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Happy 175th, Ottawa Citizen!
Mar. 29th, 2020 03:25 pmToday I'm wearing a T-shirt that I bought at the Ottawa Citizen's on-site boutique many, many years ago. It's not quite prehistoric ... except that it IS, in a way. On the front, it has two dinosaurs - one orange, the other green - and both are reading. The green one is reading a newspaper, La Brea Times; the orange one is reading a book (by Dinah Sor, of course) called Fossil Fuel in Your Future. The caption on the front of the shirt reads "READ. Avoid Extinction." On the back? Ottawa Citizen.
I've been reading the Citizen - or parts of it, anyway - since I first learned to read. Fair play and daylight have flowed into my home for many decades now.
I do think that local news is particularly important in pandemic conditions. Local news delivered to your mailbox or doorstep? An added bonus. I think that's where traditional media can really excel, and where they should focus their scarce resources. Thank heavens we still have the infrastructure there for daily newsPAPER delivery. Now, if we could only restore door to door mail! Those community mailboxes are rather an anachronism now, aren't they, given how many businesses, faced with having to close their doors (some no doubt permanently), are actually offering FREE delivery to the local community?!
I was rather peeved when CBC TV cut its local newscast a few days after Covid 19 hit the capital. I miss seeing Lucy van Oldenbarneveld, Adrian Harewood, Ian Black and all the others. In protest I have now turned to CTV, which offers local newscasts weekdays from 5 to 7PM and weekends from 6PM.
To be sure, I want national and international news too, and the news sources I've just mentioned are by no means limited to what's happening in the local community. But when you're no longer free to explore at random, the news that's of most immediate importance is likely the hours of availability of your local grocery and drug stores!
I've been reading the Citizen - or parts of it, anyway - since I first learned to read. Fair play and daylight have flowed into my home for many decades now.
I do think that local news is particularly important in pandemic conditions. Local news delivered to your mailbox or doorstep? An added bonus. I think that's where traditional media can really excel, and where they should focus their scarce resources. Thank heavens we still have the infrastructure there for daily newsPAPER delivery. Now, if we could only restore door to door mail! Those community mailboxes are rather an anachronism now, aren't they, given how many businesses, faced with having to close their doors (some no doubt permanently), are actually offering FREE delivery to the local community?!
I was rather peeved when CBC TV cut its local newscast a few days after Covid 19 hit the capital. I miss seeing Lucy van Oldenbarneveld, Adrian Harewood, Ian Black and all the others. In protest I have now turned to CTV, which offers local newscasts weekdays from 5 to 7PM and weekends from 6PM.
To be sure, I want national and international news too, and the news sources I've just mentioned are by no means limited to what's happening in the local community. But when you're no longer free to explore at random, the news that's of most immediate importance is likely the hours of availability of your local grocery and drug stores!
