Saturday, January 9, 2010

Journalism 101


Irony.

Make that ironies.

1) In reporting that CanWest newspapers will be sold - a move which predictably, in spite of screeching to the contrary, will result in lost jobs - the Globe & Mail used only four reporters. Four.

2) Guess who may end up owning a few of those papers?

Why David Radler, of course. Mr. Radler and his former partner Conrad Black owned Hollinger International Inc. which sold the Southam chain of papers to CanWest in 2000.

That was shortly before both Radler and Black were found guilty of various crimes and sent to prison.

Radler has been at home for some time now, quietly rebuilding the business he knows best.

In case you'd like to outbid Radler or Scotiabank (How much do you relish a bank owning newspapers? Yes, that'll really do heaps for journalism.), the going price is about a Billion dollars.

B-b-b-billion.

3 comments:

Jeff Taylor said...

Is the 'press' really free any ways ? Doesn't ALL news casts and news papers have a slant, one way or another ? Isn't the 'news' really about making money now a days ? We all have our 'views' on the various issues that surround our day to day lives. It's hard to call one persons views wrong mainly because they are in fact views and opinions. I get my news from many different sources now. I take all that I have read and watched and put it together in my head arriving to a 'some where in the middle' version of events. I mean, who can you actually trust these days to give you the complete truth ?

RossK said...

Wasn't 'Boo' Radler the original architect of all that bare-knuckled, cost-cutting when Ravelston/Argus/Hollinger originally shagged the Southam chain?

I would think that the best possible outcome would be if the stable could be sold-off piecemeal to protect us from media-monopolists like the good Mr. R.


.

Anonymous said...

I remember when the North Shore News was an independent paper with controversial opinions by the late Doug Collins. There were often protesters outside their doors.
Then came Canwest and the first to go was the editor replaced by some smarmy climate-change disciple who refuses to put a name to their anti Conservative editorials.
If the papers are to survive, they need to be independently owned and cost less to buy, like the British papers.