Yesterday I tweeted a New Yorker article about YouTube’s plans for cable-like niche channels, and I got to wondering whether the future of television lies in the hands of Google.

Of course, the question of TV’s direction is a little less simple than that. Cultural and generational tendencies will have, and have had, an impact on the original Tube.

To quote the article by John Seabrook, “‘The Cosby Show’ was the last TV series to command a mass following,” with over 30 per cent of all households with televisions tuning in to watch the 1985-86 season. In comparison: “Last year, ‘American Idol,’ the most popular show on TV today, pulled in fewer than nine per cent of all television viewers in the U.S.”

That’s less than a third, and just 25 years later: A trend is clear.

But here’s another potential factor, that places the future of broadcasting in the hands of 7-16 year olds.

A BBC article from yesterday cited the new annual Childwise monitoring survey that found that 61 per cent of kids and teens aged seven-16 have a phone with internet access.

The story stated that the “biggest trend in children’s use of gadgets, according to the report [...] is the growth in internet use through mobile phones.”

In addition: “Children are now more likely to play with their mobiles than watch television.”

But how children are using their phones may have an even more influential sway on television’s future: Namely, is there a clear shift away from the consumption of TV content to social media and online content, or is TV content also being watched on the net?

Things to ponder, especially for someone wanting to go into television.

And now, back to statistics.

In brief: The article used the then timely Attawapiskat crisis as a starting point to look into the condition of First Nations housing across Canada.

Sources include various Canadian media, Statistics Canada, B.C. Stats, RIIC.ca, J-Source, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.

Read by clicking on the link below:

A weak financial foundation underscores First Nations housing crisis

More accurately, I’ve struggled with whether it’s important to voice an opinion.

Are our thoughts pulled out of us by others’ interest in what we have to say, or pushed onto unsuspecting listeners because we want them to hear what we have to say?

A field producer I once had put it best: “Opinions are like assholes: Everybody’s got one.”

It stuck with me.

In general, I’ve kept my opinions to myself. Mostly because I don’t feel like I really have any right to blab about things I don’t fully understand just because I have a constitutional right to blab. (I also like to think-out what I’m going to say before I actually say it.)

But today, I’ve decided to have an opinion. Or more accurately, I’ve decided to voice it.

I’ve spent the past several hours re-reading a column on columns by National Post’s Andrew Coyne.

I think he summed up the whole business of opinions nicely, stating bluntly that ”nobody owes you the two minutes it takes to read your column.”

How true. And in an age of immediacy and choice and options, one could say that nobody really owes you two minutes for anything. Whether that’s called being autonomous or being careless, I’m not too sure.

Regardless, the second blow: ”You do not do the reader a favour by writing something for him to read. He does you a favour by reading it.”

Also true: If you aren’t liked or read or respected or hated by some sort of sizeable audience, you’re losing. And not only that, but you’re losing to YouTube videos of pandas sneezing.

Enough said.

It’s a vicious cycle, whereby a columnist has to write to a specific audience to capture that audience. Eventually, hopefully having attracted a great enough number of readers, he can eventually transition to writing about what he wants.

The kicker, as pointed out by Coyne, is that if the audience stops liking what they read, nothing is preventing them from flipping the page. That opinion-writers’ readers have opinions about their columns is expected. But that they can altogether choose to tune out the other side of a topic is argumentatively unfair.

And that, I’ll argue, is the problem with media: That it’s so easy to tune out.

Of course this can be a good thing, because “media” includes advertising and OK! Magazine. But opinions and entertainment aside, the real problem is that good journalism is also optional.

A question: Is it not a problem that an article about alleged human rights abuses by Canadian mining companies in Africa can be ignored, because a reader simply doesn’t fancy being woken up by anything other than the morning coffee?

Whose fault is it that when “favours” are being handed out, important pieces of journalism can be overlooked? Is it the responsibility of the reader who actively chooses what to read, or the responsibility of the journalist to persuade people to care? Furthermore, what and who defines “important”?

That’s the irony, that we have a constitutional right to not practice our constitutional rights: That we can not only hold a particular view, but that we can decide to shut out all other arguments that may have had the potential to persuade us otherwise.

I suppose the problem is that this isn’t even a problem at all: It’s just a matter of opinion.

Coyne wrote also that “as a rule, most of us don’t like to be shouted at” and I have to agree, so I’ll stop shouting.

But in my “opinion,” people could stand to be shouted at a little more often if what’s being shouted merits being heard.

In my New Year purge of papers and knickknacks and clothes I never wear, I found a copy of my very first article, dating back to December 2007.

It was a human rights column written for my high school paper The Empress, inspired by the all-too-familiar Robert Dziekanski case splashed across the pages of real newspapers at the time.

