Reviewed by Brian Brennan

Jan Wong was a star of The Globe and Mail newsroom, a driven, gutsy, award-winning reporter who observed the Tiananmen Square massacre at first hand, and tested the limits of Canada’s airport security by smuggling box cutters aboard four Air Canada flights in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In September 2006 she wrote a morning-after feature story – a combination of reporting and analysis – on the Montreal Dawson College shooting that left the gunman and one student dead. In her story she linked the incident to two other Montreal school shootings, noting that in each instance the perpetrator came from immigrant stock. Each had been marginalized in a society that valued “pure laine,” which Wong defined as francophone slang for old-stock Quebecers.

All hell broke loose.

Out of the Blue chronicles the crisis that followed for Wong, including her two-year struggle with depression and her fight to have her sick pay restored after the employer accused her of malingering. It’s a candid, compelling, unflinching account, dappled with references to others who battled depression and wrote about it, and packed with well-documented information about the history, causes, symptoms, and treatment of mental illness. It also offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of an intensely competitive newsroom where reporters complained of “severe byline deprivation” if they hadn’t a story in the paper for a while.

The “pure laine” reference, cleared by her editors before publication, plunged her into hot water. Letters of condemnation, 13 of which the Globe published, came from readers including Prime Minister Harper and Quebec Premier Charest. The House of Commons passed a motion apologizing to the people of Quebec for the “offensive remarks.” Wong received a flood of racist hate mail, abusive phone calls, packages containing excrement and mutilated copies of her books, and a death threat alarming enough to warrant calling police.

The Globe let Wong take the fall. It attempted to appease her critics by publishing an editorial saying there was no evidence Quebec’s linguistic struggle contributed to marginalization of immigrants or to any violence perpetrated by them. The editor-in-chief, Edward Greenspon, added in a damning column that Wong’s opinions should not have been part of her story. With nobody in her corner, Wong went on extended stress leave, during which she was diagnosed with severe depression.

Wong remained mostly silent following the uproar. After first granting her permission to talk to other media outlets about the backlash, the Globe management slapped a gag order on her. At the same time, the newspaper company’s insurer, Manulife, began questioning her claim that she was stricken with a mental illness and could not return to work.

Though she ended up losing her job at the Globe, Wong eventually received written acknowledgement from the employer that she had been ill and unable to attend work during the time she was on stress leave. She also negotiated successfully for a favorable settlement agreement and removal of the gag order. But that wasn’t the end of the Globe fallout. Left free to write about her ordeal, she landed a contract with Doubleday Canada and spent three years at work on Out of the Blue. She was “a keystroke away” from sending it to final copy edit before printing when her publisher got cold feet, despite having had the book assiduously lawyered, because of some references she made to the Globe‘s “corporate bullying.” Wong refused to change the material, parted ways with Doubleday, and published the manuscript herself.

I’m grateful that she did. Books like this rarely make it into print because corporations generally demand silence as part of settlement agreements with individuals who sue them for wrongful dismissal. Wong took on three behemoths – the Globe, Manulife, and Doubleday – and emerged from the fray with her voice gloriously intact.

By Frank Moher

Alheli Picazo at CalgaryPolitics.com has dug up some of the writings of Wildrose Party candidate and one-time Alberta Report Publisher/Editor Link Byfield, just in case Danielle Smith would like to defend someone other than Allan Hunsperger and Ron Leech for a change. Of course, this one’s almost too easy: any ex-journalissimo who runs for public office comes trailing a stack of clips that are bound to piss somebody off. Still, Link’s work was often ordure of a special order.

Jan. 1, 2001: “‘Houses of worship’ worth the name always have and always will reserve marriage solely to heterosexuals … homosexuality being what it is, relatively few homosexuals and lesbians want to be married anyway. They may want the right, but few seem to want the reality. This whole struggle has been about political mastery, not equal rights, for this is not a right they use . . . the few who do form more lasting partnerships already have the same tax and benefit rights as normal married couples . . . the Liberals gave them that last year: everything except the use of the word ‘marriage.’ And now, needless to say, a few activists are determined to get that too, and nothing seems likely to stop them . . . the goal now is status.

