Fun with cheques

You just knew this would happen. Obviously a Liberal creation, a website devoted to the Conservatives' "Cheque Republic."

The website comes complete with a place to make Liberal donations, or, if you prefer, to a little on-line kit to "cut your own cheque."

"Your friends will love the sleek blue template complete with oh-so authoritative-looking Tory logo. What are you waiting for: fill in your and your friends’ info now and start pumping out your very own stimulus funding!"

Political TV viewing habits

The Prime Minister said this week that he doesn't watch Canadian news -- a fact he also noted in an  interview last week with Macleans editor-in-chief Ken Whyte. 

PM: I don’t know. Maybe it’s the perfectionist in me. Also, I find it like an out-of-body experience. It’s like watching somebody imitating me. It makes me very uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the shy side of my personality or something. But I don’t watch any Canadian news—I don’t want to see myself on television.

Well, this aversion to Canadian-TV-news watching  has prompted reporters here to ask about the viewing habits of other members of Harper's cabinet and leading Ottawa politicians. My colleague, Tonda MacCharles, has a story in today's paper, but here's a rundown of the raw Q and A, as it rolled out in the scrums yesterday.

Here's Industry Minister Tony Clement, who finds  Harper's  claim a bit of a stretch:

Question:            He says he watches American politics and American news.  He doesn't watch Canadian news and it's not the first time he's said it.

Hon. Tony Clement:    I don't believe you.  I don't believe you.

Question:            You don't believe me. 

Hon. Tony Clement:    No. I think - I think he watches -

Question:            Okay, do you believe the Prime Minister?

Hon. Tony Clement:    I think he watches Canadian news, he reads Canadian news, he watches American news, he reads American news.  He probably watches European news.  We all do that. 

Question:            So what, he's lying or he's joking?

Hon. Tony Clement:    We're new junkies, all of us are.  Come on.  You know what we're all about.

Former TV news anchor Peter Kent, now   a Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, also seems to find it a bit hard to believe -- that Harper avoids ALL news on Canadian TV.

Hon. Peter Kent:        I watch news from all sorts of sources.  I watch the BBC.  I watch some news from Latin America. 

Question:            But you watch Canadian -

Hon. Peter Kent:        Absolutely.

Question:            Should the Prime Minister watch Canadian political news?

Hon. Peter Kent:        He doesn't watch news about himself.

Question:            Do you think he watches any Canadian news?

Hon. Peter Kent:        Absolutely.

Question:            You know that.

Hon. Peter Kent:        Well, I've never sat with him but I assume that he -

Question:            Is that why he brought you in, he liked you on TV?

Hon. Peter Kent:        That's not a bad question but I don't think that had anything to do with it.  But thank you.

And then there's Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who confesses that he, like his boss, doesn't like to see himself on TV.

Question:            Do you watch Canadian news, sir?

Hon. Jason Kenney:    Occasionally. 

Question:            Occasionally.

Hon. Jason Kenney:    Not every day.

Question:            No, do you watch Canadian political news, sir?

Hon. Jason Kenney:    Every now and then I'll catch one of these shows they do in the lobby here but not habitually, no, I don't.

Question:            Basically when you're on?

Question:            Yeah, do you check out your own performance?

Hon. Jason Kenney:    No, I hate to see myself on TV.

Question:            Do you think the Prime Minister should watch Canadian (inaudible)?

Hon. Jason Kenney:    No, I think that would be - I understand - I think the Prime Minister is too busy to sit there being vainglorious and watching himself on TV.  So I think he should be doing the people's business rather than -

Question:            Does he watch any Canadian news?
Hon. Jason Kenney:    It's up to him.  Look, I'm glad to hear if the Prime Minister isn't sitting there glued to the TV it means he's doing his job.  That's a good thing. Thanks, guys.

And finally, we have Bob Rae, who says that politicians have a duty to watch the news, no matter what effect it has on one's hair. Really. Read on:

Bob Rae: I find that quite shocking.

