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So Long Newspapers But (Fingers Crossed) Long Live the Written Word!

1/27/2016

12 Comments

 
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I just heard that my hometown newspaper, The Guelph Mercury, which has been operating for 149 years—making it one of Canada’s oldest newspapers—will run its last issue ever this Friday. My multimedia-artist friend Dawn Matheson is organizing a “Guelph Mercury Hug Mob Goodbye” where the newspaper’s long-time readers will converge for a group hug of the old downtown Mercury building—and a group hug of the staff itself as they walk out of their jobs for good. All Guelph Mercury staff have lost their jobs. They had five days notice. (Who will cover this local story of the group hug, I have no idea, probably no one.)
 
So long Guelph Mercury, a newspaper my elderly mother still subscribes to, a newspaper I delivered as a kid, a newspaper which prided itself on being “intensely local” and committed to putting 25 stories and 75 local names in every issue. The Mercury is just another victim in the slow train wreck of print media, and the train’s name, as everyone knows, is the Internet Express. (I just made that up but I think it’s kind of catchy.)
 
As a writer I see the fallout of print media’s demise every day. I feel lucky because at least I caught the tail end of making a living as a travel writer, a job that is pretty much  archaic today. After getting two books published it dawned on me that some people were actually making a living publishing travel writing in newspapers. I thought I’d try this myself and was shocked when I hit it lucky with the very first story I ever submitted, an article on carpets in Morocco. The Globe and Mail actually paid me $1000 for the story and asked for more. I thought, like Mary Tyler Moore, I had made it. I had a real career. And for a while, I did. This was in the days when just the travel section of The Globe was twice as thick as the entire paper is today. It was when people were just starting to talk about the internet and only a few people I knew were actually “connected” to whatever it was that got you connected to the internet back then, phone lines mainly. Back then, the internet seemed to be kind of nerdy. But after a decade passed of my being a travel writer for newspapers and magazines it was all over. Nobody was paying money for travel stories anymore, certainly not cash-strapped newspapers, and only during that short dotcom bubble of the late 90s was I getting paid to write for websites. (Salon.com once gave me an incredible US$1500.00 for a single story, unheard of today.)
 
So what does a writer do when nobody is paying for the written word anymore?
 
She gives travel writing classes! She tells people how to become a travel writer!
 
It’s all an impossible dream of course and I tell people that and you know what? They don’t seem to care. They don’t care because they still want to know what makes a good travel story, how to hook the reader with the first sentence, how to transform their gut-wrenching trek across the north of Spain into an actual story for their children and their friends. They don’t care about getting published—they can take a self-publishing workshop some day or write their own blog. Mostly, these people just want to write, to recall and record the events of their lives. And I’m so happy about that because writing is the best part of being a writer. (See: What Writing Gives Me)
 
Some day, perhaps, when some cyber-destroying barbaric terrorist group unplugs us all and we’re left to wander outside and have actual conversations, the written word will still be there, quietly sitting on people’s dusty bookshelves or in their compost heaps, waiting to be picked up by someone’s hands and read, page by page, deep into the night.
 

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Laurie Gough's Memoir Writing Workshop, San Miguel International Writers' Festival
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Laurie Gough's Travel Writing Workshop, Morrin Centre, Quebec City, 2016
12 Comments
Alan Bowman
1/28/2016 01:09:03 pm

Laurie, thanx for this! I am a fan of the Mercury and have been reading it for years and cannot comprehend it's now a thing of the past as of today. My dad would turn in his grave. where is the world headed?

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Pam Logan
1/29/2016 05:24:02 pm

I just don't understand how journalists are all losing their jobs left right and center. Who will report on a council meeting? Who will report on ANYTHING in guelph anymore, in toronto, in the world, without real journalists!!!!???? Are we supposed to get our news off of facebook and is that really news? WE need real reporting and knowledge behind the stories, not people with phones who takes pictures and write their own story without any background of what is going on. I am sorry but I can't see the world is headed anywhere near MORE knowledge and more understanding and more awareness if we don't respect our journalists and as Laurie says, the freaking written word!