“This debate is not . . . between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘progressivists.’ It’s between nature and perversity; between reality and illusion . . . .The danger of homosexual marriage is not that there will be many such marriages. There will be few. The danger lies in recognizing them, or affirming them, or pretending they’re just as good as the real thing. It debases the whole institution.”

March 19, 2001: “A lesbian in our vicinity named Teresa O’Riordan, I read in our weekly Morinville-Gibbons Free Press, has been appointed to the local Community Justice Committee. She and seven other volunteers will help try to keep young offenders out of jail by giving them guidance and encouragement to turn their lives around . . . .

[SNIP:]

“…. All of which goes to show how absurdly our public attitudes have been turned on their head. Here we have a divorcee teaching families how to succeed, a lesbian teaching about parenting, and all on the state payroll. Here we see a noted permissivist assigned to monitor young criminals whose most urgent need is probably a good hard kick in the pants.

“As for anger management, I can’t help but wonder (bigot that I am) if Ms. T’s household suffers the kind of domestic violence and discord for which lesbian relationships are so notorious. The odds are that it doesn’t, but short of a police complaint or hospital emergency visit, how would anyone know? Did anyone ask? Is anyone these days allowed to ask?”

February 5, 2001: “The like-minded groups we now discreetly refer to as ‘sexual minorities’ — homosexuals, lesbians, pedophiles, etc. –

[Actually, that's all we need of that one, isn't it?]

And here’s one I dug up myself, from the January, 11, 1999 Alberta Report, in which Link waxed slightly delusional about the history of the magazine and its “Next 25 Years”:

“We learned one other lesson in the latter 1980s, as we started branching out with other editions, first Western and then B.C. Report. Instead of reverting to clear conservatism on the social issues of the day, we began to drift, subtly, into what could be called ‘lifestyle’ coverage . . . . There was a reason for this drift. Back in the 1970s, weirdo things like radical feminism and gay rights could be dismissed, at least in Alberta, as an amusing madness. But by the late-1980s they couldn’t.

Unfortunately for Link, most readers had by that point fled the not-so-amusing madness that Alberta Report had become, and it was dead within four years.

I call him Link because, you see, I worked with him at AR back in the early ’80s. I was the books and sometimes-other-things editor, in which minor capacities my lack of pure laine conservatism could be ignored. (His father, Ted Byfield, used to claim I was a closet conservative; I am afraid I have sadly disappointed him.) He even, as he prepared to move into the top position, offered me the job of Executive Editor. Had I said Yes, I’d be the president of Rogers Publishing today! (Okay, maybe not.) But I was more interested in a career in theatre, and already had one. And I could see, even if Link could not, that I might last six months in the job. So I moved to a Gulf Island to write plays, instead.

All of which is to say, I knew Link back when, and I liked him; he was a Nice Guy™. I have since learned, however, that Nice Guys™ are often up to all sorts of nastiness while they’re about being Nice; in fact, I have come to believe that their Niceness™ is often directly proportionate to the amount of nastiness they’re up to. Link has certainly gotten up to a lot of nastiness as a journalist over the years and, if it’s inevitable that it catches up to him as a politician, it’s also deserved. Mind you, he may be just what the constituents of Barrhead-Westlock-Morinville are looking for. (He wasn’t what those in Whitecourt-Ste. Anne wanted last time, but this is a whole different foodfight.) I have familial reasons, though, to believe that conservative Albertans still know the difference between principles and zealotry. And so one lives in hope.

As for myself, I’ve ceased being nice, as perhaps this post indicates. So here, for old time’s sake, are some blasts from Link’s pasts — covers from AR during his editorship. The most notorious is at the top, but for my money, it’s the last one that really ought to bring perdition upon him. Alberta Report gave us the Reform Party, which gave us Stephen Harper, which gave us our current truth- and math-challenged federal government. And if that isn’t damning, I don’t know what is.

