Newspapers

"I'm seeing some of you for the last time," Michael Moore said to a roomful of journalists. It wasn't because he doesn't plan on bringing his next film to the Toronto Film Festival. It's because by the time he does, newspapers will be done, he said. "I had a section (in the film) about how capitalism killed the newspaper," Moore said. But then he realized that story could be its own entire movie."It's not the Internet that killed the newspaper; these newspapers slit their own throats by siding with the group of politicians," he said, adding that papers in Europe and Japan aren't suffering nearly as much.

"If you stop reporting things, then who will buy them?"

In the U.S., newspapers have readily endorsed Republican leaders who have in turn made cuts to literacy programs. "It would be like General Motors funding candidates who promised to get rid of Driver Education," he smirked.

"In Europe, they realize they better put out a damn good paper."In North America ,newspapers instead worry about: "How can we get more news for less money?

"So it's bye-bye, Michael said."Unless some of you move to the Internet."

I love to read the paper, not on line, although I do it, but I love to sit and peruse the morning paper. For a while I took the Hamilton Spectator as well as the Globe and Mail. For my American readers, the Globe and Mail is the more liberal national newspaper. For many years it was the only one and it seemed a bit conservative until the National Post came along.

I found that I couldn’t read the two papers, even though I really enjoyed them, but I couldn’t read both and work for a living. I just didn’t have the time. I seldom if ever get to read the paper in the evening, and I hated old news so I didn’t save them up until the end of the week to read. My wife loved them both as well, and the cost seemed a bit much but they were fun.

When I lived in Calgary for a while I read the local paper and the New York Times, but I ended up not knowing what was happening in Calgary and knew a lot about Brooklyn!

In the end, we decided on getting the Saturday Globe and Mail, and I usually saved the reading of it for Sunday, and used the Spectator on Saturday.

I complained once to Dana Robbins, the publisher of the Spectator, that I couldn’t read two papers a day, and he told me he read five! I guess I should have kept my mouth shut!

On Friday I received a letter from the Globe and Mail. They told me that since I was a Saturday only subscriber, they were giving me, free of cost or obligation, six weeks of the daily paper for me to try.

Oh, no, here we go again!