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Pam Logan
1/29/2016 05:29:31 pm

I am sorry but I don't understand where the world is headed if we don't have journalists! Who will report on what the Guelph city council is doing? Who will report on upcoming events in our area? In Toronto, in our schools, in the world? How can we think we are headed for more "awareness" and "knowledge" in this world if there is nobody to record what is happening? Are we supposed to rely on what people post on facebook to get an idea of what's happening out there? I am sorry but I don't care how cute your dog looks today. I want hardcore interesting news written by someone who has experience and knowledge and has been covering issues for years. How can all these journalists be losing their jobs? As Laurie says what is freaking happening to the value of the written word? Is it all instagram and twitter now? BEam me up Scotty. I am so not interested in a dumbed down world.

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Ravi P.
1/30/2016 06:01:40 pm

I agree. The same thing is happening here in the States. Newspapers disappearing, reporters out of work, journalists gone the way of the dodo bird. I worry for the generation of my kids who aren't yet old enough to read and when they do start reading it won't be newspapers.

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Irene Hogan
2/7/2016 09:05:16 pm

Laurie, I want to take one of your writing classes. I agree with you about how sad the loss of newspapers are by the way. Can you PM me and let me know about your classes? I have met you before, i think in guelph or toronto? Anyway I am interested if you do it again.

Reply
Kira
2/8/2016 08:45:37 pm

Maybe you should continue the newspaper yourself. Just call it the Gough Mercury and write editorials and travel sites. Or maybe just the funny papers. Whatever you want!

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Laurie
2/9/2016 06:58:49 am

That sounds fun Kira but I don't live in Guelph anymore! Maybe when I move back. I hope someone takes up the reins, How about you?

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Kira
2/9/2016 11:56:42 am

Sorry, I have never even been to Guelph before so cannot report on the news! I have only been to Montreal and Victoria a long time ago. Of course,I could just make up news for a fictional type of Guelph.. I think I would just recreate a Canadian Mayberry. It would have a small town newspaper with an Aunt Bee, Barney Fife, Gomer Pyle and Opie... Andy Griffith caught two fish--that's our headline for today, eh?

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Laurie
2/9/2016 12:23:47 pm

Sounds fun!
I thought because of your name you were a friend of mine from Guelph, also named Kira. She's a writer so I figured that's who wrote. So you're from the States?

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Kira
2/9/2016 02:46:39 pm

Yes, I'm from California and spent an entire afternoon with you once. I set up an interview that you did on public radio in West Sonoma County. I even went to Fiji because of your book. I live through your travel blog vicariously these days because all I've ever wanted to do was to travel. And something always comes up. I believe you are born the same year as I,1964 -- and I also lost my father several years before your father passed away. Now, I help take care of my mom, who is, well, not trying out for the Olympics any time soon. The million question is, how do you break the ties that bind and go off on the road again? It's not like I could strap my mother to my backpack, you know?

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Laurie
2/9/2016 09:02:40 pm

Hi Kira, I remember you! That's a really tough question and of course it depends on so many things. I think human relationships are the most important things in this life and when we're old and look back we will want to know we spent time with our parents when we had the chance. Having said that, I should take my own advice and visit my mother more often (although she doesn't exactly love it if I stay too long, very set in her ways!) It's all very hard I find, these questions of what to do at this stage. I'm in a similar position.

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Kira
2/11/2016 08:03:21 am

Well, they say that caring for sick and elderly parents is the most karma-burning thing there is. I was overwhelmed and scared when my mother's health problems began, especially since my siblings and their spouses for the most part refused to help out. One actually said it wasn't their problem. But as the past two years have gone by, I am wondering who got the bad deal -- it's been a real course in Life 101. I am not a Nurse Nancy type but I have learned so much about family dynamics, health care, physiology and much much more. The travel related part is figuring out how to balance all this with time off, which I haven't had since I've been carrying this 24--7. I think I can arrange going off on some short trips, maybe several days. I never thought a weekend package trip to Hawaii would be something I'd want to do, but in this situation, it would be a fantastic experience as well as a much needed break.

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    Laurie Gough

    I'm an author of books about my travels, a freelance writer, an adventurer, a mother of a little boy, an environmental activist, and someone who daydreams about finding the perfect place to live.

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