Post-traumatic stress

The National Post printed a virile editorial this weekend, addressing the various media outlets and news reports speculating its death last week. Characterizing the reports as a collective “barrage,” “firestorm,” and “frenzy” of celebrations on their supposed death, the editorial attempts to set the record straight, or at least provide the necessary contexts to the swathe of reports that did indeed predict the paper’s demise prematurely.

Praising its own “small-c conservative voice,” and its “irreverence,” the article tries to claim some victory in reducing its annual losses from $65 million in fiscal 2001 to $12.7 million in fiscal 2008. Meanwhile it throws around buzzword infested, masturbatory phrases such as the paper’s transfer “ensuring [its] long-term existence and stability,” or that “The publishing group…understands the contribution the Post can make to the entire operation, and has put a dollar value on it.”

The Post‘s editorial board members seemed to lean back smugly into their Aero chairs, basking in their phoenix-like rebirth as part of Canwest’s publishing chain. However, they must have forgotten that the actual phoenix’s revival is a majestic spectacle, requiring no words. The Post, by comparison, apparently felt the need to blow its own horn in a manner not unlike its less eloquent critics.

By the way, whose decision was it to use such an over-blown, over-used quote for its headline? Mark Twain’s grave-rolling must resemble a Swiss Chalet rotisserie by now. The last time I saw that quote in a newspaper was in a review of a Rise Against album.