make sense of their world,” says Erica Johnson.

“Journalism is getting your hands dirty. Journalism is accuracy, accountability and a desire to share information,” is part of Dani Finch’s inclusive definition.

But this topic is important not only to students doing an assignment.

Jeff Jarvis in his blog BuzzMachine asks the same question, with some not-so-different answers, but interesting new examples.

Meanwhile, two journalists have been found slain in Mexico City. Their deaths follow a pattern of violence by organized criminals, The Guardian reports.

And in Russia, a former police colonel has finally been charged in the notorious 2006 murder of the investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

So, while we debate “What is journalism?” let’s remember the journalists Ana Marcela Yarce Viveros, Rocio González Trapaga and Anna Politkovskaya.

These three women answered the question with their lives.

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?