A Basic Income for All. Louis Shalako.

The freedom to do what you want.

Louis Shalako

I’m just putting together my final income, mileage and expense report for the Ontario Disability Support Program. I’m retiring after 30 years on ODSP.

I will drop that off downtown tomorrow morning with the greatest of pleasure.

And then, I will be free—

Maybe even rich.

I will actually get a raise of five hundred a month, just for going off of disability.

I earned $1.470.00, working part-time, for 21 days in August of 2024. Now, you wouldn’t want to live on the pension, and you probably couldn’t live on the earnings either. I also drove 1,558 k on business last month. Taken together, they seem to add up to something a poverty-stricken person could actually live on, assuming one has lived in a rent-controlled building for thirteen years, and assuming Landlordie McLandlordface doesn’t suddenly get some sort of a fucking brainstorm.

Even now, I’m still paying just under $10,000.00 a year in rent, and assuming I got renovicted, it’s pretty clear I couldn’t get anything under $20,000.00 or more per year.

The point is, that the disability pension represents a kind of basic income, providing an income floor, below which, a citizen is theoretically, not supposed to fall.

The ODSP pension was always a good thirty to forty percent below the poverty line. The guidelines for business and employment were always restrictive. The mileage rate, an allowable deduction, was for many years a ridiculous $0.17 per kilometre. You were only allowed to earn up to $200.00 per month, before they would apply a claw-back of $0.50 on the dollar. Yet you could receive a gift of up to $7,000.00 per year, with no penalty at all—no, the heinous crime was that you had earned it. The disabled, showing signs of independence, earning a little money, and clawing their way up out of poverty.

It was more than they could bear, what with all that stigma going around.

Staff worked their no-good, sorry asses off trying to prevent such a thing, and for the most part, they were very successful…so successful, that quite a number of us are currently residing in tents down at Rainbow Park.

You will forgive me if I choose not to be among them.

I have better things to do.

***

Nowadays, you can earn up to $1,000.00 per month without penalty and the deductible mileage rate is up to $0.40/k.

My point here, is simply the one word, ‘restrictive’. A no-questions-asked, basic income, for citizens who fall below a certain cut-off threshold, (one that tapers off with rising income), regardless of ability or disability, (and no bourgeois moral judgements), would be very desirable in terms of lifting hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of our fellow Canadians, not just out of poverty, but into the middle class.

It might even keep a few of us out of homeless encampments.

If having a strong middle class is a be-all and end-all for social policy, and it is one of the pillars of a strong democracy, no argument there, then surely a basic income (for those who qualify), would be a very good thing.

When I went to work for #superdough I was maxing out my credit card every winter and it would take half the year to pay it off again. Groceries and gasoline, right. I was fortunate, in that the job is out in the country, and I could deduct $0.40 per kilometre in mileage. So I earn maybe $60.00, then write off twenty. This means I could earn more, and the actual fuel costs are less than twenty dollars. You’re not making a profit. $0.40/k in no way reflects the true costs of vehicle ownership.

You’re just trying to stay ahead of some kind of a curve. It is about cash flow, and living on the margin—a very slim margin at times.

When I first began, I wasn’t getting too many hours. Ah, but we needed clean totes for our deliveries—and if no one else wanted to wash totes, then all the minutes or hours a week spent washing totes were mine for the taking. When no one else had the confidence to call the distributor, and order fifteen or twenty sacks of flour, well, I had the guts where maybe they didn’t. I took responsibility, ladies and gentlemen, and predictably enough, I ended up running the place. Where others saw it as a crappy job, or a chore, or an unwelcome obligation to the family business, I saw the opportunity, to make the most of what was there. And it can be a crummy job at times.

The Boss was getting older, and no one else wanted it…the Boss offered me a chance to buy in, all sweat equity, and now I own a little piece of the business. It’s what we call ‘free enterprise’, or maybe just freedom. The fucking freedom to do what we needed to do.

