Back in 1991, when morning newspapers pretty well set the news agenda for everyone else, what went on the front page of Thursday’s edition would have been the topic of weighty thought and robust discussion.
After all, on Wednesday we can expect to learn whether the United Conservative Party has told Alberta Premier Jason Kenney whether he gets to stay or has to go.
There are lots of ways that story could play out, but there’s bound to be drama and conflict, whatever the official vote count says, assuming there isn’t a mystery delay in coming up with the results of the UCP’s contentious leadership review.
Whatever happens, it’ll be news.
The same day, that evening at least, there’s this ice hockey game.
You know, the one where the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames are scheduled to meet up in the National Hockey League playoffs for the first time in 31 years.
The sports reporters are billing that series the Battle of Alberta, writ large. It’s generating quite a bit of interest in Alberta.
The opening game is in Calgary.
So which story will be Thursday’s big story?
Back in 1991, I can assure you, both stories would have made it onto the front page. Which one got the biggest headline might have been different in Calgary than Edmonton, depending on who won, where.
That was then, though. This is now.
Nowadays there’s not much question it’ll be the hockey match.
I wouldn’t even bet the political story will make it onto the front page of an actual newspaper.
That might or might not please Premier Kenney, I’m guessing, depending on what happens.
Back in 1991, hardly anyone in the newspaper industry had heard of the Internet, except perhaps a couple of technology reporters. That was the year, by coincidence, when the World Wide Web was made available to the general public. According to the Wikipedia, 50 websites existed!
As alert readers will be aware, there are somewhat more than that today, among them AlbertaPolitics.ca. About 1.2 billion, in fact.
That development has played hell with the newspaper industry, as is well known. Many venerable newspapers no longer exist. Those that do are forced to do much of their business on the Internet, and that has led to a need to file stories more than once a day.
So in 2022, Mr. Kenney’s fate will be old news by the time Thursday morning rolls around.
As a result, the dominant news story in Alberta – in whatever media it appears – will be about whoever won that hockey game.
The other battle of Alberta – the one involving politics – will probably continue to generate headlines a little longer than the hockey series, though. The final game isn’t scheduled to take place for another year.
As for hockey, for whatever it’s worth, the Oilers beat the Flames in 1991. But they didn’t win the Stanley Cup.
You are probably right about the newspaper coverage. The hockey story will be more current than the UCP’s ongoing drama for the morning news. The UCP leadership debacle has been going on seemingly forever and is a bit stale, although I suppose still somewhat news worthy. At this point, it sure is not uplifting. On the other hand, at least half or so Albertans will be in a good mood from the hockey results.
The UCP leadership outcome is also not definitive in a way. Regardless of what happens the same party will be in power for another year, although some of the faces could change.
So, for Kenney I am not sure what is worse, the possibility that he may be removed or that his fate will not be the main story in the news. He is headed to irrelevance.
Clearly, the news this coming Thursdays morning will reflect two realities.
First, there are two NHL teams from Alberta who will be competing to see which one will advance and be trounced mercilessly by the Tampa Bay Lightning.
And the other reality will be where Ken-Babe will create a situation where everyone, no matter what viewable and examined circumstances say, will no only be acclaimed the premier of Alberta, but also the wisest, most brilliant, and most eligible bachelor in the land.
Money to stuff ballot counts can buy anything.
FWIW I don’t think changing technology is the main driver behind the decline of print media, I think it’s our decision to remove the regulations that used to prohibit wealthy individuals from assembling massive propaganda empires that choke out all other possible stories and perspectives. Print and televised media is almost entirely irrelevant to anyone under 40, and deservedly so. It’s very easy to spot a con when it’s not aimed at you. No disrespect intended to my elders, but legacy media exists to spoonfeed boomers so they will hold the “correct” values and beliefs and will resist calls for societal change, because the people who own legacy media don’t want to change society – the status quo is great for the property owning class!
Also, the news about the hockey game will be available just as quickly as the news about the premiere. Which one ends up on the front page has nothing to do with “who hasn’t heard the story,” and everything to do with, “which story do we want to dwell on?” I think people will find the NHL to be slightly less corrupt, opaque, unfair and frustrating to think about than an election rigged in plain sight by Jason Kenney.
Haha I was debating how the NHL handles refereeing with someone much older than I the other day. Nothing was getting through… until I asked if he would want to live in a town where the NHL supplied the police (he worked in a company town back in the day). That got him thinking critically for a moment, and that’s tough to do for heavily indoctrinated people.