But on the topic of “real” publications: I think the paper we put out was a more-than-decent product given that our school didn’t have a journalism class at the time. (In hindsight, it was more the teenage equivalent of a Vancouver cultural mag than a newspaper.)

I usually cringe when I read anything I wrote in high school: It’s always less imaginative than what I conjured up in elementary school, and less grammatically correct than what I write now. Hopefully.

But this piece was worth a read, and so escaped my toss pile.

Plus, it made the front page, so I had to keep it for hubris’ sake. And also because I’m fairly certain that this is the only high school story I wrote. (I never interviewed that policeman.)

—

Column: Human Rights                                                         Hayley Woodin

Do you know your rights as a Canadian citizen? If you don’t, how do you know when your rights are being violated? You may have heard about the Florida university student who was tasered and handcuffed by police for asking a question at a presidential candidate forum. Were his rights violated? The last time I checked, it was perfectly legal to ask questions in your own country. Freedom of speech is a constitutional right, granted to us by the government. So why did the American authorities deem it necessary to aggressively stop the student from questioning presidential candidate John Kerry? And more importantly, does this abuse of power occur in Canada?

Over the past few months, I’ve come across over half-a-dozen news stories involving local police or RCMP who seemed to have overreacted while carrying out their policing duties. In future columns I hope to explore these cases and share what I have learned about how police enforce the law, and how they are reprimanded when they are found to have overreacted.

But for now I want to ask the question: what are our rights as citizens when it comes to dealing with the police or other authorities? And what are our responsibilities, if any, as “good Canadian citizens”? Does the old Canadian stereotype of us being generally polite come from following rules of etiquette and abiding by the law? Or is it solely an impression we seem to make on other cultures? An interview is in the process of being set up with a local White Rock policeman, and it is here where I hope to find some answers. Things aren’t always as they seem, yet sometimes first impressions turn out to be true. It is here that I hope to ask more questions, and share with you my personal opinions.

All I can say is that I’m glad I read it earlier in the afternoon: It’s unbelievable enough to get the mind wandering, and terrifying enough to give anyone nightmares.

The article is several weeks old, but still relevant nonetheless: It also goes hand-in-hand with point 14 in my previous post’s list about the Top 25 underreported stories in Canadian media from 2010-2011.

In a nutshell: Because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is possible to patent living things, Big Pharma has for years been acquiring a monopoly on human gene and tissue patents for the purposes of research and the development of new drugs. This means independent research teams cannot work on patented genes without the consent of the patent-owning corporations, or without paying a hefty fee.

The consequences of this are definitely worth thinking about.

Thirteen Simon Fraser University student researchers analyzed both mainstream and independent news sources to first compile a list of 100 important national or international stories that lacked media coverage during the past year – important being defined as having a significant impact on a large number of Canadians.

They eventually narrowed it down to the top quarter, which includes topics ranging from the state of native reserves (now being addressed in the recent coverage of Attawapiskat), to the militarization of Canada’s foreign policy, to the extent of corporate lobbying on policy-making.

I haven’t read the complete report, but the 63-page summary was an interesting read, with one-to-two page synopses on each story. It also looks at the system, and suggests how it leads to these gaps in coverage.

Here’s the Top 25, in order of their importance, according to the study.

—

1. Canada-Europe Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)

2. Canadian Mining Companies Lack Accountability

3. Corporate Lobbying Shaping Laws

4. Crisis in Long Term Care

5. Violence Against Aboriginal Women in Canada

6. State of Native Reserves in Canada

7. Health Effects of Canada’s Tar Sands

8. Long Term Effects of Fukushima

9. Abandoned Oil Wells Cause Environmental Hazard

10. Global Disposable Workforce

11. Militarizing Canada’s Foreign Policy

12. Negative Impacts of Fracking

13. Devastation of the Oceans

14. Big Pharma Testing for Profit

15. Soldier Suicides and the Mental Health Cost of War

16. Threat of Public Relations to Newsrooms and the Public Sphere

17. Canadian Interference in Haiti

18. Disaster Capitalism in Afghanistan

19. Impact of Climate Change on Canada’s Boreal Forest

20. Asbestos Exports

21. Effects of Industrial Farming

22. BPA on Sales Recepts

23. Pharmaceutical Comapnies “Ghost Writing” for Medical Journals

24. FBI’s War on Islam

25. Failure of the War on Drugs

—

The summarized report is available here, with more details on the topics and the study’s methodology.

And Happy New Year: Here’s hoping that 2012 brings more coverage to underreported issues.

Today was my first full day on base, and everything I learned six months ago is coming back to me quickly: The ranks, the regiments, the names of weaponry and which building are which.

The weather is cool, but cloudless and sunny. No snow yet.