I have no illusions there, like when the mixing machine, all $12,000.00 of it, makes loud noises and isn’t working properly, and guess whose job it is to fix it? Mine. That’s why I downloaded all the drawings and parts sheets for the machine. I’ve studied them, and I could take that thing apart and put it back together if I really needed to. And when I take things apart and put them back together again, not only do they run, they run better than before…

(Hell, I might even run for city council next time around.)

Quite frankly, the service techs we’ve called in the past seem remarkably unwilling to take on that job, and I don’t blame them. It really would be one big, greasy mess and you never quite know what you might find in there…the machine, I mean. Not city council.

When it comes to city council, it's pretty obvious what we're dealing with. One big, greasy, fucking mess, ladies and gentlemen.

The point is, I took the base income, and built upon that income, to the extent, that I could invest not just time but money—my bank was only too happy to loan me $10,000.000 in order to purchase a good, used minivan. A minivan which I use to deliver our orders to our customer, which pays an hourly rate, it takes me back and forth to work, and it has more than earned its keep. I paid off a four-year loan in 31 months. And if I could do that, I might even be able to save up a little bit of cash…right?

Right.

The base ODSP disability pension does not cover such luxuries as good vehicles, or significant cash reserves. It barely pays the rent, food, and not much else these days. That’s especially true for singles, although for families, when the children ‘age out’ of the system, the expenses remain basically the same, and the income can take a real big hit—it’s a shocker for those experiencing it.

Maybe they should look up once in a while, rather than keeping their faces to the floor all of the time…you might have seen that one coming.

I won’t bore you with statistics, but if you’re into that sort of thing, there are a couple of story links below.

A basic income for low-income Canadians means they would have, and would generate, additional opportunities for education, starting a small business, save up for a car, maybe even a small house if they’re lucky enough to be able to see that far ahead, or maybe they just have a little more lifetime ahead of them as compared to an old crock like me.

I suppose that’s why the bougies are against it. It’s a threat to the established order, that much is true.

And when someone tells you a basic income means we have to give Bill Gates $1,000.00 a month, that person is not your friend.

They’re just lying to you.

Truth is, they’re full of shit and they know it.

The question is, do you know it?

END

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Google Play in ebook and audio format.

Sam Altman's Study on Basic Income.

Tax the Rich.

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Officially an Old Fart. Louis Shalako.

Wracked with angst.

Louis Shalako

My birthday has gone by and I am now officially an old fart.

Living in a rent-controlled unit for the last thirteen years has certain advantages of cost. As long as the landlord doesn't get some kind of a brainstorm.

I know more or less what the pension benefits are likely to be.

I still have a part-time job making pizza dough in the family business.

After a years-long hiatus, I have made a few short story submissions. If I sell a story, I get a little money, a little exposure, perhaps even a buy-link at the bottom of the page, so readers can find me on Amazon, or iTunes, Google Play or Kobo.

I plan on at least starting another novel in late September or early October, when the days grow short and nights get long and cold and dark. That one will be the tenth in the Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery Series. I have no idea of what to do there, except make it different, rather than repeat old plots. Make it as good as I can, sort of thing. It's always a good idea to have a few thoughts before starting, and if you know the ending ahead of time, you can write towards that point, although the murder mystery can be formulaic. You still want to surprise the readers.

And I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of thinking.

There's nothing wrong with thinking, but it is possible to get too much of a good thing.

***

My first mystery novel.

A local journal advertised for a full-time reporter, the position paid $19-21 per hour for a forty-hour week. That just seems like a pile of money after thirty years on an Ontario disability support pension. Thirty years on ODSP also means I don’t have much of a resume.

I wrestled with myself for a couple of weeks and I just had to let it go—

It was a wonderful opportunity, for somebody. I just couldn’t sort of visualize myself doing it, no matter how good or bad I turned out to be.

Some months went by and the same journal advertised for a free-lance journalist.

Again, I had to wrestle with it, and again, I just couldn’t do it.

