St. Catharines sub-Standard.

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for country.”

There aren’t many rules more fundamental to printing a passable newspaper than the insistence that phrases within quotation marks present exactly what was written, or spoken, by the subject. When newspapers fail to deliver on that basic premise they fail to justify their own existence.

Postmedia operates dozens of newspapers around the country, and while the quality of many of them has likely suffered under their ownership, few can be as terrible as the St. Catharines Standard. Today, March 29, 2016, the front page of that paper contains an article that not only fails to meet the basic standard of transcribing a quotation correctly, but also miscites that same quotation.

In that article, the author makes an attempt, presumably, to invoke Samuel Johnson’s words: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Johnson’s words were cited in James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, which is in the public domain and can be checked to ensure accurate citation by anyone with an internet connection.

The front page of The Standard printed, within quotation marks, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” It might not seem like much, the difference in article between “a” and “the”. For a publication that has any illusions of being good it is everything. Either what you print is accurate, or it isn’t. Citing the wrong subject presents a whole other level of what is either indifference or incompetence.

That misquotation was to be found after this bit of excellence:

The refugees were among those who recently moved into the Days Inn in St. Catharines after they had leave their Hamilton hotels to make room for concertgoers attending the Garth Brooks shows in that city.

In what level of school would sentences like that get a passing grade? That was found not on a grade three writing assignment but on the front page of a daily newspaper. That bears repeating: “had leave their Hamilton hotels” was found on the front page of a daily newspaper.

I will come back to my out of place lead sentence now. By the standards set by The Standard, I can implore you to recall the words once written by myself, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for country.” The fact that the quotation is neither correctly attributed to President Kennedy’s inaugural address nor even accurate should fail to be of any importance. It is only inaccurate by a word, and I did write it: right there in line one.

There is an environment of what is either incompetence or indifference at that newspaper. It doesn’t really matter which one it is, although indifference may be more insulting to what readers remain.

One would think that someone whose name is associated with such consistent garbage would have some shame about it, and at the very least endeavour to do better.

Not so at The Standard. The editor-in-chief has made it clear how proud he is of the work they do there. Those don’t sound like the words of someone intent on perpetual improvement of processes going forward, and they also don’t sound like the words of someone who would do the right thing and resign.

Postmedia is in the midst of lobbying to allow even more foreign ownership of media in Canada. Why? To preserve the quality news they publish every day? The simple truth is there is no quality in the areas that need it most. And not “no quality” in that the editorial voice of a newspaper is for sale. “No quality” in that newspapers can no longer be trusted to perform the most basic functions of presenting quotations accurately or presenting decent sentences.

The Toronto Star wrote on January 30, 2016,

Postmedia is giving private ownership of an essential public service a bad name. Its charade of pretending to operate its papers in the public interest cannot end soon enough.

Clearly, absentee ownership does not care what garbage runs on pages under their name, otherwise there would have been changes a long time ago. Just as clearly, the perpetrators of this garbage don’t have the dignity required to resign. The insultingly low quality, then, is set to continue into the foreseeable future. The message to Niagara is that they are not worthy of a quality product, and that is a shame.

Tanglewood North

The federal budget was announced March 22, and it contains billions of dollars for the arts, billions of dollars for infrastructure, and significant money to promote tourism. What if there was a project in the Niagara region that encompassed all three of those things?

There is, kind of. Not so long ago the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the National Arts Centre  were pushing for a project that would bring their art to Niagara-on-the-Lake for summer performances. The idea was to emulate the wildly successful offshoot of the Boston Symphony Orchestra - Tanglewood.

It was known as Project Niagara, or Tanglewood North. The land was to be donated by Parks Canada, a beautiful location right on Lake Ontario. The symphonies would play in a 2,400 seat amphitheatre.

Part of the cost of the project would be doing something with the sewage lagoons presently on the site. Maintaining sewage lagoons seems like it may fall into the category of unsexy but crucial infrastructure projects our Prime Minister was promising before budget day. Tanglewood North would also require some new roads for access, and that area could really use some new roads.

Bringing two world-class symphonies to the region would be absolutely huge and would be an amazing compliment to the Shaw Festival and the wineries of the area. The prestige of having that kind of world-class presence could only help to bolster the already positive image of local wine operations.

Promoting gambling interests is not something I like to do, but the clientele that would attend the symphony may translate to a significant amount of added play in Salon Privé.

The chief executive officer of the National Arts Centre, Peter Hernndorf, remains the same. There is new leadership at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, with Jeff Melanson in the CEO post.

Tanglewood North was a great project when it was conceived, and remains a great project today. Maybe with the new focus on the arts the project can finally have its moment. It would be a win for the National Arts Centre, a win for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and a win for the region.