Question:            Why?

Bob Rae:            Well, because we all have an obligation to know what's going on and to know what other people are reporting and what's taking place.  I'm quite astounded that the Prime Minister would be so unaware of what's - of the world around him.

Question:            In your darker days of being Ontario Premier did you watch Canadian -

Bob Rae:            I'm afraid I watched it always and I also read the newspapers.

Question:            And do you still?

Bob Rae:            Well, look at the colour of my hair.  Of course I still read it. 

Look who's talking

Maxime Bernier's time in the political wilderness may be over. Three events with the PM tomorrow. Can it be long before he's back in cabinet?(By the way, if you want to see a clip of Bernier's press-gallery dinner performance last weekend, another potential milepost on his road to redemption, click here.)

OTTAWA – Public events for Prime Minister Stephen Harper for Friday, October 23^rd are:

 

Saint-Georges, Québec

11:45 a.m. & 12:00 p.m. – Prime Minister Stephen Harper will hold a photo opportunity.  He will be joined by Conservative Member of Parliament Maxime Bernier.

Cégep Beauce-Appalaches

1055, 116th Street

Saint-Georges, Québec

G5Y 3G1

 

*Cameras and photographers only.

NOTES:

 

·         Media are required to present proper identification for accreditation.

·         Media are to park in the main parking lot and use the main entrance where they will be guided to the Socio Room for accreditation.

 

Saint-Georges, Québec

12:15 p.m. – Prime Minister Stephen Harper will make an announcement.  He will be joined by Conservative Member of Parliament Maxime Bernier.

 

Socio Room

Cégep Beauce-Appalaches

1055, 116th Street

Saint-Georges, Québec

G5Y 3G1

*Open to media.

NOTES:

 

• Media are required to present proper identification for accreditation.
• Media are to park in the main parking lot and use the main entrance where they will be guided to Socio Room for accreditation.

 

Saint-Georges, Québec

2:15 p.m. – Prime Minister Stephen Harper will host a roundtable.  He will be joined by Conservative Member of Parliament Maxime Bernier.

 

Boa-Franc

1255, 98th Street

Saint-Georges, Québec

G5Y 8J5

 

*Photo opportunity only (cameras and photographers only).

NOTES:

 

·         Media are required to present proper identification for accreditation.

·         Media to use the entrance to the left of the main doors (Door 26-B) and proceed to the cafeteria to hold.

 

- 30 -

 

Proud Canadians

Gary Doer, the new ambassador to the U.S., gave a little progress report to cabinet in Ottawa today about his first few days on the job. He says it's going to take a lot of Canadians to infiltrate the United States and spread the word against the  Buy America provisions. Canadians like the ones in these videos, below, maybe?  I'm coming a little late to both of them, but in the interests of Doer's call to arms, I post these two examples of Canadian pride.

That video, above, is being recirculated in response to this little snippet of the Jimmey Kimmel show a couple of weeks ago, titled "Stump the Canadian" and featuring filmmaker Michael Moore.

Frenemies

More evidence today that in politics, your friends are your worst enemies -- whether you're a Conservative or a Liberal. Nice.

The kid in the picture

Here's the video of that group hug at the daycare centre yesterday; a video I'm sure the Liberals would like you to see as many times as possible (or at least as many times as people have viewed the Prime Minister's piano performance on YouTube.)

Note the child who starts the hug. His name is Scott and I can attest that he has a large personality. Before the event, the utterly unshy Scott came over to where I was sitting on a radiator, leaned up against me and slipped my blackberry from my hands into his. He then started playing card games on it. After a couple of minutes, he tired of the blackberry and I gave him my camera instead. Sometime later today, I'll try to post the photos Scott snapped.

 ** Update ** You can find the photos at my Facebook page, under the album "young Scott's pictures." 

Which half?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper just said in the Commons that "almost half" of the stimulus money had gone to opposition-held ridings in Canada, which proves how magnanimous Conservatives are.

