Watch out, Hillary Clinton! Dilbert creator and self-described master persuader Scott Adams has discovered the Twitter hashtag that will spell your doom!
See, it's "Hill" for "Hillary Clinton," and "bullies" for "bullies," and it sounds like "hillbillies" which is HILARIOUS, so therefore LANDSLIDE VICTORY FOR TRUMP.
Let's back up a second here, in case you don't fully grasp Mr. Adams' PERSUASION MASTERY.
You see, Adams has been trying for some days now to reverse the perception that Trump and his followers are bullies — you know, just because Trump has repeatedly called for protesters at his rallies to be beaten up, and his followers have gone ahead and done that, you know, that sort of thing.
But as Adams sees it, it's Hillary's supporters who are the REAL bullies, because some of them have called him "silly" on Twitter.
And here he is taking on someone who jokingly referred to him as the creator of the Garfield comic strip.
But there was something, well, lacking about his replies, persuasion-wise. "Clinton bullies" doesn't have much of a ring to it. Even when it's rendered as the hashtag #ClintonBullies.
Now Adams has turned his MasterPersuasion up to 11 with a devastating new hashtag. I am speaking, of course, of #Hillbullies.
Adams wasn't the first to use the hashtag to go after Ms. Clinton; assorted tweeters have been using it sporadically for some time. But none of them had Adams' reach, or his enthusiasm for the hashtag, which he's pulled out again and again since his earthshattering discovery of it.
Apparently it has not occurred to Mr. Adams that calling someone a "Hillbully" isn't technically an argument either.
But no matter. Adams' fans think he's a GENIUS.
Naturally, people have started making the memes.
I don't know about you, but all this persuasion is making me dizzy.
I don't know if anyone else covered this, but in addition to all Scott Adams' other BS, derogatory jokes about "hillbillies" tends to be incredibly classist (especially given how economically depressed the Ozarks still are).
It's also weird since Hillary supporters are also supposed to be liberal elites, if I've got my stereotypes straight?
I've a question for non-American Mammotheers. Are election seasons in other countries as awful as those in the United States?
Depending of what you are calling awful.
In France, campaigns are shorter, but since a few elections, there is the "Primaires" stuff, coming from the american system, i guess. I mean that before the beginning of the millenium, parties were designating their candidate and that was all. Now, inside the parties, various politicians compete to be The candidate. The 2017 camapaign has not begin, and yet the ridicule is still escalating.
Before the campaign in itself, there are often a lot of declarations of candidacy, but to participate in the campaign, the candidate must get 500 signatures from elected persons (mayors, deputies, senators, and so on), which means that the campaign always has less official candidates than declared candidates. Have a look to the 2012 one, as an example.
During the campaign, some debates are organized, and there can be words (also know in France as "petites phrases") between candidates, but i think it is never as harsh as in American ones, and certainly not like Trump (till now. I hope we never reach that point of awful discourse).
The proof is that I wrote that he is.


text:
Wieża zegarowa Büyük Saat – wieża zegarowa w Adanie, najwyższa w Turcji, mająca 32 metry.

Historia
Budowę Büyük Saat rozpoczęto w 1879 roku za czasów gubernatora Ziya Pasha, a ukończono w 1882 roku, gdy rządził jego następca gubernator Abidin Pasha. Projekt przygotowali dwaj architekci Krikor Agha Bzdikian i Kasbar Agha Bzdikian.

Ponieważ wieża pełniła również funkcje punktu obserwacyjnego, została uszkodzona podczas okupacji francuskiej w latach 1918-21 i odbudowana dopiero w 1935 roku. Budowa zegara ułatwiła życie mieszkańcom, którzy słyszeli co godzinę dźwięk dzwonu wybijającego godzinę. Korzystali z tego również urzędnicy, którzy wprowadzili godziny urzędowania według czasu pokazywanego przez zegar. Budowa wieży zmieniła również sposób ustalania godzin muzułmańskich modlitw. W 1998 roku podczas trzęsienia o mocy 6,3 w skali Richtera w Adanie zostało zniszczonych około 14 000 domów. Wieża poza kilkoma drobnymi pęknięciami nie ucierpiała.

Opis
Büyük Saat ma kształt kwadratowej kolumny o 8 metrowym boku. Do budowy ścian użyto małych cegieł. Ma 32 metry i jest osadzona na głębokich 3-metrowych fundamentach. Zegar ma tarcze z wszystkich czterech stron.

Zobacz też

 Wieża zegarowa Nusretiye

Przypisy

Adana
Wieże zegarowe

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The newest victims are children. I saw a piece this morning on a 17 year old who went for his first job-he was rejected because his credit stunk! Someone had stolen his social security number when he was seven years old and trashed his credit for ten years. Police figure the identify theft happened when his mother took him to his pediatrician for a routine check up. Why do we need to give out the social security number for a seven year old? Best advice-don't ever give out your child's social for something like a doctors visit. It looks like you should run a credit report once a year on your child just in case!


text:
January 20, 2020 | Small Predators Most Likely to Be Lost Due to Human Land-Use According to Global Study
New Strategy Against Life-Threatening Tuberculosis Infections
TOPICS:DiseaseHarvard UniversityHealthMedicineTechnical University of MunichTexas A&M UniversityTuberculosis
By Technical University of Munich December 28, 2017
Dr. Johannes Lehmann (left) and Prof. Stephan A. Sieber examine test results on the antibacterial effect of various substances. (Foto: Christian Fetzer / TUM)
In search of new strategies against life-threatening tuberculosis infections, a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), as well as Harvard University and Texas A&M University in the USA have found a new ally. They discovered a substance that interferes with the mycomembrane formation of the bacterium. It is effective even in low concentrations and when combined with known antibiotics their effectiveness is improved by up to 100-fold.
Among the greatest challenges when treating life-threatening tuberculosis infections is the increasing resistance to antibiotics. But the pathogen itself also makes the life of doctors difficult: its dense mycomembrane hampers the effect of many medications. A team of scientists headed by Stephan A. Sieber, Professor of Organic Chemistry at TU Munich, has discovered a substance that perturbs the formation of this membrane significantly.
The mycomembrane of the tuberculosis pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis consists of a lipid double layer that encapsulates the cell wall, forming an exterior barrier. Structural hallmarks are mycolic acids, branched beta-hydroxy fatty acids with two long hydrocarbon chains. The team hypothesizes that similarly structured beta lactones could "mask" themselves as mycolic acid to enter the mycolic acid metabolic pathways and then block the decisive enzymes.
HELPFUL DISRUPTER
In the context of an extensive search, the interdisciplinary team of scientists hit the bullseye with the beta lactone EZ120. It does indeed inhibit the biosynthesis of the mycomembrane and kills mycobacteria effectively. Using enzyme assays and mass spectroscopy investigations, Dr. Johannes Lehmann, a researcher at the Chair of Organic Chemistry II at TU Munich, demonstrated during his doctoral work that the new inhibitor blocks especially the enzymes Pks13 and Ag85, which play a key role in the development of mycomembranes.
EZ120 is effective even in low doses, easily passes the mycomembrane and exhibits only low toxicity to human cells. The combined application of this substance with known antibiotics showed a synergistic effect leading to significantly increased effectiveness."Vancomycin, a common antibiotic, and EZ120 work together very well," says Prof. Sieber, who heads the Chair of Organic Chemistry II. "When used together, the dose can be reduced over 100-fold.
"The scientists suspect that disrupting the mycomembrane enables antibiotics to enter the bacteria more easily. This is a new mode of action and might be a starting point for novel tuberculosis therapies."
The research was funded by the German Research Foundation (SFB 749 and Cluster of Excellence "Center for Integrated Protein Science"), the National Institutes of Health (USA) and the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes). Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Texas A & M University (College Station, USA) also participated in the research.
Publication: Johannes Lehmann, et al., "An Antibacterial ß-Lactone Kills Mycobacterium tuberculosis by Disrupting Mycolic Acid Biosynthesis," Angewandte Chem Int Edition, 2017; doi: 10.1002/anie.201709365
VPM1002 Tuberculosis Vaccine in Phase II Trial
Using Biosignatures to Distinguish Between Tuberculosis and Sarcoidosis
Study Reveals How Deadly Bacteria Trick the Immune System
Tuberculosis Resistance to Backup Drugs Increases
MAJORANA, the Underground Experiment that Could Rewrite the Standard Model
Little Significant Difference in Organic Foods vs. Conventional Alternatives
Amino Acids in Meteorites Provide a Clue to How Life Turned Left
Drug Resistant Tuberculosis On The Rise
Be the first to comment on "New Strategy Against Life-Threatening Tuberculosis Infections"
Astronomy Astrophysics Biology Black Hole Cancer Cassini-Huygens Mission Cell Biology Chandra X-ray Observatory Chemistry Climate Change Cosmology Disease Earth Science Ecology Engineering European Southern Observatory European Space Agency Evolution Evolutionary Biology Exoplanet Genetics Green Technology Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Harvard University Health Hubble Space Telescope Images JPL Mars Materials Science Max Planck Institute Medicine MIT Nanoscience Nanotechnology NASA Neurology Neuroscience Physics Planetary Science Popular Quantum Physics Saturn UCLA Yale University
Small Predators Most Likely to Be Lost Due to Human Land-Use According to Global Study

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Simtoo, a Shenzhen-based drone manufacturer, has reportedly closed a RMB72 million funding round.
Chinese social networking company Renren Inc co-led the series B round in Simtoo along with Beijing Infinitas Interactive Media Co., Ltd. and Hanking Family Office.
Founded in April 2015, Simtoo launched its debut product called Dragonfly Drones priced at RMB2,999 last August.
Simtoo claims to have sold 20,000 Dragonfly Drones via online and offline channels and expects to realize a profit this year, according to a statement.
The Dragonfly Drones will be available to U.S. consumers next year via Best Buy, Toys "R" Us and other retail portals, as the company aims to expand its oversea sales to as much as 70% of total revenue.
Simtoo previously raised RMB20 million in series A funding round from Renren and another Chinese investor in September 2015.