Neil: It’s hard to persuade anyone who worked for years in the newspaper business, as I did, that there’s a centralized line on most stories passed down from head office, wherever it may be. That happens occasionally, but in my day at least, things were much more shambolic than that. You are right, though, that there’s more to the troubles of the communications industry than just technology. A century of being able to make pots of money no matter how foolish your managers’ decisions were certainly contributed to some business decisions that turned out to be fatally stupid. Every purge of editors, every elimination of a step in the process, every earlier deadline contributed to more typos, errors and incomprehensible stories, driving readers away. DJC
DJC – I don’t mean to say “reporters are mouthpieces.” I mean to say “I think Manufacturing Consent is more relevant now than when it was published”. Nobody needs to tell, say, Andrew Coyne, what to write – there is no need. He is where he is because of the combination of his experience and qualifications, and his ideological convictions. If Mr. Coyne had all the same credentials, and was a Marxist, he would be lucky if his current employer would let him work in the mailroom. The same principle is at play in all media, including the CBC (which has a slightly different, but related, set of “filters” all prospective news must pass through before it reaches an audience). Because Postmedia dominates the Canadian media landscape, they are able to ensure that most of the people who have the ability to get platformed by established shows with access to large audiences share their ideology. They are also able to position their ideology as “centrist” – after all, 90% of non-CBC Canadian media agrees with them! Since they’re “centrist” and the CBC is left of them, it’s easy for them to claim the CBC is “leftist,” which is patent nonsense, I’ve never seen anyone on CBC advocating for the end of capitalism. No censorship or conspiracy necessary, just a bit of care taken with who you hire and which position you put them in.
I don’t think print media failed because of technological changes, or because of the corruption or incompetence of its rank and file employees, or even the bungling of ownership. I think it failed because politicians changed the laws about who is allowed to own how much of it, and because the Supreme Court struck down the laws that made it illegal to platform false news (R v Zundel). The combination of those two things made a Rupert Murdoch inevitable IMO. Once newspapers and tv stations stopped being owned individually by passionate, independent reporter types and started being owned collectively by the billionaire scumbags of the world, and once they were freed from any repercussions for spreading falsehoods and absurdities, the media stopped trying to report the news in a journalistically responsible manner and started trying to use the platforms they controlled to further the economic and political agenda of the billionaire tyrants who sign their paycheques.
The more the media does to get better at manipulating the boomer generation (no disrespect intended, for 40 years the boomers were the only demographic that really mattered, and more time and effort has been put into figuring out how to pull their strings than newer generations), the more everyone who isn’t part of that generation notices that the news isn’t news anymore, it’s infotainment with a hefty side of dog-whistles at best, sensationalized nonsense with a hefty side of hate speech at worst.
Warren Breed’s “Social Control in the Newsroom,” published in 1955, remained highly relevant to how newsrooms operated when I was there, and I imagine it still is. I also think a good portion of the Boomer generation – of which I am a part – has just tuned out and dropped out. Timothy Leary updated for the 21st Century: Tune out, drop out and turn on. DJC
You won’t see me disparaging boomers for that, it’s not like their descendants have found an effective way to resist, either. The easy problems were solved a long time ago by people we will never meet.
On the one hand, I believe political violence is a tool that cuts the user. On the other hand, I believe the oligarchs pillaging our society will not stop until they are made to stop, and if we let them go on long enough they will render our biosphere uninhabitable to humans. Most humans have, and consume, very little. IMO the danger is coming from a few thousand people who are consuming the rest of us off a cliff and are firmly entrenched beyond the rule of law. How many nonrenewable resources were wasted putting that pathetic, vainglorious himbo Elon Musk and his brother into space, or putting his favourite car, or a geriatric Bill Shatner, in orbit? How much is wasted on the superyachts these insecure, overindulged manchildren purchase to silently shout, “Look at me! I exist! I am important! LookitmelookitmelookitmeEEeeEEEeeeEEEeee!!!!!!!!!!!” smh @ the rest of us. I get them – they basically have a rare and exotic mental illness. I don’t understand why my friends and neighbours tolerate their existence, but I’ve been knocking my head against that wall for decades.
Thanks for the book recommendation, I will give it a go! I don’t know if knowledge will save us, but I know ignorance won’t 🙂 I take some hope from how hard the owning class works to keep us divided and misinformed – they know we outnumber them something like 3 million to 1.
Kenney will win. I expect a delay in announcing results due to “issues” and it will be announced about a week late. And then Kenney will handily win.
Cheering for the Oilers in the BOA. Let’s see how it goes!
He skates on water. He dangles like an election year promise. He causes every goalie in a five mile radius to break into spontaneous existential crises. He routinely hits speeds of “Mach David,” which is defined by theoretical physicists as “faster’n you”. He makes it impossible for opposing defenders to believe that there is a God who loves them. He causes referees to stop trying to do their jobs in order to “keep things fair.”
Unfortunately for him, he plays in the NHL. I sure do hope the NHL goes bankrupt and gets replaced by a hockey league. Frustrates me when people watch the NHLs obvious corruption and abusive culture and say, “that’s hockey.” Discourages me when people know damn well the NHL is interfering in the outcome of matches by giving refs secret instructions, while those exact people spend money gambling on the outcome of NHL games. Say what you will about Vince McMahon, at least he never tried to get people to gamble on whether so-and-so would beat the Hulkster or not.