One wee problem: the Opposition hold the seats in more than half of Canada, much of those ridings being in highly urban places such as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. So when you look at it that way, "almost half" is sort of a strange boast, isn't it? It means that more than 50 per cent of it went to Conservative ridings, correct?

Story time

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is spending some quality time with the kids this morning. (Sorry, no cracks about MPs or his advisers). Here he is, getting to know the non-voters at an Ottawa daycare centre.

 

Just visiting Harvard-not

Michael Ignatieff is apparently headed back to old stomping grounds at Harvard University this week, according to this notice from the Carr School. (h/t David Akin.)   The Liberal leader will  be there on Wednesday evening this week, part of a panel discussing "Why Human Rights Matter Now More Than Ever."

**** Update: Jill Fairbrother, Ignatieff's spokesperson, says the Liberal leader is most assuredly NOT heading to Harvard this week; he has things to do here. Unclear why that's on the Carr Centre's website.

Journalism and glimmers of hope

Aaron Wherry, fellow blogger and neighbour here on the 4th floor of the National Press Building, delivered the following speech over the weekend to  a Canadian University Press gathering. I liked it so much I thought it deserved reprinting here.

Before I'd settled on what I was going to speak about tonight, I, of course, posted a message on Twitter asking what those reading thought I should say. The first response came from a young man in Kitchener, who wrote, quote "How to get a journalism job in today's world, and then how to stand above the pack once the job is attained," unquote.

I appreciate that young man's directness and his ability to grasp the central concern of young journalists in 140 characters or less. I remember what a central preoccupation it was eight years ago when I was in university and I remember too going to talks such as this desperately seeking the magic answer.

The complicating phrase, in this case, is "today's world" and all that entails. There's no sense avoiding the obvious troubles of the industry as it currently is. Things have obviously been better. But it's also important that we understand what exactly is wrong with today's journalism.

There is, by now, a fairly standard set of explanations: the recession, the advertising market, the Internet and so forth. No doubt all of these have contributed to the current situation. But, in each scenario, the problems are said to be elsewhere. Journalism is portrayed as the unwitting victim of external forces and happenstance, a broken business model and bad luck.

The truth might be both more worrisome and more reassuring.

It is impossible, for sure, to ignore the business decisions that put many newspaper owners in precarious positions before last fall's economic downturn. But it is foolish to dismiss the very real failings of the actual journalism we have been asking readers and viewers to pay for, put their trust in, and follow.

Now, as an English major who owns not a single stock or bond and has not read a business section cover to cover in perhaps years, I am entirely unqualified to comment at any length on the first issue. As such, I will demure from heaping scorn on multi-billion-dollar business transactions I barely understand.

But, as a writer who has worked now in three newsrooms, I am just arrogant enough to believe I can comment at some length on the second issue. So here goes.

Before I made the move to Ottawa I sought counsel from a colleague who had some experience on the Hill. The worst thing about the press gallery, he said, was that it was lazy. The best thing about the press gallery, he said, was that it was lazy and since it was lazy, anyone putting forth even a modest bit of effort quickly seemed a star.

I would like to say that two years here has shown me how wrong and cynical my colleague was.

It is not that reporters here don't work hard. I'm sure that in terms of hours and words, many journalists on the Hill rank among the hardest working in the country.  The trouble has more to do with how we approach the work we do and what we understand our purpose to be, what we think provides our readers with value.

Much—perhaps even the vast majority—of journalism out of Ottawa right now takes its basis from the latest public opinion polls. In the absence of quantitative data to analyze what we see and hear here everyday, we take refuge in the latest surveys. Daunted by the complicated issues that arise when governing a country is the subject, we retreat into discussion of strategy and tactics.

For all the words spent discussing polls, it's unclear how much attention we pay to what the polls are telling us. In 2006, Stephen Harper's Conservatives took 36.3% of the vote, the Liberals claiming 30.2%. Two years later, the Conservatives won 37.7%, the Liberals 26.3%. An aggregate of the recent polling puts the Conservatives at 34.8%, the Liberals at 30.7%. In other words, over the last three years, almost nothing has changed. And the press gallery has spent the majority of its time analyzing all of the ways in which nothing much has happened.

