The London Free Press votes for Steam Whistle

I don't follow beer. I used to like my beer but as the price for a brewski went up and up my consumption went down and down. Today beer is a treat. No brewery will stay in business because of me.

That said, I used to buy Labatt whenever I did buy beer. It was brewed locally and it made me feel that I was supporting local workers. I still have a Blue, if it is available on tap, when I am out at a pub as I was Sunday.

But the Labatt brewery is now owned by AmBev, the fourth-largest brewing operation in the world. Buying Labatt does not come with the same feel-good-buying-Canadian aura it once did. Still, I was surprised to read this recommendation in a recipe in The London Free Press, the Labatt hometown paper: "1 bottle (355ml) Pilsner beer ( Steam Whistle's a good choice)"

Mixing a Pilsner into a recipe is a great leveler. No need to waste one's favourite beer when it is about to be altered with addition of "BBQ seasoning". I was surprised to see the hometown paper wasn't supporting the hometown beer.

And then I realized that The London Free Press is owned by Sun Media and Sun Media is a Toronto-based outfit. The article, written by the Sun's Rita DeMontis, was simply supporting an award-winning, local Toronto brewery.

It's nice to see a paper supporting local business when possible. Nice work Toronto Sun.

We're killing ourselves with an unhealthy lifestye_Part IV

Putting the brakes on the obesity epidemic should be easy. If you consume more calories than you burn, and do this everyday, you will gain weight. It's that simple. On the other hand, if you cut back on calories, and add a little exercise to the mix, you'll lose weight. Again, it's that simple.

Processed foods are notoriously calorie dense and often nutritionally thin. Why are so many people turning to processed foods when the results are as obvious as the thickening waist lines expanding around the world? Paul Berton, the editor-in-chief of The London Free Press has an answer, "We'd rather buy our food prepared (and salty) than make it ourselves."

He's right but I also think a little mean spirited and preachy. (If there is one tone that I can recognize it's preachy.) I think Berton needs a little history lesson.

When I was young most families were supported by only one working parent, usually the father. My father never made a lot of money. My mother told me my father never earned much more than $5000 in any year. Yet, my mother was never forced to work outside the home.

Speaking of home, our home didn't cost a lot; I don't think it was more than $7000 in 1960 when my parents bought the pleasant, two-story, five-bedroom home, built in the 1920s. Our home didn't cost even two times my father's annual wage. (Well, maybe it did on a bad year.)

Today the average wage in Canada is about $42,305 and the average home costs about $332,00 according to The Canadian Real Estate Association. It should come as no surprise that more than three-quarters of mothers with school-aged children are employed, most full-time, or are actively looking for work.

Today parents struggle to juggle multiple responsibilities. Fifty percent of working mothers, and 36 percent of working fathers report having difficulty managing their work and family responsibilities. Stress is on the rise.

Many parents simply do not feel they have the time to cook. Processed foods are time savers and many of them are healthy — at least that's what it says on the label.

And if the processed food product doesn't have the word healthy in the name, often it carries the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s Health Check program logo. Many believe the Health Check logo means 'healthy,' 'good for you' and 'approved by the Heart and Stroke Foundation.'

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

According to The Uniter, Winnipeg's Weekly Urban Journal:

"Although high amounts of sodium are associated with increased health risks leading to strokes and high blood pressure, the Health Check can be found on food products with extremely high levels of sodium. Canned soups with 650mg of sodium per serving still bear the Health Check symbol . . . Dinner entrées are allowed to bear the Health Check symbol with 960mg of sodium per serving."

1500mg of sodium (salt) is all an adult needs in a whole day!

The Health Check program is updating their nutrition criteria as of November 2010. Soups will soon have to contain less than 480mg of sodium; and dinner entrees, less than 720mg.

It's tough out there. Putting good food on the table is even hard for those of us who shun processed foods and have the time to play in the kitchen cooking healthy meals.

Check out the peaches at the top of this post. They are from Chile, imported by Del Monte, and tossed out by my wife. They were hard; They never ripened — not even when left for days to ripen in a bag — they were stringy, dry and tasteless. The food value was nil as they were inedible. 

O.K. I know I shouldn't buy peaches out of season but I did. Forgive me. It won't happen again. Trust me.

Oh well, when it comes to the Chileans it all comes out even. We sent them Coke. And the stuff, unlike the peaches, tastes good. Now they, like the rest of world, are hooked on sugar water.

When I was in the little Saharan town of dusty Douz in Tunisia, I discovered Tunisians quench their thirst with Coke. When I bought a carpet from a desert shop I was offered the choice of traditional mint tea with an almond cookie or I could sip a Coke while we haggled. (I went with the mint tea.)

What do Canadians look for when buying healthy foods. The Heart Check icon is not perfect. How about the Kraft Sensible Solutions flag? It's not perfect either. According to Kraft the Sensible Solutions products cannot have more than 10 percent of their calories from saturated fat plus trans fat . . . Trans fat? I think not.

Trans fat is related to elevated risks of heart disease and type 2 diabetes but even if you read labels you may still be eating trans fat. You see, Health Canada says if a food contains less than 0.2 grams of trans fat per serving it can claim to be "trans fat free."

But stated serving sizes are often rather small. In some cases a consumer can eat three "trans fat free" cookies a day and in a week consume approximately 4 grams of trans fat. And that is just from three cookies over a week. How much trans fat sneaks in the back door and into our diets in year of eating "trans fat free?"

Berton tells us that we eat too much fat. I don't know. Maybe we do. But according to Harvard School of Public Health the low-fat approach hasn't helped Americans control weight or become healthier.

In the 1960s, fats and oils supplied about 45 percent of the calories in the U.S. diet. At that time 13 percent of Americans were obese and under 1 percent had type 2 diabetes. Today Americans take in far less fat, they get only about 33 percent of calories from fats and oils. Yet, 35 percent of Americans are now obese

and 8 percent have diabetes, most with type 2 diabetes.

Why hasn't Paul Berton's suggestion paid off? I admit, I thought he was right. Let's have Harvard's answer:

"Detailed research — much of it done at Harvard — shows that the total amount of fat in the diet isn't really linked with weight or disease. What really matters is the type of fat in the diet. Bad fats, meaning trans and saturated fats, increase the risk for certain diseases. Good fats, meaning monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, do just the opposite. They are good for the heart and most other parts of the body.

What about cholesterol in food? For most people, the mix of fats in the diet influences cholesterol in the bloodstream far more than cholesterol in food does."

According to Harvard, "Eliminating trans fats from the U.S. food supply could prevent between 6 and 19 percent of heart attacks and related deaths . . . "

Here we really get the last laugh on Chile, they'll be sorry for those peaches; we may be cutting our trans fat use but inexpensive partially hydrogenated oil has become a staple in homes in the developing world. There is a growing epidemic of cardiovascular disease in developing nations around the world.

Slowly, I'm beginning to think there my be something to be said for the eat-organic-movement. And I no longer think vegetarians are giving up an important source of protein. We will be taking another look at food in the coming weeks and maybe giving out some recipes that my wife uses and which help us avoid the worst of the processed food traps.

Cheers,
It's the weekend,
I'm off,
Rockinon!

The LFP, Sun Media and Quebecor are letting down the team.

Media companies like The London Free Press, Sun Media and Quebecor love to take credit for the work they publish. I think we can all understand that, but in truth the publisher only publishes. Without the work of an excellent staff, they would have nothing. Their presses would sit silent.

I think it's a safe bet that Pierre Karl Peladeau knows nothing about Robert Vanier and Onco, nor should he. PKP's job is to supply the best possible paper in which to bundle the news. The actual news is the responsibility of the thousands of journalists toiling daily for him in the trenches.

At this point I had to look up the special report on the ex-Onco boss. I went to The London Free Press online page and found nothing. This story is yesterday's news and so is no longer anywhere on the homepage. Not a mention. Not a link. Nothing.

Oh well, I typed "onco" into the search field and got the result shown below.