The biggest change here from my last exercise, unknown to me until I arrived yesterday, is that we aren’t training for Afghanistan anymore.

In fact, the scenario isn’t set, as far as I know, in Asia. And it’s not set anywhere in the Middle East for that matter.

The journalists don’t know much yet, but we have some details: We will be on an “island,” where the insurgents will be just as well armed as the Canadian troops. I believe it is going to be a UN-led mission, and that the primary language of West Isle is going to be Spanish.

It’s very different from Afghanistan. While it isn’t supposed to replicate a real-world conflict zone, we think the economic and political climate of the environment will be similar to that of Haiti.

But that’s only a guess. I’ll find out for sure when the exercise starts.

@HayleyWoodin

Last April I paid to take a course in foreign correspondence, which included several weeks practical experience covering troops as they rehearsed manoeuvres, practice for how Canada plans to transition out of Afghanistan.

Who knew I would have loved it as much as I did, but here I am: I signed myself up for round two, and went after getting the opportunity with everything I had.

Sure, I’m missing a midterm, a research project, two guest speakers, an in-class essay, a quiz, multiple assignments and many readings. But what kind of student sleeps anyway?

This experience was simply too much to pass up: Sponsored school fees, free accommodation, free meals, reimbursed travel and the experience of a lifetime. (Well, a second experience of a lifetime.)

On top of it all, I am getting paid to do what I love. Do you know how cool it is to put on my resume that I have done contract work with the Department of National Defense? Very. Cool.

Boarding time, wish me luck.

@HayleyWoodin

(It took me 10 minutes to write this. I need to work on that.)

Today I completed one of the more unique items on my 10-year list with a trip to North Vancouver’s Maplewood Farm.

When I wrote my list close to a year-and-a-half ago, I had no idea how I was going to pull this one off: Not only did I need to find someone who would let me milk their cow, but if eating pork and undercooked bacon creeps me out, how on earth did I expect to get up-close and personal with a bloated udder?

Maybe it was my eagerness to hide my city-girl image, maybe it was how Farmer Courtney made the process look much easier than it actually was. Either way, at about 1:15 p.m., I gave a milking demonstration to four young kids and their respective parents.

By the end, we had filled a pale with close to five litres of fresh milk. And by we, I mean Farmer Courtney. (Although, I maybe managed to milk three ounces out of Lima, two of which ended up on my suede shoes.)

But I had a blast, and that’s all that matters.

I’d like to thank Maplewood Farm for indulging my random desire to milk a cow. There’s a first for everything, and now I know who to call if I decide to put “milk a goat” on my next 10-year list.

And a special thanks to Farmer Courtney, in some of the photos below, and who gave me a lovely souvenir, photo to come.

I am now 16 down, with 85 to go.

(Enjoy the photos, the video will be posted soon.)

The ball was a black-tie event, with approximately 650 of the city’s elite in attendance. After all, it cost guests $1,000 a seat to go, so you knew you were among business royalty.

You also knew that it had to be a spectacular evening.

And it was.

Held in an abandoned shopping mall that had ceased construction several years ago due to a lack of funding, the space was decorated with Andy Warhol-like prints and living statues covered in body paint. An open bar served cosmos and an assortment of colourful cocktails, while dozens of chandeliers lit the space, and men in uniform sold tiny gold boxes at $100 a piece for the chance to win a $10,000 diamond ring.

Dinner began at 7 p.m., although I’m pretty sure the main course wasn’t served until 9 p.m. So for a couple of hours, diners were entertained by emcee Mark Madryga, host Diane Watts and the world’s fastest painter, Dan Dunn.

I didn’t recognize his name at first, but I knew who he was as soon as he began to paint what seemed to be an abstract doodle. But in about the time it took to play one-and-a-half songs, he spun his canvas around, and the accurately-detailed face of Elvis was clearly visible. His second painting was a portrait of Marilyn Monroe, done in Warhol colours.

After the filet mignon, we were each served a plate with several dessert samplings, most of which involved sparkles of some kind. And while I enjoyed something very chocolaty while just a little too much gusto, the Canadian Tenors performed.

It was certainly a night to remember, and maybe one day, if that mall is ever completed, I can walk through the shops while telling my grandchildren that the floor where we’re shopping once hosted the most unbelievably extravagant party I had ever been to.

I also hope that I’ll be able to tell them that I was invited back the year after…

But despite the frivolities and perks of it all, the best part of the evening was that everything, from the open bar to the VIP RiverRock show tickets, was donated, so that every penny raised went to the Firefighters Association, which supports over 80 local charities and organizations.

So assuming that there were 650 people there, I’m sure that close to three-quarters of a million dollars was raised for Surrey that night.

That has the power to do a lot of good.