I see that Mike Wallace is being given a grand send off and is being called a journalistic hero.

The newspapers are full of glowing obituaries, and TV stations have been running clips of his most famous interviews and documentaries.

But funnily enough nobody mentioned the famous documentary LGBT activist Wayne Besen has described as the single most destructive hour of anti-gay propaganda in U.S. history.

The one where Wallace said this:

“The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested or capable of a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. His sex life, his love life, consists of a series of one–chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits. And even on the streets of the city — the pick-up, the one night stand, these are characteristics of the homosexual relationship.”

This horrible thing . . .

I can’t imagine what a young gay person would have felt watching that broadcast.

I can’t imagine what it must have been to live in a time like that one.

But the next time some old straight person waxes nostalgically about the good old days, I’m going to ask them what they did to stop gay people from being treated like subhumans?

And if they say they didn’t do anything, I’m going to ask them why not? And do they even feel the slightest bit guilty?

Mike Wallace may have been a good newsman.

But he was no hero . . .

Dear worshipping readership: as one of the few remaining hard-hitting investigative journalists out there (see you at the meeting, Seacrest), I obviously pride myself on never making a mistake. Ever. But apparently my assumption that I never make a mistake is, in fact, a mistake, and I would like to apologise for making such a statement and retract it. While I’m at it, I would also like to apologise for, and retract, some other comments I have made in the past.

In my last column (Who You Gonna Robo-call), I wrote what I believed to be a true statement, that all young people smoke pot: a statement I thought was true, because young people are the ones I always buy my pot off of. However, it turns out that I was wrong, as I met a young man the other day named Edward who informed me he did not smoke pot.

In lieu of this new information, I would like to apologise for, and retract, my statement. I am embarrassed that I made such a generalisation about young people. It was wrong of me. What I should have said is, “All young people smoke pot – with the exception of Edward Smith, who is a decent human being and a beacon of light in an otherwise hot-boxed smoke-filled room that is occupied by every other young person, stoned out of their minds”.

Now, unfortunately, before we can get onto the real reporting, there are a few more things I need to apologise for and retract. It’s all part of being a reporter, apologising for reporting the news. However, I digress.

In my journal entry last night, I wrote, “Jenny Hersner is a stupid, filthy, dumb girl, and I don’t know why she stood me up,  because my mom has always told me I’m the perfect catch.”  Now, I feel just horrible for writing such terrible things about someone, and what’s worse, it’s not even true. This time around, I just let my emotions get the best of me and get in the way of hard-hitting investigative journaling.  Therefore, I’d like to apologise to Ms. Hersner; you’re not a filthy girl.  If you were to ask me, you probably shower at least once a day, and therefore you are of average cleanliness (unlike me, who is of godlike cleanliness because, you know what they say, cleanliness is next to doglessness. Something about not having a dog makes you cleaner or something.)

Furthermore, while I was ordering my coffee at the coffee shop where I write my column, I told the barista that I did not like the new Norah Jones album. I would like to apologise for and retract this statement, as, after returning home I drew myself my nightly bath, lit my candles, threw on the new Norah Jones CD, and was swept away to a wonderful, relaxing world. How I could have ever thought that Norah Jones’ voice was anything but heavenly is beyond me. I’m sorry.

And lastly, I’d like to apologise in advance to my first wife. During our wedding ceremony, I will say I will “love you, comfort you, honour and keep you, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to you as long as we both shall live.” However, “as long as we both shall live” will quickly turn into, “until I met my new secretary, hubba-hubba”, and therefore I’d like to apologise and retract all of that (except the hubba-hubba, because DAMN she’s fine).

Now, if all of you could just forget I said any of those things, and no longer use them to form your own opinions of things, that would be great. Because that’s what a retraction does: makes you, the reader, forget I said those things.

