Good “tabloid” headline for this blog post — don’t you think? — and it’ good cuz it’s true! Let me explain:
Later this month, I and several of my Sun News Network colleagues will participate in an event called Freedom Weekend that Ezra Levant, host of The Source on Sun News Network, has organized. Here’s the nub of the idea: Most of the on-air talent you see on Sun News Network will hang out at a nice spot in Ontario’s Muskoka cottage country for a weekend and we’ll talk politics or whatever with those who want to join us.
Other news organizations have done stuff like this. The Globe and Mail, for example, did a 10-day luxury trip in 2008 with 500 paying guests. It sold out!
Hosted by Globe and Mail Publisher Phillip Crawley and Editor-in-Chief Edward Greenspon, the cruise features a custom itinerary designed specifically for the interests of Globe and Mail readers including: gourmet classes and demonstrations with Food Network celebrity chefs and The Globe and Mail‘s own Lucy Waverman; wine tastings hosted by Globe wine expert Beppi Crosariol; special shopping excursions led by Globe Life’s Amy Verner; and “behind the news” events with Globe and Mail columnists and editors including Margaret Wente, [Andrew] Willis, [current editorial board chair John Geiger, [current Ottawa bureau chief] John Ibbitson, and [after years reporting from Ottawa and just moving to Halifax] Jane Taber.
“The cruise is the ultimate brand extension,” commented Globe and Mail Publisher Phillip Crawley.
No wonder it sold out. Great food with Lucy, wine with Beppi, shopping with Amy all capped off with politics with John and Jane! (I kid here but in fact that sounded to me like a lot of fun for I quite enjoyed yakking with Beppi about booze when I worked at 444 Front and John and Jane do, in fact, know a lot about politics. Mind you: I couldn’t afford the freight … sigh)
So Ezra organized something similar for our network — great “brand extension.” I’ll be there. I’ll do what I do 7 days a a week no matter who’s listening – talk about politics, not from the perspective of any partisan viewpoint but from the perspective of “an independent.”
But — get this — John Miller, who is a “professor of journalism at Ryerson for 23 years… That followed a 20-year career as an editor and reporter.. at the Toronto Star, where he was foreign editor, founding editor of the Sunday Star, weekend editor, deputy managing editor, and acting managing editor.
He came to Ryerson as chair of the School of Journalism, and served in that position for 10 year..” says in a post at his blog that that I and my colleagues participating in Ezra’s “Freedom Weekend” are terrorists. Now I’ve been called names before but this one takes the friggin’ cake!
“… the last time a group of ideological warriors went north to train in the backwoods and plot to storm Parliament, blow up the CBC, seize the airwaves and spread terror across the land. Oh yeah, the Toronto 18 did that. Didn’t police arrest the lot of them and call them the gravest threat to our democracy?
I think a weekend with Ezra and friends could be something just like that.
The only thing that sets them apart from the Muslim extremists is that Sun Media will be charging you admission.
[read the whole post: Blog: Fun with Ezra]
And remember: The Star itself [in this excellent long-form series by Isabel Teotonio and elsewhere] agreess that it is accurate and appropriate to identify the Toronto 18 that Miller compares us to as “terrorists.”
C’mon professor Miller! Ain’t you jumping the shark a bit with that one?