There is such a thing as a reason. There is also such a thing as an excuse.

Irritable bowels, for example. Much of the work can be done from home, with modern digital technology. People can wear headsets with ear-thingies and a microphone. They can have a webcam and set up meetings or interviews using Zoom. They can zip files back and forth using email or wirelessly right from any high-end phone.

They don't even need a newsroom any more. It's a nice thing to have and everything, but it's not strictly essential.

Sooner or later, one has to climb into the crummy old minivan and actually go somewhere, taking a photo outside a new business while the local politicos cut a nice, red ribbon...right? 

Even then, folks submit their own photos all the time.

I’ve been fairly isolated after all these years, what with the pandemic and all. I worked alone at our shop from October to late April. You get used to it after a while.

More than anything, it’s like I just don’t want to get involved. If I did, it would be strictly on my own terms, which might be fairly stiff for the other parties.

It’s one hell of a commitment, after all—to the employer, to the community we would be serving, and most of all, to myself. At one time this would have been the job of a lifetime.

Maybe I’m just spoiled by all that free time, or maybe I’m just getting old.

 

END

Louis has books and stories in ebook and audio format available from Google Play.

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

The Invisible Disability. Louis Shalako.

So, how's your mental health lately...

Louis Shalako

When every report on homelessness and poverty mentions mental health and addictions, one wonders how it is even possible that at least some of these people can’t qualify for federal or provincial disability benefits.

They all qualified for the most minimal welfare, didn’t they. In which case, they must have some rights. They must exist, if we can put it that way.

If nothing else, they are documented citizens.

It’s not like every asshole in town doesn’t somehow know that to be true—

Surely there must be some evidence for all of that, evidence other than the fact that they are homeless, for this is the old ‘coincidence-chasing-the-tail-of-causality’ ploy in all of its logical and rhetorical ugliness.

First, there is the stigma, a stigma that the exact same Canadian journalists are careful to remind us of, with depressing regularity, which as we all know equates with a good poop…it’s pro forma. They can’t help themselves. They must do it. If they were caught in a bear trap, they would gnaw their arm off, in order to continue to slather on the stigma, ladies and gentlemen.

Second, it is an invisible disability.

It’s terribly hard to prove something that is invisible, and yet the Chief of Police is quoted as saying that 88 % of the folks forced to live down at Rainbow Park suffer from a combination of these issues, thereby stigmatizing them and the other twelve percent…that’s because we cannot tell with a quick glance, who is who, and who is what, ladies and gentlemen.

Words have great power. They also have meaning, sometimes very deep meaning which goes beyond that which is in the dictionary.

Words can be used to obscure, as well as to illuminate.

And guilt is one of your weapons.

***

What’s kind of interesting is the sheer number of invisible disabilities. My mother suffers from vertigo. Shirley and Ron were driving the big rig, a brand-new tractor they’d financed themselves. It was a dream for Ron and Shirley was nothing if not game for adventure. She fell getting out of the truck. Hit her head, began experiencing symptoms. Diagnosed by her doctor, and now confirmed by thirty years of experience…the insurance company wouldn’t pay off. It was impossible to prove, and despite her own doctor’s signature, their own doctors were there to dispute it. The government is no better and perhaps no worse than the insurance company.

Ron and Shirley quickly went bankrupt, the costs of trucking being what they are—two drivers can keep that vehicle on the road twice as many hours per day as one single driver.

They did try to get another driver to help Ron, but when diesel went from thirty cents to fifty cents a litre it was time to admit defeat and hang it up.

The financial penalties were tough in such a situation. Bankruptcy is not fun, ladies and gentlemen, and it takes years, many years, to recover from such an event. My mother suffers vertigo to this day.

No one would ever say that my mother was disabled, (Shirley would never say such a thing), and yet, there are people who have been bedridden for years by vertigo. The sheer nausea caused by vertigo, the spinning head, and the loss of balance is purely subjective, in the sense that it cannot be measured by a blood test, an X-ray, or by a urine sample.

