Not even if it’s free

I’m sorry, folks, but I appear to have gotten a bit, well, wordy with this one. Must be the subject matter. Please excuse me for the moment; normal programming will resume shortly.

Every morning, I arrive to work just before 7am. Stepping off the bus, I take the escalator (or, if it is not working, the stairs) to enter the mall which I cross to get to coffee, and the office. Before I am even inside the mall, I am accosted.

Perhaps accosted isn’t the right word, because there is no physical violence associated with this woman’s approach. She is short, and rather on the ugly side of plain, with a phlegmatic face, eyes close together, uneven teeth and an involuntarily protruding tongue. Her once-blue jacket is done up carelessly, and she wears a knit hat that echoes headwear seen in the better quality of British period comedies atop mediaeval peasantry.  She shouts monosyllables as she cheerfully, urgently, offers me what she is offering everyone else. George Clinton, in my left ear, is imploring me to tear the roof off as she waves a newspaper at me. I politely decline to take it, without a word.

If I were to speak, I dread to think what might come out of my mouth, for there are strong personal reasons behind my refusal to accept this seeming gift.

Regarding newspapers in general, I am about as likely to read one as I am to smoke a cigar on a city bus: not very. The occasional exception is made; if somebody I know is featured in a column, for events that cannot be misinterpreted or misrepresented, for research purposes, or if I’ve been quoted in an article. By and large, however, print media is no longer part of my daily diet, and I find myself no less rich for the loss.

It’s moderately amusing to me that this particular paper (which I shall not name, out of courtesy and fear that it will become even more popular) has taken to not just leaving free stacks in apartment lobbies, but suiting up the obviously otherwise unemployable to push them on weary morning travellers in underground alleyways. One requires about the same level of literacy to read it as one does to read a stop sign; but the stop sign is likely informative, timely and unbiased.

There are two different opinions I am used to hearing about this paper. One is that it is a tabloid, and the other is that it is a rag. Really, since its format is technically a tabloid format, and it is, to be sure, trite, plebian and less than 15% actual news by weight, I prefer to split the difference and refer to it as a tabloid rag, when I find it necessary to refer to it at all. It does not help matters when Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien graces the cover with his friendly but grotesque Batboy-like countenance, making it appear, for all intents and purposes, to be a colour edition of the Weekly World News.

Has this Ottawa institution felt the sting of upstart eight-page free newspapers (one of which is published by the same media conglomerate) which provide the same amount and quality of news, supported entirely by advertising, and are so popular that they practically form a second sidewalk around bus shelters in the region? And does it really think that by giving away free samples, it will win readership? That only works if you have worthwhile content, a “hook” or a “gimmick.” Don’t they know that?

I’m definitely not in the socioeconomic bracket to sneer at the proletariat, and I don’t have the formal education to insist that illiteracy-fostering blights like this be swept from the social landscape. But I am appalled that a newspaper like this can even survive in a city populated by bilingual, university-educated federal government employees. God, people, pick up the Globe and Mail, or the National Post (it has the Financial Post inside, that’s got to be useful to you!) — who cares if you have time to read it, if it costs a little more? Don’t you care about your literacy, your vocabulary, your level of culture?

No, I suppose it’s just me being too picky again. I’ll continue to smile and turn down that free paper in the morning, and the rest of the world can do whatever they want. I will twitch and wince my workday away confronting an inbox full of punctuation-deficient, grammar-resistant e-mails that defy interpretation. And I shall remain hopeful that the unaesthetic culture of semiliteracy in which we live will provide adequate contrast to highlight those of us who can write, who can read, and who will gladly spend the extra money for a higher-quality product.

That is, if you’re inclined to read the papers at all, these days.