- Nathaniel Moher is a television writer living in Vancouver. This column first appeared in The Flying Shingle.

The sudden news that the Vancouver Playhouse is closing after 49 seasons comes as a shock, of course. We assume these venerable civic institutions will somehow always manage to lumber along, despite economic downturns and hostile governments and digital depredations. This, after all, was the company that gave Canadian theatre its seminal play, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, that launched numerous Canadian theatre luminaries (including playwright Sharon Pollock), that was the redoubt of the city’s grey hairs and monied class. Those theatres don’t just die, do they?

But, in some ways, its shuttering is no surprise at all. Vancouver has a distinctly pallid theatre scene, as compared with those of similar-sized Canadian cities (Toronto, Montreal) or even smaller ones (Edmonton, Calgary). It is notoriously a theatrical tough-sell. Various reasons are given for this: the weather, weak provincial funding, the vigorous local film and TV industry, which tends to tie people up in projects involving a lot of sci-fi gibberish. To these, I’d add another: a hostile and/or uninformed local media, including and particularly the city’s flagship paper, The Vancouver Sun.

For many years, the Sun was home to a critic who used theatre as an excuse for his witticisms (one problem being that the witticisms were not all that witty; we’re not talking Kenneth Tynan here). This set the tone for various media acolytes, who grew up believing what he wrote constituted good criticism. (I’m not naming the critic, by the way, because he passed away recently and, if I must speak ill of the dead, I can at least make them immune to a Google search.) It also set the tone for his successor, Peter Birnie (not dead) — one of the most flagrant examples of a theatre critic learning on the job in recent history. Birnie has now been around long enough — 15 years — that he seems to have come to know something about his beat, but his basic attitude of disdain for it, pretty neatly encapsulated here, remains. (Apparently he doesn’t much care for the audience, either.)

Like his predecessor, Birnie — whatever his opinion of a particular show, and despite his occasional resort to boilerplateisms like “a rollicking riot of fun” — is congenitally incapable of creating enthusiasm for the idea of theatre, of going to the theatre. He just doesn’t have it in him. Contrast this with, for example, Liz Nichols in The Edmonton Journal, who, though she is hardly a mindless cheerleader for anything that comes along, manages to write with an enthusiasm for her subject and, even in attack mode, an energy that suggests to her readers that theatre is something worth their while.

Theatre people tend to underestimate the impact of good or bad theatre criticism on its healthy development in any given community. They understand that a negative review will hurt the box-office for whatever show they have on at that moment, but not so much the long-term effect of a dolorous reviewer. And the critics themselves will almost always underestimate their clout, because they’re uncomfortable with the idea that they have power over artists’ careers and livelihoods. The more powerful their position, the more likely they are to claim that they have no effect. But, even in these days of fracturing media, a theatre critic on a major paper who, on the whole, would rather be elsewhere, or who regards himself as the main event, or who is simply uninteresting and without insight, can do major harm over the years.

Make that a few decades and you have Vancouver. I’m not saying lousy theatre coverage in the Sun is what killed the Playhouse. But it’s a factor among many that shouldn’t be ignored.

One is impressed by just how credulous the reading public — that would be you — can be. You see what I just did there? I just insulted you. Conventional wisdom would suggest that insulting one’s readers is not the best way to start an article. But conventional wisdom is pretty stupid, too.

It’s called “contrarianism,” and it’s what Christie Blatchford and Christopher Hitchens practise and practised, respectively, to a tee. And, as they know and knew, it’s good journalistic business, not least because readers will fall for it every time.

These thoughts — or rather, insults — are inspired by the response to Blatchford’s recent National Post Globe and Mail National Post column on man-hugging (I have trouble keeping track of who she’s writing for this week), and the recent outpouring of tweets and status updates beginning “I still can’t believe Christopher Hitchens supported the war in Iraq, but . . .”. Hitchens, of course, came out in favour of the invasion early on, and remained stridently unrepentant to the end. Blatchford’s column was on a less keen matter — the alleged sissification of the modern male, especially in Toronto — but the widespread astonishment that anyone could hold such an opinion, much less write it down, was about the same.