No one is going to take your word for it, not when there’s money involved. In that sense, the government and the insurance company are a lot alike…

This one will do.

If you’ve ever been right on the verge of going to sleep, and had that sudden falling sensation, that is very much what vertigo feels like. I’ve suffered from anxiety attacks, way back in the early 2000s. It is different but similar: a kind of rushing feeling, a feeling that the walls are squeezing in, and it is, in fact terrifying. I guess that’s why they politely call it ‘anxiety’.

What it is, is sheer, unremitting terror—all for no apparent reason, it’s all in your head. You’re sitting in a chair, in a room, watching television, and you’re absolutely scared shitless for no reason. By definition, a ‘mental illness’. And thank fucking Darwin that’s over and done with, those particular circumstances, the stress has been gone for a long time now, and I will probably never suffer from that again.

I was afraid to even leave the house for about nine months, funny thing was, I always felt better when I managed to do so.

It was the fear of fear itself, or so I guess.

***

When I was twenty or so, going to Lambton College, I worked part time at the old Woolco Auto Centre, doing oil changes, the old lube, oil and filter Saturday specials, and tires and the like. We had a mechanic. Rolly had to take the three-beer lunch, every single day. His toolbox was a rusted, pathetic wreck. Rolly had the Class A License, the boss hung it up on the wall or we would have hardly been able to stay in business.

Andy was a journeyman mechanic, not Class A, and his toolbox was very professional. I was just young and enthusiastic, in some sense. But poor old Rolly never should have been allowed to repair automobiles after a certain stage of alcoholism. The problem with alcoholism, of course, is that it is self-inflicted. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot—you might get out of work, or even out of a war, but no one is going to give you all that much sympathy. I guess that’s why we call it stigma…Rolly’s hands shook even on a good day, and it was Rolly who stood there and watched as I pulled off brake drums, brake calipers, the rotors, replaced bearings, and put new shoes and pads on the customer vehicle. His hands shook. Was that the booze, or was that Parkinson’s? I suppose I will never know.

Someone had to sign off on that repair…and it better not be an inexperienced twenty year-old kid, or the Ministry of Transportation would have every right to ask a few pointed questions.

And we have absolutely no idea of why any fairly rational person would do that to themselves.

We also have no idea of what the trauma in that man’s life might have been.

Alcohol is pretty insidious, and it takes quite a few people down.

They can still walk, they can still talk, theoretically, they should be able to look after themselves.

It’s a disease.

We're all getting older.

***

After thirty years on disability, (ODSP), I retire at age 65. This results in a substantial raise of three or four hundred dollars a month. Which tells us just how much the government values the disabled. There are seniors on similar benefits, one story on the CBC tells of a woman paying 100 % of her income in rent. What might be the only thing that saves me, is thirteen years in a rent controlled building.

In a recent story, also on CBC, they state that if you have been in a rent-controlled unit for five years, ‘you have a target on your back’.

It’s not a very nice feeling. They’re not telling me anything I didn’t already know.

So what happened, is that I fell from a scaffolding when a plank broke. That was May 4, 1989. I broke my back in three places, so there were compression fractures at T-6, L-3 and L-4. There was also a hell of a lot of pain, and a lot of depression to go along with that, and yet, I can walk. I can talk, I can look after myself pretty well, once I sort of adapted to the realities. Nowadays, I simply don’t work more than three or four hours a day, in winter, when sales are slow, that’s like maybe 12-15 hours a week, in summer, more like 24-26 hours a week. Oddly enough, the job is fairly physical. I just can’t do it full-time, and probably couldn’t live on that income alone…

That almost doubles the base ODSP benefits, and the fact that the government finally raised allowable earnings from $200.00 per month up to $1,000.00 was a big help and a big forward step—dare I call it a victory, for the disabled no matter how we choose to classify them.

