At the end of the day Kai Nagata quit his job because he wanted his voice back, he wanted the freedom to express his opinions - and I stress the word opinion - without contractual, professional or, as he makes clear, factual restraints. Fair enough. Have fun. The adults will make do without your input. No doubt there's a blog in his future.
Nagata may be articulate but it's clear he doesn't have the courage of his convictions, giving up after only a year on the job. If Canadian journalism is worth saving - if indeed it's possible to save it - we will need more people like Nagata but ones willing to stay the course for more than a few months.
Unfortunately, this essay is little more than a rant about the state of Canadian journalism, something that could easily be deduced by picking up a newspaper or watching the evening news, where Ken and Barbie dolls abound. Ironically, Nagata's lament is simply a longer, less concise version of Howard Beale's "I'm mad as hell and I"m not going to take it any more!" rant.
The truth is that news has always been a business first and a public good second and this fact belies Nagata's assertion that he took the job with his eyes wide open.
Newspapers, magazines, and broadcast television are in the business of information collection and distribution and the current, albeit dying, business models they operate under require a constant stream of new readers and viewers. The battle for readers and viewer is a source of great pressure on all newsrooms and this has always been true where there is competition for those same readers and viewers. In short, the race to the bottom in journalism has been going on for a long time.
To quote Thomas Jefferson,, "the man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing, but newspapers." Or if you prefer, consider the term "yellow journalism", which was coined to describe the antics of newspapers in New York during the great circulation wars in the late 19th Century. It is a term long-associated with Joesph Pulitzer and I'm sure you know who he is and what he stands for. Rupert Murdoch and murdochism isn't new, it's just a variant on existing trends practiced with ruthless efficiency and determination along with the odd bribe or two or three.
The alternatives, however, to private news or news-as-a-business are worse, news by government or news by blogosphere, which really isn't news.
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Once a newspaper touches a story the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists. Norman Mailer
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