Dear Stupid Readers: these people don’t write broadsides and columns to be liked — they do it, at least much of the time, to rile you up. Why? Do I really have to write this? Because then you will continue to buy their books and newspapers. Thus endeth Street Journalism 101.

Readers don’t return to a writer or publication because the writer or publication is correct — they do it because, as a seasoned editor once taught me, to my own youthful astonishment, they have developed an emotional connection to the writer or publication. And outrage will do the job as well as any other emotion. The easiest way to forge this sort of codependent relationship with the reader is to look for a widely-held assumption and then argue its opposite. Babies cute? Babies suck. War in Iraq bad? War in Iraq good. Rinse and repeat.

It also gives the writer something new to say. After a decade-or-two of spouting left-wing pieties, even the most earnest of fellow-travellers is liable to hanker for a change of subject. This explains P.J. O’Rourke. For some reason, it doesn’t seem to work the other way as often — right to left — though we are currently seeing a variant in David Frum’s reinvention of himself as a critic of the Republican Party. In Frum’s case, though, it is likely a matter of survival — having been frog-marched out of the clubhouse, he doesn’t have much choice.

This is not to say that these people don’t believe what they write — I have no doubt Hitchens was sincere in his support of the Iraq invasion. It just means that, when they sit down to put their unpopular thoughts out into the public sphere, they don’t get all quivery and “Gee, maybe I shouldn’t say this.” Instead, they go, “Oh goody.” Because they know how you are going to respond.

And so, dear Stupid Readers (as well as the rest of you), you might save yourself a lot of turmoil if, when Blatchford produces her next unspeakable column about how, really, smoking is good for you or Stephen Harper is actually kind of cute, you smile and respond, “Oh, Christie” (and perhaps also observe how freaking funny and well-written her stuff is).

And by the way: Babies really do suck.

A young woman died of a drug overdose in Vancouver yesterday. Her name was Ashley. She became one of the approximately 120 people who will die of drug overdoses in Vancouver this year.

She happened to be at the Occupy Vancouver encampment when she died.

Or perhaps it wasn’t coincidental. Perhaps she had been drawn there by the communal spirit of the place. By a desire for company. Or safety. Maybe she was there because she believed in its ideals. Or wished she could. At any rate, that’s where she was.

It has been instructive, overnight, to watch her death congeal into a reason to shut down Occupy Vancouver, especially among journalists. One watches this, of course, on twitter:

garymasonglobe Gary Mason

Gregor Robertson has no choice now. The OV camp has to come down. Now. This isn’t about politics any longer.

fabulavancouver Frances Bula

Can see why this death an argumnt for shuttng camp. If you claim you’re in charge, you are responsibe. Imagine if a shelter had an OD death

rodmickleburgh Rod Mickleburgh

The point that #OccupyVancouver needs to consider is whether the occupation at VAG makes any sense any more, the original cause is forgotten

garymasonglobe Gary Mason

#occupyvancouver is a health and safety issue now. The original cause is beside the point.

steveburgess1 Steve Burgess

@rodmickleburgh Eventually it was going to be about itself. It always happens.

acoyne Andrew Coyne

@steveburgess1 @rodmickleburgh I agree, except for the eventually part.

Mr. (James Andrew) Coyne, son of James Coyne, the governor of the Bank of Canada from 1955 to 1961,  appears to be saying that the Occupy movement has always been “about itself” — in other words, one big self-indulgent wank. Perhaps we should be grateful: It’s not often Coyne so candidly tips his hand.

