Through the Looking Glass

The project where I read a book a week this year. See more about my project here (and feel free to leave your book suggestions). You can read my other 52 in ’11 posts here.

Book 25: Falling Backwards by Jann Arden
My rating: Must-read

OK, I admit, being a fan of Jann Arden’s might make me a little bias to review her book in a fair and just manner. However, don’t let that dissuade you. Arden’s memoir, which takes us through her childhood pretty much up until she signs her record deal at the age of 30, is one of the best books I’ve read this year (and I’ve been aiming to read a lot.)

This is not Arden’s first book — she has published two other which were based off her online journal entries (Arden’s never called it a blog, so I’m hesitant to call it a blog). Those books are far different from Falling Backwards. If I Knew, Don’t You Think I’d Tell You  and I’ll Tell You One Thing, and That’s All I Knew were written in an abstract tone. (And as an Arden fan, I’ll even admit I was not a fan). Falling Backwards is not like the books that preceded it.

At a speaking engagement for her book last month, Arden told me that because of that, writing this book was much harder than the two that came before it.

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Note: I originally published this on my Tumblr, which focuses on journalism, but thought I’d post it over here, too.

A piece in the Toronto Standard today this week demands more accountability for online news. Amelia Schonbek uses CBC’s Rob Ford called 911 and used the F-bomb story (from almost two months ago) as a way to illustrate her point that online news is not accountable enough to its readers.

(F)ew have discussed a potentially more serious issue: the manner in which CBC.ca published and revised its reporting as the story developed. … The CBC’s original story was published at 5:18 a.m. on October 27. Over the course of the day, it went through several updates. By the time it was last updated, after 9 p.m. the same night, it had become a completely different piece—new information had been added, old information had disappeared, and it even had a different headline.

Schonbek is quick to point out many newspapers often do this, but she writes this is wrong because:

There was no way for anyone to revisit and assess the original content. It was made invisible.

I don’t know that I buy that. I can’t turn back the clock to compare the two stories, but I do believe the CBC stood by its story. There was no correction, no retraction. If anything, the CBC probably moved the story forward by adding Ford’s apology and denial, as well as the comments made by his brother, Doug Ford. To me, this is all good reporting and what the story has become.

It’s important to remember that with any story, the story that is posted at 5:18 a.m. is bound to change throughout the day into something different by 9 p.m.

Schonbek does propose changes to how online news is posted to make it more “transparent” to its readers:

Newspapers could, for instance, implement a tab system: at every URL, a reader would be able to click through different versions of the story in different tabs, each of which would be time-stamped. The most recent version would appear on top, but if readers wanted to reference past reporting, they could simply flick through the tabs and compare versions.

While an interesting idea, I don’t think this is at all practical. Online news consumers, for the most part, would never read all that content, they just don’t care that much.

The biggest question I have after reading this piece, and other pieces like it, is: Why do we not criticize 24 hour news stations, such as CNN, in the same way we criticize online news?

In her piece, Schonbek also references how (some) of the media killed Gabrielle Giffords back in January. Fair enough, but it wasn’t just online news that got that wrong, CNN also reported the congresswoman had been killed. CNN even said it had confirmed it “with CNN sources.” Now, whether CNN’s sources were tweets from NPR and Reuters remains to be seen, but CNN still killed the congresswoman. And then, she was brought back to life and no one demonized the news network for their misreporting.

(I’m not saying online news reports should not correct errors, or point out to readers when they change something that was wrong in their copy, but I do not believe that to be the case here. As far as I know, CBC continues to stand by their original story.)

News networks are often filled with erroneous reports throughout the day as a story develops because, well, a story is developing. If the Internet did not exist, then that CBC story would have been read on air first thing in the morning, then changed, amended and moved forward as the day went on. One would assume the story you would hear on the radio on your way into work would be nothing near what you’d hear on the way home.

Where is the demand for accountability with 24-hour news networks? Why are we demanding online news be held to a higher standard than the rest?

I was 12 years old when Jann Arden released Living Under June.

I remember falling in love with Could I Be Your Girl like I had never fallen in love with a song before. I was too young to know what it meant, or how desperately sad its lyrics are (“I am worthless sounds compared to all your perfect words”), but I loved it. I taped it from the radio and listened to it over and over again, writing out the lyrics in school notebooks, with hearts dotting the eyes.

I added it to my Christmas list that year. I remember standing in the record store a week before Christmas, holding the CD in my hands, wanting it right then like nothing else.

Santa didn’t bring me Living Under June for Christmas that year. Neither did my parents or grandparents. I took the money that I got for Christmas and bought it before the new year came. It’s not only the first CD I remember buying, it’s the first one I listened to front to back over and over and over again.

This Christmas marks 17 years since that Christmas. And while Living Under June was my first Jann Arden album, it was far from my last. Ten albums and five concerts have gotten me through my share of tween and teen heartbreak, self-doubt, self-loathing and  finally, to my own self-acceptance.

I can’t explain what that music means to me. It was a life-preserver when I needed one. A shoulder to cry on when I had none. It was someone who understood what I was going through like no one else could. I strive to be myself, if only because the fridge magnet I got at the first Jann Arden concert I went to tells me to.

I was 24 when met Arden for the first time when she was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2006. It was the first time I had interviewed anyone on camera. I interviewed a dozen celebrities before her, including Eugene Levy, Jennifer Coolidge and Brendan Fraser, and didn’t bat an eye. When it came to Arden, my 12-year-old self took over and I broke down crying. She was gracious and helped me get through it, but I was mortified. (And oh, yes, it’s all on video, which I still have and cringe every time I watch it.)

Not my most shining professional — or personal — moment.