I clicked on the first linked page. I immediately found myself back at today's Free Press homepage, the one I had just left, the one with nothing on Onco. I hit the back button.

I clicked on the second link. I noted that this link appeared to take me to: http://www.lfpress.com/home.html. I thought this is going to take me right back to today's homepage; The one with nothing on Onco. I was right. I hit the back button.

I clicked on the third link. I noted that this link appeared to take me to: http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2010/01/08/12397921.html. This took me to another Chip Martin story but not the Special Report. I hit the back button.

This time I looked for a link with special report in it. I found it. This looked good. This must be the link to Chip Martin's Special Report on Onco.

Nope! I got a special report on school cash shortages. I clicked on the big blue words "Special Reports." Nothing. I clicked on "Full series." This gave me the full series on the high cost of school incidentals.

I gave up.

Which bring me right back to my original premise. The publisher provides the wrapper for the news. If they provide a great wrapper - an enticing wrapper - one that attracts readers, then they are doing their job and can take a small bow.

So far our publisher is failing miserably. But, this is online. As Dan Brown the senior online editor at The London Free Press likes to point out this is a stodgy old company with its feet placed firmly in the past. I'm sure they do better with their old paper product.

Well, hold onto your money - unless you're about to bet against the house. The Free Press is not doing much better with their paper wrapper. Take the comics.

Starting late last year the comics started appearing as grey on grey rather than black on white. It was very hard to read the dark grey words printed on a dark grey background. The paper got complaints.

At the end of December a letter to the editor said about the change, "I have poor vision and it is very difficult for me to read them now. It's not clear to me (pardon the pun) why you would make such a change."

Days later the paper was still running these hard to read comics. A St. Thomas reader wrote in to say, "I'm not a senior yet but I had been skipping over some of my favourite comics because they were just too difficult to read."

But the comics are not all The Free Press can't print.

Check out this image, right, from the London paper.

To save money, certain news pages are being done centrally by Sun Media in their Centres of Excellence and delivered electronically in a press-ready state to all company papers. Some of the pictures are no more than black rectangles on a page.

My guess is the pictures are being prepared for publication by a computer running some automatic image toning software. I ran tests on some software for the paper years ago. The results looked horrid - rather like the stuff now being run by the paper. On the plus side, a publisher can use this software and reduce the payroll by laying off some expensive pre-press people.

Chip Martin did his job. He supplied the paper with a great story. The kind of work that sells papers and keeps the citizen journalist wolves at bay. He can take a bow.

My premise for this post was: Newspapers are a cooperative effort with news the main driver behind the success of a paper. Reporters, like Chip Martin, supply the paper with the all important quality journalism. No journalism; No paper. In return, the newspaper is supposed to supply Martin with a professional looking paper in which to package his work.

Martin is keeping his end of the bargain.
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Since writing this the London paper has gone back to printing the comics with the usual contrast. The comics are again legible.

And the bright pictures that accompanied Martin's story - why so bright? My guess is the staff at The Free Press did the toning for those images.

A symbolic icon for mediocrity

What makes a newspaper great? And being great is very important today as even great doesn't always cut it and mediocre quickly will be history.

It is the staff.

At the end of the month one of Canada's finest papers, at least it was once one of Canada's finest papers, is again suffering the loss of some excellent staff members - four from editorial and more from advertising. The ones in editorial took voluntary buyouts; the others got pink slips and separation payments to ease the financial pain.

Sue Bradnam, the paper's chief photographer, will be gone by the end of the month. She is a talented photographer and will do just fine but the paper will miss her. Behind the scenes, she was a constant, quiet fighter for her department.

In the new world of the Internet, Sue could have been an amazing addition to the team. She always has neat ideas and with the unlimited room offered by the Web, many of her ideas could have been put into practice. The reality of newsprint, with its set physical size, contained imaginative people like Sue. With the might of Sun Media and Quebecor behind her, pushing her on, supporting her, rather than pushing her out the door, she might have developed a unique but large following for her work. Just think of the ads that could have been attached to her work . . .

Speaking of ads, Jill Worthington of the Special Sections department has been dismissed. The work will be done off site, as I understand it. Now, if we had linked Jill and Sue together maybe we would have created a money machine. A coupling that might have been an Internet dream team, but we will never know.

Editors Tom Bogart and Ralph Bridgland are leaving the paper. Two more editors gone. Fire up the spell check. Reporter Joe Matyas is also leaving after decades covering the news for Londoners. Joe is such a keener about all things web-based that he has actually taken courses in writing code for the Web.

He uses his talents to run his church's website. At one time Joe's code was better than the code being used by The Free Press; I could load Joe's pages quicker than those of the mighty Free Press. The London Free Press is losing a forward looking talent in the loss of Joe.

There is a painting of a newsboy hanging on the wall at the paper. Paul Berton, editor-in-chief, uses it as the icon accompanying his online work. (Paul's unretouched icon at left.)

The painting originally had a rich, black background - not the grey and washed out look appearing on the Web. Maybe Berton is trying to tell us something with his symbolically fading icon. Are you Paul?

Just for fun, I set a black and a highlight for Paul's icon. It took but seconds to give it the rich, punchy look of the original art. What was it that I said about mediocrity at the beginning of this post?

[You don't want to be too much of a smart aleck when you write this stuff. This post corrects an error this old, blogging geezer would have thought impossible to make. A former editor at The Free Press alerted me to my error. Thank-you! I have always admitted that I needed an editor.  )-:  ]

The Mean Decade: 2008 - When the financial world crumbled

Sun Media reporter Thane Burnett has written a series on the past decade in which he found very little good to report. When it came to 2008, the article carried the headline, "The Mean Decade: 2008 - When the financial world crumbled."

Many of us, who have been saving for retirement and rode out the truly frightening 2008 correction of historic proportions, are kicking up our heels with glee. In the end, it was a good decade.

2008 was bad when you think about investments, but it was not anywhere near as bad as the media would have one believe. Everyone did not buy at the peak and dump their stock when all bottomed out. The story is far more complicated than that. Let  me give you an example.

If you had put $10,000 in a simple fund, say the TD Monthly Income on Jan. 1, 2000, you would have had $18,024.49 at the end of 2008. When growth like that is being achieved, saying the financial world crumbled as Burnett claimed, is the all-too-common shallow media response to a complex story.

If you had left the money in the TD MIF until the decade ended, you would have had $23,552.99 for an increase of 135.5% during the "mean decade." The financial story is not over but as the decade ended, the story was hitting some very positive notes.

I, by the way, owned a lot of TD MIF until early this year when I dumped about 75 percent of my holdings for CIBC Monthly Income. The CIBC offering has not performed as well as the TD one but it did not drag my portfolio down either, just put a gentle brake on its growth. A little less volatility offered the benefit of a better night's sleep. I'm not upset about my decision.

Like many investors, I found 2009 an amazing year, giving portfolio growth in the 30 percent range. If the 2008 crash chopped  a fast 20% to 25% off your balanced, diversified portfolio, 2009 may not have pulled you free of the financial hole dug a year earlier, but you are sitting in a very comfortable position.

A $100 thousand dollar RRSP portfolio could easily have been cut to a $75 thousand dollar portfolio in 2008. But that $75 thousand could easily have regain most of its losses in 2009. (100 X .75 X 1.3 = 97.5)

If you had had the nerve to buy into the market in the spring, there are lots of ETFs and inexpensive mutual funds that would have paid handsomely.

It is a rich, complex world. If someone tries lumping ten years together, a whole decade, one has to ask a few questions. The first question is, "Why is the Sun Media reporter not asking more questions?"

And they (Sun Media and other media folk) wonder why newspaper sales are slumping.
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I also looked at this silliness on my other blog, Rockin' On: Money.

The London Free Press has December 2009 layoffs

I tried to Google the recent layoffs at The London Free Press in London, Ontario. No luck. I checked both The London Free Press site and the Canoe site; Nothing.

