God hates journalism - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

When did it all begin? Was it foretold in Genesis? On the seventh day, did God plop down with a copy of The Heaven Herald and paper cut His thumb? Or is it a more recent development? Does it go back to 1966 when The New York Times declared “God is dead,” followed by Time asking, just a few months later, “Is God dead?” on its cover? Was it when Elton John sang about the Times in “Levon”, thinking, “Hey, no one reads the dinky little Times, but now he’s on about it on Madman Across the Water? Enough!”

 

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe... but I digress. I was inclined to write a third straight column about Spotify, concluding what my “Spotify Trilogy”, the Spotify Era-defining creative pursuit that will echo in the same corridors as Picasso’s Blue Period, Bob Dylan’s white face years and when Andre 3000 of Outkast, one of the most important hip-hop artists of the last generation, decided to only play the flute, but I’ve resisted the urge and robbed you all. 

 

In all seriousness, why would God take journalism’s name in vain? I ask this because, frankly, there is no other explanation. The life of a reporter is tough these days. I think most of us had become used to the usual stuff, you know, the crazy e-mails, autocratic leaders who continue to undermine our work by jailing and killing us and the widening gulf between revenue and expenses and the amount of work and the people employed to do that work. That stuff is all established. But now, even once the work is all said and done - done and dusted, even - we can’t even get the paper to you all.

 

As the Canada Post strike continued, we could not mail the newspaper to you, as you know. We have done our best to set up pick-up locations for you all and that requires a lot of extra work on our end and the co-operation and generosity of many local business owners.

 

Furthermore, with Mark Zuckerberg’s war on journalism through his company, Meta, we continue to be unable to post links through our Facebook and Instagram pages. As people complain on our posts, suggesting that we’ve forgotten to post the links to stories or that our (never-posted) link is malfunctioning, we have to navigate that landscape as well, encouraging people to visit our website for articles and the entire e-dition of the paper, all for free during the postal strike. The only way we’ve been able to skirt this war on journalism has been to post pictures and encourage people to visit our site so our page hasn’t been entirely shuttered.

 

Here’s a quick story. Publisher Deb posted a link during the first week of the postal strike about the free e-dition and pick-up locations for the paper. I was home and saw the post, but noticed that Deb made an error in our website address, so I corrected it. Once I corrected website and directed people to a site that contained - God help us (He won’t) - journalism, it got shut down, so I had to go back in and scrap the website reference.

 

So, you see, this is what we’re up against. It’s not even the challenge of doing the work anymore. It’s that once the work is done, we can’t even get it to you because of decisions being made by a handful of people who really don’t have much to do with little-old us here at The Citizen based in Blyth, Ontario, Canada.

 

The only logical explanation left, of course, is that God hates journalism. Everyone from Rupert Murdoch to William Randolph Hearst’s corpse to anyone who’s ever had a paper route: God hates you. It’s just a fact. Go to church all you want... it will change nothing.

 

It is on that note that I and every other despised cretin here at The Citizen wish our dear readers the warmest of holiday seasons.