How Did the Five W's Become an Endangered Species?

For your reading pleasure something from my rejection pile. The following is an Opinion piece submitted to and rejected by the Globe and Mail. (As a writer I do not let rejection get me down.) However, I feel it covers an idea worth exploring. 

Who. What. Where. When. Why. And How. These are the bedrock upon which
are built sound journalism, criminal investigations and, likely, the
discovery of a disastrous mess in the kitchen.

A recent Globe and Mail Opinion piece (Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019)
entitled 'How can we save Canadian non-fiction?' decried the apparent
policy shift by the Canada Council away from fact-based literature
(non-fiction) and the imminent demise of that genre due to lack of
critical funding. In its place there will be mainly "fiction, poetry
and the sort of first-person non-fiction that appears to be in favour
at the council stated writer and publisher Kenneth Whyte.

Reading this made the word "storytelling" bubble to the fore of my
consciousness from deep within where it had been percolating since a
Stratford Festival Forum discussion I attended in October on The
Integrity of Journalism. (Three eminent journalists discussed the
state of their craft and commented on audience observations.) There
were the expected questions about coverage of the troublesome U.S.
president and the slow death of print media; however, what lodged in
my brain was the way University of Toronto professor Naheed Mustafa
shook her head sadly when asked about the trend toward Storytelling.

As a lifelong learner, that visual pronouncement germinated a truism I
had not known existed up to then: Storytelling is the easy way out.

To define the thing--Storytelling is the first-person recounting of
that person's own story. Period. It is often heart-breaking and
difficult to listen to the details; many times I have heard the
interviewee break down and cry. Solutions to problems and happy
outcomes are rare in this genre. After the story is over I am no more
knowledgeable than when it started about the causes of said problem,
remedies attempted, incidence rates and determinants of success.

As an example, take homelessness. I have read and listened to too many
"Docs" as a homeless person takes us through the details of that hard
life: the begging, the sleeping on grates, the difficulty getting
health care, the eating of other's leftovers and on and on. Then the
so-called documentary ends. I ultimately feel bad and think I should
donate some money or knit some socks or something but.... where to
donate? Who can solve this?

Maybe it makes for good ratings but journalists and their
employers/authors and their publishers and, in the end, the Canada
Council are letting us down here.

Back to homelessness. I would like a well-rounded analysis of that
issue. Sure, include one person's story to put a face on it but
explore the Why, What, How, Where, When of the thing, not just the
Who. To my way of thinking, a thorough investigation would discover
how many people are homeless, root causes such as government closures
and cut-backs to mental health facilities, drug and alcohol addiction,
lack of affordable housing, marital dissolution and unemployment, to
name a few. The reader would learn percentages of men, women and
children caught up in it; regional hot spots, city versus small town
rates; how other provinces and countries deal with the problem;
programs that have shown promise or are proven successes.

All of the above involves the gathering and presentation of facts.
Non-fiction. The stuff that is needed to make informed decisions. And
to keep me, as a listener and reader engaged, a glimmer of hope or
some ideas from those in the know on how to help would be ideal.

It's The Little Things That Are Big

Delight. That's what it was. It took me a moment to identify; I was just so surprised to be offered up a moment of pure happiness on a drear Tuesday morning as I slogged my way through a mundane list of household tasks.

It was akin to having a butterfly land on your rare flowering cactus as you clicked the shutter. It made me break into a goofy grin. I felt I should share this miraculous moment with someone but my husband was out. A text to a friend could not convey the sublime zen I felt; nor is there an emoji that could capture it. I wanted to call my mother with the good news but she is a bit confused at 89 and it would be lost in the explanation. Twice.

So it fell upon a complete stranger to absorb my over-the-top blathering and for that I should probably apologize. But maybe it made her day as well.

The episode in question began when I called our local newspaper to restart the paper after putting it on "vacation hold" for the summer. I had procrastinated because The North Bay Nugget's automated answering service is a special kind of hell designed, I am guessing, by devious millennials tasked with the ultimate corporate goal of eliminating the use of archaic instruments such as landlines--maybe all phones in fact--and newsprint. 

As close as I can figure the current business model dictates we should be interacting with our news providers online only: reading it, watching it, paying for it, never putting it on vacation hold. Except the websites have been designed by another set of devious millennials in the Philippines or India who will chat with you online about what you want to do; they will thank you profusely for that information; they will not understand First World problems like the inability to have a newspaper delivered to an island cottage which means the papers will pile up in the driveway for the entire season of summer unless our neighbour clears them away. Even though I had dutifully suffered through the automated system to put it on hold at the beginning of summer. 

I probably should not name specific newspapers but I worked for The Nugget back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. There is a special place in my heart for the old rag even if it no longer has much in the way of local content or thoughtful editorials and op-ed pieces. Despite the fact Sun Media Corp insists reporters are an expensive option and editors and proofreaders are an unnecessary luxury, I still subscribe. 

So to restart my subscription I called the local number with dread. I had my coffee at hand and my nerves steeled to combat the approaching frustration. It rang once and I thought, Here we go. A voice answered and it took me a full second to realize it was a living breathing woman asking how she could help me. I coughed on my coffee and then could not come up with the words "I would like to take my Nugget off vacation hold". She waited. And then when I did sputter my request, she efficiently said she would transfer me to Circulation. Here we go, I thought again.

But no. Another efficient, real live woman offered to help me. I told her my phone number, address and she said it would restart the next day. "But wait," I gasped. (And here is where the gushing began.) "Can I just say how nice it is to talk to a real human being to transact this?" I could hear her smiling over the line. 