As I understand it, and this is just gossip, five in advertising have been pink slipped and as many as six may be leaving from editorial. The editorial staff members willing to accept a voluntary buyout have now submitted their names and the lucky winners of the buyout lottery will be announced early next week.

At one point it was thought that about twenty jobs in editorial would be lost. Word was that Sun Media / Quebecor wanted to gut the newsroom and move the work to the Barrie, Ontario, Centre of Excellence. Editor-in-chief Paul Berton, managing editor Joe Ruscitti and publisher Susan Muzak are credited by some staff for successfully lobbying against the suggested move.

As it is, I understand six pagination workers are being hired to assemble pages but without the editing responsibilities of the present staff. This will result in London losing some well-paid jobs and gaining a few poorly paid one -- it is rumored, the new jobs will pay possibly half of what the old positions paid. If these new workers get bumped up temporarily into a more traditional editing role, they would earn an acting pay premium of about $1.60 an hour. Sun Media / Quebecor gets a bargain both ways.

I understand that the Woodstock and St. Thomas papers are also being hit. How many other papers in the Sun Media chain are affected is still an open question. Maybe the Freeps will see fit to do an article on this latest round of layoffs by Canada's media giant, Sun Media / Quebecor.

This is worth a large, in-depth post. Someone should get the word out and possibly make the Freeps discuss openly their ongoing staffing cutbacks. I personally see more cutbacks in The Free Press future but that's just my guess.

Addendum:
I now have four names of editorial staff expected to leave. I also have four names from advertising. These changes at the London paper are no longer a rumour.

On poor and pore pronunciation

Now that newspapers are going on-line they have one more thing to watch when it comes to quality and professionalism. In print there was spelling, grammar and fact checking. Now, with Internet podcasts and the like, pronunciation can be added to the list.

When I was in school in the '50s and '60s I had some really bad experiences on account of my pronunciations. I said poor, pronouncing it pore, and my teacher made me stand in front of the class while she corrected me for the edification of all.

The word was pronounced poor, poo, and not poh. "A pore is a hole in your skin," she told me. If you say pore when you mean someone had little money it makes you sound like you're poor; It makes you sound as if you come from the poor side of town. It makes you sound like a farmer from down east.

She was right, on all counts. I was poor, or maybe I should be honest and say pore. Us pore folk shouldn't put on airs and use pronunciations above our place. And I was but one generation removed from a farm in eastern Ontario.

I always thought my teacher was right — it was poor and not pore. But I also thought that she, and the others who humiliated students because of their pronunciations, were the ones who lacked class.

How I wish those teachers were still alive today. I could introduce them to Paul Berton, the editor-in-chief of The London Free Press, who could chastise them for their pronunciations. They might get their backs up but my money would be on Paul. Times and pronunciations have changed.

Paul tells us that zoology is good example of a word badly mangled in conversation today. My teachers would agree. "Never say z-oh-ology. It's pompous," they'd say. "It's zoo-ology." Paul would challenge them, "It is correctly pronounced z-oh-ology."

Unfortunately, he wouldn't stop while ahead. He'd continue by admitting, "(saying) it that way makes you sound like a snotty scientist." They would tell Paul an adult does not use the word snotty as an adjective.

My spelling is a fright. I'm sure, if you've followed this blog at all, I have made your hair stand on end with my creative spelling. I'm sorry, but I do try. I even pronounce February as 'Feb-roo-air-ee." I want to remember to put in the first 'r'.

Some of my teachers tried to knock that out of me. "Just because a word is spelt one way does not mean it is pronounced that way," they said. Other teachers demanded just the opposite, "Remember the 'roo' in February." Paul and Daniela, quoted in Paul's column, agree with the rooites. I checked my dictionary and sure enough the pronunciation favoured is 'roo'. Yes!

I wondered what the Internet would add to this discussion. I found a site that claims to be: "a free online talking dictionary of English pronunciation." Feeling mischievous I typed in mischievous . Ah . . . Teachers one, Paul zero.

My wife objected to my site selection. "That speaker is English!" Well of course he's English; I'm looking into English pronunciation. "Just type in jaguar and see how he pronounces it. Or yogourt." (The site didn't even like my spelling for yogourt, taken right from my Astro yogourt container. "Just anything goes when it comes to spelling yogourt," my said and went back to making soup. She's not fond of the stuff whether it's yogourt or yogurt.)

I tried zoology. It pumped out both pronunciations. Teachers two, Paul one.
I tried forsythia . Teachers two, Paul two.
I tried harassment . Teachers three, Paul two. (Paul wants the emphasis on the 'har' not the 'rass.'
I then tried Iraquis . Hmmm?

I'm afraid that at my age I suffer from tinnitus and I'm even a little deaf. I'm finding I am no longer a good judge of this stuff. Oh, I could still pick Eliza Doolittle out from a crowd before old Higgins got hold of her, but I'm not a good judge of this stuff anymore. I swear that I heard not 'Eye-raqis,' which Paul hates, a position with which my teachers would agree, nor did I hear the short first "i." I heard a third pronunciation! Sure sounds like, "Eee-rack-ees" to me.

I give up. I'll step back and let my teachers and Paul duke it out. Now, what else do I have on my schedule today? ....uh, is that pronounced skedule?

Oh, and the word poor . I checked its pronunciation using my Internet English buddy and he, it turns out, did not have a proper upbringing either. He said pore!
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Inspired by the column, "You say potato . . . " Proper pronunciation is no longer just a concern of traditional broadcasters --- By Paul Berton, editor-in-chief, The London Free Press / Sun Media

Are there still words best left unsaid?

Maybe I see newspapers differently that you do. To me newspapers are special. I invite a newspaper into my home. It sits with me every morning at my breakfast table and shares stories with me, brings me up to speed on what has happened over the past 24 hours, while I drink my coffee, eat my cereal and just generally wake up.

I find it jarring when my friend asks me, "Why didn't he go after the writer of this crap...?" I change the conversation, I turn the page.

"She pisses off the wrong customer...," my friend, the newspaper, continues.

Now, the word crap I can take but I don't need it bandied about at the breakfast table. But the word piss has no place in day-to-day conversation. This is not the language of someone I want to wake up to. I'm not a prude, honest. I just recall what these words once meant.

One of my favourite columnists at The London Free Press likes to entertain and enlighten me with witty conversation and wise words. He makes me think and laugh at the same time. Ian Gillespie is a fine fellow with whom to share breakfast. He may offend but he is rarely offensive.

Ian has a grasp of English that seems to escape some of his superiors — in rank at the paper, not in class or writing abililty. P. J. Harston likes to throw around the term "wanker". He put the word to good use in his on-line piece, "Earth Day? Screw it!" (P.J. boldly used another questionable word right in his headline.)

Thank goodness for the redesign. Many of The London Free Press links are broken. You will be unable, at least in the short term, to read the Harston piece. (Harston the interactive manager must take some of the blame for all the broken links. I imagine if Harston was looking for a term to describe an interactive manager who cannot get his Internet code correct, he might reach no deeper into his rich vocabulary than the previous paragraph.)

Years ago I knew an English girl, Liz, who was staying with a girlfriend in Detroit. Liz brought the album Hair into her friend's home, but when her girlfriend's father, a Detroit policeman, heard the lyrics Liz was on the way home. I thought he over-reacted.

I would not have expected him to run out and buy the album or get tickets to the musical. Nor would the folk behind the production of Hair be surprise to learn that he was not to be counted among their audience. The Hair folk were not interested in having people like our Detroit policeman among their fans.

Why is it that The London Free Press appears not to be interested in having people like me among their fans?

Capitalism: the best system?

"Even Paul McCartney has admitted capitalism is the best system. And he was a big pinko back in the day." [source: Dan Brown of The London Free Press]

When I read the above I groaned, then I thought — this could be a blog — and finally I thought, "Whoa! There is a lot buried in those 20 words. If I'm not careful, those words could also bury me."