Bear Den Waco near Baylor University is a small community consisting of 8 units. Amenities include ceramic tile throughout the kitchen, bathrooms, dining area, halls and entry. The common room and bedrooms are carpeted.


Increased investment and economic growth in South Western Sydney's Growth Corridor suburbs are expected after the federal government announced that construction has began on Badgerys Creek Airport.
It was reported that Edmondson Park, Menangle Park, Oran Park, Bardia, Leppington and Harrington Park are some of the suburbs seen to benefit from the multi-billion dollar financial injections into Badgerys Creek and South West Growth Corridor.
Ernst & Young revealed that construction of Badgerys Creek Airport alone is anticipated to return an additional $1.9 billion in value-add for the Western Sydney economy, on top of the $140 million across the rest of Sydney. Five years after opening in 2031, the airport would bring in around $77 million in value-add for Western Sydney and $145 million across the rest of the city.
Dahua Group Australia Chief Executive Officer Eric Li said that this news was positively welcomed by the industry players.
"The private sector, state and federal governments are all collectively pumping billions of dollars into the area, which is fast becoming the epicentre of Sydney's development activity. Hundreds of jobs are being created, new businesses are opening, home frames are everywhere and several cranes are visible across the [Western Sydney] region," he said.
Li further underscored the importance of a well-planned infrastructure in attracting investors. "Infrastructure both existing and future including Badgerys Creek Airport has been a catalyst to drive purchasers into the project," he noted.
Given the state of things, it was found that master planned communities which are located in the South West's fastest growing suburbs are already taking advantage of their location.
Campbelltown, for instance, is in the middle of the South West Growth Corridor. It is envisioned to be at the forefront of Sydney's metropolitan development because of the forecasted population growth in the area. From 158,941, the population is seen to increase to about 300,000 by 2036, according to the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research 2015.
"Campbelltown is one of Australia's fastest growing cities and will be less than 30 minutes from the Western Sydney Airport, providing significant economic stimulus. Overseas investment interest continues to grow in this region and is expected to accelerate when the airport arrives," Campbelltown City Council General Manager Lindy Deitz commented.
Deitz added that Campbelltown is transforming into a major metropolitan destination. In fact, the masterplanned community New Breeze by Dahua is in Campbelltown's Bardia.
As such, it is foreseen that South Western Sydney's Growth Corridor will fuel Australia's economic growth and affluence.


text:
Morris Swadesh, född 22 januari 1909, död 20 juli 1967, var amerikansk lingvist. Han föddes i Holyoke, Massachusetts i USA. Hans föräldrar var ryssar av judiskt ursprung, av vilka han lärde sig jiddisch. Swadesh tog fram listor som används för att jämföra släktskapet mellan olika språk. Dessa kallas för swadeshlistor.

Amerikanska lingvister
Födda 1909
Avlidna 1967
Män
Amerikanska eponymer
Alumner från University of Chicago


Beaufort's Thomas Smith was spot-on with everything he threw. The right-hander used his fastball effectively enough, but it was a steady diet of curveballs and changeups that kept Florence's hitters frustrated, flailing and off kilter all night.
Smith gave up just five hits, struck out one and walked none. Three of the five hits came consecutively with two outs in the second, but he got Garrett Bevill to bounce into a 5-4 force play to leave the bases loaded. Florence's other hits were a first-inning double by Fonta James and a fourth-inning double by Keshaun Samuel.
After Samuel's double, Smith retired 13 in a row until left fielder Jesse Sanborn dropped a pop-up to start the bottom of the ninth. But a fielder's choice grounder and two more routine fly balls ended it.
"This team (Florence) is probably the best hitting team we've played this year," Smith said. "I was able to throw both my curveball and changeup for a strike, which really helped me. I used both sides of the plate and used my defense. My defense played a heck of a game and they were able to get me out of any jam I got in."
Florence lost the series opener to the Ospreys, 12-11 on Monday, but rebounded to win 13-1 in seven innings at Beaufort on Tuesday. Urquhart admitted after how Florence played Tuesday, and with Beaufort having a long bus ride to Florence, he didn't expect what he saw unfold Wednesday.
But the Ospreys (13-6) came out swinging against Post 1 starter Brian Davis. Sanborn's two-out bloop double in the first scored Alex Silon to give Post 9 a 1-0 lead.
Post 9 made it 3-0 in the third. Stephen Baggett singled home Silon, and Sanborn's second double, a shot into the left-field gap, plated Baggett.
That was more than enough for Smith, who got 14 fly ball outs and had two other easy pop-ups dropped for errors.
"We just came into this not thinking about their talent or depth," Smith said. "We're just trying to think about competing with anybody we face and not be intimidated. We fight and we scrap, and we came out on top tonight."
Said Urquhart, "We just kept hitting pop-up after pop-up after pop-up. And we did not make any adjustments. About the fourth inning, we warned them, stay out of the air. And nobody made any adjustments."
The fourth game of the series is set for 7 p.m. Thursday at Beaufort. If Florence extends the series, the teams will play at 7:30 p.m. Friday in Florence.


I WANTED TO PRESS THE BUTTON!!!
Very cool, the first three "keys" he pressed were the intro to the riff on Smoke on the water, was that with purpose? cool efffects, only one thing... I WANTED TO PRESS THE BUTTON!!!
lol You can never push the button! NEVER!!!! haha. Anyway, no purpose to the first three sounds. They were just the only three tone sounds I could get on Flashkit.
man poot more thought into your work.


Nov. 8 is the deadline to sign up for a free CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation) class, including infant CPR, that has been organized by Ozark County Ambulance administrator Stacy Raney and Ozark County emergency management director Steve Ator.
The CPR class will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 15, at The Center in Gainesville. Classes usually last about four hours. Air Evac has agreed to supply instructors who will provide the training.
The class is free, but reservations are necessary to ensure that an adequate number of instructors are present with training mannequins.
To add your name and phone number to the list, contact the Ozark County Times by phone (417-679-4641) or email (sueann@ozarkcountytimes.com). After Nov. 8, Air Evac will assign the appropriate number of instructors, who will be coming from outside the county, to teach the class.
Organizers say there's no minimum or maximum age for the CPR class as long as trainees have the necessary physical strength and agility and are able to hear and follow instructions.
Please note that this class will provide complete training, but it is not a certification class. Ator is organizing another CPR class that will offer certification for those working in the medical or emergency medical services field who need certification for their jobs – or for other residents who want to be CPR-certified. Information about the certification class will be provided in upcoming editions of the Times.


These are high quality diamond resin pads that are manufactured to our specifications. These are great polishing pads that perform nearly as well as our top-of-the-line RockMaster pads - the primary difference is in durability. These pads give you about 60%-70% of the life of the most expensive pads. Our RockMaster E-Pads have been produced and packaged in large volumes so we could bring them to you at rock bottom prices without sacrificing quality. The dry set includes dry polishing pads of 50 grit, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1500, 3000.