Some people fought long and hard for that change, as well as regular raises from the Conservative provincial government, and in fact I was one of them…trust me, they know my name over there.

This is how I know that victory is bittersweet. I mean, we really shouldn’t have to fight that hard, just to get a little justice around here.

I do not know if I get a full payment for August. I do know that the OAS (Old Age Security), presumably CPP and GIS as well, first payments will be September 30.

Only an idiot wouldn’t take steps to prepare for certain eventualities. You might be surprised that I have been saving money, (rather than spending it all on cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines…etc. – ed).

(What I am saying, – ed., is that I will cover the Sept. 1 rent.)

I haven’t even bothered to call the social workers, neither did I appeal a whopping $4,000.00 in so-called overpayments. It took them five years, partly due to COVID-19, (they also tore down their own building), to rule on income dating back to 2019. Some things in life just aren’t fair, what in the hell are you going to do about it. Truth is, I should have fought them, even if I lost—I do reserve the right to tell them exactly what I think of them, although it might be pointless.

It can also wait.

I also know that a lot of folks simply can’t fight for themselves, and maybe I was cast in a somewhat more heroic mold…I am not without my own vanity. You can always fight for someone else, right.

All that juicy stigma.

You might even win a round once in a blue moon, and I have to admit, it feels like a kind of power, which is exactly what the disabled, visible or otherwise, lack.

***

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. The price of my freedom, is four grand.

They will cheerfully claw that back one way or another, with little regard to the impact on a senior citizen’s situation, which may be precarious for any number of reasons. What if I can’t work, what if the job goes away, what if I muff the income tax return and don’t get all the proper benefits?

My vehicle is paid off, and yet it is also 14 years old with 308,000 k on the clock. My job depends on a vehicle and having a place to live.

I haven’t had a winter coat in eight or nine years, basically I just dress in layers…and layers and layers.

I’ve cut my own hair for thirty years. I have used dish soap for shampoo, and brushed my teeth with baking soda.

One way or another, I will survive—

Assuming the landlord doesn’t get some kind of a brainstorm.

MillDon Enterprises has a thousand units across southwestern Ontario, and one wonders just how many relatives they have, in order to produce the N-12 eviction form, and to claim that they need the unit for a family member. The problem there, is that there is no follow-up, no verification, and no enforcement, and the onus is on the client to do all of that investigative work. Then take it back to the tribunal, hopefully with competent legal representation. Very few people get back into their old unit, and certainly not in any sort of time-frame.

I live in a three-floor walk-up in the central city. It’s probably the best unit in the building, top floor, (even the Mayor doesn’t have that), on the end away from the driveway, and facing the south so we at least get a bit of sunshine in winter…if you moved into an exact same unit, you will be paying at least double what I am paying. If this seems unfair to the landlord, or the other tenants, well, that’s too bad. I have some rights too, and perhaps the foresight simply to hang onto the place, even when there was a horrible noise problem, one that was never solved until three or four problem children simply moved on, as they almost inevitably will. The rest of us suffered through it, and that’s really all we can say about that.

Here’s the other thing: the company has been systematically renovating units, and raising the rents, as people ended their occupancy and moved out. You could call it a kind of natural attrition, and at this point in time, there are only six or seven units that have been occupied for ten years or longer. Some of us are getting older (we’re all getting older), and all the landlord has to do is to be patient. It’s not hard to estimate the income from this building, which has gone from about $28,000.00 per month to well over $40,000.00 gross income.

(That’s a half a million a year almost, from one fairly small building.)

It would be extremely unlikely that the company would evict the entire building (the N-13 ‘renoviction’), in order to renovate, although that is exactly the case in the building across the street. That building has been vacant since roughly June 1 of 2023, and there is virtually no activity on the part of contractors, although the grass is cut regularly.

The biggest issue with housing right now, even here in Sarnia, is that there is simply no place to go—

No place to go.

In which case, the only thing to do is to stand up and fight.