Paul McCartney caused a stir in 1972 with his song "Give Ireland Back to the Irish." The song was banned on the BBC. I'm old enough to recall all sorts of silly stuff being said about the Beatles when they were at their peak, but I don't think Paul McCartney was ever a communist — but that's just my opinion. Go google this and get back to me. I did, and failed to find a solid connection.

But, I don't think McCartney's politics are really relevant. You might say this talk of his being a pinko is a bit of a red herring. The statement we're really interested in is: "Capitalism is the best system." Is this true?

This is hard one, for someone who is not an economist, to answer. I'm going to answer but I'll come at the answer sideways. I want to slip out of this unscathed, I'm not looking to get deep into an economic or political argument, but it may be difficult.

You see, my first thought is that when I was young I would have agreed rather quickly with the statement. But with the passing of fifty some years I've changed and it is has not only me that has changed but capitalism. Capitalism today is not the capitalism of my childhood.

I believe the boosters of capitalism would say this is a strength of the capitalist system. It adapts to meet the demands of the day. This sounds good on the surface but what does it mean in reality? Are the changes that I have experienced through the past half century making capitalism better? If not, maybe the best system was some version of capitalism now adapted out of existence.

My grandfather was born on a farm in Princeton, Ontario. He was an outstanding student and I understand that at his graduation it was said he was the youngest pharmacist in the province of Ontario. It's hard to prove the truth of this statement as he graduated back in the early 1890s. Let's just agree that he was a very bright young man.

On graduation, he went to the States to work for Cunningham Drug Stores. This was an up and coming chain. My grandfather had a chance to get in on the ground floor, so to speak, but he declined.

He moved back to Canada, to Brantford, Ontario, where he started his own independent neighbourhood drugstore. He didn't get rich but he did have a beautiful wife and he raised a fine family. He never owned a car; he didn't need one as he walked to work. He lived in the type of walkable neighbourhood that is today thought so desirable.

Today, a young man graduating as a pharmacist would have a difficult time starting his own independent corner drugstore. The large chains pretty well control everything in the pharmacy business.

The Cunningham's Drug Store chain, the one my grandfather snubbed, went on to become one of the major players in the American Midwest but a few decades ago it was taken out by another player in the capitalist game. A lot of people lost their jobs.

When I was a boy, my neighbourhood had a least three independent drugstores. Each one employed people in the neighbourhood and provided an important service. There were no big parking lots at any of these stores as big parking lots weren't necessary. Most people walked to these drugstores — even the staff.

I worked for one of those drugstores; it became one of the first Big V pharmacies. Big V was formed by a small group of independent Windsor, Ontario, pharmacists intent on saving the neighbourhood drugstore. A few years ago Big V was bought by Shopper's Drug Mart. Today Shopper's is owned by Loblaws.

Capitalism, the best system? I'm not sure that my grandfather would recognize today's capitalism. And I honestly believe that he would tell you the system under which he started his business, a business that lasted him a lifetime, was better.

A Recycled Blog

I'm shutting down my original Rockinon blog and I am moving some of my favourite posts to this site. I'm not being lazy; I'm recycling.

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It’s a weird world when David Gough, the blogger covering environmental concerns for The London Free Press, comes out against a bylaw designed to stop the practice of idling a car for more than a minute.

Gough wrote: “Five minutes makes sense, one minute just seems to be cutting it too close.”

He goes on to argue that dropping his son off at the arena might easily force him to idle his car for more than a minute while his son putzes around undoing his seat belt, turning off his video game and getting his hockey bag from the trunk. Gough says he could see his son costing him money.

Dave, the idea is to turn off your car. It’s easy. It’s fast. It’s green. And, it’s old fashioned.

That’s right, old fashioned. When I was a boy, my father never let his car idle for more than a minute — not even in winter. He had been told by a mechanic that the manual choke made the carburetor fuel mix richer and this could cause a soot-like build-up on the plugs. This dirt, the mechanic said, caused engines to run-on when turned off.

Furthermore, the mechanic said the engine oil pump was not efficient when the car was idling. It worked best with the car underway and the engine reving higher.

Four decades ago, my father taught me: If you are stopping for more than a minute, turn off the car. If my dad could do it, we can all do it. And, my dad wasn’t even green.

Too green for the LFP green blogger

This is a tricky post to write. It's both funny and disgusting. I thought of not writing this at all because children might stumble upon it. Then I realized, kids talk about this stuff all the time. Kids love to be both funny and disgusting.

My tale involves The London Free Press and their green blogger. It seems the newspaper blogger first heard of a Brazilian water-saving strategy quickly becoming the talk of the globe while listening to local radio. He found what he heard upsetting, as well as unbelievable.

He tried putting it out of his mind. He soon discovered he couldn't. The Brazilian story was everywhere. He even saw tweets about it on Twitter. I agree, it was an impossible story to ignore. I read about it in The Huffington Post.

The green blogger found the concept behind the Brazilian green strategy "gross." He got "the heebie jeebies just thinking about doing it." The senior online editor at the paper, showing his sharp wit, commented, "I smell a hoax. I saw this story, I don't believe it for a second."

The online editor flippantly called the story a hoax without a second's worth of investigation. I thought that his lack of initiative reflected poorly on the profession of journalism. If a senior online editor can't confirm whether a story is a hoax or not, who can? ( Uh, I know the answer, a dedicated blogger.)

Let's not drag this out. There is no point in an adult being so prissy. What offended the journalist's oh-do-delicate sensibilities? Talk of peeing in the shower to save water. Heck, it's not as if peeing in the shower was completely unheard of. Why even Kelly Clarkson admits doing it. Clarkson reportedly told Blender magazine: "Anybody who says they don’t is lying." I wonder if that includes our green blogger, senior online editor, journalist.

And Kelly is not the only one coming out of the (water) closet. Read this post by a blogger named Fran who confesses, "I often pee in the shower and have since I was young." Fran goes on to promise that she doesn't "pee in the bathtub or in swimming pools." (Good to know.)

The Huffington Post reported Brazilians are being encouraged to save water by urinating in the shower. Here, it is important to note: if you are healthy, your urine is sterile. The Brazilian environmental group SOS Mata Atlantica says the campaign running on several television stations is using humor to persuade people to reduce flushes. The group claims a household can save up to 4,380 liters of water annually by following this green advice.

SOS spokeswoman Adriana Kfouri said Tuesday that the ad is "a way to be playful about a serious subject." The spot features cartoons of people from all walks of life — a trapeze artist, a basketball player, even an alien — all are urinating in the shower. Narrated by children's voices, the ad ends with: "Pee in the shower! Save the Atlantic rain forest!"

If you are as put off as most folk, Tucson Citizen reporter Ryan Gargulinski will put you at ease on this and other germ-o-phobic myths. Read Ryan if you'd like to stop worrying about that public restroom toilet seat.

So was this whole thing just a hoax? I wasn't sure at first. If it was it sure fooled a lot of folk. For instance, both the Toronto Sun and Canoe carried the story a day before our local journalist dismissed it.

Using Orkut and Facebook I contacted people living in Brazil. I asked them if the campaign was a hoax. It took me just minutes using social media to confirm that the story is not a hoax.

When I googled some details of the story and added the word hoax, my only relevant hit was the  comment by the local journalist. He may have learned not to pee in the shower but now he must learn what not to do into the wind.

If you'd like another way of saving on water, check out my post on dual flush HET toilets and water saving shower heads and faucets. I have installed all green plumbing fixtures in my main floor bathroom. It has cut my water usage and all without offending my wife or giving my house guests the heebie jeebies.
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This post has been edited from the original. I removed the name of the journalist. I believe the journalist exhibited a sloppy approach to confirming information that is all too common in the profession. Yet, I see no reason to embarrass the chap. I was wrong to have included his name in the original post.

I rechecked this story almost a decade later. I was able to easily confirm that I was right in my original assessment. The peeing-during-showering video is not a hoax. It the video is from the creative  minds at F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi and can still be found both on YouTube and the S.O.S. Mata Atlântica web page.