"As more and more people get their news online, and share their interests directly through social media, many communities have been left without local newspapers to tell their stories. To ensure trusted, local perspectives as well as accountability in local communities, the Government proposes to provide $50 million over five years, starting in 2018–19, to one or more independent non-governmental organizations that will support local journalism in underserved communities. The organizations will have full responsibility to administer the funds, respecting the independence of the press.
As the Public Policy Forum's 2017 report The Shattered Mirror: News, Democracy and Trust in the Digital Age documented, the traditional privately owned, for-profit news media model has seen its sustainability thrown into doubt in the digital age. This is largely because the current context favours content distributors over producers, especially Facebook and Google, which together draw in roughly three-quarters of online advertising revenue and virtually all of the growth. As well, digital subscriptions, in which readers pay the freight, generally have not taken off in Canada. The 2018 version of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report showed just nine percent of Canadians pay for online news, barely changed from the previous year, and the country ranked 27th of the 37 countries surveyed.
This limits the extent to which producers of Canadian content aimed at broader Canadian audiences can finance their operations through traditional revenue sources, particularly those producing civic news with a local, regional or national orientation. In the case of journalism startups, the majority have turned to a variety of revenue streams in an effort to achieve financial sustainably. Few, if any, however, are known to have achieved that sustainability yet. Thus, new sources of finance are required if journalism is to continue its contribution as a public good.
The Shattered Mirror documented in detail how this huge and growing revenue hole was sinking Canadian journalism. Newspapers across Canada were closing, leaving communities with reduced or no news coverage of civic affairs. To avoid closure, other news outlets were laying off staff, reducing their footprints or merging local newsrooms. From 2008 to 2016, 169 local media outlets closed and another 54 reduced services. Despite some limited startup activity, these downward trends continue unabated.
The Torstar and Postmedia chains, which each own many regional and local papers, arranged to swap 41 titles in late 2017. Almost immediately, 36 of them were shuttered to create regional dominance by one chain or the other. Almost 300 jobs were lost. Torstar chair John Honderich remarked that quality journalism was in crisis and that the company was "very, very close to the end." As well, publisher Roger Holmes, who in 2016 purchased the Moose Jaw Times-Herald and Prince Albert Daily Herald in optimistic defiance of industry trends, announced in November 2017 that the 125-year-old titles were closing. Ultimately, the workers of the Prince Albert paper purchased it for $1.
In the meantime, some digital-only publications have enriched the news ecosystem, and other experiments—such as building partnerships among news organizations, university professors and students to produce investigative journalism—have been undertaken. While of net benefit to the ecosystem as a whole, these efforts tend to lack the scope or concentration of journalistic resources of the traditional system. While it is certainly possible some, particularly the privately owned ones with entrepreneurial drive, might break through someday, for now the startups are not fully filling the news vacuum.
The relevance of these trend lines goes well beyond those directly involved in the news industry to have major implications for Canadian politics and democracy. Access to quality news and information is critical in a democracy, as it enables citizens to know what their governments are doing, hold those governments to account, and build a culture of civic participation and debate among citizens. Access to quality local news is critical to the very creation of a sense of community. The 2009 report by The Knight Commission on Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, for example, found that "information is as vital to the healthy functioning of communities as clean air, safe streets, good schools and public health." This decline in news about local communities threatens the transmission lines connecting information, community and democracy.
The Shattered Mirror identified the factors that lead to reduced news coverage on a national scale and, as a result, we now have a good picture of what's going on in the news industry and why. The report also made 14 specific recommendations on what the Canadian government can do to reverse some of these trends and promote civic-minded journalism in Canada.
At the beginning of 2018, PPF decided to take a more empirical look into the state of local and community news media over a 10-year period. Working with our research associate, Nordicity, and with the support of our partners the Atkinson Foundation, Community Foundations of Canada, CWA Canada, McConnell Foundation, Unifor and Vancouver Foundation, we set out to measure the gaps that have opened up in 20 communities across Canada. If, as The Shattered Mirror demonstrated, journalistic outlets were shrinking, merging or closing, what was the effect on the volume and depth of coverage?
To date, as with the paucity of Canadian media research generally, there has been no known work of this kind done in Canada beyond a crowd-sourced map of media closures and startups. And it is difficult to undertake content counts because of limits to the breadth and depth of databases of news stories. As a result, we do not have a good picture of which communities are more or less likely to suffer from inadequate coverage, whether this extends beyond places where outlets have gone out of business, or what specific areas of coverage have been hit the hardest. As the federal government prepares its plans to distribute funds to support journalism in communities across Canada, and as other groups look at ways they might also assist local journalism, highlighting evidence of where gaps have opened and what new models have emerged can help inform decision-making.
In addition to examining the news coverage of local communities, we felt it imperative to take an initial look at the online media ecosystem, too. More detailed research and analysis will be required to answer the question of whether the online news media ecosystem, including news relayed via social media platforms, are adequately plugging the gap.
We are publishing two companion reports: this one looks at the emergence of alternative ownership and financing models hoping to plot a path to a more sustainable and broadly based civic journalism in Canada. While wide-ranging, the list is by no means exhaustive. The second report, Mind the Gaps, examines to what extent print news coverage is being rolled back in Canada.
Many different approaches to support journalism, locally and beyond, have emerged in recent years in the wake of the sharp decline of traditional industry players. While there have always been exceptions, the main ownership models for news have been private companies (often organized into chains with multiple titles), the public broadcaster, and the long-time co-operative responsible for The Canadian Press until 2010.
Necessity is the mother of invention. So are the low barriers to entry for new media players, who neither require the capital for a printing press or a government broadcast licence. Experimentation is highly welcome. At the same time, journalism is an iterative process that works best and can be most ambitious with the support of news organizations—ones where career development and internal learning can occur and where legal support and insurance for contentious stories can be provided. The vast majority of civic reporting, particularly that aimed at broad audiences of Canadians, still originates in traditional news organizations, despite their financial woes. We see in the companion report, Mind the Gaps, that the sum total of journalism appears to be falling significantly.
While it is impossible to know whether new models will produce journalism in quantity and quality, experimentation is vital at any time, and particularly in this moment of decline. The following section outlines some of the new approaches popping up in Canada and elsewhere, both by startups and by established providers of news. We have organized them into five separate sections (though many would not look out of place in another section). Furthermore, the examples provided here are far from exhaustive; rather they are offered to inform further discussion about the future of the news media system in Canada.
more public support, such as the $50 million currently on offer from the federal government and a $36 million program to support print journalism already in place in Quebec.
Finally, we propose bringing many of these approaches together in what we call the Canadian Football League's Saskatchewan Roughriders model: a mixed form of ownership deeply embedded in individual communities. We believe that the economies of scale that have made chains the dominant ownership form over many decades have had the unintended consequence, in a long period of financial pressure, of creating distance between news outlets and the communities in which they reside. This thesis is validated both anecdotally (the regionally rooted Winnipeg Free Press is arguably the most innovative and journalistically committed paper in Western Canada) and supported by the research in Mind the Gaps. In the near term at least, the tension between the search for cost savings and the centralization of content, with its concomitant reduction of community connection, will be increasingly resolved in favour of community orientations. This will be especially so when public and philanthropic money is involved. We will describe the Saskatchewan Roughriders model further below. Suffice to say it is not only an ownership form but even more so a descriptor for the kinds of mixed models we expect to emerge. That said—and this is a key point—we think governments should proceed very cautiously if they are thinking of discriminating in favour or against different ownership models. By and large, the public interest lies in ensuring two things above all: that original journalism is being produced and that the inevitable transition to digital proceeds apace.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began the BBC Local News Partnership in 2016 as an effort to ensure journalistic coverage for local communities. Through this program, the BBC hires "Local Democracy Reporters" who cover municipal councils, public services and local issues in underserved areas on behalf of the BBC and other local news organizations. As of early 2018, 145 reporters have been hired under this program and have been posted in 59 community newspapers across England, Scotland and Wales. Five additional reporters will be assigned to local papers in Northern Ireland by the end of the year.
In addition, the Local News Partnership has created a News Hub and a Shared Data Unit. The News Hub allows media organizations outside the BBC to access BBC video and audio content and use that material online. The Shared Data Unit contains data journalism content from both BBC reports and the Local Democracy Reporters. This data is accessible to news organizations across the U.K., allowing them to use it in their own journalistic work.
This initiative, and the BBC's other reporting, is supported by policy and legislation by the U.K. government, principally through an annual licence fee (£150.50 at the time of writing) applied to households with TVs or internet-connected devices used for consuming BBC materials.
This model offers the potential for the development of a distributed network unique to Canada. In The Shattered Mirror, we recommended establishing a local mandate for The Canadian Press—a Canadian version that would reflect similarities to the BBC's Local Democracy Reporters. This service, which we refer to as "CP2", would be distinct from that of the 100-year-old Canadian Press, which has not tended to focus on distinctly local news. The Shattered Mirror suggested that for $8 million per year, CP2 could hire 80 to 100 reporters and editors (more recent calculations suggest a greater number) to cover local democratic institutions in communities that need original or supplemental coverage. This service may also be used to cover gaps in court coverage or of provincial legislatures.
CP2 would not compete with, or seek to undermine, existing local coverage. Unlike the existing wire service, it could offer its journalistic content on an open-source basis to all takers, thus promoting local innovation while providing CP's well-respected professional standards and the physical infrastructure in handling text, images, audio and video. Under this model, CP2 could serve communities and cover institutions that have been neglected due to cutbacks in local news coverage, and so avoid running the risk of undermining existing news outlets and coverage.
Finally, The Shattered Mirror explored the potential for CP2 to leverage government investment and attract other financial contributions, including from local community organizations, foundations, or municipal government. In all cases, policies and governance measures would be required to ensure journalistic independence.
Village Media, based in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., is an entrepreneurial startup news operation that runs local news sites in eight communities across Ontario and has further partnerships with another six outlets in communities across Canada. The news organization offers hyperlocal content, generated by full-time reporters and editors at each location who cover local issues.
Village Media focuses on operating in communities where there are few other local advertising opportunities and targets merchants who prefer to be associated with local content by offering premium advertising. This creates revenue while also generating web traffic. Village Media does not have a paywall but has seen some favourable results from requests to its users for donations in support of local journalism.
The organization has successfully made headway in communities where traditional papers have either declined or shut down altogether. In some places, it has recruited most of the editorial and advertising teams that have been let go by news media closures. For example, after the closure of the Guelph Mercury and the Orillia Packet & Times, Village Media has experienced positive early outcomes in both communities with its digital-only offering. Although it is not yet at a break-even point, its owner feels he has identified a sweet spot in smaller and mid-sized communities without much competition for advertising dollars or presence of local content. In larger centres with greater competition, such as Ottawa and Halifax, Village Media has been experimenting through partnerships with local radio news stations owned by Rogers.
It is unclear to what extent Village Media heralds a new model blending community news, digital advertising savvy and entrepreneurial drive.
National Observer was initially supported through several Kickstarter campaigns, investments and loans, and is now owned by Observer Media Group, a privately held company. Linda Solomon Wood, founder and editor-in-chief of National Observer, is the majority shareholder, with the other shareholders being National Observer's two most senior staff. In July 2016, National Observer launched a paywall and has a goal of being 100-percent reader-funded in the coming years.
The site offers a blend of journalism and activism. As per its mission statement, it is journalistic in its pursuit of truth, yet also committed to a worldview that goes beyond the findings of individual stories. It uses its activist journalism accomplishments and the anxieties of its audience about environmental and climate degradation to issue fundraising appeals for specific reporting initiatives. Much of National Observer's coverage is supported by these appeals or by project-specific funding largely from philanthropic organizations. Annual revenue also comes from individual subscriptions, advertising, and "enterprise subscribers" (businesses, foundations and universities).
The Tyee is a local news organization that has covered news and issues in B.C. since 2003. Like National Observer, it has a mixed business model, with revenue from two core investors, ticket sales and advertising, event sponsorship, donations, desk rentals, and other miscellaneous revenue. The British Columbia trade union movement is its largest owner and funder. Despite winning awards and plaudits for the quality of its journalistic efforts, growth has been slow over its 15-year existence and it is still widely considered a startup. The Tyee attracted about one million page views a month in 2017. It is not profitable.
Another Vancouver-based startup is Discourse Media, which aims to "engage communities underserved by other media in journalism, public dialogue and civic life." It sees the disrupted media landscape as an opportunity to redirect journalism to the service of "community impact" while creating a profitable business model that can be replicated. It generally eschews daily reporting to dig more deeply into issues such as climate change, reconciliation and sexual assault. In 2017, arguing that this kind of work could not be financed through crowdfunding campaigns alone, Discourse launched a FrontFundr campaign to raise $1 million of investment, with the promise of returns down the road in the form of dividends. As of April 2018, it reported it had achieved 95 percent of its goal through 300 investors contributing $950,000, including— according to founder Erin Millar—judges, students, Indigenous leaders, tech startup founders, environmentalist David Suzuki and media innovators. The proceeds are intended to fund a national expansion to 20 investigative reporters concentrating on specific areas of coverage.
Discourse Media reports that it has tested more than a dozen revenue models and sees the strongest growth in "direct audience revenue (subscription, membership or donations)" but notes that this approach has not been tested to a great degree in Canadian local news markets. Discourse believes Canadians will pay for journalism if they value the product, but also observed that in community consultations it held in seven underserved markets, citizens were dissatisfied with the type of journalism they had access to. Among the issues they reported: A desire for solutions rather than reporting on only conflicts or problems; coverage of their communities from elsewhere that reinforced stereotypes; and a desire for more depth in coverage.
These wide-ranging startups, and a number of others, reflect efforts being made across the media industry to identify new pathways to financial sustainability and profit. It is worth noting that with the exception of Village Media, all of these organizations received some kind of startup funding that was not seeking the ordinary return of a financial investor, in some cases from either government or philanthropic organizations.
In terms of foundation and philanthropic support, it is unclear how much money is available to support such undertakings. What is clear is that funding could only be unlocked at scale if journalism organizations can be identified as charities, either as qualified donees or through their ability to issue charitable receipts.
Assuming the organizations mentioned above would be open to operating under a charitable model rather than aspiring to profitability, the participation of philanthropy might help spark further new ventures. Of course, charitable status entails an indirect public subsidy—beyond that of non-profits—that would involve significant tax law reform by the Government of Canada. This could come in the form of a special designation of journalism for charitable purposes, a not-unprecedented approach, or a more general and widespread overhaul of Canada's approach to charities, which is rooted in a late 19th-century framework.
Of the examples discussed above, only Village Media has a specific commitment to local coverage, something the website extolls as a value: "We are proud members of the cities where we operate. We support local events, charitable causes, and recognize our neighbours' achievements. We're more than just news: Village Media is all about community." Just as Village Media calls on community-first values of its readers and marketers in Ontario, National Observer and The Tyee focus on specific issues such as the environment and social justice. When considering the future of local media in Canada, the values demonstrated by Village Media offer a possible model: How can media organizations and policy-makers tap into local pride and community values to create a sense of connection with local news media?
While there are a host of not-for-profit media organizations scattered around the globe, this model has had less traction in Canada, at least in part due to a regulatory regime that does not consider journalism-related activities charitable, thus posing an obstacle to funding from foundations and donors motivated by charitable tax treatment. One investigative journalism site, ProPublica—which was initially financed through annual donations of $10 million by California's Sandler family, plus foundation money—was imbued with professional journalistic standards by its first editor, Paul Steiger, who previously ran the Wall Street Journal newsroom. It enjoyed journalistic critical mass from the outset, with an initial staffing of 28 journalists.
Regional variations on this model exist in Texas, Minnesota and other states.
In contrast, Canadian non-for-profits operate on a shoestring. One example in Canada is Ottawa's Apt613, and its Gatineau sister organization, Sous-sol 819, which cover community news in the Ottawa-Gatineau region on an exclusively digital platform. Content is produced by volunteers, often journalism students, retired journalists, public servants and other interested community members. The organization also has in-kind partnerships with local community groups whose staff write content for the website.
It is funded by partnerships, advertisements and donations, and runs fundraising campaigns for specific projects, as with a recent campaign to fund a citizen journalism training program. Apt613 has three part-time staff. The majority of Apt613's content is on arts, culture and events in Ottawa. It does cover some civic issues and features a "news and ideas" section on its website, but this engagement is limited because of the reliance on volunteers who do not have time to cover ongoing stories. It freely admits that it is dependent on the reporting of more traditional news organizations for its feedstock.
At the other end of the spectrum is La Presse, founded in 1884 and one of the most well-established and journalistically accomplished news brands in Canada. With paper, printing and distribution—not journalism— representing the lion's share of costs in the newspaper industry, La Presse led the way in ceasing print operations and moved to an exclusively digital offering through a website, a mobile app and a daily tablet edition called La Presse+. It succeeded in moving most of its readers and many of its advertisers to its digital platforms and held on to a greater share of its revenues and newsroom staff than comparable organizations. This transformation was enabled in part by wealthy owners, the Desmarais family, who invested $40 million in the tablet app. While it has been highly successful in relative terms, losses never abated and the dominance of smartphones over tablets has imposed a need for further investment.
La Presse announced in May 2018 that is was changing its business model, specifically to transition to a non- profit organization with hopes of gaining charitable status. By departing the scene, the Desmarais family and La Presse management hope to make the media company attractive to private donors and government support. The move also places a cap on the financial exposure of the Desmarais family, who will relinquish ownership of La Presse with a final contribution of $50 million to the new entity and assumption of legacy pension obligations.