One plaintive note of logic was sounded among Canadian journos:

colbycosh Colby Cosh

How can a death at Occupy Vancouver be a cause for breaking up the camp in the absence of any real knowledge of the cause?

colbycosh Colby Cosh

And if breaking up the camp is unconstitutional–which appears to be the consensus among officials everywhere–how does a death change that?

colbycosh Colby Cosh

But by all means let’s overreact; that’s what makes the mainstream media mainstream, dammit.

And so they did — overreact, that is. By the end of the evening, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, in the middle of an election campaign, and knowing that all this self-satisfied hand-wringing would show up in the newspapers over the next 24 hours, had announced that the city would “expedite the appropriate steps to end the encampment as soon as possible, with a safe resolution being absolutely critical.” Good luck with that, Mr. Mayor.

Journalists such as Mason et al. are paid to think — but only for a moment or two. Then they must produce their required column inches of opinion. So, in fact, what they mostly do is react, and, as we have seen, with no less emotion and bluster than most people. They simply have a knack for expressing it better. We can hope that by the time they get around to generating their think-pieces today, they will have gotten over the notion that Ashley’s death is any more meaningful, or any less, than those of the other 120 people who die of drug overdoses in Vancouver every year, and that somehow it means the Occupy Vancouver encampment should be shut down. That is an absurdity. Chasing the protestors off the art gallery lawn will make no difference to the numbers of addicts who die each year; it will simply guarantee that they go back to doing it on the streets of the Downtown East Side, where they may be comfortably ignored.

Of course, maybe that’s the point. Much of the middle-class is discomfited by the Occupy the World movement, and would like to see it go away — why should journalists be any different? But if that’s the case, they should just admit it’s all too messy and amorphous for them, and that they’d prefer to be able to watch football without the distraction. (The Lions game was another trending topic among them last night.) But let them not invoke Ashley and cry crocodile tears for her while they do it.

Because, somehow, I don’t think Ashley would appreciate it.

Seems that editors get a lot of negative criticism for some reason — perhaps for assuming authority even over experts by virtue of nothing more than having a lot of time to spend contributing their unpaid labour. This allows them to roost upon pages, reverting the edits of others who think they know better. The audacity of people who are under the strange impression that anyone can just change pages with impunity! Poor editors! No wonder they need our love.

The feature hasn’t been rolled out yet, but even if it was available, I know of one editor who wouldn’t be getting any love from me. On this, American Independence Day, I found myself, a Canadian who celebrated Canadian independence by attending a Canada Day parade in Canmore, wondering how many other countries celebrate independence in July. Wikipedia to the rescue!

Or not. Canada isn’t listed. Nor some other countries. The answer to this seeming omission is to be found on the discussion page. Apparently, to be included, a country’s independence must satisfy a strict set of criteria:

(1) must be a celebration; (2) must be annual; and (3) must commemorate the day on which a country assumed independent statehood. The national holidays of Canada, Australia, and NZ do not meet that third criterion, because the days they respectively celebrate as a national holiday commemorate the day of becoming dominions.

Reminds me of an episode of Futurama where resident bureaucrat Hermes Conrad scores a point over another bureaucrat who didn’t stamp a form the correct number of times. The senior bureaucrat praises him, saying ” Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct — the best kind of correct. I hereby promote you to grade 37.”

Perhaps instead of this WikiLove nonsense, Wikipedia could institute a similar system of bureaucratic grades allowing editors to rise by defending the integrity of the rules above and beyond all reason. And heaven forbid that the criteria for inclusion should be modified to admit major nation states such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Many, many criticisms have been leveled against Wikipedia, from lack of expertise, to copyright infringement, to its anarchic nature (as though that were a bad thing), but the criticism which is most important and which comes up repeatedly on Slashdot whenever a Wikipedia related story is posted has to do with the defacto ownership of pages by editors who routinely delete edits by others, not because they’re vandalism or off topic or whatever, but because the editor personally disagrees with them. The comments under the recent Slashdot posting regarding WikiLove are typical — the highest rated mostly address rogue editing, rather than the subject of the story.