And lastly, the video was a winner at the 2010 Gold Lion Cannes Advertising Awards. I'd post a better link but the best one is unavailable. It is behind a membership only wall. Breaching such a wall is a job for a journalist.

Miracle heater changes newspaper into huckster

huckster/n. 1. a mercenary person ready to make a profit out of anything. v. 1. tr. to promote or sell (an often questionable product) aggressively.

The newspaper and magazine hucksters are again promoting the purchase of the Amish mantle (sic), a very questionable product - a grossly overpriced, Chinese made, portable electric space heater, contained in a solid wood, and possibly partially particle board, ersatz fireplace, complete with artificial flames flickering from the glow of twin 40-watt light bulbs.

Maybe I should be surprised that newspapers are stooping to run ads like these, but I'm not. While I still worked at The London Free Press, the paper ran a double-truck version of the Amish miracle heater ad. The ad, clearly designed to resemble a news page, going so far as to credit the writer, is a disgrace, shaming the publications stooping to carrying it. The word advertisement at the top of the page is in almost the smallest, and in easily the lightest, font on the page.

Offended that this ad was running in The London Free Press, a paper at which I had worked for decades, I walked down to Paul Berton's office - Berton is the editor-in-chief of The London Free Press - I told him what a disgrace it was to be running this ad. Readers deserve better from their community paper. I told him that other papers had run stories in their news pages revealing the truth behind the false claims for the Heat Surge space heater. He listened politely to my rant and brushed me off. In the coming weeks we ran the ad a second time and we never, to the best of my knowledge, printed the truth about this rip-off.

I no longer work at the paper. I took a buyout in January. I no longer have to bite my tongue when it come to the Amish miracle heater. But why is it left to a blogger to tell Londoners the truth? Since I personally talked with Paul about this ad, he cannot claim that he didn't know the ad was highly questionable.

The local paper talks a good line about caring for the community but running an ad like this shows complete disregard for the community - for the readers of the paper and for the local advertisers who are truly the paper's financial backbone.

According to The London Free Press and other papers, I assume that many in the Sun Media chain carried the ad, readers who ordered their miracle heater and Amish mantel within the 48-hour deadline would get the imported hi-tech miracle heater for free. You only had to pay for the mantel, the shipping and handling and tax. Roughly $463 will get you the free heater. There may be importing fees, duty, still to be paid. If you want cherry wood (actually poplar with a cherry finish) plan on spending more than $500 to receive your free heater.

• "Amish man's new miracle idea helps home heat bills hit rock bottom" read the original ad. Now, the ad says, "Amish mantle (sic) and miracle invention help home heat bills hit rock bottom."

The new ad credits an "engineering genius from the China coast" for the miracle heater. ". . . (a heater) is so advanced, you simply plug it into any standard outlet." I guess the Amish haven't heard that we plug all small, electric space heaters into the wall. Canadian Tire has one for $19.99 and it too is most likely from China.

• "Fireless Flames" gives a peaceful flicker without flames, fumes, smells, ashes or mess.

I guess Fireless Flames is what the Amish call twin 40-watt light bulbs. Those Amish may not know a lot about electricity but they certainly are poetic.

• ". . . slash your heating bills . . . "

First, turn down the thermostat. Now, roll your portable heater from room to room. You simply take the heat with you. But, be careful as rumour has it that the Roll-n-Glow has plastic wheels prone to break.

• "It produces up to an amazing 5,119 BTU's on the high setting."

Yes, it pumps that much heat but it is not amazing. This is exactly the same amount of heat as the $19.99, 1500 watt, heater from Canadian Tire. This is the amount of heat all 1500 watt heaters produce.

• ". . . fine real wood Amish made fireplace mantles (sic) . . . "

Reports say that some parts of the mantels are solid wood, like the tops, but other parts are wood veneer over particle board. Quality Amish staples are also used in the construction.

If you think you need a space heater, the cheapest ones have a bad reputation. The fans can be loud and the heaters may not have a thermostat to control the heat - oh, the Amish miracle heater does not have a thermostat. What does that tell you? And it has heater coil construction like the least expensive space heaters.

A New York Times article in January of 2009 reported, "Since 2007, the Better Business Bureau of Canton has received 237 complaints against Heat Surge, many of them related to misleading advertising and customer service issues; the company currently has an F rating from the bureau."

The Providence in Phoenix carried the ad but then in a subsequent story addressed the issue. The deck below the headline read, "In tough times, newspapers get ad money where they can."

According to the Providence:

"When an ad exec at the News & Observer in North Carolina defended an ad the paper published for the "Universal Health Card," calling it clear about "what it is and what it is not," the N&O's public editor disagreed.

"To me the ad looks misleading and, from my brief research, promises more than it delivers," the public editor wrote. "I'm concerned not only that it gives information to readers that is at best confusing, but also that it undermines the credibility of the newspaper. The ad caused me to wonder whether the well-publicized revenue declines in the newspaper business have caused the paper to accept advertising that might not appear in flusher times."

The Providence in Phoenix is part of a chain. The reporter, Ian Donnis, contacted Tim Schick, administrator of the Providence Newspaper Guild in Rhode Island. Schick said, "As long as [such advertising] is clearly marked as advertising, we do not have an issue . . ."

Schick added that there's always a risk "that these ads will lure vulnerable individuals, but this is nothing new in the industry. It has been going on for a long time." I cannot argue with Schick there. How long have newspapers been running the 0% car loan ads? I addressed that problem in my blog GM Slight of hand . . . 0% becomes 7.2%.

To the credit of the Heat Surge company their website is far more honest than their newspaper ads. Possibly they could still sell their units without the questionable claims.

David Baker, Heat Surge vice president, told The New York Times, "If someone would come to me and say, 'I need a heater and I want to spend as little as possible,' I would say go to a local big-box store and buy one for $29.99. Our heater represents a fireplace rather than just some space heater."

So take David Baker's advice, if all you want is a space heater save money and buy an excellent space heater right here in London. Support a local company and trusted local advertiser in The Free Press. You will save a pot full of money and be a much better community supporter than the local paper.

Unfortunately, many of the small, space heaters do not have wheels. Oh well, you can buy eight or more for the price of one Amish miracle heater - just don't turn a number of them on at the same time or the miracle will be paying your home hydro bill when it arrives.

Addendum:

Consumer Reports has released a video in which they give their take on the Amish Heater from Heat Surge of Canton, Ohio. It is a very balanced report. Watching it left me wondering why Heat Surge even bothers with the questionable sales gimmicks. It they put their money into upgrading their product, installing a heater equiped with a thermostat for instance, I bet they would sell lots of these Amish mantels.

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The colour photo at the top of this post was found in the National Geographic. It seems just about everyone has carried the Heat Surge ad. This company is clearly selling product as they can afford to spend big bucks on advertising. In looking through the National Geographic I found another questionable ad and one that was completely out of place in a magazine dedicated to protecting the world's heritage. I'll talk about it in detail another day.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Don't blame the 24-hour news cycle

On the weekend I read an opinion piece examining how the media reported the death of Edward (Ted) Kennedy — the writer claimed to be taking a view "through the lens of North American journalism." After working for almost four decades in the photojournalism business, some of that time with the author of the opinion piece, I can say that I don't know what lens Mr. Cornies is referring to.

The point of his column was that today nothing is out of bounds when it comes to reporting the news. Journalists are no longer discreet. Why? The author sees lots of reasons: "The relentless appetite of the 24-hour news cycle among information-hungry media outlets, the proliferation of social media, the rise of a more shrill and less genteel political discourse, and the rupturing of the once-impenetrable walls of media institutions . . ."

Maybe he's right, maybe not, but I'll tell you one thing: The writer, Larry Cornies, is still genteel. There will be no overt mud slinging from Mr. Cornies. He writes that Joseph Kennedy, the father of John, Robert, and Ted, was "a successful businessperson and ambassador who built a fortune by the age of 30 . . . "

He mentions that old Joe Kennedy "groomed his sons for political life" and that they were "made in their father's image." In the context of Larry's writing, it sounds very positive. Dad was a success and his boys were just like dad.