La Presse has often been the most aggressive in its class at innovating. The pursuit of charitable status and the exit of the Desmarais family is the most radical response to date of the invitation in the federal government's 2018 budget to study charitable models for news media. It comes before that review has been completed or reported on. It is not, however, the only such response. The Globe and Mail has put forth a less-sweeping proposal to set up a charitable entity that would operate in parallel to its for-profit news business. The charitable arm would seek donations to finance individual stories and beats considered within the bounds of current charity law.
The Prince Albert Daily Herald provides a recent and still untested example of employee ownership. In December 2017, a group of employees led by publisher Donna Pfeil reached an agreement with Star News Publishing to buy out the paper, which was slated to be closed, and return it to an independent, locally owned and operated news outlet. According to reports, the paper currently has 10 full-time staff.
Commenting at the time of the deal, Pfeil said the employees were committed to continuing to print the paper as a daily. The Herald also has a website. An important factor to keep in mind from a policy point of view is that the owner announced his intentions to close the Herald and was willing to engage in conversation with the employees. In many instances, papers are shuttered with no notice to support consolidation efforts. The community has no chance to respond. The Shattered Mirror discussed that a notice period be considered so efforts to keep the news outlet alive could be plausibly mounted.
In response to earlier cutbacks to the Herald under then-owner Transcontinental, a Prince Albert online news portal, paNOW.com, was created in 2012. The site was launched off the base of three local radio stations owned by the same media company. It pulls content from the stations as well as producing its own and has been financed through ad sales. In 2015, Vancouver-based Jim Pattison Broadcast Group purchased the stations and paNOW.com from Rawlco Radio Ltd. and is expanding the model to communities in Saskatchewan. The Pattison Group believes this model can work only in small communities with an established media presence and limited competition.
From the outside, Prince Albert appears a rare community of news innovation and competition. Yet it remains to be seen whether employee ownership, deeply rooted in the community, will succeed where corporate or entrepreneurial ownership has not.
The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit media organization that connects the public with content sourced from the academic and research community. The editors work with authors, typically university researchers, who have proven expertise in specific subject matter and who commit to community standards that emphasize the importance of expertise and transparency. As part of its commitment to an informed public and the free flow of information, The Conversation is a free resource, both free to read and free to share or re-publish under Creative Commons licensing. Launched in 2011 in Melbourne, Australia, it has since expanded to Africa, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and most recently opened an office in Canada in June 2017.
Canadians can access news content on a range of topics on The Conversation Canada website; content is also distributed by universities and through more traditional news platforms such as Maclean's and CBC, thanks to the website's partnership with The Canadian Press. The content of The Conversation is not news per se, but rather analysis and commentary on news. By virtue of its stable of academic writers, its commentary tends to be better informed than much of what can be found on the internet.
In terms of the business model, The Conversation Canada taps into Canada's strong network of post-secondary institutions: it is primarily financed by 25 member universities in nine provinces. In return for support, the universities can connect their researchers with a platform for sharing their expertise, and they receive data analytics about Canadians' engagement with published articles (number of views, shares, etc.). The Conversation Canada has research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and receives financial support from strategic partners, including several foundations and Universities Canada.
Headquartered in Boston, Mass., The GroundTruth Project is a non-profit media organization that offers reporting fellowships and workshops to journalists and distributes their work through editorial partners including PBS NewsHour, The Atlantic, ABC News, and the Huffington Post. GroundTruth specifically supports emerging millennial journalists working on issues that have been identified as priorities for that generation, including climate change, income inequality, youth unemployment and the experiences of refugees.
The GroundTruth Project does not accept government support; rather it is funded through individual donors as well as foundations. As of spring 2018, GroundTruth had offered more than 100 reporting fellowships and workshops to emerging journalists around the world and had distributed their work through editorial partners in the United States and abroad.
Another example of support for local news is the announcement in early July 2018 that the state of New Jersey is planning to dedicate $5 million (U.S.) to support the establishment of a new Civic Information Consortium, a non-profit with a mission to revive local media in the state. According to reports, the consortium will collaborate directly with five of the state's universities (The College of New Jersey, Montclair State University, The New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rowan University and Rutgers University) and be governed by a board of 15 selected by the state's governor, legislature and the five universities. The board will be responsible for approving grant proposals against a series of criteria with the aim of benefiting both established and startup news outlets. The consortium aims to seek additional donations and grants to continue to grow.
As discussed, the non-profit media model has had limited activation in Canada, in part because the existing regulatory regime prevents non-profit journalism organizations from accessing charitable status. A number of startups that have sought to forge close relations with their readers and listeners, including voluntary monthly contributions—The Tyee, National Observer, and Discourse Media for example—are structured as businesses rather than non-profits. In many cases, profits have not materialized. Reforming the regulatory regime to include journalism-related activities as a charitable activity could unlock at the very least new incremental resources from philanthropic sources that give some of these news organizations a shot at sustainability and growth, as described later in the report.
The Conversation, The GroundTruth Project and the IIJ highlight the opportunity to tap into post-secondary institutions and recent graduates as part of strengthening the media system. These institutions already receive public contributions from government and they also already enjoy status as qualified donees and charities. A number of foundations have expressed a higher comfort level with such arrangements given their long experience and existing mandates supporting the post-secondary sector.
Philanthropic support of local journalism has been a core source of funding for media in the United States, where non-profit organizations focused on journalism can be conferred charitable (501(c)3) status. An example is the Knight Foundation, which has been a leader in philanthropic support of community journalism. The foundation has supported a range of journalism-related initiatives, including funding for projects that work to improve diversity within newsrooms and those that support community organizations to empower and train "citizen journalists".
In promoting journalistic innovation, Knight has championed a "design thinking" approach. Community organizations begin by holding engagement and consultation processes within their communities to identify gaps in local coverage and to encourage community members' ideas and solutions. The community group then uses these perspectives to create a journalism initiative, test and pilot the idea, and make adjustments —an iterative process that responds to the preferences and needs of community members (as opposed to an external, imposed approach to journalism). To date, the Knight Foundation has funded four community groups in four cities across the United States to undertake these projects.
To encourage other funders to grow their support for local journalism, the Knight Foundation led the Knight Community Information Challenge, an initiative that offered matching dollars to American community foundations when they supported local media projects that worked to create more informed and engaged communities. Between 2008 and 2013, the foundation made more than $24 million available for community foundations to match, resulting in support for more than 100 community-led media projects. This initiative saw American community foundations play a key role in supporting information and knowledge in communities across the United States.
Philanthropic support for journalism-related initiatives exists in Canada, but funders have so far focused largely on project-specific funding or the convening of stakeholders in the media system, as the current regulations governing charities in Canada do not permit broad-scale support for journalistic activities.
The Vancouver Foundation has recently undertaken a pilot project that demonstrates the role community philanthropy can play in encouraging behavioural and business model change. While the foundation recognizes that local journalism is a community need and has invested in reporting aligned to its strategic priorities, requests for funding have begun to exceed dollars allocated to this cause. The Vancouver Foundation is mindful that its mandate and focus is on supporting registered charities through a competitive call for grant applications.
As an alternative to contracting directly with individual news organizations, in May 2018 the Vancouver Foundation began a pilot to encourage collaboration between local media organizations on an issue of community interest. Through direct communication with media partners, the foundation has offered one grant of up to $10,000 in support of a project proposal that brings together local entities and journalists from multiple outlets for a collaborative media project rooted in community engagement.
The amount to be invested would be determined by the proposal itself but could be up to $100,000 on top of the initial $10,000, depending on project duration and deliverables. If the foundation went ahead in support of the proposal, it would not hold editorial control; rather, the project would be guided by its community engagement and by a coordinator from a media outlet or a collaboration between a media organization and another community organization.
Between 2012 and 2017, The Winnipeg Foundation ran Community News Commons (CNC), an initiative that demonstrated how a community foundation can lead a local community journalism program. CNC offered training to citizen journalists and provided an online hub for them to share their stories. It encouraged the use of diverse forms of journalism, including traditional reporting, editorials, audio content and photojournalism. It also aimed to cover the broad spectrum of community news: coverage of city hall; relevant political and policy issues; arts and culture; community events; and profiles of individual community members. The website had specific subsections and stories on different neighbourhoods within Winnipeg, allowing community members to find detailed, hyperlocal information that might not have existed otherwise.
This initiative was made possible through grants and partnerships, including a three-year, $200,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, which meant that CNC never ran any revenue-generating ads on its website. Once the grant funding from the Knight Foundation ended, The Winnipeg Foundation continued to fund CNC directly until the program was paused at the end of 2017. The foundation is currently considering next steps for the project.
A more ambitious undertaking can be found at the Atkinson Foundation. Given Atkinson's focus on social and economic justice, it is concerned with the impact of news media industry cutbacks and closures on lower-income communities.
On the eve of a major Ontario government review of employment standards, Atkinson became aware that none of Canada's largest daily newspapers had a full-time labour beat. In response to this coverage deficit, the foundation partnered with the Toronto Star to create a "work and wealth" beat and to increase reporting on issues related to inequality. The Star has complete editorial independence and provides the beat reporter with the editorial, legal and other supports required to produce high quality, accessible public interest journalism. The contract that enables this partnership has been renewed twice.
This is an example of philanthropic and private resources working together to patch a hole in the country's newsgathering system. In this instance, the role of philanthropy is two-fold: (1) to protect the interests of those most adversely affected by 'news deserts' and coverage deficits; and (2) to support the role of the news media in the public policy development process. This partnership does not presume or anticipate an ongoing role for philanthropy as a core source of funding for public interest journalism. It does, however, bolster coverage relevant to underserved communities during the transition to future business models.
The McConnell Foundation has brought together media leaders and other stakeholders to discuss the future of journalism. Beyond that, McConnell has been exploring ways in which it might provide direct support. Its interest particularly lies in so-called solutions journalism, a movement that focuses on how individuals, communities and organizations are responding to the problems they are encountering rather than the more common journalistic practice of revealing only the problems themselves.
Were Canada's regulatory regime to change and include journalism as a charitable activity, the resources and relationships held by foundations could open new opportunities for local news organizations and beyond. Community foundations have the distinct mandate to serve their local, geographic communities, and would be well-positioned to support local news coverage. It is as yet unclear to what extent community foundations could and are willing to finance journalism.
Regulatory change would also open the opportunity for media organizations to connect with the broader philanthropic community across Canada. Philanthropic Foundations Canada has 134 member foundations (a mix of family foundations of varying sizes and interests as well as public and corporate grant-makers) that hold $23 billion in assets and which granted over $620 million across Canada in 2016. Unlike community foundations, which primarily serve a local geographic area, these foundations tend to focus on issue-specific areas such as education, the environment, arts and culture, health, and religion. Were regulations to change, it is possible that some of these foundations may be interested in supporting local knowledge, the news system, or journalism-related activities in connection with democracy.
As The Shattered Mirror revealed, the traditional privately owned, for-profit news media model faces increasingly severe headwinds in a digital age that favours platform distributors—most particularly Facebook and Google, who do not invest in content—and that puts continuous downward pressure on revenues for news producers. The social question is how journalism, as a public good, will be financed in future.
As with the La Presse announcement and myriad other experiments and initiatives outlined in this report, moves are afoot to try different ownership or financing arrangements while continuing to search for the elusive business model that might prove sustainable in a period of extreme and continual disruptions. Many of these experiments are predicated on a belief that success will only be possible with the added participation of new funding sources, particularly philanthropic and public money.
We refer to mixed forms of non-profit, community-based ownership as the Saskatchewan Roughriders model, in recognition of a major professional sports team operating in a small market but competing thanks to ownership by a cross-section of the community rather than a single controlling shareholder. Whether this is superior to entrepreneurial ownership is certainly open to debate, but it may be the only way to go in some smaller or mid-sized markets. Certainly, nothing will block private capital from investing where it sees fit.
For their part, the Roughriders can be traced back to 1910. Like a newspaper, the team provides an element of the social glue that creates the experiences of shared community. After running into financial difficulties, the club transitioned from private to community ownership in 2004. The Roughriders sell equity shares in the team to community members and fans across the country, and shareholders vote for a board of directors that oversees operational management. The club is a non-profit, and all money raised from games, merchandise and the shares themselves is reinvested in the team. Shareholders do not receive a financial return; rather, their participation is motivated by a desire to support the team and see it remain in the community on a sustainable basis. The number of shares that can be owned by any individual or corporate entity is limited so that nobody can gain a controlling position. Season to season, the Roughriders' financial picture has varied, but the direction has been positive under community ownership. In 2016-17, the Roughriders essentially operated on a break-even basis, taking the total surplus for the last five seasons to roughly $9.5 million.
A similar approach has been used by the National Football League's Green Bay Packers since 1923, which also places a limit on how many shares an individual or corporation can own to prevent the chances of a takeover. For both the Packers and the Roughriders, the model has united fans and reinforced the community's attachment and pride in their team.
We can imagine the Saskatchewan Roughriders model being applied in a number of ways in the news business, while recognizing that emotional attachment to a sports team runs higher than that for a news operation. In the case of a struggling or failing news operation, the community can support it using a variety of assets at its disposal. Although equity would be widely dispersed, it could be backstopped by an anchor investor such as a community foundation, university or college, or by other organizations rooted in the community and with a public interest mandate. The ownership group could also include individuals, local businesses, unions and employees. For press freedom reasons, any public support through government would need to be indirect and based on objective criteria to eliminate the danger of elected officials exercising discretion in supporting operators of a free press. Government officials could not sit on a board. Operating editorial decisions would rest with the newsroom leadership.
That said, public support of some sort would probably be necessary, whether through the tax system or via other means. The two most obvious areas for support in the news business are the capital required to innovate and some form of labour-market subsidy to ensure the continued presence of journalists reporting on their communities. Whether these are ongoing or transitional is difficult to determine at this point in the evolution of the industry. Either way, the innovation piece is a necessity, and the continued employment of journalists goes to the heart of the public good that policy is intended to save. Precedents certainly exist in other programs for the so-called cultural industries. The Canadian Periodical Fund contains a small innovation stream, and payments from the Canada Media Fund are based in part on the employment of Canadian content producers. PPF has worked previously with industry players on bringing this all together in a Canadian Journalism Fund, which was proposed in mid-2017.
With modifications, the Roughriders' approach to ownership could provide a basis for returning chain news operations to community control. As a general rule, newspapers operated by chains have grown detached from their home communities. It is certainly less expensive to publish news edited and paginated at centralized hubs into multiple publications. But doing so frays their bonds to their communities and is ultimately defeating in respect to local democratic accountability.
We can imagine community-based entities such as Canada's 191 Community Foundations, covering more than 85 percent of the population, as anchor owners—although that may require certain legal changes or assurances. Shareholdings would be capped to prevent a single owner or a group acting in concert from gaining control. Or, in time, perhaps the creation of a control position would be permitted with a concurring vote by the majority of the minority. In either case, it would be up to these reformed news organizations, most currently in freefall, to find ways to reconnect with their communities and tend to their future business models.
It may well be that particular transitional assistance is required, perhaps through a major expansion of the Canadian Periodical Fund's Collective Initiatives component. When the Roughriders were converting to a community ownership model, governments assisted by forgiving past debts, offering loan guarantees, and according non-profit status.
Editorial independence—for which reporting capacity is a prerequisite—is key to building trust and therefore sustainability. Who makes decisions around content and perspective? How do governance and policy safeguards ensure that funders or owners do not have undue influence on editorial decisions? How can certain models, like those based on membership or a shared idea of "priority areas", ensure journalistic integrity and avoid becoming (or the perception of being) politicized? These questions hit at the core of the connection between journalism and democracy, and they merit close examination when considering any business model for journalism—including both new innovations and the more traditional legacy models. Canada is fortunate to still have a relatively high level of trust in its media. This needs to be preserved.
As the consolidation of advertising revenue by global platform companies continues to squeeze the quality of civic journalism across Canada, many media organizations will have to evolve their business models to survive. The rapid shifts within digital innovation—in which technological evolutions like those from desktop to tablet to smartphone demand continual responses—will make the evolution harder still. Experimentation is underway on the ownership side, which, while necessary, does not resolve business model challenges.
Encouragingly, some new businesses are generating froth, but none has shown an ability to scale and provide material contributions to the body of civic journalistic content.
What is likely is that no single model will provide the solution. Rather, a mix of ownership models will emerge, forged by their own unique circumstances, with a greater likelihood that the chain ownership of the past 50-plus years will prove less dominant and, for at least a time, community-based models more prevalent. Public policy will play a crucial role in shaping the rules for ownership innovation and protected space for Canadian journalism. There is nothing novel about policy being used to support media, even news media, as attested by the CBC, Section 19 of the Income Tax Act, the split-run amendments in the not-so-distant past and the Canadian Periodical Fund, whose roots date to pre-Confederation Canada. New policy thinking is unavoidable if the public good of journalism is to be sustained in a relatively small market in extremely tumultuous times.


