Some of my most popular, and favourite, dispatches

I was contacted recently by Kristen Curtis, a student of journalism in her final year at Wilfrid Laurier University. She asked me the following excellent questions. 1. How did you become ...
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I'm happy to report that the state of hyperlinking in news in Canada appears to be improving. It's a tentative claim. However, last year I wrote twice about what I ...
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The thing about economics is that it's a real scientific discipline. Like many sciences, there's some more theoretical branches and also some more applied branches. And the application of economic ...
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It's two thousand years since the birth of Christ; the zero year. I think it's time to free ourselves from the Christian calendar. To be clear, we didn't make the ...
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Some time ago Nikiforuk published an article at Foreign Policy declaring Canada a petrostate. It caused a big splash and became a talking point in the culture wars that make ...
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I've been interested in hearing more about a case of a PEI writer and journalist who was ejected from the Press Gallery for being an advocate. I have thoughts about ...
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In the days and months following the bombing of the world trade centers, there was a kind of smothering of public conversation. The range of things one could say about ...
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It's no small chore trying to understand climate change. We live in a society that is lacking in scientific literacy. Even those of us that have some, have little time ...
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Journalists claim that it's their duty to give context to important events. The floods in Alberta are important. And an important context is climate change. I'm not saying that climate ...
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Postmedia put up paywalls recently on their online properties. Whenever this kind of thing happens there's usually a flourish of media about the future of journalism, and what digital journalism ...
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This is my third exploration of racism in the writings of Andrew Coyne. Today's argument will focus on the  discourse of denial. I should mention that Coyne wrote three articles ...
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For the purposes of this second argument, I will be referring to three articles written by Andrew Coyne for Postmedia News in January. On my view, Coyne showed poor judgement ...
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This is my first argument toward the conclusion that journalist Andrew Coyne made claims that were racist. The remarks by Coyne, that I will focus on for today's argument were ...
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A little while ago I posted a review of several journalists' positions on First Nations governance, Indigenous land rights, Idle No More, Chief Spence and Attawapiskat. With the exception of ...
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There is an old idea that journalism has an important role to play in a healthy democracy. I mostly believe this. Some would even argue that the press is a ...
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I challenge white journalists to tell us how much they know about about the history and relationship between settlers and Indigenous people.[1. I have some severe discomfort using the words ...
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I see bias everywhere. Yes we all struggle with our biases. I wish the reporters, editors and owners at the Globe and Mail would own up to theirs. There’s bias ...
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This is my sixth post in my series on Dan Gardner's article about the Muslim veil. I want to reflect on the language of hate, and on having successful public ...
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I approve of science. I approve of evidence and research. By and large and in the long run, science reveals the facts or transparently fails to do so. Along the ...
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I've fallen behind publishing some short reflections about the editorial Dan Gardner wrote about women who choose to wear a veil. I'm still committed to writing them. I have a ...
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Democracy is not a single style of governance. Democracy is not simply about having elections. Democracies come in many colours and fashions. Democracy is a matter of degree and dimension ...
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I was recently asked on Twitter what the difference is between Santa Claus and the orbital model of the atom. It was asked in a way, that suggested there was ...
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Folks have always understood that the various news outlets have brands. But I think this understanding has been superficial. People are highly aware that major news outlets have different logos ...
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I have started writing about the killing of Robert Dziekanski on numerous occasions. I always scrapped my drafts because I was worried that my anger over the killing and the ...
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A few years ago I was at a dinner party at a cabin on Vancouver Island. The host, and my good friend, Dalton, told a story. He told us a ...
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Okay. I've been very critical of journalists and newspapers that are getting it wrong on climate change: here and here and here. But you should know that I have moments ...
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Here's a fun thing that you can try at home. It's a simple form of media analysis. The result of this particular analysis leads me to think bad thoughts about ...
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Today is a good day to think about our life support system. Our life support is our earth. It's a delicate mixture of gravity, various nuclear forces that hold our ...
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