"Someone at Sun Media changed something and now the calls come direct to us," she said happily. We said our good-byes under the cloud of probability that someone at head office will discover this breach of business model efficiency and went on about our days. I don't know about the Nugget women I spoke to but the serendipitous pleasantries exchanged made my day better. 

And our Nugget was in the box the next morning.

The In Box Advantage

It is a sadly apocalyptic landscape I have been travelling through lately. The trees are refusing to bud out. Rain clouds keep blocking out the sun. The flood waters are lapping at the doorstep and garden centres remain empty, cold bastions of hope and shivering annuals. (Oh sorry, that is the reality of a very late, reluctant Northern Ontario spring that is following on the heels of an unusually long, cold winter.)

No, the other landscape I am witnessing is a miasma of shifting technologies, a dearth of sober second thought and the abdication of belief in rigorous research ideally shared with all in clear, unvarnished language. Why, just the other day I sauntered along a new route—out to jack up my infernal step average, if truth be told—and came upon a hulk of a vehicle, one of those glorious stretch limos complete with all the appointments, broken down at the road side. On closer inspection I saw on the door, in precise New Times Roman font, the words “Old-style Journalism” and a tarnished motto about all the news that’s fit to print. I sensed, before I saw, movement on the other side of those smokey windows; toiling away without benefit of library cards, clean ashtrays or a decent Internet connection were a half dozen practitioners of the old way of getting out the news, madly talking on phones and typing stories in a race to deadline.

Although reluctant to put aside their assignments to talk to me, I was able to establish that their vehicle had broken down sometime around the turn of the century and no one quite knew how to fix it. Occasionally their conveyance would come to life and they would continue haltingly on their journey but most days now are spent on the sidelines confusedly watching what passes for news dissemination. What they see is a storm of vitriol, half-truths, cruelty and feel-good memes hidden behind an impenetrable wall of anonymity.

But for a career turn, I too would be in the limo looking out. A bit of my heart and loyalty is in there with them. You see I was schooled in the old-style Journalism where slander and libel suits were to be avoided at all costs. Heads were known to have rolled. So a young reporter learned first and foremost to get the facts and quotes right. It was not a legitimate story without a solid source and facts that could be verified and double-checked. And the person who decided that was an editor.

And this brings me to the all-important credenza. Who knew that the nub of all that ails current news dissemination would be a $5.99 purchase at Staples but it is true. Sitting on the corner of every editor's desk was the In box. When I started in a news room it was an actual thing crammed to overflowing with photos, story ideas, rough drafts, opinion pieces and polished features. Every morning the editor sifted through the offerings and decided-- based mostly on a gut feeling moiled with news judgement and bad coffee--what would make that day's paper. Then he or she went to work assigning reporters and photographers to tighten up what they had written the night before and call sources to confirm or deny rumours. The editor then edited the results--and this is very important--correcting spelling and grammar, moving the most important facts to the lead, questioning any dubious innuendo, deleting slanderous and libellous material and deciding on its prominence according to the page layout.

All was done under a looming deadline; and holding up the press run was akin to cancelling Christmas. Most days the editor's task was a frantic attempt at accuracy, good judgement, smoothing ruffled feathers among reporters/photographers who did not agree how their work had been cropped, taking calls from the public who did not agree on how they or their business had been reported on and maintaining a sense of humour. That done, the editor would turn to the In box again because tomorrow was another day and another paper had to get out.

So, yes, the news landscape has changed and is never going to be the same. And, no, I do not think the tech giants of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and their ilk even considered the importance of news integrity back in the heady days of million-dollar startups and juvenile CEOs. Nor did those in the traditional press twig onto the story that their world was about to end. One of the hazards of being the story is not knowing it.

There are a few faint beacons of light trying to beat off the fog at the end of the questionable news tunnel. This week the Prime Minister announced Canada will be instituting a digital charter to police the wild west that is the Internet. It was remarkably short on details but it is something if done correctly. I would vote for someone who grew a spine and stood up to the tech industry's lackadaisical attitude toward lawful expression of opinion and common decency.

Should this theoretical leader be interested, I would suggest the mandating of editorial boards through which all would-be online material must be vetted in order to reach Canadian viewers. Too cumbersome to be practical? An unmanageable volume that would cause Facebook, say, to stop being the go-to platform for current happenings? On the contrary. I posit that if every user was registered using their real name, linked to an algorithm which would automatically remove submissions by non-registered users, most of the trolling would stop. Legitimate user posts would be scanned by a team of (probably, harried) editors from their electronic In box. If there is nothing slanderous, libellous, cruel or illegal it will be posted.

These are just the musings, of course, of an old hack. I would not know an algorithm from a Game of Thrones storyline. I do know there are a lot of smart young people who could be trained up as editors and I am betting they could quite handily sort out the online news world. It might slow the news feed by a millisecond but I think it is worth the wait. And there are legions of lawyers who could begin prosecuting and defending slanderers and libellers should they persist.

Wouldn't it be Utopia-like to have the Internet working for us and with us instead of against us?

                                                       ✳✳✳✳✳✳✳

One of the ironies of all this is that when I hit the Publish button this blog is dispersed electronically only. No paper copies will ever exist. And to enhance my readership audience I post it on good ole Facebook. There is an actual messy In box on my desk. I, for one, would welcome another set of eyes on what I deem important to share before it is released to the Wild West.