National Coverage

[Don Perkins]

Guillermo's thoughts are correct for any mass-market publication, of course,
as well as for "focused" journals, etc.  So maybe we need ignore the
propaganda implicit in the claim/name of the "National" Post, or the
advertisaing of Canada's "national" newspaper.  We need rather to be
vigilant that any theatre publication with national ambitions have national
scope--and I can recall arguments about Theatrum (in its time) not being
"national" in coverage.  The editor claimed it was "so hard" to find out
what was happening "out west."  Of course, the NeWest Review had published a
list of shows upcoming in cities from Wiinipeg west for years at that time.
 It still publishes such a list, but is not able to keep up with the full
array of large and small theatres in large and small western (read prairie)
centres. Unfortunately, the NR no longer publishes regular reviews of new
shows in the west (it long ago passed up on reviews of shows imported from
the Rest of Canada--which means something different here in Alberta),
preferring more general feature stories and season wrap-ups.


Don Perkins
Research Associate
Edmonton Professional Theatre Project



P.S.--didn't you just love the national coverage of Joe Shoctor winning the
Ray Hnatyshyn Award for Volunteerism in the latest Governor General's Awards
for the Performing Arts.  I realize Shoctor is blamed for a lot, as well as
praised for a little, but surely an award of this scope, for his work in
building and maintaining major theatre complex merited a feature or two
somewhere?



On Fri, 13
Nov 1998, Guillermo Verdecchia wrote:

> Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 20:14:50 -0500
> From: Guillermo Verdecchia <GLV at COMPUSERVE.COM>
> To: CANDRAMA at hermes.csd.unb.ca
> Subject: National Coverage
>
> I think the people at the Post and G&M will tell you -- the former
> publisher of the Globe said so a few years ago -- that their job is to
> deliver an audience ( a readership) to advertisers. Their job is not to
> cover the "news",  afflict the comfortable or comfort the afflicted, least
> of all is it to provide arts criticism. No, their job is to sell
> advertising.
>
> Gaetan's experience appears to demonstrate that there was a time when
> newspapers had other goals or philosophies. In these lean and mean times,
> newspapers can no longer afford such altruism.
>
> GLV
>
> >  It was the
> > job of the Post and the G&M to make up for that loss of funding and to
> draw
> > attention to that production and everytime we spend our 60 cents to buy
>