text:
This article originally appeared in the news section of byThom in May 2012.
It seems a lot of readers are grappling with which midrange zoom to stick on a D800. The commonly cited choices are 24-70mm f/2.8, 24-120mm f/4, and 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6.
Give me a moment. I need to put my flak suit on, buckle my helmet, and check the protective sandbags I'm crouched behind. Ah yes, all good.
All the things you read about resolution are both right and wrong. We've been in a tricky area with DSLRs lately, and it's going to stay tricky until we get far higher pixel counts. More resolution is always good, as you lose nothing and potentially gain something. But we're currently negotiating a specific rapid that has some hidden rocks we need to be aware of. (Can you tell I just got back from that Grand Canyon trip?)
In particular, diffraction is at the heart of some of the confusion. The irony is that compact cameras negotiated this rapid long, long ago. The small sensor size and huge pixel counts we've had most of this decade in compact cameras means that they're all pretty much efficient diffraction recorders. In other words, if you stop down the aperture at all, you record more diffraction on those compact cameras. The lens opening itself, even at maximum aperture, is already contributing diffraction to every compact camera's recording of detail. In fact, it acts like an AA filter, so guess what, you can remove the AA filter (or at least temper it considerably).
Back when we had 6mp DX or 12mp FX cameras, we didn't really have to worry much about diffraction impacts. At the extreme small apertures you could provoke diffraction far enough that it extended across the Bayer pattern enough to be fully realized, but at most apertures it wasn't an issue worth stressing over.
At 36mp on the D800, though, diffraction impacts start recording noticeably at f/8 and above. So we have about half the typically used apertures (f/2.8, 4, 5.6) where we don't have to worry much about diffraction, and half (f/8, f/11, f/16) where we do.
Now let's put another variable into play: maximum performance of a lens. Typically, that's one or two stops down from maximum aperture. And there's the rub. With the 24-70mm we're at f/4 or f/5.6 for optimal results and thus "okay." With the 24-120mm we're at f/5.6 or f/8 for optimal results and venturing into diffraction land. With the 28-300mm much of the range we're at f/8 or f/11 and definitely in diffraction land.
So here's why I put my flak jacket and helmet on and ducked behind the sandbags: different shooters are going to come to different conclusions about those three lenses on the D800.
Let's assume for a moment that they're all "equal" in performance at the same focal length. Let's pick 50mm and assume further that we need to stop down one stop for "picture perfect" results from our lens candidates. The 24-70mm is f/4, the 24-120mm is f/5.6, the 28-300mm is f/6.3. Yeah, I picked this case for a reason: the 24-70mm is not recording visible diffraction (it's there, it's just not a key influencer in final results). The 24-120mm got into the realm where some people say they see a difference on a D800, though a minimal one. The 28-300mm is further up that realm and more people will notice a small difference when pixel peeping.
Put a different way, faster apertures give you more leeway to avoid visible diffraction impacts. Couple this with the fact that the prices on these lenses predict a level of performance, too, and we get to this: the 24-70mm is the best mid-range zoom to put on your D800. Duck!
Phew, that one almost hit me.
Okay, but there's another way to use a D800: shoot at 36mp and reduce in size to 12mp or 18mp. Done properly, the diffraction problem pretty much goes away and these lenses are back to performing like they're on a D3 or D4, which is to say that even the 28-300mm looks pretty darned good. Duck!
Nah, Nah, missed me.
In reality, all three lenses are pretty good. The 24-70mm has some small faults, the 24-120mm very few more, and the 28-300mm surprisingly only a few more. But those faults do add up. On MTF tests, they array like this: 24-70mm best, 28-300mm worst. So how much worse is worse? As much as 20% in terms of absolute numbers averaged over the frame, but some of that is that the 28-300mm's best results occur at f/8, where diffraction is robbing it of a bit of performance, while the other lenses both top out at somewhere around f/5.6, where diffraction isn't yet a major factor.
I'm always reluctant to quote numbers, though, as my photographs don't consist of numbers ;~). If you can live with f/8 as your smallest aperture, the 28-300mm may be good enough that you won't notice the difference. Duck!
Come on guys, I said "may not notice the difference." I didn't say there was no difference.
Back in the film days, Galen Rowell almost never shot below f/11 (e.g. f/16 or f/22). Why? Because of diffraction. I suspect that if we pixel peeped as thoroughly then as we do now, Galen might have upped that to closer to f/8. Basically, he was trying to balance depth of field with diffraction, and I think the D800 puts us right back in the same realm as film. If you're shooting at f/11 to get DOF, it might not make a huge difference which lens you're shooting with. Duck!
Phew, you almost hit me again.
Of course, the reason to buy a D800 is...well, what is the reason to buy a D800? If you answer "resolution," then I suspect that you need to stay under f/8 and you will definitely find that the 24-70mm puts up slightly better numbers than the 24-120mm, so you automatically put yourself in the "must buy 24-70mm" camp. Duck!
Ha Ha! Didn't even come close to hitting me.
I suspect that people are stressing over the wrong thing. Yes, you can select a lens that takes away some of what the D800 gains you, but if you're jumping from a 12mp camera to 36mp, is that really going to hurt you?
But so far we've just talked about resolution (and its cousin sharpness). Don't these lenses have other attributes that come into play?
Sure. Some of you will reject the 24-120mm because of its vignetting, for example, which is at least a stop wide open (and two stops at 24mm) and at least two thirds of a stop at f/5.6. Remember, you're going to be avoiding f/8, Duck!
Wow, that one came in fast and low.
The linear distortion and chromatic aberration production is relatively high on all these lenses. The 24-120mm isn't particularly better or worse than the 24-70mm. The 28-300mm is slightly worse at a few of those things (linear distortion at the extremes) and slightly better at others. Personally, none of those attributes bother me all that much as they're pretty all correctable after the fact.
Hey! That was a cheap shot, I didn't even say Duck! Fortunately it bounced off me.
For me, it all comes back to center and edge performance, and there the lenses stack up exactly as you'd expect: (1) 24-70mm, (2) 24-120mm, (3) 28-300mm. In particular, the 24-70mm has extremely strong central performance, weak corner performance at maximum aperture that rapidly gets to very good. The 24-120mm has surpisingly good center performance wide open, though at most focal lengths the corners are far weaker, but those corners are quite good up to about 50mm once you get to f/5.6 or smaller. The 120mm performance is good in the center, weak in the edges, pretty much no matter which aperture you pick. The 28-300mm is the weakest in the center but still very good (better than I expected and strong enough for some to consider even on a D800), but at anything less than f/8 the corners are very weak. At above f/8 the lens is diffraction limited in what it can do and isn't far off from the rest.
So my preference is exactly as you might think it is and the price points suggest: (1) 24-70mm, (2) 24-120mm, and (3) 28-300mm.
Let me check my helmet for a moment. I think I'll put on another layer of flak protection.
Buy the 24-70mm. While it has plenty of modest weaknesses, that extra stop actually buys you a bit of performance at f/4 (plus, of course, you have f/2.8 ;~). If you're on a budget or can live with the edges, okay, buy the 24-120mm. It's surprisingly good on the D800, enough so that the extra focal length starts to make it highly tempting, even if that focal length is the weakest part of the lens. Plus you've got VR.
Whoa, almost didn't see that shot coming. Fortunately I'm immune to that shot, as I've long said that the 24-70mm needs VR.
The 28-300mm? No, I'll pass. I know a lot of people like the notion of one-lens-does-everything, but that seems to me to be in direct contradiction to the core of what the D800 is. I really don't see the point of buying the DSLR with arguably the best image quality available and then slapping it with the penalty of less capable glass (probably with a protective filter out front that further reduces capability).
Hey, was that a Swiss Army Knife someone attacked me with?
There's another option out there, though. Get the 28mm f/1.8G, the 50mm f/1.8G, and the 85mm f/1.8G. Yes, f/1.8. Another hint at what I'm likely to write in future reviews: I like the 85mm f/1.8G better than the f/1.4G, and I've already written that I prefer the 50mm f/1.8G over the f/1.4G because of focus speed. Other than some field curvature you have to work around, the 28mm f/1.8G is right up there, too. And these lenses will chase away most of those demons you see in the corners of the zooms. If you're not on a budget and don't mind manual focus, the Zeiss ZF.2 primes will polish those D800 pixels even more. A 21/25mm, 50mm, 100mm Zeiss combo basically nets you the best you can do right now on a D800.
This also brings me to my last thought before I duck down deep behind my bunker: maybe the 24-120mm f/4 is the right choice. Coupled with three primes, what would you be missing?
Small clarification. There was one post about this article on dpreview that pointed out a point I didn't make fully clear here. I'm writing about peak lens performance in this article (and peek performance, as in peeking at pixels). Some people do indeed get confused, as that poster wrote. If we print a D3, D3x, D4, and D800 image all at 14" wide, diffraction isn't going to limit the D3x or D800 image (it's buried too deeply in the print's pixels where you can't see it). As I noted at the beginning of the article, more resolution is always good. While I write for sophisticated shooters who know these things, I forget sometimes that there are others trying to get up to that level that might not have yet learned everything I assume or are confused by something I write because they're missing a piece of information.
One reason why Galen was often criticized by other photographers during his career was that those (medium and large format) photographers felt that he was limiting his potential gallery print size by using a smaller capture format. The diffraction would show up in very large prints because you were magnifying the small frame more to get the big print (compared to 645 or 4x5). Yet he was very careful to understand just how far he could go, and pretty much went right up to the edge by practicing great shot discipline and understanding the balance between DOF and diffraction in the equipment he was using. I'm reminded of that when I use my D800: with care I can push into what used to be the sole territory of medium format. But push too far and things like diffraction starts to show.
So let me state this: there will be times when it is worth going into diffraction-limited apertures to capture more DOF. As I noted, more resolution is always good, and done right you should gain more from the DOF than you lose from the diffraction. But once diffraction is the primary limiting factor of your len's resolving power, the gains from the extra resolution start to fall. A lot of people are buying D800's to "print big." Those people, especially, need to understand the gains and losses they're going to encounter, and to do what Galen did: carefully balance them.
Nikon's Recommended D800E Lens Set
The following lenses are ones that Nikon NPS has published as having excellent resolution, and by implication (they don't actually come out and say these are the recommended lenses for D800E users), work well with the D800E. Indeed, I'd tend to say these are the best lenses Nikon has produced in terms of optical quality, though I'd probably add the 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G VR to this list.
AF-S NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED VR
AF-S NIKKOR 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5G ED
AF-S NIKKOR 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED VR
AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II
AF-S NIKKOR 200-400mm f/4G ED VR II
AF-S NIKKOR 24mm f/1.4G ED
AF-S NIKKOR 28mm f/1.8G
AF-S NIKKOR 200mm f/2G ED VR II
AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8G ED VR II
AF-S NIKKOR 400mm f/2.8G ED VR
AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/4G ED VR
AF-S NIKKOR 800mm f/5.6E FL ED VR
AF-S Micro NIKKOR 60mm f/2.8G ED
PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f/3.5D ED
PC-E Micro NIKKOR 45mm f/2.8D ED
PC-E Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/2.8D
One thing to note about this list is Nikon has included lenses that are f/5.6 at maximum aperture, and then makes the somewhat ambiguous statement "greatest contrast…can generally be achieved at an aperture setting two to three stops down from maximum aperture." You could be at f/11 with some of these lenses if you followed that advice, and diffraction would most likely render the D800 and D800E results as equal at that aperture (there's still a very small measurable difference, but not a visual one).
I would phrase things differently than Nikon: if used at maximum aperture or any aperture of f/4 or faster, these lenses will attain more acuity on a D800E than a D800. The f/1.4 and f/1.8 lenses can be stopped down to f/2.8 or f/4 and get better than wide open results. The f/2.8 lenses generally can be stopped down to f/4 and get visibly better results on a D800E than they would wide open (the exceptions might be the 300mm and 400mm). But once you're above f/5.6, diffraction begins stealing acuity. At f/11 and above that acuity loss is going to be clearly visible if you're a pixel peeper.


