THE LIGHTNING SPEED OF BREAKING NEWS - THE INTIMACY WITH ACTUALITY -

SHORT OF BEING THERE, WE’RE CLOSER THAN EVER TO GLOBAL OCCURRENCES

I’ve never felt so connected. So much a part of world news. In need of updates. I’m a news addict. I’m not sure if I need re-hab or not. It’s not really an obsession.....but on the other hand I can hardly wait for tonight’s National. I wonder if there’s a place for all us former reporters and related news hounds to retire with common interest......24 hour news channels, and an in-house press. I’ll be the old fart with the fedora. The one with the “PRESS” card tucked into the rim.

I’m just a kidder. We don’t even have cable here at Birch Hollow. We dumped that in the 1989 economic downturn, and just decided to stick with the old standbys I can get with rabbit ears. I do like to stay up on the news even though it’s slim pickings without 482 channels to hop.

Some people I know play billiards to relax. A few play with electric trains as a hobby. A game of shinny works for others, as does skating on the lake. I’d collect stamps if I didn’t find it complicated and boring. I gave up golf because it only annoyed me. I wish I could read more books but I usually fall asleep by the second chapter. Now news. That’s fulfilling the hungry newsie!

You won’t find many folks who find “news-hounding” a satisfying, relaxing hobby. It drives my wife Suzanne nuts, and it does cut into our romantic moments, but I refuse to miss a news broadcast or a newspaper. I’ve been like this my whole life. My father Ed may be to blame, for at least part of my obsession. He never missed the evening news whether we were at home or on vacation, and always bought the daily newspaper. I don’t remember lengthy conversations about what he learned from the news but until his final days of life, he paid attention to what was going on in the world, and new pretty much was happening on the home front. He was quite impressed when I got my first reporting gig at the Muskoka Lakes-Georgian Bay Beacon, in MacTier. For me it was a natural progression. A profession and a hobby all in one. This then, was the commencement of “me” being the news gatherer for the benefit of others.

Yup, they called me “Scoop,” in MacTier. And when I showed up to manage the local Midget hockey team, they called me “Coach Scoop.” Amongst a lot of other things I won’t repeat. Good times.

I can remember dropping in to the Toronto Star newsroom once, and was blown away by the huge room of writing staff. The orderly chaos of reporter’s paper-askew desks, and a myriad of typewriters, clacking and thumping in the composition of a large daily newspaper. Reporters yelling across the floor, paper flying out of carriages, news and opinion being compiled about events at home and abroad. When I first joined with the staff of Muskoka Publications, also responsible at that time for The Herald-Gazette, in Bracebridge, and The Muskoka Sun, we used typewriters and liquid ink by the gallon. There was something amazing about the sound of these old Underwoods and Smith-Coronas smashing ink onto paper that got into my soul. There is an old industry legend that says once you have printer’s ink in your veins, it will never dissipate. It’s not a real contamination of ink and blood but moreso a spiritual union that can’t be broken. While I don’t work much with ink any more, using this infernal, ever humming computer, I’ve been writing actively since the autumn of 1974. Since 1979 when I started as a cub reporter in West Muskoka, I’ve been involved with news gathering in one form or another ever since......much of it now as a regional historian, updating files with new information. Garnered with some satisfaction, from the relentless digging in long-ignored, musty archives.

As I watched this afternoon, the current chaos in Egypt, and the coverage coming from a wide array of technological devices, I couldn’t help but feel antiquated myself. Thinking back to the era of the land-line and in-person interviews I was asked to do, as an eager stringer for local television and radio. Harvested human interest stories I might have been able to get to air, if lucky, by the late evening news. Now via online sites, the process has been sped-up to near-lightning speed. For what some people argue is a news indifference these days, I believe quite the opposite. Reporters are being made from average folk who happen upon news in the making, and employ technology like the pros. Heck I was using real film in my camera. I remember being at the site of a murder, on Highway 11, at 30 below, and my actual film breaking three times when I had to manually advance it; and my camera having to be warmed up in the car every five minutes to remain operational. What amazing advances today in news gathering for the masses.

As I wrote about in a recent blog, the only thing I’m not sure about, is whether we’re truly ready, as a society, for this barrage of news actuality. I can remember readers calling me, when our paper hit the newstands, terribly unhappy because the paper that week had many accident and fire reports that apparently made it “too negative.” I still hear complaints like that about newspapers. When social media heralds breaking news actuality, of tragedies unfolding, how many folks tune out? More tune in than tune out! While I’m thrilled with the immediacy of news, because I want to be amongst the informed of the world, I bet more than a few folks are starting to feel bombarded with negative news. It’s not just on the evening news or in the daily press anymore. This is coming at you all times of day and night, on a wide variety of media technologies, well beyond the traditional boob-tube in the living room. What has been going on in Egypt, on a minute by minute basis, is both fascinating and unnerving at the same time.....because you can’t help but realize, by exposure to unpleasant realities, this is our shrinking globe. We seem a lot closer to these outbreak situations than ever before. And even when the Egyptian Government shut down the media linkages to the world, they couldn’t stop it all.....or lie about the scope of the expanding, violent protests. The social media’s following is so loyal and huge, and determined to reach into every corner of existence, that regimes wishing to limit access, fail miserably to block the truth from getting out. It is the insurance the world will know about atrocities these dictatorships direct at their citizens. The proverbial genie is out of the bottle, and news gathering, with its host of problems and accesses of course, is now in the hands of technology holders.....not just newsies by profession. And we thought we were so special.