Well, the comment by user rbrausse is an exception: “I don’t get the idea behind such features – where are dislike, -1, WikiHate?”

Good point, rbrausse. When the WikiLove interface pops up, you can choose an image such as a kitten or bottle of beer to go with your message. If there was a WikiHate interface, I think the exclusion of Canada Day would warrant a pile of poo.

Is BC ready for a story asking if it’s ready for a gay leader?

It’s the story that Mike Farnworth, a leading contender to replace the deposed Carole James as leader of BC’s NDP, knew would be told before he announced his candidacy. A story that I, along with NDP MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert and former Liberal MLA Lorne Mayencourt, had been awaiting as well. And, although I can’t speak for them, I’m certain that they would all agree that if the story had to be broken –– and it did — better it be done by The Globe and Mail’s award-winning journalist Gary Mason than by some lesser scribe.

Nine days ago, Gary sent me this e-mail:

“Looking for your advice on this.

Today (Jan. 13/11), Mike Farnworth will announce his candidacy for leadership of the NDP. He’s got a real shot at winning and if he does it will prompt the question: is B.C. ready for an openly (although he doesn’t broadcast it much) gay premier?

I think it’s a worthy subject, if not a little controversial. I realize that having gay MPs and MLAs is not a big deal at all in 2011. But I wonder if there are some who, even in this day and age, might have some trouble with a gay premier.

What do you think of the premise of this piece? Any advice on how to pursue it?”

I, too, thought it a worthy subject, not to mention flattering that a journalist of Gary’s skill and integrity would ask my advice on how to approach it.

In the end, it took Gary nine days to write his column. Nine. Days. I can speak with some experience that when it takes nine days to write a column, some blood, sweat and tears went into it.

Then last night, I got this Facebook message from him:

“Dave,

The piece is up. I needed 5,000 words to do this subject justice. I honestly did. I had 950 so the best I could hope for was to represent some of the thoughts of people like yourself out there.”

Since my thoughts on the subject are quoted in the column, I recuse myself from any feedback on what Gary wrote. Nor will I make wild assumptions about why TGAM decided to publish the story in its largest-read Saturday edition. To boost readership? Or is it showing sensitivity, in that, by making Farnworth’s sexuality a story now, it leaves the gadflies and gadabouts on geezer radio and TV to chew chips and watch hockey and football until Monday, when, one hopes, the topic will no longer be a headline except as digested on Bill Good’s dozy CKNW talk show.

I will, however, point out the lesson in journalism — time and care — that we in new media can learn from Gary. Most of the time, we get the subject matter for our posts from the geezer media. Then we amplify. Even if we comment that the story is a “non-issue” and that The Globe is just trying to make it one, we’re helping it to do so. So it’s a good thing that we still have some journalists out there willing to sit on a piece for nine days to get it right. In the blogosphere’s rush to be first-to-post and to always-be-trending, time and care is the element that too often goes out the window.

At the time of this posting, Mason’s story is the second most-read story in The Globe‘s online BC section, and the comments have doubled since midnight. Many do, in fact, accuse The Globe of trying to make something from nothing:

“MacKenna 2:27 AM on January 22, 2011

How about Is BC ready for an honest and ethical leader? Because it hasn’t had one for decades.
Gay shmay, who cares? A person’s sexual orientation is completely irrelevant.

But trust the Globe to focus on that.”

My reply, as posted, was:

“As enlightened and progressive as so many of you profess on the headline question, it is an issue. We gay men might enjoy our rights as Canadians in the Westend, but that does not extend to large parts of Surrey, Richmond and the bible belt in the valley. Remember that it was a pivotal issue in 2008 when Americans were deciding if they were ready for a black President? That was a story. So is this.”