So when I heard this year Arden was releasing not just another album, but a memoir as well (Falling Backwards), I knew I had to read it. And when I heard she was doing a Q&A and autograph signing, I set my sights on redeeming myself.

And I did. She didn’t remember me, which is good, but she told me not to let it get me down, “everyone has moments like that.”

I was glad to get to pose for a picture with her without tears welling in my eyes, and to be able to talk to her like the grown up — and professional — I am. Maybe I’ve grown up in the five years since, or maybe I just realize that while that 12-year-old hearing Could I Be Your Girl for the first time on the radio will always exist inside of me, it doesn’t mean I wear her on my sleeve.

As for Arden’s memoir? I’m halfway through it and will give a full review when I’m done (along with some of the other 52 in ’11 posts I’ve been neglecting), but suffice it to say, I’m not at all disappointed with the book.

Thanks for everything, Jann.

Is it just me, or has TV suddenly discovered Twitter?

Sure, TV shows or personalities tweeted before: Survivor‘s Jeff Probst has live-tweeted episodes for the past few seasons, so has Phil Keoghan of The Amazing Race. But suddenly, it seems every TV show wants you to tweet with them while you’re watching the program. Some even give you a hashtag to use with your tweets.

Some recent examples include 60 Minutes (#60minutes), 20/20 and CBC’s The Fifth Estate. Sure, these programs are all newsmagazines, so I can see why they might want to engage their audience on this new medium (and hey, trying to get people to watch live TV again and commercials instead of having them PVR it, is a better business model). But there’s one show who’s sudden interest in social media perplexes me.

The Good Wife.

Yes, that Good Wife. The courtroom show. The women’s show that men also happen to like so it’s a hit.

A couple weeks ago for their season premiere, viewers were invited to follow the actors feeds (and the main Good Wife account), while they tweeted during the episode.

That alone caught me off guard. While I don’t mind keeping half an eye on my iPad while watching Survivor or The Amazing Race, The Good Wife is a show I want to pay attention to (and typically it’s a show you need to pay attention to, it leaves a lot unsaid).

But the I found this: A fake gossip website that’s blogging about things that are happening in storylines in the show.

It leaves me a little perplexed. I know that women tend to use social media more than men, but I wonder how much traction stuff like this gets. Do people tweet while watching the show? Is there an appetite for some gamification around the web? Will the show’s demographic even participate in an online game based on the show?

I’m not sure where The Good Wife is going with all of this, but I’m interested to find out.

Why don’t creative young writers care if they get paid?

That’s the headline on a column by Russell Smith in The Globe and Mail, where he laments that young writers, like me, don’t care if they get paid for their work, unlike old writers, like him.

The column stems from a “recurring argument” he has with young writers about why they choose to write for publications, such as The Huffington Post, where they are not paid for their work. They claim they do it to further their brand, while Smith’s generation (the older generation), would never imagine writing something for free — let alone to something like HuffPo that can afford to pay its writers.

He writes:

There now exists an entire generation of intelligent people who have grown up without any expectation of compensation for imaginative work.

As a young writer, I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Nor do I believe that I contently give away my creative work for free without getting anything back out of it.

As someone under the age of 30, I can only assume I am the demographic Smith is speaking about. I wish he were as right about me as he thinks he is.

I began writing for newspapers at 17, and I was paid for every word I wrote. Sometimes I was paid too little for the amount of work I put into a story, other times too much, but I was paid.

When I moved to a small town, the weekly papers there were happy to have me contribute, but I didn’t get paid from them until I began working as a staff reporter at one of them. Weekly papers don’t have the budget for freelance. (Or at least not the ones in my small town.) Nor should they. After all, being a community paper means the community contributes. Paying every citizen who contributed to a small town weekly paper would bankrupt it pretty fast, I would guess.

When I moved to Toronto, I knew I’d have to take some lumps to make it. I worked for free at a website here and there, volunteered for my school paper for two out of three years, and wrote stories and blog posts when I worked at a national paper that I considered, for the most part, part of my job as a sports copy editor.

Did I make a willing decision not to get paid for my work? I wouldn’t say that. But I do have this blog. And no one, not even Google Ad Sense, is paying for me to write this blog post.

Perhaps then Smith is right. I’m just too willing to give away my creative content, but then I look at what I got out of all that giving away and suddenly things aren’t as black and white.

I got exposure. I got experience. I got to interview celebrities and cover stories and beats I love. I got to find my voice.

And yes, Smith addresses all this:

Somehow, they know, money will come in from another source. They can get famous fast this way, and it’s gratifying to have a huge audience.

That’s right, I do what I do to get famous. And I’m pretty famous, in case you couldn’t tell. (I mean, more than 1,000 people follow me on Twitter.)

Smith explains in his day, reporters worked their way up:

We old farts did that tiring reporting/interviewing stuff for years before we were allowed to write our opinions on things.

Well, people still work their way up, for the most part. The whole getting-famous-for-a-blog-or-something-else-you-did-for-free is prettty rare.

Another difference between the two generations?

I still don’t even aspire to this ideal of not being edited; not being edited doesn’t seem like a benefit to me. I still have a deep-rooted (and unjustified) instinct telling me that something published has value only if it has been commissioned by someone else.

I prefer being edited. I know this blog is not perfect because I wrote it and no one proofed it. I’m not an expert writer on my own, I know that (and so do my editors). Does something published only have value if commissioned by someone else? I say no. There’s lots of great ideas out there, and some of them come from reporters themselves.

Should the Huffington Post pay? Maybe, but if you’re happy getting the kind of exposure you would get writing for a site like that, then there’s no need to complain.

Now, if you’d excuse me, I’ve got to get back to some writing I’m getting paid for.