Mr. Farrell Speaks.

IfChuckYeagerWereABlogger
BestThereIsVille


Norm Farrell has been away from the Lotuslandian Bloggodome for awhile.

And he has just written a post that explains the situation.

It also explains a whole lot more. Here is just a snippet:

"...In youth, I was a Liberal activist but came to believe the party was unworthy of support, from me or anyone else. (Sorry Pat McGeer and Gordon Gibson Jr.) With a career in small enterprise management, I was not inclined toward the other party of big business or the party of trade unions. Therefore, I consciously spoiled ballots in both federal and provincial elections. Yet, I became certain that strong unions enabled a strong middle class and government transparency and accountability was the key to political change. My spoiled ballots were an unnoticed protest that achieved nothing.

People have asked if my blog was intended to promote one party over another. My usual reply was no, I only hoped that better informed citizens would ensure government would improve. However, I concluded that citizens could not and would not be better informed because professional media messengers remain obliged to people other than common folks.

The concept of independent, public interest journalism is practised rarely now. It is a relic, not of past times but of past idealism. Journalism in the good old days was less perfect than we like to remember. People aiming to influence public discourse years ago knew then how to handle the media gatekeepers. And, they do now. Rewards were less direct in earlier days: travel and entertainment benefits, usually modest ones. Today, the rewards are obvious and the recipients defiantly oblivious to conflicts..."

If you read one local blogpost in its entirety today it really should be Norm's.

OK?


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