Even sitting here in the snow-laden Ontario hinterland, you can feel comfortably, or uncomfortably intimate with the actions and re-actions of news events thousands of miles distant....... from that easy chair you love to huddle on cold winter nights. Many of us feel a new responsibility to know what is going on in the world, as it might affect us in any of a number of ways. Global warming. Ecological horrors. Natural disasters. Mounting civil unrest.

In Egypt and the Middle East generally, where conflict is always a teetering possibility, the damage such ongoing disruption can cause to world economics, definitely inflicts chagrin for players of the stock market. It may not be great for motorists either, when the price at the pumps jumps well past the dollar-a-litre mark. While most Canadians respect the protest for democratic change in Egypt, we recognize that it will come with a substantial cost, wagered against the much tighter global economy of today. With a fragile recovery from a huge economic calamity, experienced by many of us, over the past three years, what happens in the Middle East is as intimate and nerve-wracking for us, as if we were side by side neighbors. Certainly investors have a keen interest in this same breaking news, as it is very much the cost (attention to detail) of doing business. I have never been a dabbler in the stock market but I’m just guessing that world turmoil, very much influences the decisions to buy and sell. This isn’t really fair to throw back on the Egyptian people. They’re fighting for democracy. We’re looking at our economic well-being. There seems to be an increasing demand for news, wouldn’t you say?

As word spread about the assassinations of American President John F. Kennedy, his brother Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and of course, much later, John Lennon, folks from my vintage flocked to the news sources out of shock, anger and respect for the fallen. When we heard the news, we stopped in our tracks, looked at the reality surrounding us, and knew it would be a memory held for a lifetime.....as other memories we held as significant faded into obscurity. This more intense, intimate and intrusive exposure now, to news and global events, is etching hard upon all who choose to “tune-in.” For those who “tune-out,” well, that’s their choice.....it may also be their undoing.

There are no real safe havens from the collateral damage of all major global events. Whether it is the economic collateral damage, of banking system collapses, natural chaos, caused by floods and drought, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes, food or fuel shortages, the immediate communication of news should mean a greater preparedness for the approaching storm. But there are many, many millions on this planet who are not “connected,” via media technologies, adding even more disparity and disadvantage to their opportunities, of ever catching up to the rest of the mad world.

In Egypt, the technologies possessed by citizenry and visitors, has given the world that intimate look at the truths of rebellion; facts now impossible to dismiss by government as lies and distortions. We are seeing it worts and all, mere moments after the images and events were captured.

I do wonder quite a bit these days, how life at home will be affected by this new and exciting global community, seemingly so much closer at hand, these days, thanks to camera phones and the advances of on-line social networking. As an example, we can no longer dismiss, as a matter of minimal intrusion, the huge gains of on-line shopping, and its toll on traditional retail....... those without an online option can be at a serious disadvantage, in a highly competitive market. Online sales are well into the billions while traditional retail faces a more demanding customer......insisting on better services and prices, and devouring opportunities to get what they want, when they want, from wherever they can. Online parking is a breeze and there are no parking tickets from over-zealous bylaw officers. But I remember when critics said it would never replace mainstreet and mainstream retail. It’s a work in progress.

I do believe we are staring at that storied, feared “Brave New World,” and I don’t think we’re ever going to return to the old ways. We apparently like this new intimacy with the events and options of the shrinking globe. News and events bringing us closer to the hot spots. But what is too intimate? How far do we want it to go? How can we control it? Should we control it? I sort of think controlling technology, and social media advancements, from Face-Book to Twitter, is akin to the kind of ill-fated repression the government of Egypt tried, by shutting down signals when the crisis began. It would be like opting this moment, to face the angry mob, with lethal force.......expecting after the carnage that the blood stained calm will herald “situation normal.” This is a new normal. Like the coming down of the Berlin Wall, times they are a changing.

Putting our heads in the sand today, is not an evasive action for the shy. It is suffocation by intent. I’d much rather face up to the brave new world, and employ its technologies. I’m reminded of the famous descent of Cowboy actor, Slim Pickens, in the movie “Dr. Strangelove,” who jumped aboard an atomic war-head, as a last resort, to guide it from plane to point of impact;....... riding it through the atmosphere like a bucking bronco, hollering all the way to the big bang.

I’d rather embrace this new-age communication technology, and perish with it, if necessary, than disassociate with what I believe to be a valuable tool of all future democracy. Repression? It has no place to hide in an enlightened world.

I tossed my last underwood in the scrap metal pile the other day. I kept it just in case. I’m pretty sure I won’t need it again. I feel liberated from the iron embrace of its hundred pounds of antiquity. I’m a lap-topper now. And I don’t mean dancer.

Maybe I do need to dry-out from all this breaking news stuff. But I’d be too scared of missing something happening, during my self imposed exile. Naw, I’ll just cut the intake to four or five news broadcasts a day. That should level me out. Suzanne is shaking her head.