MediaWatch: Sad State of Affairs Edition

It remains to be seen who the victims of the ongoing carnage in Canadian media will be.  Concerns about the viability of local TV news continue, the perilous position of Canwest is not much improved and now the Globe and Mail finds itself with a new editor.  Meanwhile, a long list of journalistic icons are quietly getting ready for retirement.

So given all of that, I read Paul Wells’ most recent column with some interest. Christina and I recently subscribed to the Globe (mostly as a way to get a weekly copy of the Sunday New York Times) and I enjoy reading it, but when I compare it to the newspapers I read while in England last month, it is not the paper I once though it was.

I offer this advice as a former Globe subscriber, but of course we are also competitors here at Maclean’s for scarce ad dollars and busy readers. And frankly on that score, if the Crawley-Stackhouse regime continues to chase trends and apologize for showing a sense of perspective, we won’t mind at all. When I joined this magazine we used to tell one another it wouldn’t do to indulge our various passions for politics or culture or real debate too deeply. In the last four years, we’ve been less reticent, and it’s going well. Our readers are really happy that we picked up our game. It’s almost as though people cared about things that are worth caring about.