The BC NDP’s membership reflects the provincial demographic, which means that large cultural, religious, and social constituencies within it are not ready for an openly gay leader. That block is big enough to keep it from happening. Go back to the beginning of this week when Adrian Dix, likely the only real challenger to Farnworth, did a last-minute membership dump that might give him the numbers to win. Most of those memberships were from party associations within those constituencies of which I speak. While voters in the cities might be progressive enough to accept a gay leader, will the mill and mining towns of the coast and interior? And, there is the gay community itself. We are, for the most part, highly educated and very political. But just because one of our “own” runs for the leadership of a party doesn’t necessary mean that we’re going to vote for that person. Politics is a numbers game not a moral ground.

As a friend e-mailed:

“It seems to me that until Mike Farnworth is open about his sexuality he will be unsuitable for NDP leader. Let him run as an openly gay man. If he loses because of this, then B.C. can be confronted with its bigotry and maybe move forward.”

While you were enjoying the festive season, a minor contretemps blew up and just as quickly away at The Globe and Mail. Both parties to the matter have been studiously decorous about it, but it deserves further scrutiny before disappearing entirely down the memory hole.

On Dec. 24th, the Globe pulled from its website a blog post by Norman Spector, former Mulroney Chief of Staff and ambassador to Israel, now living in Victoria and making his way as a pundit. Spector had remarked on the unusual fact that, for the first time, Laureen Harper would join husband Stephen when he sat down for his annual Christmas chat with CTV. In fact, it would be “her first television interview with the Prime Minister since he took office in 2006.”

Why her sudden visibilty? Spector speculated that it might have something to do with rumours circulating in Ottawa that the couple’s marriage is in trouble, and, more particularly, that those rumours had recently emerged in the Ottawa Citizen, albeit in veiled form. Wrote Andrew Cohen in the December 3rd Citizen: “In Ottawa, tongues have been wagging for two years about trouble in one political marriage. One of the partners is now said to have left the nest. It hasn’t made the newspapers, at least not yet.”

Specifically, the rumours have Mrs. Harper living in the Chateau Laurier while the Prime Minister remains at 24 Sussex. Showing more journalistic initiative than the rest of our press, Spector did some digging. “I checked out the rumour with two journalists in Ottawa. From both, I got the sense that it was likely true. And that it was not being reported because it was deemed to be a personal matter.”

Oh really?

In his forbidden post, which Spector immediately republished to his own website, he makes a reasonable case for why the matter, if true, would be more than personal. “If the PM’s marriage was in trouble, that was something that could affect his performance and lead to bizarre decisions. (Have you heard about the census being abolished?) And given the power of the office, the troubled marriage could impact all Canadians.” I’ll add another: if Harper and his wife were living apart, but he continued to issue Christmas cards like the recent one above, we would have to conclude that the Prime Minister is a big fat dissimulator.

Spector also politely allows as how zapping his post “is the paper’s right.” (I’ve had my own experience of being disappeared, in my case by the National Post; I wasn’t quite so polite.) But while the Globe may be within its rights — that is, they haven’t broken any laws — their boilerplate claim that they did it for reasons of “fairness, balance, and accuracy” is ludicrous. Does the Globe think publishing the rumour is unfair, imbalanced, and possibly inaccurate? Then let it do its job, particularly in matters of public interest: phone up the principals and ask them about it. Then do what Spector did, and phone up some informed sources and ask them about it. Then publish what you’re told. It’s called reporting.

What did the Globe do instead? Zap.

This sort of misplaced politesse is the reason that mainstream papers are increasingly obsolescent in an age of internet journalism and wikileaking, no matter how many iPad applications they produce. Readers are increasingly aware of how much the old-school media choose not to tell us, whether for political or financial reasons, or from some misguided notion that it’s for our own good. And increasingly we reply: We’ll be the judge of that. Tell us what you know, or even just what you’ve heard (where’s Frank magazine when you need it?), and we’ll decide whether it’s File 13 material or not. And if you won’t tell us, there are plenty of sources out there that will.

We don’t need mommies and daddies in our newsrooms. What we need are actual journalists — even if they must be drawn from the ranks of retired civil servants.