A taste of war; health news everywhere; and hurricanes sink a Titanic plan: Get a four-minute audio summary of what's on Monday's front pages of papers across the country by clicking on the link below.
You can also get these audio summaries automatically every day via podcast from iTunes or via an RSS feed by subscribing to my AudioBoo stream. Both the iTunes link and the RSS link are at my profile at AudioBoo.fm. Look in the top right corner of the “Boos” box.
Ian Johnson, a former Beijing bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, reviews Richard McGregor's The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers and other books about China's Communist Party. Some notes from the article:
The key question [at the Chinese Communist Party's annual plenum this fall] will be if the man tapped to be China’s next leader, Xi Jinping, will get a seat on the Party’s Central Military Commission. Joining this body, which has responsibility for all of China’s armed forces, is one of a series of steps that is supposed to culminate in Xi replacing the current top leader, Hu Jintao, when his second five-year term as president ends in two years.
Some thought that Xi was to join the military commission last year, but he didn’t, and now observers are divided on what that meant—is Xi no longer rising in the Party hierarchy or was that snub unimportant? :And what if he doesn’t join the commission at this plenum—is his star falling further, or has the Party changed the rules of succession, with a seat on the commission not as important as had been assumed?
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… the [Communist] Party [of China] has 78 million members—almost as many as the entire population of Germany. In theory, members vote to select their representatives in the system, culminating in the nine-man Standing Committee of the Party’s Political Bureau, or Politburo. In fact, bodies higher up in the system usually present lower-ranking members with preapproved slates of candidates. That means the system is self-selecting, with leaders trying to promote people loyal to them so they can advance their own agendas. The result is that the Party consists of factions grouped around leaders, and divisions in the Party have often been deep and venomous.See, for example, China's New Rulers by Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley for a look at the maneuvering surrounding the 2002–2004 change of power from Jiang to Hu, or the recent autobiography by former Party leader Zhao Ziyang, Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang (Simon and Schuster, 2010). The new heir apparent, Xi, may be the victim of such a split: he is not Hu's chosen successor as president but the choice of Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin. Some Pekingologists speculate that Hu is purposefully weakening Xi by denying him a place on the military commission; this way, Hu could maintain his influence when he retires.
McGregor … says … [the Communist] Party’s Organization Department is so expansive that it would be like one group in Washington naming the members of the Supreme Court, all the members of the Cabinet, the editors of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, the heads of all major think tanks, and the CEOs of major companies like General Electric, Exxon-Mobil, and Wal-Mart. These analogies, while imperfect, help make this an accessible introduction to the Party’s power in today’s China.
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From the Party’s perspective it pulled off a surprising feat in 2002 by organizing an orderly transfer of power that wasn’t driven by a crisis like Tiananmen or the Cultural Revolution. Unless a completely unforeseen series of events takes place in the next two years, it is likely to do the same in 2012, with the odds favoring Xi Jinping becoming China’s next leader. This shows that the Party has figured out the sort of institutional stability that largely eluded its counterparts in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.
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Early on in its reign, the Party pushed get-rich-quick schemes like the Great Leap Forward that resulted in national catastrophe. These utopian plans are gone but more than a faint echo remains in the desire of Chinese companies to shortcut the painstaking process of creating international brands by buying faltering names.
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…another problem: the lack of creative and intellectually ambitious students. After Tiananmen, the government channeled huge sums into better dorms for students, housing for teachers, labs for scientists, and junkets for administrators. This satiated material demands and attracted foreign universities hoping to set up programs in China. But it can hardly be a coincidence that this system has never produced a Nobel Prize winner; even among China’s elite universities, the academic level resembles that of an average US land-grant university, with most no better than a mediocre community college.
Technorati Tags: China, Xi Jinping, Communist Party of China
From Jonathan Franzen Freedom, 2010: Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
Because it's the same problem everywhere. It's like the internet, or cable TV — there's never any center, there's no communal agreement, there's just a trillion little bits of distracting noise. We can never sit down and have any kind of sustained conversation, it's all just cheap trash and shitty development. All the real things, the authentic things, the honest things are dying off.
Aboriginals want gun registry exemption; Charest fires back, and new poet laureate: Get a four-minute audio summary of what's on Friday's front pages of papers across the country by clicking on the link below.
Listen!
You can also get these audio summaries automatically every day via podcast from iTunes or via an RSS feed by subscribing to my AudioBoo stream. Both the iTunes link and the RSS link are at my profile at AudioBoo.fm. Look in the top right corner of the “Boos” box.
Gun registry lives, BC reporter's China threat; Danny Williams and Igor; Get a four-minute audio summary of what's on Thursday's front pages of papers across the country by clicking on the link below.
You can also get these audio summaries automatically every day via podcast from iTunes or via an RSS feed by subscribing to my AudioBoo stream. Both the iTunes link and the RSS link are at my profile at AudioBoo.fm. Look in the top right corner of the “Boos” box.