All may be true but the whole truth, the complete, unvarnished story, is very different. John Kennedy was a womanizer, Robert Kennedy has similar stories tarnishing his memory, and even Larry allows that Ted had the scandal of the Mary Jo Kopechne buried in a very shallow grave in his past. The Kennedy boys followed in their father Joe's footsteps — all were womanizers.

Joseph Kennedy was brazen in his escapades with other women. In 1928 he had an almost public affair with Hollywood's Gloria Swanson. Rose, Joe's wife, handled the humiliating situations by pretending they weren't happening or she blamed the press. In Rose's memoir, written by Robert Coughlin with her approval, she is quoted as saying that gossip and slander were "the price one pays for being in public life."

With no 24-hour news deadlines, no Internet, none of the stuff Larry Cornies lists, the press was apparently reporting Joseph Kennedy's indiscretions to the dismay of his long-suffering wife. Nothing genteel here.

Why did the media give his son, John, a free pass? Why did they refuse to report John Kennedy's wrong doings. I am sure Rose Kennedy would not argue as does Mr. Cornies that it was because of the ". . . self-imposed constraints that had shaped their earlier formality and deference." The look-the-other-way reporting on the JFK White House reveals an endemic media blight. Even the media label for the Kennedy's time in office, Camelot, is tainted by this blight.

After the war in Vietnam ended in defeat, it was not just American legislators whose lies were laid bare. It was also the American press. We now know the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a creation of the U.S. government to give it a reason to go to war. Why did we not know it then? It was because of the media blight was hiding the truth.

President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara claimed the air strikes against the North Vietnamese were “retaliation” for the “unequivocal,” “unprovoked” attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on U.S. destroyers “on routine patrol” in “international waters.” As the war in Viet Nam escalated more lies were told but the media remained on side.

How did all these lies escape detection? Time Magazine rewrote some of their correspondents' stories when the stories did not mesh with the government's version of events. Time deferred to the government Time and Time again — issue after issue.

At a newspaper seminar I met a famous-in-the-media journalist, a speaker at the seminar, who had reported from Saigon. He told me that he and others in the field groaned when they saw General Westmoreland gracing the cover of Time. They saw this not as news but as a PR coup for the military. The Saigon-based correspondents and the New York rewrite desk were detailing two different wars, he said.Today we know the reporters in the field had it right and much of what we read at the time had it so very, very wrong.

During that war, now decades past, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann argued for greater care, greater discrimination in killing. He is quoted as saying to David Halberstam, Saigon correspondent for the New York Times, "The best weapon for killing is the knife . . . the next best is a rifle. The worst is an airplane, and after that the worst is artillery."

Vann went on to argue that pilots and artillery commanders needed easy targets, and small villages were easy targets. Unfortunately, the possibility of hitting a VC stronghold was much less than that of killing innocent peasants.

Fast forward to today, to Afghanistan, where U.S. planes, including a B-52 bomber and an AC-130 helicopter gunship, dropped seven 2,000 lb. bombs killing dozens of Afghan women and children and injuring scores more. Did the story receive strong play in the U.S. media today? Or were these deaths explained away with claims strikingly similar to those used decades ago during the war in Vietnam?

In the words of a colonel from the Viet Nam era, Colonel Daniel Boone Porter, we are still ". . . killing the people we are are here to help."

Curious to know what images from the war in Afghanistan were being withheld from the American people, and Canadian for that matter, I searched the Internet. I soon stopped. The images were heart breaking. I cannot describe the horror I found. War is hell and the images were worse than anything  had every imagined. I now have a small window was causes military people involved in the violence of war to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

If you want to know the identity of the Argentinian mistress — Maria Belen Chapur — of Governor Mark Sandford, CNN is ready to inform you and inform you again and again and yet again. The death of Michael Jackson is such big news that it pushes everything first to the back burner and then right off the stove. The relentless appetite of the 24-hour news cycle is satisfied with quantity and not quality.

It is not the last shards of constraint, self-censorship and inhibition that are gone, but what we are seeing is media  maturity under attack. I do so wish you had been right, Larry. (See Addendum at bottom of post.)
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A few important additional comments. Larry Cornies was an editor with The London Free Press for years. He is a smart man and a gentleman. When it came time to publish this post I fell back on the expert assistance of an old friend and retired newspaper editor — a man very much like Larry Cornies. My friend caught a number of embarrassing mistakes in my spelling, my word usage, and my grammar. (And I, of course, corrected those and made more.)

It takes a lot of courage to put one's thoughts down on the printed page. You just know that someone, like me, will take a different tack.

The editorial ranks have been thinned at most newspapers. That's sad. Even editors can use an editor. A good editor might have warned Larry Cornies that his take on the history of the media was a view seen through rose coloured glasses.
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Addendum:

Today, Monday, the Huffington Post carried a story saying, "Last week McChrystal (Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan) said troops "must change the way that we think, act and operate" in newly released counterinsurgency guidance. McChrystal hopes to instill a new approach in troops to make the safety of villagers the top priority.

McChrystal said the supply of fighters in the Afghan insurgency is "essentially endless." This is the reason violence continues to rise. He called on troops to think of how they would expect a foreign army to operate in their home country "among your families and your children, and act accordingly."
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In the coming weeks and months I may take a look at some of the myths so prevalent in the media and the buzzwords that accompany these myths.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Newspapers must evolve

The post for today is a wee bit long. If it was a wine, I think it would be described as being a bit dull on the palette, but it develops nicely and has a good, clean finish. Enjoy.
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I often think of newspapers as I knew them: the newspapers I grew up with, the newspaper from which I retired early after being given a buyout. I believe papers are on their last legs. They are tottering dinosaurs. Some say a changing environment doomed those prehistoric Goliaths. I think the environment is changing for newspapers, too.

Some argue dinosaurs are still with us. They say the descendants of the dinosaurs are today's birds. Maybe newspapers will do as well and take flight unburdened by huge printing presses, large fleets of trucks, tonnes of newsprint and tanker loads of ink.

Of course, in the end, birds are birds. It doesn't matter what came before. That was then and this is now. The Internet is not a newspaper. Period. Newspapers are the news gathering organizations of the past. The Internet is the new paradigm.

It's a new paradigm to some but in truth it has been a long time coming. You often read that the generation raised on the Internet is now coming of age. Young people are the savviest of the tech-savvy, we are told. How silly.

How old is Steve Jobs? Early-fifties, I believe. When it comes to being tech-savvy, old Steve is the king of savvy hill. If Steve sneezes, Apple stock tumbles. This is a company filled with imaginative, creative young people, but it is the aging boomer (oh how I hate that word) who drives the company. Many argue, he is the company.

There are many people who grew up with the Internet and many more who grew old with it. I'm 62 and when I was 39 I was a GEnie subscriber. Sitting at a 128K Mac I could talk with the world using a 300 baud modem and a dial-up connection. GEnie was, to be generous, a precursor of the Internet run by General Electric.

GE didn't grasp what they had. They structured GEnie to take advantage of the time available on their numerous GE Mark III time-sharing mainframes. To ensure that GEnie subscribers used the system during slow periods,the charge for going online with GEnie at night, the off-hours for those mainframes, was far cheaper than the comparable time during the day. GE treated their service as a mainframe load filler. Bad move. GE was handed the Internet ball early but dropped it, letting others pick it up and run away with the prize.

GEnie was a text-based service. This sounds terrible and it was but moving letters about is not CPU intensive, nor does it eat a lot of bandwidth. My typing at the time was slow and so my 300 baud modem could easily keep up with my hunt-and-peck style of typing.

I did research using GEnie and visited the GEnie forums, called RoundTables. There I chatted with people who shared my interests. I used to come to work and bend the ear of Sue Bradnam, now the chief photographer at the paper, and I would babble on about the coming computer driven wave of change. Sue can be very patient and very polite. She ignored me with great class and style but I am sure she thought, "Nut!" (Computers aside, she may have been right.)