More:

https://beta.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2010/07/13/tso_nac_pull_the_plug_on_project_niagara.html

https://beta.thestar.com/opinion/2009/07/01/roll_the_drums_for_project_niagara.html

https://beta.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2010/04/08/is_niagaraonthelake_ready_for_a_major_music_festival.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/ottawa-toronto-orchestras-push-plan-for-niagara-summer-festival-1.754641

https://www.niagararegion.ca/news/notices/aug202015.aspx

The editor guy is PROUD of this garbage?

This, on the same day Doug Herod's good column is assigned a by-line that isn't him, and with an incorrect photo caption as well.



And others recently. Be proud.

http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/2016/03/14/lafleche-do-better-on-sexual-harassment-brock-u

Can't agree on the time on front page, can't get tenses correct, can't make sentences. Be proud.

Still not fixed.

Seven words before one is wrong. "distain" juxtaposed with "We have pride back". Be Proud.

Probably getting five Big Mac orders wrong would put someone's job on the line at McDonald's. At Postmedia you can be consistently terrible and no one cares.

Local media in 2016. Not good.

The St. Catharines Standard, under its masthead, proudly states "SERVING ST. CATHARINES AND NIAGARA SINCE 1891" on the left, and "POSTMEDIA" on the right. It has an imprint on page A2. It acts the part of being a daily newspaper in the traditional sense.

Traditional it is not. Traditional papers check facts before publishing them. Traditional papers proofread and eliminate spelling and grammatical errors before publishing them. Traditional papers prominently display when they are publishing a different version of a story than that they had previously deemed fit to print. Traditional papers run a list of corrections to their errors. These are things that made traditional papers a trustworthy source of news. And The Standard, under its current leadership, fails at all of them.

Masthead of a fallen newspaper

Today, March 19, 2016, The Standard is publishing an editorial about Earth Hour. They don't do many editorials, and after reading this one that is probably a good thing. It isn't controversial, and the position could pretty much be summed up as "Make as many hours Earth Hour as you can."

It contains the same problems with commas that are allowed to make their way into so many stories at that paper:

But again, that movement is slow and hopefully, not too little too late.

The real problem is revealed a few short paragraphs later. In an attempt to laud Brock University for increasing their waste diversion rate they actually write the opposite.

And Brock University says it has reduced its waste diversion rate to 68.5 per cent as of last year, keeping a lot of junk out of landfills.

They probably got the number wrong too: Brock's report of May 12, 2015 says they managed to increase their waste diversion rate to 65.8% in 2014. If The Standard has another source, which coincidentally has the same digits in a different order that would be something.

The culture of The Standard being what it is, the print version of this editorial will likely stand uncorrected. The existence of that same culture means that should they decide to correct the online version they will do so with no notice of correction.

The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage is in the midst of a study on Media and Local Communities. Just before bringing her committee in camera at the end of the meeting on February 23, the chair, Hedy Fry, made the offhand comment

I have a question that I would love to ask you, but I think we're running out of time. I would like to ask you to please send the answer in writing. Now you are regulating broadcasting, radio-television, and telecommunications. Who is going to regulate, in terms of accuracy, the digital platforms? Anyone can put anything out there and nobody knows if it's accurate or if the quality is there. People read it and they buy it. The big question is how we regulate this. That's a huge question. Maybe you could send us an answer.

Anyone can put anything out there and nobody knows if it's accurate or if the quality is there, she despaired. Ms. Fry might as well have been specifically talking about The Standard. The quality certainly isn't there, and the accuracy has to be questioned as well.

The truth is that many online platforms provide more transparency about altered content than is the case at The Standard. Altered posts on Facebook get tagged as "edited" with a link to see previous versions. Once a tweet is crafted and sent on twitter there is no altering it; it either remains as is or is deleted. Any replacement tweet will show a newer timestamp. Even in Wikipedia the entire revision history back to the original lousy article is readily available.

Postmedia has allowed the newspapers they own to fall short of being worthy of the name newspaper. Altering published material with no notice in a newspaper is not good. It's not good like Napoleon having the barn wall changed in Animal Farm not good. All news sources are equal. Some are less equal than others.

The Standard's shabby editorial that I have written about here is not an isolated bout of awful. It probably wouldn't make a bottom 5 list of awful for the week, but it is what is current.

Postmedia has given the editor-in-chief title for three papers in this area to Peter Conradi. I have focussed on The Standard because it is still a daily newspaper, but the Niagara Falls Review and Welland Tribune are not at all good either. All three have some decent writers but the tolerance of garbage has created a culture where it often seems the stories that make their newspaper have not even been proofread once. If Postmedia doesn't care enough to fire the editorial staff responsible for that disaster of a paper then the parties responsible should have a small shred of dignity and quit.