Gun registry showdown, Ottawa's depressing; and those awful Leafs: Get a four-minute audio summary of what's on Wednesday's front pages of papers across the country by clicking on the link below.
Listen!
You can also get these audio summaries automatically every day via podcast from iTunes or via an RSS feed by subscribing to my AudioBoo stream. Both the iTunes link and the RSS link are at my profile at AudioBoo.fm. Look in the top right corner of the “Boos” box.
Ian Morrison is the spokesperson for the “media watchdog” group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, a group I and many other journalists often turn to for their reaction to news about the CBC or other broadcasters. Because of their influence and long interest in issues about Canadian broadcasting, I think it important to point out the whopper of a mistake Morrison makes in today's Hill Times in a piece titled “Prime Minister shouldn't hand out broadcasting licenses like Senate seats“. He's talking about the application before the CRTC by SunTV and – full disclosure here — As I'm the bureau chief in Ottawa for Sun Media, there's a very good chance you'll see me a lot on SunTV.
In this piece Morrison writes:
'Must-carry' status is key to Sun TV News application. Almost nine milllion English-speaking households subscribe to cable or satellite service in Canada. In its application, SunTV news is asking the CRTC to require these systems to carry its signal for three years, and to charge each subscriber 25 cents per month for SunTV News, whether the subscriber wants it or not.
Twenty-five cents may not sound like a lot of money, but over three years, it would deliver $80-million into [Quebecor CEO and majority shareholder Pierre-Karl] Péladeau's pocket — before he sells a single ad.
Morrison should have read the application and supporting documents available at the the CRTC's website. It is true that SunTV is asking TV distributors to carry the channel for three years but he's dead wrong that SunTV is asking that anyone be forced to pay for it. I'll quote from what SunTV tells the CRTC in Appendix I of its Supplementary Brief supporting its application: “We do not ask for mandatory basic distribution, but only to be available on cable and satellite distribution undertakings allowing the public to have access to Sun TV News without any obligation to choose it.”
So no, it's not true, as Morrison says that you'll get SunTV “whether the subscriber wants it or not”. Only subscribers that want it will get it.
Second, Morrison claims if SunTV gets what it is asking for, that would be the same as essentially giving Quebecor $80 million. Wrong again. Again, looking at the supporting documents SunTV provided to the CRTC, we find the financial projections for SunTV for the next seven years. They are based on the premise that SunTV will have to go out and sell itself to subscribers, to convince them to sign up with the service. The financial statements show that this will not happen overnight. Total subscriber revenue in the first year of operation is estimated to be $4.6 million, climbing to $12.4 million by year four. Meanwhile, the same financial statements also show that SunTV will be a money-losing operation during those first four years. If everything goes according to the estimates, provided by SunTV to the CRTC, SunTV will finish its first four years of operation with an accumulated deficit of nearly $20 million. In other words, Quebecor is set to lose $20 million over the first four years of SunTV's operation.
The financial statements provide seven years worth of projections on revenues and expenses. In years, five, six and seven, SunTV's backers believe it will be generating an operating profit by then and, over those three years, will have a combined operating profit of $6.5 million. So even after seven years of operations, SunTV's shareholders will still have an accumulated deficit of $13.5 milion. Far from putting “$80-million” into the pockets of anyone, it will be taking $13.5 million out of the pockets of Quebecor's shareholders.
I'd encourage Morrison or anyone else interested in this application to read the documents posted at the CRTC's Web site that have been filed in connection with our application. You can get them right here. Argue all you want about the application but please get the facts right.
You may be too cool to be one of the 130 million around the world who hang out on Twitter but I'm not. If you're not on Twitter, you're missing out on what I think is a fun game happening on the social media network right now. Don't know where it started but it's called “Rock Retractions” or, to use the Twitter syntax “#rockretractions”. (You can see what's going in real time in this game by clicking here) Playing the game is easy: Think of a favourite lyric from your favourite pop song and write the retraction.
Industry Minister Tony Clement — who is a pop music fan (likes loud, heavy guitars, I'm told) and a top political twit — has chipped in with a goodie:
@TonyClement_MP You can check out any time you like, really, because we have your credit card imprint
And here's famous rock yukster Al Yankovic:
@alyankovic: On second thought, it actually might behoove you to fear the Reaper a little bit.
Here's some other faves I found:
@crankynick: I fought the law and only the lawyers came out ahead #rockretractions
@bobearth: I fought the law & the law won on a loophole. I'm waiting to see if I have grounds for appeal, I feel pretty confident. #rockretractions
@drnaomi: I really do like starting the week on Mondays
@kentkangley: If I had a rocket launcher, I'd turn it in to the proper authorities. Those things are dangerous!
@WKAmsterdam: I did not shoot the sherriff. Concerning his deputy, I plead the Fifth. #rockretractions
@jonbecker: Layla? Did I call you Layla? Whoops; of course I know your name is Nancy. My bad. #rockretractions
@LikeSoy: Turns out it was Prof. Plum, and not Video, that killed the radio star. With a lead pipe. In the study.