Mikros, exclusive Italian distributor of Leica dental microscopes, reaffirmed cooperation with us in the renewal of the corporate identity and website.
The new Mikros website was designed paying particular attention to the mobile user experience, by developing ad-hoc responsive frontend that ensures full accessibility of the content posted from smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. The backend is based on the open source WordPress engine, already used in the previous release, which allowed the maintenance and improvement of the positioning on search engines.
The web project has been joined by the revision of the corporate identity, in particular logo restyling, creating a newsletter for the promotion of products and events, and improved social networks presence.


text:
Diary Of A Busker Day 678 Wednesday December 31st 2014 (Opposite Bellis, Time: 2:46-4:50pm).
At 8 degrees, the temperature's up a couple of degrees since three days ago, so I thought I'd venture out…maybe people are more generous on New Year's Eve…I don't know. I checked the diary and I was out last year and got £26 in an hour and a half: better than the usual average.
Second song in and that guy and his wife who always mention Yellow Bird turn up. I know his face but still can't remember his name. He says 'Remember me? Yellow Bird?' I said 'Yeah, I saw you last (thinks…) a few months ago, and before then, probably about a year ago. I'll just tune down and do Yellow Bird…it'll take a minute'. He says he'll hear it on their way down the street. So I do it, then Wheels, then the zither-style Third Man which is very taxing because I usually tune down for all that stuff but only after some considerable time warming up, and today, at 8 degrees(!), it's at least an hour.
Then, someone who I've had correspondence with via the diary website but never met in-person, turns up. It's Calvin, and I tell him he's lucky – if you want to call it that – to find me, as I haven't been out much lately. I stand up to stretch, as it were, and we have a chat for awhile. I don't mind just this once – Calvin's a nice bloke and he buys both CDs – the fingerstyle one and the original album. I must get a pen that writes well on CD covers. Calvin gave me one that I think might be on its way out.
Another good bloke – Philip – came by after, and he must have known what my first words were going to be because before I could say anything, it was 'I'm pretty bad today. Pumped full of drugs…I'm sort of on the line between pain and cheerfulness'. He was really swaying about: all the drugs, he said. I said I hope he has a better year next year, and he said 'I hope you do. I hope you make a lot of money', then he was off.
Just over an hour in and I was starting to flag a bit. The hands had had enough. I was losing the feeling in the fingers, especially in the right thumb, as the pick was cutting off the circulation. One thing I've noticed – and I'm sure I'm not imagining it – if I play a few songs with the capo on, especially if it's high up like on the 7th fret, like Blowin' In The Wind and Here Comes The Sun, the hands warm up a bit, and it must be because the hand is much nearer the body – and warmth! than when it's playing further down in open position. I'm sure of it. I mean, it's not rocket science, as they say.
A man about 70 stands in front during the second airing of Albatross, then says how much he likes it and can he have a look at the CD. So after apologising for playing not too well (due to the cold) I give one to him and say he can have it for £8. But he says he's 'a bit tight tonight' – doesn't that mean he's admitting he's mean? How can anyone admit that?! Or does he mean he hasn't got a lot on him right now. Anyway, because he's heaped loads of compliments on me, I say he can have it for £7. But no, apparently that's still too much. He asks if I'll be here later and I say maybe another 10 minutes as I'm getting really cold.
He then starts chatting, asking me how long I've been playing, so I give him a condensed version of the Hard Luck Story, ie: been playing this stuff for 5 years, had to stop playing what I was playing before for 35 years in groups, all of that. He said 'Oh, that's terrible…any bands I might have heard of?' I don't want to get into all that so I say 'No, just lots of different ones'. He then says 'Well, I used to play, but my brother-in-law Nicky, he's in Pink Floyd. He's the drummer'. (What, Nick Mason?!) 'Really?' I say. "Yeah, I'm married to his sister so…yeah, he's my brother-in-law. And Dave Gilmour told me a few stories about…Barrett. Have you heard of Syd Barrett?' (Have I heard of Syd Barrett?! REALLY?!) Indeed I have, I say.
He says 'Well, Dave Gilmour told me a couple of stories – I don't read the books or whatever 'cause I hear about it…I don't know if they're true or not. Anyway, he (Barrett) just got…you know, and he'd just play one chord for twenty minutes'. I said 'Yeah, I've heard that one'. He went on 'And he wouldn't turn up for gigs and one time they were waiting for him, in Cambridge, to go somewhere – the four of them' – here I interrupted 'Ah, there was a short time when they both – Gilmour and Syd Barrett – were playing in the group'. He says 'Yeah, and Syd Barrett just didn't turn up and in the end Gilmour said "Oh, sod this, let's just go", and they went without him'. I said I'd heard that one, too (an adolescent spent researching rock groups) and as far as I know, it was all true.
Anyway, the brother-in-law once again told me how great he thought I was, and once again I apologised for the rather under-the-weather playing, and then we said our goodbyes and that was it. But I don't care who it is – brother-in-law of the famous Nick Mason or whatever – I'm not giving CDs away free! I don't know where he went, I think it was to a restaurant to meet some people, but I was there for another half hour and he never came back. So I DID give him a chance, but I couldn't play anymore. It was getting like it was a few days ago – I could hardly feel anything. In fact, I had a job changing the hearing-aid battery when one went ten minutes before the end because it's quite a fiddly operation.
Also, I had to be back by 5:30 as I was expecting a call from Dr. Fitzgerald-Barron about arranging a prostate cancer blood test – a PSA or something.
Earnings: £38.67p + £15 Calvin gave for the 2 CDs (a profit of £10) = £48.67p
Diary Of A Busker Day 679 →


