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By: Ish Theilheimer, Publisher
I called Lauren in the Ottawa Valley village of Wilno (pop. 300, 20 km west of my farm near Killaloe) the other day to ask if she'd get involved in a brand new musical variety show that I'm trying to organize at the local tavern. But she already knew all about it!
Why? Because the leading man's wife is Lauren's orthodontist in Pembroke (pop. 14,000, 70 km north of Killaloe), and the orthodontist was plying Lauren - who she knew to be a singer and actor - with questions about this new show while adjusting her braces. "Why didn't Ish tell me about this?" Lauren demanded when she could talk again. (You should know that although Lauren and I are friendly, we don't socialize, rarely speak, and only see each other in town or at events.)
So I had no idea what I was walking into when I phoned Lauren. But I sure walked into it!
That's how the news business works in my part of the world. In my view, it should be more like that everywhere. That's why we started Straight Goods.
Where I live, you notice whose truck is parked in whose laneway. You notice if someone's car has broken down and you stop, whether they're friends of yours or not. Because you know where they live, who their family members are, where they work, how they did in school, whether their uncle drinks too much, whether their dog runs deer, and much, much more about them.
You need this knowledge. You're expected to have it. In fact, it's almost rude not to have it.
Not everyone can or wants to live in a small town or rural area. But places like this have important lessons for all of us. News travels in a very natural and efficient way here.
News is about things that happen that matter to the people getting the news. News gets passed from person to person. Everyone who passes it on adds their point of view and their own experiences. It just so happens that most people in a position to pass on the news to Canadians don't share the same interests as my neighbours in Killaloe or yours in Burnaby, or Moncton, or Come-By-Chance. And I don't get the impression they much care what we think.
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Straight Goods is about bringing the news home. It's about bringing you, the news reader, into the story, and giving you a chance to become part of the story |
As a result, too much of what passes for news today doesn't matter much to my neighbours. Media personalities debate whether a reporter who insulted millions of viewers on camera should have been sacked. Talking heads and so-called "think tanks" find lots of space for their views that Canadians will be happier if we pay as much for health care as Americans do. The Prime Minister, beset with charges of incompetence and corruption, rolls out a "clarity bill" designed to muddle and confuse, and it goes front page for weeks. No wonder my neighbours turn off to news.
They're more interested in why the young local nurses who went to Texas to work came back. Why Bell sells TV satellite dishes that work great but don't carry local TV stations. Whether their kid will die for lack of emergency care, as an 18 year old boy from Scarborough did last week when an ambulance he was in was turned away from the hospital.
Or whether they'll ever be able to retire if they only make $12 an hour and can't afford $10,000 a year to invest in the mutual funds advertised on TV.
Straight Goods is about bringing the news home. It's about bringing you, the news reader, into the story, and giving you a chance to become part of the story and add to it with your own story, knowledge or experience. It isn't a bunch of office workers in the sealed atmosphere of a downtown high-rise office. It's Ish in Killaloe on his farm, and our editor Susan with her baby at home in North York, and our other editor Stephen, whose Ottawa workplace is not a spot at the National Press Gallery, but home in a mixed-income downtown neighbourhood.
And Straight Goods is all our other staff in Maxville (ON), Toronto, London, Montreal, Vernon, Vancouver, and elsewhere. It's working writers contributing from across the country, and citizen reporters telling their side of the stories.
And Straight Goods is you and all the people you know. We are your virtual neighbours. Like the neighbours on my line, we've come to share the news and pass it along.
We want the straight goods from you. About products and services you purchase or the ones you receive from public agencies. About your health and family and work and rights and community and how you protect these vital things in your lives. About how you and your neighbours beat the system.
We want to develop citizen journalism and build a healthy relationship between the working writers and editors who produce the news and the people who receive and rely on the news and pass it along.
We're going to bring you straight goods every day. Don't be strangers.
Ish Theilheimer has spent most of his 50 years raising hell, attempting to beat the system, organizing in the community, playing fiddle, and running small businesses - welding, bar bands, theatre, organic pork and hot dogs, and, for the last 20 years, freelance wordsmithing. He works and lives with his wife and partner Kathy Eisner in the log home they and their daughter Sandi built in 1979 on an old farm near Killaloe in the upper Ottawa Valley.
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