Where Is Journalism For Sale? Here in NB, apparently...

Say what you will about the control Irving-owned Brunswick News has over New Brunswick's daily papers, at least the crusty journalists at the Telegraph Journal work reasonably hard at crafting the daily news. Their record is far from perfect, but on any given day an NB reader can at least get more out of the TJ than its provincial cousins, the Daily Gleaner, or the Times-Transcript.

The once scrappy urban weekly, here, however, has clearly lost whatever journalistic principals it might have once had, in the pioneering years before it was consumed by Brunswick News. It's latest low, almost laughable to anyone who watches local media?

The October 18 cover story, proudly circulated throughout Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John, asks New Brunswickers to why not? consider natural gas.

Hardly the pull-no-punches reviews of urban life that here was once known for, but as a cover story it appears relatively benign (after all, natural gas is somewhat cleaner than the majority of energy sources NB Power forces New Brunswickers to consume on cold winter mornings).

The only problem? When you turn inside to actually read the cover story, it turns out that it is little more than a breathless press release/advertorial, prepared and paid for by Enbridge NB, the province's largest supplier of natural gas.

No wonder copies of here are now orphaned regularly, left in brightly-coloured newspaper boxes throughout the province. Saint Johners once had a small newspaper worthy of conversation. Now all they get is an 'urban' product about as newsworthy as a Walmart flyer.

In Golf, it's called a mulligan...

In politics, it's a do-over.

The Graham government has just announced a working group to examine the future of post-secondary education in NB. All indications are that this working group is supposed to fix the PR nightmare left by the work of the last guys.

The working group will be led by NB PSE officials.
Rick Miner has not been invited back.
The polytechnic idea may soon perish thanks to the work of over 4,000 Facebookers, another 1,000 or so committed emailers, and a united Saint John community.

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round

Two government lines, two different dates.

"Although these are only recommendations from an independent commission and final decisions haven't been made yet by our government, I am pleased that the report kept the students' interests as its central theme.."
- Minister Ed Doherty, from a September 7 GNB News Release

"Before meeting with the students, I want to meet with the university presidents, and I also want to meet with the community college stakeholders," he said. "There will be an opportunity in the future to meet with the student groups, but our top priority today is to meet with the stakeholders at the university."
- Premier Shawn Graham, quoted in the Telegraph Journal on
October 11

If students' interests are the central theme driving the reforms, wouldn't these students be considered key stakeholders?

Aren't they worried about the wrong set of student numbers?

Saint Johners are still feeling mighty raw at Rick Miner's idea to close down UNBSJ, and letters, faxes and emails are putting a fair bit of pressure on government MLAs.

Amidst government's desire for transformative change in education, however, they may be focussing on the wrong set of numbers (or no numbers at all, in the case of Miner's report). In 2005/06, according to GNB's own education statistics, local school districts 6 and 8 saw over 220 kids drop out.

Just this Spring, UNBSJ saw over 422 of its students graduate. While this is a fine achievement, a comparison to the number above suggests that in its drive for self-sufficiency, the province is looking at the wrong institution to reform. For every 2 graduates UNBSJ produces, Greater Saint John still turns out 1 high school dropout.

According to the last census, a high school drop-out in SJ earns slightly more than $18,ooo. A university graduate earns more than $45,000. All of this suggests that perhaps we need to radically overhaul our high schools, and not our institutions of higher learning.

But to do this, we'd actually need to have government officials look at numbers for a change.