 

END

 

Landlord has brainstorm...

Woman Pays 100 % of Income in Rent. (CBC)

Apartment Tenants Renovicted. (Sarnia Journal)

Why do we Have to Prove Our Disability Constantly? (The Walrus)

The Invisible Disability. (Wiki)

Louis has books and stories available from Amazon.

See his works on ArtPal.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

Dig Deep: An Analysis of Local Media, Sarnia-Lambton. Louis Shalako.

Vote for me, I have my own newspaper...

Louis Shalako

Consider the current state of mass media in Canada.

Let us focus primarily on the journalism aspects of local media and make a review, some analysis of local media here in Sarnia-Lambton.

It’s also something of a tough assignment. We’re not here to insult local personalities or to put down local companies, (Don’t worry, he’ll get to it. – ed), all of which employ people and contribute to the local economy. They make other contributions as well, some of which are intangibles.

As readers, they’ve been part of our lives for a very long time…

Basically, some of the effects are difficult to measure or quantify, but one might agree that they exist. Simply put, the local marketplace is served, and to determine how well it is served might lie mostly in the eye, (or ears, or mind), of the individual reader, viewer or listener.

What do we actually expect, from local media.

***

Okay, in we go—

Corus Entertainment, owners of Global News, and television and radio outlets across Canada, is laying off workers, cutting costs, and have seen their share prices fall from twenty-five dollars or so, down to twelve cents.

I won’t get too deeply into that, but some of those stations are considered local stations.

We will go through systematically, examine print, online, radio, television (of which there are no stations except possibly TV-6, public access TV with extremely limited funding and minimal content).

The Sarnia Observer.

One wonders if the local daily generates much of a profit for the Postmedia Group, or whether it breaks even, or operates at a loss. What strikes me with some of the long-standing, more traditional news outlets is the insistence on having a print edition. Ink, paper, and time on the press, the labour, it all costs money. Printing requires physical infrastructure. In the past, the Observer shut down their own printing plant, and it was announced that the paper would be printed, to my recollection, at the London Free Press plant in London.

The papers would be trucked into town, with distribution from their own loading dock in downtown Sarnia. My mother and step-father actually took a couple of rural paper routes, showing up a seven a.m., six days a week, and they kept that up until one or the other got back to more renumerative work. Ron is a licensed auto body mechanic, and Shirley has worked in taxes, financial planning, teaching, all kinds of things. As retirement age creeps up on me, I have considered it myself. I suppose I’d rather write for the news as opposed to tossing bagged copies out at the end of people’s driveways. I have to admit, grabbing a stack of papers and then cruising the side-roads might be an all right way to eke out some rather small pension benefits…I could look at the birds, the trees and the grass, and listen to the radio, and enjoy a coffee and presumably, a pay-cheque.

Sarnia Observer Scales Back Print Edition. (Sarnia News Today)

That being said, what do you do if the thing really isn’t making money? The parent company can only afford to subsidize any one local operation for so long, and in the current environment, they might have quite a number of them on hand. This can only go on for so long, as we see from the lead example, the Corus/Global TV story.

In the classic sense, subscriptions paid for paper and ink, and advertising was considered to pay for the editorial staff—writers, photographers, graphic artists and editors. One must assume the combination of all revenue streams provided some level of profit.

So, you want my story now, basically... #Fletch (Click any image to enlarge.)

The Sarnia Journal.

The Sarnia Journal recently won an award for a series of stories on homelessness locally. They have won awards in the past. It’s almost like they make a point of it—all it takes is a good, deep look into an issue of local importance, one with regional relevance. The story or series has to be submitted to the Association, who give such awards once a year.

It is (was) a weekly, and after a publishing hiatus brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic and related economic factors, have brought back the print edition. The online version seems quite good, yet one wonders at pricing in terms of the ads. A print edition, going out to 14,000 households or so, still carries a lot of weight with advertisers. Simply counting clicks isn’t quite the same thing, or maybe there are other factors as well. Originally, media outlets realized they must have an online presence, and yet the persistent mentality was to focus on their print editions, the online material being something of a must-have, but also an afterthought.

