Getting rid of the deck chairs on the Titanic
As any viewer of CBC news knows by now, the corporation is in such dire financial straits, it’s had to sell the chairs.
That, of course, is another one of those hilarious references to the fact that almost everyone on CBC’s The National seems to be forced to stand around while presenting the news.
Almost all reviews of the new format for The National and Newsworld (now called CBC News Network), have heaped scorn on the standing-up gimmick to the point where corporation executives have shot back.
Jennifer McGuire, the CBC News’s general manager and editor in chief, says she is annoyed by the focus on standing and the executive vice-president of CBC English services calls criticism “pathetic” and that it “revolves around whether people are standing or sitting.”
However, that debilitating weariness of the topic, didn’t stop anchor Peter Mansbridge from writing almost 600 words on the topic, defending it as something he’s always done. Well, once and awhile, anyway.
In many ways, CBC should be grateful that so much of the focus is on Mansbridge’s stand-and-deliver number. Once viewers look beyond the Xbox graphics and plexi-glass blackjack table, they might discover that more than the chairs have been removed.
In announcing the new CBC news, the corporation fell back, as it always has, on buzzwords and jargon, the meaning of which are only clear to those in the Toronto headquarters.
The news is now supposedly more “transparent” and “customizable” and presents “only what matters.” Mansbridge says “we’re still dealing with the important news stories of the day.”
Like on Nov. 12, when The National’s top story was a collision in Calgary between a school bus and a van in which nobody was injured beyond scrapes and bruises. Despite over two minutes of overwrought, dramatic quotes, in the end it was, well, a traffic accident. This was the most important news in Canada. Across the nation, this was “only what matters.” It didn’t even make the front page of the Edmonton Journal.
Mansbridge may stand behind his comments, but this is a story that would never have topped a CBC national newscast in the past. It is all emotion and drama, signifying nothing. But, hey, the visuals were good.
And this is but one example. They abound in the new CBC. As well, the new CBC puts great value in having their anchors interview their reporters. Indeed, the message seems to be that the most important person in a story is the reporter. And they’re really important when they are reporting “live” or, in most cases, pretending.
The director of CBC News Network says the chatting between the anchor and reporters is presenting “news as it breaks, as it develops. And we move a story through in a conversational way, and pull the curtain back on the editorial process.”
Whatever that means on this planet.
What it means on the screen is you get “live” coverage such as the CBC Winnipeg story last month about a fatal accident in North Dakota. The anchor went to the “live” correspondent who ended a recitation of the story with “live on Spence Street.” Spence Street, by the way, is not in North Dakota, it is a sidewalk’s width away from the door to CBC Winnipeg’s headquarters.
This was not unusual. Watching the news one might get the impression that many events in Winnipeg and beyond actually occur within a block of Portage and Spence.
This is just one of the innovations foisted on local CBC outlets. The main one is the 90-minute, three-newscast block, promising comprehensive coverage, but is more of a mile-long, all-you-can-eat buffet that features the same nine items over and over and over again.
It’s not the fault of the reporters or on-the-ground producers. Many are still those who racked up awards and broke stories in the past that every other news outlet in the city chased.
Now they are expected to do much more, with less, looking for emotion more than information while directed by people who have little respect neither for their own employees nor for the audience. When criticism arose about the new look news, the head of CBC English services, Richard Stursberg, called them “cheap shots” and “noise”, despite the fact hundreds came from loyal viewers.
At least it has become clearer as to what the CBC brass means when it says it wants its news to be more transparent. In the two months since the change, it’s become almost invisible.
As its ads exhort: “Know more. Know now.”
No way.
Working in mysterious ways
Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of much-maligned Goldman Sachs, says he is “doing God’s work.”
“We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle. We have a social purpose."
On the other hand, a recent article in Rolling Stone magazine described the financial giant as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money"
Potato, Potahto.
Wow, who would have guessed?
A big study in the U.S. has found that walking or cycling to work every day is linked to fitness.
The study of more than 2,000 people discovered that those who cycle or walk to work did better on fitness tests than those who rode to work.
The study follows previous research which uncovered startling findings such as the fact countries that have the highest levels of walking and biking also have the lowest levels of obesity.
Spin City
The Winnipeg Free Press put quite the happy face on its decision to drop its Sunday edition, but not the weekly fee subscribers pay.
The headline said it all: More in Saturday Free Press; new Sunday tab to hit streets
The story focused on the replacement for the Sunday paper, a tabloid thing that will sell only in corner boxes and stores in Winnipeg and the fact some past Sunday features will be moved to Saturday.
Not until the last sentence of the 743-word article did it answer the question of whether subscribers will have their bills reduced in light of the 14-per-cent reduction in the number of newspapers being received.
No.
