Good Bye Globe And Mail

The Globe and Mail and I go back thirty years when it was first released across Canada as our national newspaper.  I at first ignored it, then a tenant in the house where I lived moved out before her subscription ended (she was of course from Toronto) and I took over reading it till the subscription ended a few months later.  I at first was skeptical, having long believed it to be a newspaper of and for the business elites.  Yes, this remains true to this day but reading the entire paper from cover to cover I was impressed by a quality of journalism I had not seen in our local rags here in Vancouver.  I was hooked and soon was buying it.  Luckily the price then was twenty-five cents weekdays, 50 cents weekends.  The minimum wage in B.C. then was $3.65 an hour, so the weekday Globe and Mail cost a whopping just less than one fifteenth of the minimum hourly wage of the day.  The paper was in those days a modest affair, two sections, weekdays, four on weekends.  It was all in black and white and reading it suggested that you were either well educated or highly successful in business.  Reading the Globe and Mail every morning became part of my daily ritual, usually read from cover to cover while having my morning coffee, lying on the couch, before heading off to work.  It was pure bliss.

     The price of the Globe and Mail rose gradually, but more quickly than the minimum wage, to fifty cents, then sixty, then seventy-five, eighty-five, then one dollar, where it remained frozen for a while.  Then it crept up again, to $1.25, then to $1.50, $1.60, then early last year, 2013, it jumped to $1.90 weekdays, $3.30 for the weekend edition.  In the meantime the basic minimum wage in BC has risen to only $10.25 an hour, so that now for the privilege of reading this journal for the privileged one would be paying one fifth of the minimum wage, up three times from one fifteenth in 1983.

     The format has changed and the size has increased.  Now it's in colour, one of the last holdouts to change from the traditional black and white format.  They added a life section, on weekdays full of articles of human and social interest, psychological and sociological inquiries, and general trivia and silliness, but very intellectually appealing trivia and silliness as shown consistently in my favourite feature of the Globe and Mail, "Social Studies" by Michael Kesterton.  The weekend edition now runs the Lifestyles section which I find unnecessary and offensive for its complete obsession with fashion and interior decoration and absolutely nothing of depth or intellectual interest. 

     It was becoming gradually very clear that the venerable Globe and Mail, owned by the Thompson Group, one of Canada's wealthiest family firms, was increasingly directing its content and advertising copy to appeal to not just the wealthy, but the obscenely wealthy.  The ads were getting to be all about outrageously expensive jewelry, fashions, cruises, houses and condominiums, and food.  The feature columnists were all writing from or trying to appeal to the perspective of the One Percent: regular screeds against the poor and marginalized; a callous disregard towards those less fortunate; yard after yard of column inches supporting George Bush, his presidency, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as politically conservative and neo-liberal economic ideologies.   

        There have also been some brilliant writers offering a sense of hope and vision for this era characterized by massive greed and the most savage and reptilian style of economic competition.  I first became aware of Naomi Klein when the Globe and Mail was offering her weekly column space in 2000.  As she became more published, and her brilliant exposes of the unethical and socially destructive dangers of global capitalism became more known in her brilliant works "No Logo" and "The Shock Doctrine", she all but disappeared from the pages of the Globe and Mail until there was only the occasional article written by her in the Op-Ed Section.  It was also in the Globe and Mail that I first read the beautiful and enlightened writing of historian Erna Paris and later read her brilliant book "Long Shadows" which occupies a place of honour in my personal library.  And I do greatly miss Jan Wong, her brilliant incisive writing, her obvious compassion for the poor and less fortunate as well as her deliciously nasty weekly send-ups on the foibles of celebrities on whom she was dining in her "Lunch With" column.  Her departure from the Globe and Mail to me marks the very end of some of the best writing this paper has had to offer and I am sure that she is sorely missed by many. 

     I have the Globe and Mail to thank for introducing me to some of the most brilliant writers and thinkers of our time, and reading the weekly book reviews became for me a Sunday morning pleasure that I still at times feel nostalgia for.  A college dropout like me owes an incredible debt to the Globe and Mail for the impromptu remedial education that I have encountered week after week in the Op-Ed, the Focus section and the book reviews.  I also first learned of one of the most beautiful places on earth, the Monteverde Cloud Forest in Costa Rica in February 1994, and I have since been to this enchanted and enchanting place three times and expect to return in the future.

     Reading the Globe and Mail every morning became more than a routine, more than an ingrained habit.  It was a life support, an addiction if you will.  In 2007, when I kicked the caffeine habit I began purchasing fair trade cocoa which I would every morning make from scratch with milk, brown sugar and butter into a delightful daily beverage (I have so far lost more than twenty of the over forty pounds this daily indulgence has helped me gain, since I gave it up in May) while reading the daily Globe and Mail.  Almost every day except for a period of the deepest poverty imaginable in a First World Country in 1989, I have bought and read this paper.  Even while I was on welfare for three and a half years I was always able to budget just enough money to maintain my daily vice.  From time to time I would try to break the habit. In 2009 I enjoyed three months of success when I discovered CBC Radio One on the fm dial (I cannot get am radio where I live downtown for reasons I am unable to explain).  I realized very quickly that I was reading a day later in the newspaper current affairs that I had already heard on the radio, and usually with better and more thorough coverage.  Meanwhile the editorial content, the general writing and the advertising were becoming increasingly geared towards the tastes of the One Percent, and soon I no longer recognized the newspaper I had once loved and caused me so many hours of reading enjoyment.

     When the price went up yet again to $1.90 weekdays and $3.30 weekends I decided that it was time to pull the plug.  I gave up my cocoa vice along with the Globe and Mail, began starting my day better rested and able to take on work earlier in the mornings, since I no longer had to finish reading my precious Globe and Mail.  Listening to evening news programs on the CBC beginning with The World at Six, then As It Happens and often concluding with Ideas has provided me with more than a replacement for the daily paper.  It is giving me news and access to ideas, writers, people of interest and world events with greater detail and perspective without the bias of the wealthy to cloud my judgment.  And it is all free.  I am also often free, while listening to the news programs to work on my paintings and read, as well as get on with making and eating dinner and cleaning up afterward, so I can use my time a lot more productively and efficiently. I have estimated that I am saving up to fifty dollars a month now that I no longer read the Globe and Mail which has done wonders to enhance my travel budget.  Speaking of which, here's a bit of a howler for you: Last year in the Globe and Mail it was determined that anyone earning less than $44,000 a year, cannot afford to take a foreign vacation.  I really had to laugh at this because I earn considerably less than $20,000 a year, given my low paying job, but also with the blessing of living in subsidized housing. Having no expensive habits and a naturally frugal bent I am able to vacation in Latin America annually for at least a month and in decent hotel accommodations (not luxurious but still passable and better than passable).

     A couple of months after I gave up this venerable daily publication it was publicly announced that the scope of journalism, editorial content and advertising in the Globe and Mail are going to be directed exclusivelytowards the wealthy, those who earn over $100,000 a year, or if you will, the One Per Cent.  After this ultimate insult I have no intention of buying another issue of this paper.  When a newspaper has lost its broad appeal and begins to focus on a single strata of society, particularly the wealthiest and most powerful strata of society, this paper has lost its legitimacy.  It has certainly lost me.

     I sometimes think it's a pity that the Globe and Mail has never appointed a columnist who is genuinely poor and marginalized to write well-written and informed articles about poverty and marginalization in this country from the perspective of someone who is poor and marginalized.  I have sometimes entertained this fantasy myself.  I am sad to say that this will always remain a fantasy.  Until pigs fly.

no pigs were harmed during the writing of this article