Vancouver

Diversity, Bias, and Workflow

Last Friday, the website of the Vancouver Sun newspaper posted an op-ed article titled Can Social Trust and Diversity Co-Exist? The opinion piece, submitted by Mount Royal University instructor Mark Hecht, argued that “a not insignificant proportion of Muslim immigrants have no intention of assimilating into any western society” and concluded that “the minimum requirement is that we say goodbye to diversity, tolerance and inclusion if we wish to be a society that can rebuild the trust we used to have in one another, and start accepting a new norm for immigration policy”.

As you might imagine, the article caused a firestorm of criticism, and it was pulled from the newspaper’s website – although it still appeared in the Sun’s Saturday print edition, which had already gone to press. Many commentators were asking why anyone at the Sun would have approved this article for publication, with its shoddy argumentation, lack of solid evidence, and anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim bias. (The article is still available on several other Internet sites; I don’t want to give it any more attention by linking to it, but you can find those sites by Googling the article title.)

The Sun’s editor, Harold Munro, posted an apology to readers that included a commitment to a “[review of] our local workflow and editorial processes to ensure greater oversight and accountability”. Since then, he met with Sun staff in person and promised further changes, although it appears there’s still a great deal of internal dissent and dissatisfaction around the matter.

As a former Sun employee, I was deeply upset that this article made it into print and online. I was also very impressed that many current Sun staff members publicly expressed their opposition to the article. But when I read Munro’s apology, I suspected that the “workflow” issue relates to the ongoing extensive staff cutbacks throughout Postmedia, the company that owns the Sun. It may be difficult for Sun editors to identify potentially problematic content if they’re overworked and on deadline, and have a space on a page that needs to be filled right away.

But then I wondered: how difficult is it to tell that Hecht’s article is problematic? So I sat down with (more…)

A Sense of Place: Almost Live! and Seattle

Next weekend John Keister, from Seattle’s legendary Almost Live! TV show, is doing a live show titled “Living and Dying in Seattle”. When I first saw the title, I was horrified – I thought it meant Keister had a terminal illness. Thankfully, that’s not the case. He’s planning to retire from live shows, but, as he explains in this interview, he sees the city of Seattle changing from the Seattle he knows, and he wanted to do the show while the city “was still partly recognizable”.

Almost Live! was a late-night comedy show that (more…)

Water

Writing a blog is rewarding in many ways. But for me, one of the great and unexpected benefits of blogging is being inspired – even unknowingly – by the work of other bloggers.

This spring, a blog that I’ve really been enjoying is The Perimeter by photographer Quintin Lake. Quintin has done several long-distance walks in the UK, but last year he embarked on an epic journey – a walk around 10,000 kilometres of Britain’s coastline. He’s doing the walk in sections, as time permits; he estimates he’ll get back to his starting point (St. Paul’s Cathedral in London) in April 2020.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had some unusual opportunities to take photos – including a round trip by seaplane from Vancouver to Nanaimo. I found that for some reason my eye kept being drawn to water: its textures, its movement, how the light made it change. And I ended up taking a lot of pictures of it. But it wasn’t until a few days ago, (more…)

Musical Gifts and Kindred Spirits

In the movie Almost Famous, one of the characters gives this advice about life on the road: “If you ever get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends.” To me, that quote encapsulates two of the great things about being a music fan – that music itself is your friend, and that music can connect you to fascinating people all over the world. Serious music fans can be quirky and prickly, but if they recognize a kindred spirit, they can share some incredible discoveries.

I’m currently reading Respect, David Ritz’s new biography of Aretha Franklin. The book is remarkable not only for its blunt portrayal of Franklin’s life, but also for its thorough depiction of the many musical styles that influenced Franklin’s work. And what made me think about the wonderful community among music fans is the book’s description of Franklin’s early career. There are two references in there that would mean nothing to me without (more…)

Vancouver Newspapers in Crisis: Not Only the Industry’s Fault

This week, a shock went through the Canadian media world with the leak of an internal memo predicting a very dark future for Vancouver’s two daily newspapers, the Vancouver Sun and the Province. The memo, entitled “Next Steps”, was written by Gordon Fisher, the newly installed president and publisher of Pacific Newspaper Group (PNG) – the division of Postmedia which publishes the two papers. The memo called the business “unsustainable” because of declining revenues, announced yet another voluntary buyout program for employees, and warned that the new “audience-first, four-platform organization” would “continu[e] to aggressively cut costs”.

Full disclosure: I am a former employee of both the Sun and the Province (more…)