“Lame-stream student media”
by titocurtis
Photo Corey Pool
Last week, Montreal’s activist-in-residence Jaggi Singh started a bit of a twitter-fight bonanza with about a dozen of the city’s student journalists.
He tweeted praise for Concordia University Television for their tireless work in covering the Quebec student strike but finished the compliment with a bit of a backhand to other student media outlets.
His contention seemed to be that no matter how hard they work or what kind of critical material they produce, members of the campus media are really just wannabe corporate hacks shilling for a job at The Gazette or QMI.
While we can debate the merits of a 40-year-old man taking family-sized dumps on teenagers learning a vocation, Jaggi’s criticisms of mainstream media are usually pretty fair. The corporate press often misses important stories and fails to live up to its obligation in keeping “the man” in check. Fair enough.
I have no problem with these criticisms because they’re an essential part of living in a democracy and because I know Jaggi’s heart is in the right place. But it makes me cringe when the debate turns into name-calling and specific personal attacks as it did last week.
To begin with, I don’t think Mr. Singh understands the realities a student journalist faces on a daily basis. For one thing, we’re just about always broke or in debt and we rarely get a moment to breathe. I remember working in construction all summer and into the fall as I was putting in 60 hours a week at my college paper and attending classes at Concordia University. My situation wasn’t exceptional, it’s a kind of rite of passage most of us have to go through to get our degrees and to earn our stripes.
No matter how broke and tired we all were it was thrilling to be able to produce a newspaper that was critical of the university’s administration and that addressed other kinds of stories that may not have made it in a mainstream paper. These so-called “wannabe lame-streamers” were shaping the coverage of the province’s student movement long before the mainstream press ever caught wind of what a GND or a #ggi was.
But everyone has to leave the circus one day. College ends and once the first of the month starts to roll around, you can’t afford to snub your nose at work because it won’t start a revolution or cause the ghost of Richard Nixon to posthumously be impeached from office. Sometimes it means writing a story about LED Lights on St. Laurent Blvd. (which admittedly didn’t make me feel like Bob Woodward or Robert Redford). Sometimes it means being one of the lucky ones that gets a job at The Montreal Gazette or the Toronto Star.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here because Jaggi isn’t even giving these students a chance to prove that they can effect change once they land a job at a corporate paper. He’s happy to assume we’re all wannabes and lazy hacks. That none of us have hearts or think critically. That we don’t have to pay rent or sink deeper into debt just to get by for another month.
He’s not there when we have to see the look on our loved ones’ faces when we tell them we haven’t found work in weeks.
But god forbid any one of us has an off day or publishes something that won’t rage against the machine. Because when that happens, trust me, Jaggi will be there pointing and laughing. Publically calling you out in an attempt to demean and humiliate you for not living up to his standards of journalism.
To his credit, plenty of us will end up being shitty reporters and crummy people. I’m not entirely sure I’m any good at this but I’ve seen so much potential and so much new, young talent during the student strike that it gives me hope. I’m sure some of these kids will end up in the corporate newsrooms of Canada where they’ll make some noise and rattle a few cages.
Last year at The Gazette, I wrote plenty of shitty intern pieces but I was also given the freedom to write about First Nations issues, racial profiling, poverty and many of my fellow students wrote about homophobia, trans rights and a swath of issues that don’t usually make it in a daily newspaper.
I respect the work Jaggi Singh does. He obviously cares deeply about the afflicted and wants to make the world a better place. I agree with many of his views on corporate media and have a great appreciation for the work of alternative media like The Dominion, Rabble.ca or CUTV (If you haven’t already, check out the work of Tim McSorely, Stefan Christoff, Dru Oja Jay because they’re all great indie journalists).
But for now, lets give the kids a chance to screw up before kicking them in the teeth whenever the opportunity presents itself. Painting us all with the same brush is hurtful and it’s the exact kind of lazy, stereotype that Mr. Singh fights every day through his work as an activist.
Christopher Curtis 
Hey Chris, thanks for the props. I think it would be great if the discussion could steer away from debates about who is worthy or unworthy, whose work is good or bad, and towards deepening all of our understanding of the issue that (I hope) lies at the core of the disagreement: a structural analysis of the corporate media.
It’s true that the corporate media will allow a certain number of decent stories to get into the paper — it helps their credibility and to maintain a relationship of some sort with a younger or progressive audience even as their senior columnists do whatever everything in their power to alienate us.