Announcement from Sarnia Journal regarding Distribution.

What is a local issue with regional relevance? Well, homelessness for one—it struck me one day, when the provincial government provided a couple of million dollars on the homelessness file, (and it was in the ‘paper’), to go looking at other publications, big and small, all across Ontario. There are thousands of municipalities, counties, regions, and they were all getting money in dribs and drabs, some quite small amounts, in the larger centres, quite large amounts. That series of stories had regional, provincial, national relevance. And no one had ever thought to go through, systematically, and tally all of that money up. Or to draw conclusions from that data, or offer any sort of editorial opinion. It’s not like they can afford to go on data-fishing expeditions, just for the sport of it.

The quality of journalism depends on the quality of the questions asked…and having the resources to pursue such questions.

(...oops. No offense intended.)

The Petrolia Lambton Independent.

The Independent is online-only content. In such a small marketplace, print copies would very much be a luxury, and would have to compete head-to-head with all other local print media. Sales staff have to compete with all those other sales staff, assuming any small publication even has someone. Paper and ink cost money, there are distribution costs, and many weeklies are simply given away, or regular mailbox-stuffers, where the motivation is all those full-colour flyers tucked in there, each and every week. They get a penny for each one, presumably. I’m sure the publisher has had all these thoughts and done the cost-benefit analysis…if the publication is free, subscribers can’t pay for the paper and ink. If there is no paper and ink, advertisers aren’t too interested, and it’s a small, local publication to begin with. Update: Heather Wright says it is a print publication, along with the Observer.

It's a fucking print shop.

First Monday.

First Monday is a monthly print and online publication. Produced by Huron Web, (named for the ‘web offset press’, rather than the internet), it contains a mix of news and opinion, definitely slanting to the right side of the political spectrum. The company owns their own presses, and one monthly publication, really isn’t enough to sustain the operation, which is a fairly substantial employer in Wyoming, Ontario. If one considers the bulk of their income comes from jobbing for other publications, other printing jobs, having one’s own newspaper takes advantage of the investment in the sense that your own work keeps the assembly line rolling. In that sense, it’s all about production. A factory requires investment. To let it sit idle is a waste of resources. The print edition is one thing, the website is something else. The news content is essentially a photographic reproduction of the print copy, and the columns appear PDF-based at first glance, although that may be unfair. It’s safe to say that few of the local publications place outbound links in their copy—too afraid of sending readers off somewhere more interesting, in my own opinion.

Day Tripping in Southwestern Ontario.

Years ago, this author sold a couple of stories, submitted by mail, to this publication. He was much surprised to receive a couple of cheques for fifty bucks some weeks later. This is a tourism-focused publication, with features as opposed to hard news. It is a print publication and is distributed over southwestern Ontario. There is no subscription or news-stand price, it’s given away at various retail outlets in a kind of reciprocal arrangement. The ads are purchased by all the same sorts of people who will have that on a rack or shelf, just inside the door of their establishment. This might very well be printed on the same presses as some other local publications…or maybe not. I just don’t know.

Radio: Theatre of the Mind.

Cool 106.3 FM

This is the one most familiar to this writer.

Edward R. Murrow. #analysis

With a rebranding of the sound, (softening and broadening the play-list, with a view to attracting more women listeners) and voice-tracking, an operator with half a dozen radio stations could essentially put out the same show in multiple markets. It's almost seamless, your local radio personalities are all still right there (maybe)—due to Covid-19, working from the kitchen table in some cases. It's all a matter of software and some training and experience. The fact the operator has three local stations doesn't change anything. A 'lite-FM' station in town might be mirroring content in half a dozen other markets, same for the C & W sister station. Truth is, it makes a lot of sense. It's like a force-multiplier in military terms.