text:
› Policy/Biz
Melanoma Drug, Keytruda, Earns Accelerated FDA Approval For Last Resort Treatment
Sep 4, 2014 05:00 PM By Chris Weller
The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new melanoma drug as a last-ditch treatment option. Ed Uthman, CC BY 2.0
The new Merck drug Keytruda (pembrolizumab) was granted accelerated approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the treatment of advanced-stage melanoma on Thursday.
Melanomas are the most dangerous form of skin cancer, which itself is the most common form of the disease in the United States. Melanomas account for roughly five percent of all cancer cases. Treating them requires a careful assessment of risk to determine whether outright surgical removal is sufficient, or, in the event a tumor can't be removed, doctors need to turn to pharmaceutical treatments. Keytruda has been approved as a last-ditch effort when patients no longer respond to other drugs.
"Keytruda is the sixth new melanoma treatment approved since 2011, a result of promising advances in melanoma research," said Dr. Richard Pazdur, director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in the FDA, in a statement.
The accelerated approval comes with some qualifiers. Even though Keytruda earned a fast-track approval status, which generally respects the drug's clinical benefits, the FDA makes explicit "an improvement in survival or disease-related symptoms has not yet been established." Ongoing clinical trials continue to test the drug's benefits while it is made available to consumers.
Keytruda was approved under the orphan product designation, meaning it services an ailment or condition that affects fewer than 200,000 people each year. Melanomas were responsible for 70,853 diagnoses and 12,212 deaths in 2011 (the most recent year the data is available). Men are more than twice as likely as women to die from melanomas.
Efficacy trials of Keytruda included 173 participants who received either a recommended dose of 2 milligrams per kilogram or an increased dosage of 10 mg/kg. In the half that received the recommended dose, roughly 24 percent of subjects saw their tumors shrink. The high-dose group experienced around the same results. The effect lasted at least one to eight months, on average, and extended past this point for most people.
In safety trials, Keytruda was shown to produce minimal side effects, the greatest of which were fatigue, cough, nausea, itchy skin (pruritus), rash, decreased appetite, constipation, joint pain (arthralgia) and diarrhea. The FDA points out Keytruda also has the potential for severe immune-mediated side effects in the lung, colon, hormone-producing glands, and liver. However, most of these were uncommon.
The drug is the first to block a cellular pathway known as PD-1, which restricts the body's immune system from attacking melanoma cells. The FDA states Keytruda is intended to be taken following treatment with ipilimumab, a type of immunotherapy.