Suffice it to say, I'm not convinced that, in the process, we are regularly providing our readers with value and quality.

In recent American political journalism, there are perhaps two unique success stories.

The first is Politico, a website and Washington, D.C. newspaper that specializes in exhaustive coverage of the capitol and website that borders on the obsessive, including an hour-by-hour live diary of Barack Obama's presidency. It is the personification, in a way, of what the web, at its best, has brought to the American discussion.

The second is The Daily Show. Setting aside whatever else The Daily Show does well, it’s primary contribution to American political discourse, especially in recent years, is very straightforward: It calls people on their shit. Each night, Jon Stewart spends at least ten minutes exploring contradictions, half-truths, overstatements, lies and diversions. The worst behaviours are called out and mocked, simply and glaringly. All involved are called to account for the words that come out of their mouths in the most blunt and straightforward way.

Note that none of this is particularly innovative. Lively, comprehensive coverage. Holding people to account. Demanding better. Striving for clarity. These are precisely, it seems to me, the sorts of qualities and ideals for which newspapers are supposed to exist. And yet, if modern American newspapers were meeting those standards, Politico and Jon Stewart wouldn't seem like such revelations.

Here, in this country, we do not necessarily need our own Daily Show, or even our own Politico. But we need somehow to fulfill those purposes. As my colleague noted to me two years ago, what's lacking is effort. What the Daily Show and Politico represent is simply that—commitment to this endeavour. It is the same thing you'll find in the work that is done here that can be considered exemplary. Work like Daniel LeBlanc's unravelling of the Liberal sponsorship scandal. Work like Kady O'Malley's obsessive coverage of Parliamentary committees.  Work like much of what is produced each day by the Ottawa bureau of Canadian Press.

Now, obviously, not all of you—perhaps even few of you—are going to end up covering politics. If you value even a moderate level of belief in humanity, you'll likely find something less maddening to dwell upon. But we could just as easily have this same conversation with similar laments for almost any other area of modern newspaper journalism. The most intriguing new voice to emerge in sports journalism these last few years, for instance, is Deadspin, a website that spends a good deal of its time mocking how silly and boring mainstream sports coverage has become.

All of which brings me, in an admittedly roundabout way, to that young man's request. Whatever form newspaper journalism takes on over the next few years, however we learn to balance print and online, whatever the exact business model, I am among those who believe that quality will ultimately separate success from failure. Those outlets that survive and thrive will be those that demonstrate true value to the reader, that are clear in their purpose and committed to competing for the reader's attention. If a media outlet's survival is no longer to be taken for granted, it will be forced to think seriously about what it is doing, how well it is doing what it does, and whether it sufficiently serves its audience.

Which is, hopefully, where that young man from Kitchener and many of you come in. There is not yet a magic answer to the future of the industry and there has probably never been a magic answer to finding gainful employment—aside from the usual platitudes about working hard, dressing well and sucking up to the right individuals. But what we, as a collective industry, need right now is actually quite simple: we need to be refreshed. We need new and excited minds who are enthused about this business and committed to the craft.

I understand that these may sound like simple platitudes. And I recognize the irony of lamenting the emptiness of current journalism then falling back on what must sound like very earnest declarations. But I'm genuinely not convinced it's much more complicated than that.

Shortly after Barack Obama's election, his chief of staff let slip the administration's unapologetic ethos. “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” he told the New York Times.“They are opportunities to do big things.” It is the same for journalism now.

This is not a time for pessimism or panic, it is a chance to break from the complacency that has put us here. It is a time for enthusiasm for the work. You, as new voices, untainted by the cynicism carried by those of us already in the business, must be part of that. And no matter the larger state of the industry, I truly believe that those who care, those who want to do better, will find a place and succeed once there.