Blue Like You

Several bloggers and readers have noted that MSM’s reaction concerning Prime Minister Stephen Harper being the first Canadian to receive the B’nai Brith International President’s Gold Medallion, has been underwhelming to say the least.

As Sandy pointed out , if you do happen to stumble upon the story, it is buried in news of Harper’s reaction to the Zimbabwe ‘election’ results. I haven’t had any success at all trying to find a MSM link to the award story itself.

Meanwhile, Rob Granatstein bemoans the the tough state of the newspaper industry today - Paying for quality work:

The newspaper industry has been turned on its ear.

The change in the way news is being consumed, from the solid version printed on trees (recycled paper in our case) to the Internet, has been unkind to us in the great, old newspaper business. Not everyone has been able to keep up.

Having the news delivered in electronic form is our future. That’s bad news, potentially, because the economics of producing a newspaper haven’t yet translated into the online world — even with the savings of not having to print and deliver the paper…

I hear him on the last issue. It is tough making any money on the internet from ads. And trying to charge the reader an online fee doesn’t seem to work out either. Just ask the Globe, which recently ‘unlocked’ all online articles.

However, I think there is a healthy balance for MSM and bloggers. Exactly where that balance is and who will pay for it remains to be seen.

But when MSM downplays an important event like the Prime Minister of Canada receiving an historic Human Rights award, or the print media gets scooped by bloggers, you have to wonder where the ‘quality’ journalism really is.

Paul Wells’ latest piece in Macleans (Generation Harper ) is one for CPC supporters to savour. It seems that Stephen Harper is outperforming Stephane Dion in the race to resonate with the under-40 ‘wellsprings of new voter support’. This according to Frank Graves of Ekos research. Also, there is the beginning of a trend among Canadians to self-identify as conservative over liberal:

...Graves identified two big trends emerging. One is a steady, marked shift in Canadians’ political identification from liberal to conservative. That’s obviously bad news for the federal Liberals. The other trend looks less menacing: the emergence of two broad cohorts of under-40 voters, one broadly left-leaning, the other more conservative. Since they’re about the same size they should more or less balance out. Except both of these groups of younger voters have their own generational quirks, and so far Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have had better luck reaching out to "their" young voters than the post-Paul Martin Liberals have to "theirs."

Please read the whole article and feel free to comment below. Conservative readers may wish to relax with an accompanying glass of Merlot.

For my Liberal readers, I would recommend a bottle of Tums.