The only thing I can say with certainty about the New Journalism is that it changed my life. I was introduced to it in the late sixties, mostly through the works of Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer. They had very different-in some respects, totally opposed-approaches to the writing of journalism, but they made an equivalent… Continue reading Tom, Joan, Norman & I
It Never Happened
I am not aware of the students at any time having been blamed, although they have been punished, for what culminated in the slaughter on June 4, which you out there call the Tiananmen massacre. But you’re wrong, you see. Nobody was killed on Tiananmen Square If you think you saw people being killed on… Continue reading It Never Happened
The Watson Report
Patrick Watson faces the public through the microphones of CBC’s “Radio Noon.” It is October 12, 1989, and he has just been appointed chairman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The station is inundated with callers who want to know how $140 million in government cuts to the network will be administered. Watson answers-quoting policy to… Continue reading The Watson Report
Manitoba’s Native Justice Inquiry
On November 13, 1971, the nude and mangled body of a 19-year-old high school student, treaty Indian 848, lay dumped in the snow-covered bush near a lake north of The Pas, Manitoba. Fifty-six puncture wounds from a flat lathed screwdriver slashed the body. A blow from a boot had crushed the skull beyond recognition. The… Continue reading Manitoba’s Native Justice Inquiry
Terminal Condition
One of the oldest cliches that comes to mind when one thinks of this century’s love affair with easily consumable information is that of the working journalist. He is invariably hunched over his Underwood typewriter at a paper-strewn desk under the glare of a bare bulb. The teeming ashtray beside him-as well as the crowded… Continue reading Terminal Condition
