Glenn Kubish

Boorstin, Mann, Chardonnay Tonight, we're in Calgary and I'm sneaking in a little MACT reading while Shelagh sleeps. On the desk is Daniel Boorstin's The Image: A Guide Top Pseudo-Events in America. I want to emerge from my time in the MACT program with a better understanding of what, when I was in the television news industry, I might have been too close to see. And that is the effect of the very camera used to record the images and sound that are the raw material of traditional television news broadcasts. MacArthur then Boorstin recounts the image of cheering Chicagoans who lined up on April 26, 1951, for a parade honouring General Douglas MacArthur. "On the television screen one received the impression of wildly cheering and enthusiastic crowds before, during, and after the parade. Of course the cameras were specially selecting 'action shots,' which showed a noisy, waving audience; yet in many cases the cheering, waving, and shouting were reall...

One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve...

There is a song I am listening to these days. It's called Unbreakable Chain, and it's sung by Daniel Lanois. Writing about music never quite works. So, here it is for a watch and a listen.  To me, the song is about communication. Attempts at communication, failed communication, suspended communication. The title, to me, refers to the silence that has the nature of an unbreakable chain. It binds us in isolation.  The song is sprinkled with references to communication attempts. In the first verse, we are asked to consider the shadowy nightscape of communication: dreams. It's not the pitter-patter of the one in your dreams.. In the second verse is another familiar form in the story of communication, the belief, the instinct that the elements are somehow making themselves known to us in its own language.  You walk and you know that the wind is not passing you by/ It's speaking and you listen and the tears don't come out when you cry... In the third verse, the ...

Lippmann's Public Opinion begins with a dedication to Faye Lippmann, Wading River, Long Island, 1921, which, in what follows, is a quotation from Book 7 of Plato's Republic where we are asked to contemplate the allegory of the cave. Very romantic. Of course, it does force us to keep the teaching in mind while reading the book and be aware of Lippmann's use of the word allegory. I may not have my word count right, but the first time I came across "allegory" in the book is in the third paragraph of chapter eleven, where the author writes: "The bewildering variety of our impressions, even after they have been censored in all kinds of ways, tends to force us to adopt the greater economy of the allegory. So great is the multitude of things that we cannot keep them vividly in mind. Usually, then, we name them, and let the name stand for the whole impression. But a name is porous. Old meanings slip out and new ones slip in, and the attempt to retain the full...

One of the most amazing chapters of my time at CTV Edmonton was a convergence culture moment. The term convergence culture is Henry Jenkins's, and it refers loosely to the meanings created when established media collide with new media. My up-close view of this came in the Duckett Cookie Episode , when then (and that's not a throwaway adjective in this case) Alberta Health Service CEO Stephen Duckett chose not to answer reporters' questions.  The questions, as it turned out, were about whether he would answer questions, whether he thought he should stop to talk about emergency room wait times. CTV posted the video of that encounter to YouTube. Hundreds of thousands of people viewed the video, thousands commented, scores created mashups. The premier told the legislature that he thought everyone had seen the video. Duckett was subsequently fired. It is not the firing that is of interest to me. Who knows? It may have been politically motivated, and had nothing to do with c...

Here is a short video showing the boys at their best!

I have started this sentence three times. The first time, it was a reference to my friend, CTV reporter Bill Fortier, and the sentence was going to refer to his commitment to proper spelling. But I couldn't think my way out of that sentence (I love that sense of sentence, actually, because it captures what it's like to feel imprisoned by the written word), so I abandoned it by pressing the DELETE button 10 or 12 times.  Then, I re-started the sentence, this time by referring to what it's like to be married to an editor, and how that changes the way you read and re-read for spelling errors. But that was silly. Not being married to an editor, don't get me wrong. I just couldn't think my way out of that one, either. DELETE, DELETE, DELETE, DELETE, etc.... And that got me thinking about the DELETE key. It's like time travel. With a flash of a finger up to the top right of the keyboard it's possible to zip back into the recent past and re-do your thoughts, re-w...