Sorry, I’m busy on Thursday.
The decline in an independent print media has happened before. After the other 9/11 — the fall and murder of duly elected Argentine president Salvatore Allende — there was an abundance of media outlets popping up defending the Pinochet Regime, the coup that brought them to power, and the various interests that appeared to profit from the regime. In other words, we have seen all this happen before.
In Brazil, popular media outlets are routinely complimentary to Bolosaro’s presidency and offer little in the way good news coverage. The most popular programs are telenovelos and TV dramas that are little more than soft core porn.
Alberta, indeed all of Canada, is under the swoon of Postmedia and their fellow travellers Corus and Bell Media.
And I hear that Kenney will not only win his leadership review, he will score approval numbers that one would only see for the North Korean leadership.
Hail Alberta’s Dear Leader.
Postmedia has had a very strong allegiance to the Conservatives, for many years, and you can bet that the Battle Of Alberta hockey game will make the front page news, while the leadership review results for the head honcho of the UCP will be buried inside. This will be especially true with the Edmonton and Calgary Sun newspapers. I remember two provincial elections ago in Alberta where the Northwest Upgrader fiasco from the Alberta PCs happened. The cost of this exceeded far over $30 billion. It came to light before the provincial election in Alberta, that year, which was in 2015. In the Edmonton Sun and Calgary Sun newspapers, it didn’t make front page headlines. It should have, but it was given a narrow article, several pages in. The Sun’s editorial board was pleading for Albertans to support the Alberta PCs. The Alberta PCs should have been gone in the early 1990s. Prior to the 2012 provincial election in Alberta, Danielle Smith and the UCP had support of The Sun newspaper. She made the front page. At other times, we’d see other Conservative politicians, like Andrew Scheer on the cover of The Sun, prior to a federal election. This is who they endorsed. Prior to the 2019 provincial election in Alberta, the head honcho of the UCP got a full cover ad on Postmedia supports in Alberta. Rosa Ambrose endorsed him. They meant Rona. This isn’t right. The hypocrisy of those who say that the Liberals bought the media isn’t a suprise either. No matter how many very costly shenanigans the UCP are involved with, or no matter how much unethical conduct the UCP are involved in, Postmedia wants to cover it up.
Kenney wins. 56-62 percent. Election mid/late September.
We subscribed to Calgary Herald for a long time. In all those years it was a ‘feel good’ newspaper. It did not compare well to the local papers we read when we lived in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, or Vancouver. Too much filler.
We cancelled our subscription two months ago. We do not miss it at all. On the contrary…less recycle to deal with. Should have cancelled it a few years ago.
Off-topic, but I couldn’t help but notice Skippy making quite possibly the first responsible statement he’s made since he hitched his wagon to the insurrectionists in Ottawa. Somewhere, he managed to find enough moral fortitude to condemn white replacement theory (a white supremacist talking point with genocidal implications). Good for him. Not so good for him that this is literally the first thing he’s said publicly in months that wasn’t bad-faith, batsh*t crazy, barking-at-the-moon lunacy. I’ve disliked this individual since the Fair Elections Act, but the depths he has sunk to in the past several months has frankly astonished me.
If you like Mr. Poilievre’s style, go to town I guess, but understand there is no substance whatsoever to anything he says or does. Don’t let me tell you what’s what though, put your money where his mouth is. Opt out of inflation by purchasing bitcoin! See what happens 🙂
“The sports reporters are billing that series the Battle of Alberta, writ large. It’s generating quite a bit of interest in Alberta.”
Mainstream ‘media’ is generally acknowledged to be a self censoring type of organization. In a corporate state that operates and advertises itself as a ‘mixed economic system’ it could hardly be any other way. Based on simple capitalist structural dynamics, both the observations and conclusions are fairly obvious:
i.) “The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. “We” take care of that.”
ii.) “. . . . because the press is owned by wealthy people who only want certain things to reach the public . . . . when you go through the elite education system, when you go through the proper schools in Oxford, you learn that there are certain things it’s not proper to say and there are certain thoughts that are not proper to have. That is the socialization role of elite institutions and if you don’t adapt to that, you’re usually out. Those two sentences more or less tell the story.”
iii.) “It’s a corporation (that) sells a product. The product is audiences . . . . the audience is the product. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses.”
iv.) “By manufacturing consent, you can overcome the fact that formally a lot of people have the right to vote. We can make it irrelevant because we can manufacture consent and make sure that their choices and attitudes will be structured in such a way that they will always do what we tell them, even if they have a formal way to participate.”
v.) Ect., ect., . . . . . . . . . . .
“What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream”
What would happen if it is 50%-1?