Tag: journalism

Stuff I learned from podcasts this week

Actually, by now it’s stuff I learned last week, or the week before that… But I still find it worth knowing!

You’re going to bullshit yourself regardless, so you might as well put it to good use!

Hidden Brain: Outsmarting Yourself

Person weighing a decision.

This was the second of a two-part series on cognitive dissonance: how you try to convince yourself that a decision you made was the right one, even in light of evidence to the contrary. Pretty much all humans do this, so even if you’re well aware of that tendency, you might still do it. But the awareness can at least help you harness it for good.

Some really interesting examples here of how to harness cognitive dissonance for good, including in the realm of public health. Hmm…

The federal government is killing local news by trying to help local news

The Paul Wells podcast: How Bill C-18 is threatening a local news empire

Jeff Elgie of Village Media.

Thanks to Michael Geist, I’ve been aware of Bill C-18, the law that (essentially) says that Facebook and Google must pay news organizations for linking to their content, for years. And that it has resulted in Facebook (Meta now, I guess) doing exactly what they clearly said they would do if this bill passed, which is to stop linking to news. With Google now likely to do similarly.

What I learned from this Paul Wells podcast is how this has specifically hurt an organization that I had never heard of before. Village Media has been very successful at going into markets that have lost their traditional local news outlets. Village Media has filled that void, supplying communities with local news, all online. They have staff journalists, with benefits—not just a bunch of freelancers! They are profitable, and growing, and had been planning to expand into several new markets this year.

Until, until…

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Is it just me, or does the redesigned Globe kind of suck?

The Globe and Mail has spent a fortune redesigning itself—again. And certainly, I have no problem with the smaller page size, the increased colour, the glossy pages. But the content…?

The rumor was that, in trying to attract a younger audience (or something), there would be more “fluff”. But really, I find it’s in the “fluff”—the arts, the life stuff—that have been downsized the most.

The 7-day TV listings on Friday I used to program the PVR to? Gone.

Rick Salutin’s always interesting Friday column? Gone.

Tabitha Southby’s often hilarious Saturday column? Gone.

Movie reviews? Greatly reduced. Book reviews? Ditto.

The Style section, which I used to generally love despite its seemingly being aimed primarily at rich Torontonians, is barely worth looking at anymore. Pictures of expensive clothes. Repeats of the Style emails I already get. Russell Smith’s column reduced to a paragraph. Wine reviews now in list format, with rating numbers. So easy to scan—I sometimes miss it completely!

I’m starting to feel like I should be getting a discount, I’m getting so much less that actually seems worth reading. For the first time in many years, I’m actually thinking of cancelling my subscription.