@hackmancoltaire: Ground control to Major Tom, every thing is fine. Good job. #rockretractions
RT @kiztent: Actually, it wasn't the grapevine, your best friend ratted you out #rockretractions
RT @jasonhickman: In fact, nobody's under any obligation whatsoever to get stoned #rockretractions
@Twit_ster: The kid is not all that hot tonight and will be in Poughkeepsie tomorrow. #IsLoverboyreallyrock?
RT @fivewalls: If I could turn back time, if I could find a way, I'd take back that money I lent you; because of your drug problem #rockretractions
As for me, I was inspired by The Who and at least one current event in my professional life for these contributions:
The new boss is almost the same as the old boss – but different in some important ways. #rockretractions #suntv 🙂
I will likely get fooled again. #rockretractions #billsfan #leafsfan
Dean Starkman, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, correctly diagnoses one of the big problems with journalism nowadays. He says the imperative of “doing-less-with-more” has produced something he calls The Hamster Wheel:
“The Hamster Wheel isn’t speed; it’s motion for motion’s sake. The Hamster Wheel is volume without thought. It is news panic, a lack of discipline, an inability to say no. It is copy produced to meet arbitrary productivity metrics (Bloomberg!). It is “Sheriff plans no car purchases in 2011,” (Kokomo Tribune, 7/5/10). It is “Ben Marter’s Home-Cooked Weekend,” (Politico, 6/28/10): “Saturday morning, he took some of the leftover broccoli, onions, and mushrooms, added jalapenos, and made omeletes for a zingy breakfast.” Ben Marter is communications director for a congresswoman. It’s live-blogging the opening ceremonies, matching stories that don’t matter, and fifty-five seconds of video of a movie theater screen being built: “Wallingford cinema adding 3 screens (video),” (New Haven Register, 6/1/10).
But it’s more than just mindless volume. It’s a recalibration of the news calculus. Of the factors that affect the reporting of news, an underappreciated one is the risk/reward calculation that all professional reporters make when confronted with a story idea: How much time versus how much impact? This informal vetting system is surprisingly ruthless and ultimately efficient for one and all. The more time invested, the bigger the risk, but also the greater potential glory for the reporter, and the greater value to the public (can’t forget them!). Do you fly to Chicago to talk to that guy about that thing? Do you read that bankruptcy examiner’s report? Or do you do three things that are easier?”
Read the rest of the piece. It's terrific.
I've been offline and out of Ottawa for a few days — a family member has had a serious medical situation and I wanted to give that my full attention — and am just catching up on Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, and so on now.
So let's see what's in the electronic inbox …
Oh, there's this: Some bloggers (along with several of the readers that Michael Ignatieff's former top aide, over the weekend, called illiterate and stupid) found an error in one of my stories from last week. I am, as always, grateful to any and all for pointing out any error I've made and have asked for it to be corrected. The error was mine and no one else's and, once alerted to the error, the editors of our Web sites immediately updated it. A correction will be sent along to our papers for their use. (But just back to Ian Davey for a minute: Was he calling me stupid? I'm confused. Though, confused or not, I rather like that DiManno gal in the Star!)
In the case at hand, I was reporting on the parting of ways of Tom Clark and CTV. The CTV biography noted that Clark had reported on just about every federal election since 1974. I took that data point from CTV and re-worked it to say he had reported on every election since Pierre Trudeau beat Joe Clark in 1974. I thought that using the names of the two principal rivals in that contest would be more evocative of the era than simply saying “in 1974”. By now, though, you've surely seen the “embarrassing mistake” (as one twit called it) that The Toronto Star's Antonia Zerbisias gleefully re-tweeted to all of her followers: Trudeau did not beat Clark in 1974, he beat Robert Stanfield that year. (Clark would take his whupping from Trudeau in 1980).
Now I – and everyone who's ever had a byline in a newspaper anywhere (please see the tremendously entertaining Regret the Error) — have made plenty of mistakes in my career writing for The Globe and Mail, National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and my other stops along the way. Of course, I wish I'd never made any mistakes. (But I am proud to report that, in more than 25 years in the biz now, I've never been accused of misquoting someone. So that's something.) That said: apparently, neither Antonia Z. nor the Star have ever made an error so Antonia, of course, is free to throw all the stones she wants at the Sun's glass house.
But back to this “embarrassing mistake”. As even BigCityLib admits, this is a bit of a “cheap gotcha”. The error in question — that Trudeau beat Stanfield in '74 not Clark — doesn't at all change the basic point I was trying to make — that Tom Clark has been around one helluva long time — and it's in the second-last paragraph of the piece! If this is the most egregious mistake I and Sun Media make, then we would consider ourselves blessed. I say that not to dismiss the error or avoid responsibility for it but only to encourage those who keep an eye on the mainstream media to do so because it's important in and of itself. Democracy is best served with a lively and healthy independent press — held to account by engaged and committed readers and viewers.