But ultimately, they’re owned by who they’re owned by: people who go to the same cocktail parties and fundraising galas as Canada’s corporate elite. That’s who their accountable to, and that’s who you have to please to get ahead.
I wouldn’t be worried about the first, second, or even fifth year of hard-working young journalists sweating assignments at the Gazette or Post or whatever. But sooner or later, you’ll start to realize what kind of self-censorship is necessary to get ahead. It won’t happen all at once; it’s a long, gradual drift of perspective.
I don’t begrudge anyone who tries to make a go of it, but the fact remains that it’s statistically extremely unlikely that any one person is going to make it work without rendering their own work unrecognizable in the long term.
That said, it’s important to have allies inside, so the main thing I’d say is that I hope that young journos entering the corporate beast maintain their relationships with people outside of that context, and keep their socialization into that world in a well-observed, mostly-closed box. Not a task I envy, to say the least. I only hope that folks who choose that path know what they’re getting into, and I wish them success on their own terms, as chosen pre-employment.
Thanks Dru, I totally see what you’re saying and I think last week we were having the wrong debate. Our conversation should be the one we’re having right now and not something laced with petty ad hominem attacks. It’s just discouraging to be called a chizler when you can barely make rent each month.
That said, I love your work and I love what you and Tim do at the dominion. If ever there’s anything I can do to help, just say so man.
Noticed Jaggi calling people out on twitter due to the lack of pressing Q’s to the SPVM. Interesting to see how a kick to the nuts can start a conversation and maybe bring folks close to the fire. But fuck J just the same, alienating people doesn’t make them allies later on and generally pisses off random folks following the thread – nothing that helps bring people closer together or anywhere like a society I’d like to inhabit. Haters gonna hate. Time for J to rise up and not be a hater.
Having spent many a day working as a freelance writer and researcher, and working in independent and campus media, I think that there is quite a lack of discourse about the living conditions of writers.
Journalism has become a low wage trade heavily reliant on (usually expensive) credentials and (often unpaid) experience. Journalists and other writers are increasingly part of a freelance, casual labour force. Personally, it would be impossible for me to live doing freelance work with $420 monthly student loan payments, rent, and other expenses.
Some of my best work has taken hours of research and writing, and a fraction of what it is worth in labour because the media I want to write for don’t have the resources to adequately compensate staff and writers.
I think that Jaggi and others on the left need to remember that a job is a job. Many of us will work in positions that further the goals of the ruling class. We are their servers, their child minders, their workers who make them profits. If journalists, on campus or in the corporate media, lack of political consciousness this is an issue that deserves attention. Personally, I think it should be approached in a way that recognizes that writers are workers, and that student journalists who are seeking a job are doing the same thing as a lot of others: trying to survive.
Let’s direct our fight at the right target: the ruling class.
Hey there Chris and everyone else —
The headline here is quite misleading since I never used the words “scum” or even “lame-stream” (an ableist term). Since I’m the antagonist of this blog entry, you’re giving the false and damaging perception that I might have used those terms (unless someone actually reads the entire twitter correspondence and sees those terms were never employed by me, or anyone from what I can observe).
I did tweet about “notable exceptions” (my first reply to the wave of responses to my original tweet). While there are exceptions (ie. individuals doing amazing work despite difficult circumstances), my critique was about the structural biases of the mainstream corporate media, biases taken on by people who want to work for them, in my opinion.
We all do what we need to do to survive; no arguments there. But if there’s the pretension that corporate media work (or want-to-be-corporate media work) can serve a progressive purpose, then there’s certainly room for critique. I definitely was not questioning anyone’s survival strategies, but rather their structural biases, direct and indirect, in favor of ruling class ideas _as journalists_ (not as people cashing a paycheck for a day on the job; everyone needs to do that).
While I did criticize the “colourful characters” story by Adam on Open File as “insipid”, when have I ever “humiliated” others publicly for their writing, in this context? You’ve hyperlinked to other sources, so I’d appreciate some source. I try to stay on the level of critique and not ad-hominem attack (although I couldn’t resist a jibe at Steve). And, even in the original twitter correspondence, as people were criticizing each other, I wrote: “I do respect your good faith & hard work” (in reference to you, Laura, Giuseppe, Adam & Justin).
I’m glad at least you linked to the original twitter correspondence, because even within the limitations of twitter glibness I tried to provide some nuance. The one comment I would take back is saying campus media coverage has not provided “ANY” insight. That’s overly broad, clearly.
A conversation to be continued for sure, just not on twitter.
Please do clarify some of the points I make above when you can.
Best,
– J.