text:
You have never been to my show, you haven't seen before how looks the trumpet
Well, I think that may have been one of the best ever Eurovisions. The average standard of the entries was higher than usual, the staging couldn't be faulted, and the presenters were only very mildly irritating, so it doesn't get a lot better than that. The only ingredient that was missing was tension in the voting, but that can't really be legislated for.
Although I wasn't a believer in what seemed to be blindingly obvious to 70% of people, ie. that Sweden would win, I do think it's a great result for the contest. The dance track hoodoo has been lifted at last, and in some style. And it hardly bears thinking about what the consequences would have been had the top two been reversed - with a Russian win, half the entrants next year might well have been novelty acts of some description.
Sweden now join France, the UK and Luxembourg as the joint second most successful country in the contest's history, with five wins. In fact, it could be argued that Sweden now have a slightly better record than the UK, because one of the UK's five wins was the four-way tie in 1969, at a time when it hadn't occurred to anyone to dream up a tie-break rule!
I don't know if we've learned to accept it as a fact of life, or if it just seems less noticeable when there is a western European winner, but there doesn't seem to have been as many complaints about political voting this year. The problem was still very much present, though, and once again has only been slightly diluted by the presence of the juries. There were a few occasions when a country that I assumed was destined for a neighbourly twelve points only received eight or ten, which was presumably the jury influence. But more often than not the expected twelve arrived on cue. It's probably more of an issue at the bottom end of the leaderboard, where some countries have a natural 'buffer' of guaranteed points that leave them more or less immune from finishing bottom, whereas countries like the UK clearly don't.
It'll be fascinating to see the split between the juries and the public vote. It always seemed inevitable that Russia would do much, much worse with the juries, which leaves open the possibility that the public vote may actually have been quite tight, in spite of Sweden's landslide. I'll also be intrigued to see how the UK did with the juries, because it's become known that Engelbert Humperdinck had a shocker during Friday night's dress rehearsal, which is what the juries based their votes on. I've never liked that system - it means that the result is to a significant extent decided by something the viewing public never actually get to see. "The Hump" was in much finer voice tonight, so it's possible that if that had been his definitive performance, he might have had a better result (although probably not much better).
Either way, it's back to the drawing board for the United Kingdom, for approximately the 794th time. Luckily, if all goes according to plan in 2014, this won't be Scotland's problem for very much longer!
As always seems to happen on Eurovision weekend, Scot Goes Pop received its highest number of visitors of the year so far on Saturday. Thanks to everyone who dropped by from all over Europe and beyond, and apologies that my prediction was so rubbish for the second year in a row! My only crumb of comfort is that at least I noticed that Serbia was an excellent song and was likely to have a good result, something that seemed to be a source of utter bafflement for Graham Norton throughout the voting...
Posted by James Kelly at 1:40 AM
Labels: Eurovision
I can't fault Englebert's performance in public, but he was singing a romantic ballad which is an intimate genre; one to one.
So seeing the great big bloody stage and the dancers prancing about kind of destroyed that intimacy.
Englebert is a really nice guy and I used to go drinking with him, before he changed his name.
James Kelly May 28, 2012 at 12:22 AM
Yes, he always comes across as a decent bloke in his interviews.
James, thanks for the reply but I was setting you up for a joke!
You should have said, "changed his name? and I would have said Yes he was Englebert Humphyerdrink, when I new him.
Old joke, sorry.
I thought in fairness that the UK's song deserved a better position than it got, but choosing a 76 year old singer, who was popular in the 1960s and before most of the watchers were born, was probably not the best idea they have had... although admittedly, when you get back to the drawing board for the 793rd time, you must needs be clutching at straws.
Of course, had they managed to persuade One Direction to appear for the UK, I suspect that they would have won, regardless of the fact that people do appear to vote against the UK on the basis that they hate IT, rather than the song of the artiste.
I hope that someone somewhere is preparing the ground for a future Scottish entry, because I'm sure BBC Scotland won't be.
I suspect that pretty much regardless of what we put up, we would win, for the same reason that pretty much whatever London puts up, loses. But I'd suggest Mànran, singing partly in Gaelic and partly in English.
Their "Latha Math" (which got to No 6 in the Scottish chart in January 2011, and the completely knock-out "Oran na Cloich", which I featured on Munguin's Republic, and which tells the story of the Stone of Destiny, show what kind of work the do. Winners without a doubt.


Wizard Academy is a retreat, not a resort.
1. These aren't hotel rooms, they're finely furnished dorm rooms.
2. Consequently, there is no room service. But there will always be food in the kitchen that you can serve yourself for breakfast. On class days, lunch and dinner are brought in from fine restaurants.
3. There are no phones in the rooms, so bring your cell phone.
4. There are no televisions in the rooms.
5. All our rooms are STRICTLY non-smoking. Smoking is permitted in the courtyard only.
6. You will have WiFi in certain locations.
7. Your room has plenty of bath towels, hand towels and washcloths.
8. There is a large kitchen to which you will have 24-hour access.
9. When you return to your room in the evening, you'll find it exactly as you left it in the morning. We clean only after you check out.
Expect it to be like staying in a hotel and you'll be disappointed. Expect it to be like staying in old European castle and you'll be delighted beyond words. Enough said.