Christie Blatchford pines for a kinder gentler
journalistic time...We all have a limited number of things to say, informed opinions, funny lines, quirky observations. We have only so many words in us. Do we really want to spend them on something as ephemeral as a blog?
I have written some astonishingly banal columns in my life, and some very personal ones. I am the last person in the world who should object to blogging, but I do.
The thing that I know, as all the editors I have had also know, is what I didn't get to confide or write or commit to paper, because someone else had the good sense to put on the brakes.
There are no brakes, and thus there is no joy, in blogville.
I especially enjoyed her take on reader feedback...
On The Globe website, our slogan is "Join the Conversation," but in the blogosphere, what follows isn't usually a conversation but a brief, ungrammatical shouting match. You can have more pensive chats in a bar fight.
Well, Christie... as Mrs. Neo (
a former editor) was quick to point out to me... as in mainstream journalism... there are hacks and there are actually people who can pull a
thought or two together...And fast forward 30 years to the moment when a Canadian Prime Minister stands before Parliament to issue an official apology - and restitution - to the "Survivors of Safe Injection Sites".
It will happen. One only hopes they bankrupt the Canadian Medical Association first.
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