Then the newspaper discovered computers and set up a graphics department in the former Alcovia. This was a small recessed area in the newsroom with windows facing York Street. The reporters working there named it Alcovia and hoisted the Alcovian flag over their oh-so-independent territory. When management displaced the Alcovians there was a small insurrection, quickly quelled.

The new graphics department used Fat Macs and dozens and dozens of Macintosh plastic-encased floppies. When they started talking about getting a hard drive I tried to convince them to look at an 80 MB La Cie. Management looked at me like I was crazy. I told them that that was what I had at home. Overkill, I was told. Way more storage space than you will ever need. They bought a 20 MB Apple external hard drive. It was soon replaced -- too small.

And that has been the story of newspapers and computers and the Internet. Always a step behind. To be fair, it is hard to fault them. Visionaries are rare and with a change as extreme as the computer invasion and the Internet, not seeing it coming can be forgiven.

I think a great symbol of the newspaper industry's approach to computer innovation can be seen in the Atex system used by newspapers around the world two, and even three, decades ago. Huge keyboards, thick and clunky. Not designed for typing but for style. The monitors were huge grey cubes mounted on tall, grey cylinders. Clearly the designers of the Atex system were influenced by Star Trek. Captain Kirk would have been very comfortable with the futuristic look of the Atex terminal.

But newsroom editors and reporters were not comfortable. Atex and its parent, Eastman Kodak Co., were dragged into court by claims that the clunky keyboards caused serious repetitive strain injuries to users. Roughly a dozen New York Times employees alone took Atex to court for the perceived ergonomic design flaws.

As Macs displaced the Atex terminals, itself a revolution of a sort, another revolution was taking place. The control of the newspaper industry was passing from the hands of families to big business. This had been a trend for years but it was now in the endgame. It was said newspapers were a licence to print money and big business wanted those presses.

Just as the information revolution, powered by the Internet, was freeing news from its economic constraints, newspapers were evolving into dinosaurs. Papers were becoming big lumbering beasts.

One of my favourite stories, it may not be completely true, but no one in charge is going to fill in the blanks for me.

Quebecor and Sun Media had a bulletin board set-up to share pictures between their many papers. Staff at some papers knew about the bulletin board and posted to it regularly. If an important OHL game was held in London, it was posted to the bulletin board as soon as possible. The bulletin board system was a kludge, you could not see the images. An editor had to chose a photograph based on the name and often the name did not reveal much about the picture.

The London Free Press used a system for naming its pictures that made finding them easy, even when using a text-based system. All picture files originating in London started LDN and this was followed by the date. It was not hard to find the OHL pictures from London. In most cases we included the Knights' name in the photo caption.

Still the London paper would get calls from other Sun Media papers seeking hockey pictures, pictures posted hours earlier. The editors on the other end of the line were often desperate; they were facing deadline. No one had thought to tell these other papers about the bulletin board. Whenever I was on EPD, I would walk these callers through the system. They were always amazed that the bulletin board existed and that you didn't even need a code to access its pictures.

I thought this lack of an entry code could be a potential problem and raised the issue. I made some calls. Eventually, a code was put in place. Unfortunately, the code was not given out to all the papers. The London Free Press was missed. The Free Press could still file to the bulletin board but the paper could no longer access pictures from it. This went on for months and, to the best of my knowledge, was never fixed. In the end the bulletin board was simply replaced with a much better system and all became right with the world.

It is foolishness like this that threats newspapers and not the coming of the Internet. The best and the brightest at the newspapers will survive. It is just the giant newspaper companies, buying and merging and running up an ever growing debt with every takeover, that may disappear.

When the newspaper suffered a strike a few years back, it quickly became clear that it was the staff that was the true paper and not the building carrying the name. About five days after walking out the door, the staff of The London Free Press had an alternative paper on the street.

I know reporters at the paper who can write code. Joe Matyas has taken courses and puts together a web site for his church, complete with videos. I know a photographer, Morris Lamont, who puts out an Internet newsletter for his son's baseball team and it's a fine publication. Very professional

Talented reporters and photographers may not realize it but in the future they will not need the paper. Truth be told, it is the paper that needs them. Big business, big media, has been tossing their most valuable asset, their staff, out the door at a frightening pace.

The other day I saw the phrase "begs the question" rather than "raises the question" used in the news pages. Seeing that phrase in print brought to mind an editor who left the paper after one of the reoccurring rounds of layoffs. On his last day, walking toward the door, he stopped at my desk and handed me a sheet of paper. It was a list of his pet peeves as an editor. Near the top was the incorrect use of "begs the question." That editor, given a buy-out, was a lover of the English language. The newspaper misses him.

Newspapers, not such smarties

When considering a name for this blog, I thought of calling it "Rockinon: Musings." In some ways, it was a better name as I write about stuff I think about, like newspapers. I like newspapers. I read them. I worked for two of them. And now, I muse over them.

When I worked at newspapers, I just grumbled, mostly quietly—now, I blog. I get to grumble openly, loudly, and often. I've been surprised to discover that journalists don't like public grumbling. I get what I would call public-hate-mail for my innocuous observations. And now to today's small grumble. I'm sure some journalists' will soon have their knickers in a knot over this. All too weird.

Paul Berton, editor-in-chief of The London Free Press, claimed, "Newspapers may be increasingly late to breaking news parties, but they have the advantage of getting more (if not all) the facts right." I'm sorry to tell you Paul, you're late to many stories and often wrong.

The London Free Press can't even get a story about the changes in Smarties right. I blogged about this problem of inaccuracy before here and again here. Paul, the columns you write for the paper are all too often error-filled. You, like your staff, are spread too thin. My guess is that the paper cannot spare an editor to edit your column and we both know how important that second pair of eyes can be.

It has been more than four months since Nestlé changed Smarties. Nestlé no longer uses artificial colouring. Their website states the improved candy was "available starting in March 2009." The London Free Press broke the news today, the end of July, in their "monday minute" column. The Free Press, in keeping with the fun nature of the column, doesn't capitalize the "M" on Monday.

I hope the reader is having fun because I know The London Free Press staff isn't. They are stretched so ridiculously thin, as are all the staff at all the Sun Media/Quebecor Media papers, that they simply repackage a bit of stale fluff and report almost word for word the company's press-kit claims. This plagiarism is bad writing and bad journalism. Both the paper and the press release talk about "the trend to healthier lifestyles" driving the change.

Sadly, there is actually a bit of a story here, but even months late to the party The London Free Press had no time to discover the story. Tell me again, why we need big media—like Quebecor with their big layoffs resulting in thin staffs unable to perform.

So, what was the story missed by The London Free Press? Answer: Some colours have gone missing! Temporarily there are no blue nor green Smarties. Nestlé states on their website, "It’s proving very difficult to find a non-artificial blue." This eliminates both blue and green Smarties from the line-up as green results from a mix of blue and yellow.

The other missed story is the claim about Smarties being part of a trend toward a healthier lifestyle. Smarties? Give me a break. Nestlé itself states, "Save sweet and fatty treats for special occasions." When it comes to kids and lunch box ideas, even Nestlé nixes Smarties.

You can get 22% of your daily fat from a box of Smarties.

My mother, back in the '50s, understood what is truly meant by a healthier lifestyle. She gave me apples, navel oranges and even carrot sticks.

By the way, I don't get my knickers all in a knot over serving a child a few—very few—Smarties. But, a few go a long way. They are not my idea of a healthier lifestyle.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Where were you when. . . ? Watching TV?

Two days ago, I blogged on a column "Where were you when. . . ?" by Paul Berton, editor-in-chief of The London Free Press. I pointed out how the paper, like many others across North America, messed up the Challenger disaster photo big-time. The Free Press was forced to pull the original colour plates and replate for the city edition. For details see my earlier blog.