#local_radio

With local radio, in the sense of journalism, they do news, weather, perhaps traffic alerts, road closures, missing persons reports. The actual news stories are factual but fairly shallow. The website basically repeats what has been said on air, in what are necessarily short time-bits. They are writing twenty and thirty second news stories. The attention span is assumed to be rather short.

Why would you write a thousand words for the website when the story will be forgotten by tomorrow. The website is seen as a necessary adjunct and nothing more—a chore rather than an opportunity, and no question of a print copy here. It’s not what they do, is it.

In the Sarnia-Lambton marketplace, a two-hour phone-in show might hold a fairly tight little audience, largely composed of news and current-events junkies, ideologues, and certain scruffy old men, who phone in at the same time every day, in the simple hope of being heard. The majority of listeners would simply tune out and go somewhere else, and this is probably why this kind of radio is only successful in the major markets, where peeling off a small minority is still a sizable sample in terms of advertising sales. More than anything, they don’t want to bring you down…Bruce.

Is there a print edition, or does the site merely mimic one.

Locally, Blackburn Media has three radio ‘stations’, which have some duplication of personality and content. There is a physical location, as to whether there is actually anyone in there, or where the actual show emanates from is a matter of speculation. I’ve often thought it’s a bit of a sweat-shop, created at someone’s kitchen table up in Mennonite country. As much as anything else, it prevents anyone else from starting up a radio station in the local market. My chief criticism would be the preponderance of children’s music including Roxy Roller and other tunes such as Len, (Don’t Steal My Sunshine), Men Without Hats, (Pop Goes the World), and other pablum-like shit, for example, anything by Kiss. How many times have we crawled out of bed at four-thirty a.m., stumbled out into the other room, only to hear Def Leppard, whose singer sounds like a drunken retard with some kind of a speech impediment. Honestly guys, it’s not bad music, merely unremarkable and devoid of any real intellectual content. And just for the record, the Rolling Stones’ Brown Sugar really ought to be offensive, if only anyone had ever thought of it, if even just once. I would love to hear the spluttering, red-faced, slightly-too-much-white-around-the-eyes justification for that one.

And let’s be honest: that’s the way things have been done around here for many years…

Like television, the local listener or viewer also has access to many other channels, online and traditional, which tends to dilute the market. Those outside channels have a disadvantage, in that the music might be ‘better’ to some perceptions, but much of the news and ad content is obviously relevant to a distant market and more or less meaningless to a local (Sarnia-Lambton) listener.

END

Voice Tracking: Cyber Jocks.

The Eagle FM radio, Kettle Point.

Difficult Changes at Kingston Radio Stations. (CTV)

"We're looking at some changes, Murphy...

What is TV-6?

Interestingly, you can probably still propose programming for TV-6. The only problem, is that you’ll have to do all the work yourself. Production values are low, and the local audience miniscule. I have known people who volunteered, and at least got to broadcast local hockey games, which means you get to watch for free, essentially. There is some sort of news content, as far as I know, you have to tune in on your Cogeco service at the appointed time.

Sarnia Journal Editorial: When the News Goes Dark. (Tara Jeffrey)

Feedback: 

I can’t recall the last time the Sarnia Observer won an award, although they have done so in the past.

Postmedia Group.

Blackburn Media. (Local Radio)

Dear Editor.

Serving the Higher Goddess.

Larger Than Life. Peter Henderson.

Offset Printing. (Wikipedia)

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from iTunes.

Louis Shalako is the founder of Long Cool One Books and the author of twenty-four novels, numerous novellas and other short stories. Louis studied Radio, Television and Journalism Arts at Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology, later going on to study fine art. He began writing for community newspapers and industrial magazines over forty years ago. His stories appear in publications including Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He lives in southern Ontario and writes full time. Louis enjoys cycling, swimming and good books.

See his works on ArtPal.

Thank you for reading.

Additional: a big thanks to Chris Cooke at Huron Web for the hard information.