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When the media started promoting Meatless Mondays as a way to make a positive environmental difference, it didn't bother me as every day is meatless around here. Well, except for our stock of cat food. But Paperless Mondays? Another matter altogether.
Going paperless by going digital is also widely touted as the environmentally responsible choice. Maybe it is. We all have to weigh the pros and cons of our individual choices and I outlined a number of the cons to living digitally in a recent post. Threats to national sovereignty and opening the door to malicious cyberattacks, cyberbullying, loss of privacy and copyright protection, inattention to the fullness of real life as we key in PINs, walk with our eyes fixed upon mobile phones and other electronic devices, and so on and so forth. The power of writing something down in our own handwriting, atrocious as it may be, is not equal to that of keying in a 140-character, off-the-cuff remark that may haunt tweeters and their survivors for generations to come. All of which may strike you as ironic and even hypocritical, as here I am blithely tapping letters on to a laptop screen. But I digress.
What prompts today's entry is the fact that the Ottawa Citizen (along with some other papers in the same chain) have decided in their wisdom that we don't need a real, honest-to-goodness newspaper on Mondays any more. Nor do they need to reduce their subscription price accordingly because after all, we've got the e-paper! All I can say is e-gads! I hope they haven't reduced the wages they pay to their carriers either, who now get a well-deserved 2-day break from putting the paper in our box at 3AM!
On alternate Mondays, my partner and I get up early to go and buy a 2-week supply of groceries during the store's quiet hour (once reserved for health care workers and senior like us) from 7 to 8AM. But that means we don't catch all of Ottawa Morning on CBC Radio and now we can't even scan the headlines on The Citizen before we set off, or after we get back. Yes, I know. These are paltry considerations compared to those of folks who can't afford regular meals or even a permanent place to lay their heads at night. But dammit, it's disrupting our whole day-to-day routine!
Remember the whole thing of thinking globally and acting locally? Well, the discontinuing of the physical newspaper, along with other editorial decisions (also made globally, or at best nationally) have seriously undermined our ability to act locally. For example: movie listings have disappeared from the physical newspaper and even the e-paper. If we're considering going to a movie, we have to remember what all the cineplexes in town call themselves these days and then check movie times individually. Local businesses rarely advertise in the paper these days, probably realizing the futility of spending the money but failing to reach their target audience. But they're definitely suffering. We no longer get a TV guide with the paper, nor a weekend magazine. Classified ads are a shadow of their former selves. We still get some puzzles and comics but it's pretty generic now. And the comics have gone full-colour, but don't even credit their creators!
Along with all of the above, we've lost most of the even more locally focused papers like Metro, 24 Hours, 24 Heures, Dose, Rush Hour, etc. I guess we're lucky to still have a TV station with local news; people in smaller centres are probably not so fortunate.
You might say that globalization is a good thing: we want a world that's fair to all and an economy that, like our planet (and beyond), has no sentience of national and regional boundaries. But each of us is an individual. Our eyes naturally glaze over and we become overwhelmed if faced with huge numbers and tales of doom. We despair if we feel there's nothing we can do as individuals, families, groups of friends or neighbourhoods. Canadians of my generation will remember ventures like LIP (Local Initiatives Program) and OFY (Opportunities For Youth) that rewarded community-based, grassroots action. Will we ever get back to that mindset?
Going paperless by going digital is also widely touted as the environmentally responsible choice. Maybe it is. We all have to weigh the pros and cons of our individual choices and I outlined a number of the cons to living digitally in a recent post. Threats to national sovereignty and opening the door to malicious cyberattacks, cyberbullying, loss of privacy and copyright protection, inattention to the fullness of real life as we key in PINs, walk with our eyes fixed upon mobile phones and other electronic devices, and so on and so forth. The power of writing something down in our own handwriting, atrocious as it may be, is not equal to that of keying in a 140-character, off-the-cuff remark that may haunt tweeters and their survivors for generations to come. All of which may strike you as ironic and even hypocritical, as here I am blithely tapping letters on to a laptop screen. But I digress.
What prompts today's entry is the fact that the Ottawa Citizen (along with some other papers in the same chain) have decided in their wisdom that we don't need a real, honest-to-goodness newspaper on Mondays any more. Nor do they need to reduce their subscription price accordingly because after all, we've got the e-paper! All I can say is e-gads! I hope they haven't reduced the wages they pay to their carriers either, who now get a well-deserved 2-day break from putting the paper in our box at 3AM!
On alternate Mondays, my partner and I get up early to go and buy a 2-week supply of groceries during the store's quiet hour (once reserved for health care workers and senior like us) from 7 to 8AM. But that means we don't catch all of Ottawa Morning on CBC Radio and now we can't even scan the headlines on The Citizen before we set off, or after we get back. Yes, I know. These are paltry considerations compared to those of folks who can't afford regular meals or even a permanent place to lay their heads at night. But dammit, it's disrupting our whole day-to-day routine!
Remember the whole thing of thinking globally and acting locally? Well, the discontinuing of the physical newspaper, along with other editorial decisions (also made globally, or at best nationally) have seriously undermined our ability to act locally. For example: movie listings have disappeared from the physical newspaper and even the e-paper. If we're considering going to a movie, we have to remember what all the cineplexes in town call themselves these days and then check movie times individually. Local businesses rarely advertise in the paper these days, probably realizing the futility of spending the money but failing to reach their target audience. But they're definitely suffering. We no longer get a TV guide with the paper, nor a weekend magazine. Classified ads are a shadow of their former selves. We still get some puzzles and comics but it's pretty generic now. And the comics have gone full-colour, but don't even credit their creators!
Along with all of the above, we've lost most of the even more locally focused papers like Metro, 24 Hours, 24 Heures, Dose, Rush Hour, etc. I guess we're lucky to still have a TV station with local news; people in smaller centres are probably not so fortunate.
You might say that globalization is a good thing: we want a world that's fair to all and an economy that, like our planet (and beyond), has no sentience of national and regional boundaries. But each of us is an individual. Our eyes naturally glaze over and we become overwhelmed if faced with huge numbers and tales of doom. We despair if we feel there's nothing we can do as individuals, families, groups of friends or neighbourhoods. Canadians of my generation will remember ventures like LIP (Local Initiatives Program) and OFY (Opportunities For Youth) that rewarded community-based, grassroots action. Will we ever get back to that mindset?