I must now add that the black and white picture at the bottom of the Challenger disaster front page is not as presented. In the haste to get the best images from the disaster on the wire, AP erred when captioning the photo. Here is the correction from the New York Times:

Editor's Note: A picture on Jan. 29, published after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, showed the parents and sister of Christa McAuliffe, the teacher astronaut. Under the heading ''Family in Shock,'' the editors' caption said the family was watching ''as the space shuttle took off and exploded.'' In response to inquiries, The Times has reviewed its film, frame by frame, against television tape of the sequence, from liftoff to the announcement of the explosion. The review shows that the published photograph was in fact made slightly before the explosion. The suggestion that the family was reacting to the explosion was mistaken. (The London Free Press used the word "reacts" in their cutline.)

Note how the New York Times used television tape to clarify the situation. The dog (television) wags the tail (the newspapers) again. Now, what was Paul saying about, "Newspapers may be increasingly late to breaking news parties, but they have the advantage of getting more (if not all) the facts right."

I wasn't going to mention the following, but since I have had to revisit the column, let's look at some other stuff said in Paul's column.

First, Paul writes: "It (video of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon) was made possible by the electronic media, and, conveniently enough, by the fact the camera was somehow on the moon and rolling before the big step became a news event."

Forty years after the event and The London Free Press does not know there was no camera magically "somehow on the moon." Geesh, shades of moon landing hoax stories or the moon landing conspiracy theories. The historic event was telecast live from the side using a television camera ingeniously attached to the lunar module.

Wired has an excellent story on how the filming was accomplished. Briefly, a young electrical engineer at Westinghouse, Stan Lebar, was given the task of developing a camera that could capture the most memorable moment of the 20th century – the Apollo 11 moon landing. The goal was to send back a live television feed so that everyone could watch it – particularly the Soviets.

Paul tells us, "Those on Twitter were clearly the first to learn about the miracle plane crash on the Hudson River last winter."Yes, but . . .

According to CNET News, "TwitPic, an application that allows users to take pictures from their mobile phones and append them to Twitter posts, went down after at least 7,000 people attempted to view the photo of the airplane taken by Janis Krums." (Krums, by the way, is a man, and not a "she" as reported by The London Free Press days after the Hudson River landing.)

"According to Noah Everett, the founder of TwitPic, . . . the resulting traffic was too much for the site's servers."

According to Silicon Alley Insider, "Thirty-four minutes after Krums posted his photo, MSNBC interviewed him live on TV. . ." Twitter was first out of the gate, but it was the mature technology of television that won the race and made the world aware of Krums amazing photo. As usual, newspapers were not in the race.

Let's do a little creative editing and let Paul Berton win the last round by quoting his closing words, "Newspapers may be increasingly late to breaking news parties . . . " Well said, Paul.

Where were you when. . . ?

"Where were you when . . . ?" This is the question posed by editor-in-chief of The London Free Press, Paul Berton, in his Saturday column. Maybe I could be so bold as to answer his question with a warning, equally original: "Be careful what you wish for . . ." or in this case, "what you ask for."

Berton asks the expected: "Where were you when you heard President Kennedy had been shot?" Where was I? I was between classes in high school, waiting to enter Mr. Allen's French class. The exiting students whispered the news to us. Some of the young girls were sobbing as they left Mr. Allen's room and all the young boys were stone faced. Some were wet-eyed.

My wife was in her high school cafeteria. Her high school principal announced the event over the school's PA system. She recalls the boys sat quietly numbed while the girls cried openly.

Paul goes on to ask: "Do people still find out about big breaking stories from newspapers, the way they probably did about the attack on Pearl Harbour, the bombing of Hiroshima, or even the assassination of JFK?"

This is my answer: Ever since the first historic radio signals crossed the Atlantic early in the last century newspapers have been losing ground. They were rarely, if ever, first out of the gate with the big story.

The assassination of JFK was a radio and television story. And after they broke the shocking story, word of mouth quickly made all the world aware. When JFK was shot in mid-day in Dallas Texas most newspaper presses were sitting idle, the press rooms empty. Newspapers were not slow out of the gate, they were not even in the race.

Try googling Paul's question. It's interesting. It appears that no one, absolutely no one, first learned of Kennedy's assassination from a newspaper. From my admittedly shallow research, it appears radio gets the nod here. A quick investigation into Pearl Harbour sees radio declared the winner here, too.

Now, Paul's mention of Hiroshima raises other issues more complex than just "where were you when . . .?" A lot has been written about the press and the handling of the Hiroshima story. If you're interested, a good place to start is with Greg Mitchell's piece The Press and Hiroshima: August 6, 1945, republished from Editor and Publisher.

Paul goes on to share his recollections of the Challenger disaster and how he first learned of the explosion from the front page headline in the Toronto Star. Let me share my recollections of the Challenger disaster and how the newspaper coverage was not only bested by television but, in many cases, lead into embarrassing errors by an unearned faith in the accuracy of the televised image.

According to MSNBC the belief that ". . . millions of television viewers were horrified to witness the live broadcast of the space shuttle Challenger exploding 73 seconds into flight . . . " is actually a myth. "What most people recall as a 'live broadcast' was actually the taped replay broadcast soon after the event." (Many now argue the Challenger didn't explode, or blow up as apparently the Toronto Star reported, but I'll let you google that.)

But whether television broadcast the event live or not, what is clear is that newspapers were left out of the loop. Newspaper newsrooms everywhere scrambled to put together a story by following it minute by minute. Newspaper reporters and editors around the world were glued to newsroom television sets.

When it came time to place the front page picture, many newspapers were horrified to discover the AP image by Bruce Weaver showed the shuttle apparently exploding against a night-black sky. The disaster occurred against a blue sky; The editors knew this, they had watched the actual event on television. Editors across North America were howling: "The sky was blue, damn it! It wasn't night!"

Back then, in 1986, it took the better part of half an hour to receive a colour transmission at a newspaper. The entire process for publishing colour pictures in the paper was long and tedious. After a transmission, all that an editor had in hand was a collection of three black and white pictures called printers. The pictures were identical except in tone and the labels magenta, yellow and cyan.

These paper printers were labeled cyan, magenta and yellow and were sent to the back-shop by editorial to be proofed. As you can imagine a lot was necessary to transform three black and white images into a colour picture in the daily paper. To give editors and the press crew an idea of how the image should look when printed, a proof was pulled. This involved three, overlapping coloured images: one cyan, one magenta and one yellow and all on a transparent base. Making these took time. As I said, this was a slow, tedious operation.

By the time the editors had proofs in hand, they were sitting on deadline. The deadline at a newspaper is well named. If you are the editor in charge of the front page, you do not miss deadline. The press must roll on time. The papers must be delivered to the waiting trucks on schedule. Release your page late too often and the newspaper will release you.

Editors everywhere were in an awful bind. The Challenger disaster had to go front with art and they knew their front page picture, the one they must use, was incorrect. The sky colour was wrong. There was no time for a corrected transmission from AP and as this was in the days before Photoshop — there was no easy way to turn the sky blue.

The solution decided upon at The London Free Press was to take the magenta and the yellow printers and opaque the negatives. Opaque was a special water-based paint used in the back-shop on negatives. Once opaqued, an area would not print. The Free Press would turn the sky blue by using only the cyan printer.

This was a quick solution. Unfortunately there was no time to pull another proof. With fingers crossed, the colour plates were sent to the press room and the big Goss letterpress rumbled into action. As the press rolled and everyone saw the first papers, hearts stopped.

The editor in charge of the front page ran into the newsroom waving one of the first papers. "We've got dog shit on blue linoleum," he bellowed in anger. "We've got to replate for city!"

The flooring picture went out to the district but was pulled and replaced for the city edition. This time the original image was used as transmitted. The sky looked black but it was better than the alternative.

The truth is the blue-black sky is correct. It is an accurate representation of the image captured by many of the photojournalists shooting at the disaster. Transparency film, used by photojournalists at the time, records images differently than electronic television cameras.

Would all those editors have been panicked by the oh-so-dark sky if they had not viewed the actual event themselves on television? I doubt it.