BEYOND THE PALEWALL (10)

 1. Real Puzzling
   Many people up here are indoors working on jigsaw puzzles because that beats going outdoors or watching the news. A large 1000-piece puzzle, solidly coloured and with irregular edges, can keep you busy for quite a while. Looking for a bigger challenge, some senior folks in Utah, where they probably don't want to go outside either, ordered a 75 pounder consisting of 60,000 pieces. They went to work:

Over the next four months, about 50 seniors spent four hours a day piecing together 60 different 1,000-piece puzzle sections featuring a world map and 187 images of artwork by Dowdle of scenic landmarks such as the Colosseum in Rome, the Taj Mahal in India and U.S. national parks.
Last month, after the 60 puzzles were combined into one piece of art spread across 16 banquet tables, the senior center put its 8-by-29-foot creation on display for the public.

   Dowdle, the puzzle maker, operates "Dowdle Folk Art" which, conveniently enough is just down the road from the Springville Senior Center where the puzzle he made is on display. You can order "What A Wonderful World" - The World's Largest Puzzle" by clicking on this link. Before you do so, you should know that it is about 8' tall and 29' long and costs $1,027.00 in real dollars.
   All of this was learned from: "Utah Senior Center Tackles Loneliness With a 60,000-Piece Puzzle," Ruth Nielsen, Washington Post, Feb. 17, 2024. If you want to learn more, see the * Largest Jigsaw Puzzles in the World," Nancy Levin, largest.org, Jan. 19, 2023. The smallest offered is the 33,600-piece, "Wild Life" which costs $600 also real dollars. 

2. Build A Border Wall - A Northern One!
 Former presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy suggested one needed to be built because of the fentanyl problem, and Nikki Haley pointed out the problems presented by 500 people on the terrorist list who crossed over from Canada. More Republicans may be scrutinizing the Canadian/American border because of an article such as this one:
"Migrants Face Cold, Perilous Crossing From Canada to New York: Increasingly, Migrants From Latin America Are Risking Their Lives to Cross Illegally Into the United States Along the Northern Border," Luis Ferré-Sadurní, The New York Times, Feb. 11, 2024.

   As migrants continue to overwhelm the southern border in record numbers, a growing wave is trying an alternative route into the United States: across the less fortified, more expansive Canadian border….

More than 12,200 people were apprehended crossing illegally from Canada last year, a 241 percent jump from the 3,578 arrested the previous year. Most of them were Mexicans, who can fly to Canada without a visa and may prefer the northern border to avoid the cartels that exploit migrants in their country.

3. Dire Headline of the Decade - "Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?" 
 The subtitle of Clare Malone's Atlantic article (Feb.10) continued this way: Ads are scarce, search and social traffic is dying, and readers are burned out. The future will require fundamentally rethinking the press’s relationship to its audience. She reports on
 A report that tracked layoffs in the industry in 2023 recorded twenty-six hundred and eighty-one in broadcast, print, and digital news media. NBC News, Vox Media, Vice News, Business Insider, Spotify, theSkimm, FiveThirtyEight, The Athletic, and Condé Nast—the publisher of The New Yorker—all made significant layoffs. BuzzFeed News closed, as did Gawker. The Washington Post, which lost about a hundred million dollars last year, offered buyouts to two hundred and forty employees. In just the first month of 2024, Condé Nast laid off a significant number of Pitchfork’s staff and folded the outlet into GQ; the Los Angeles Times laid off at least a hundred and fifteen workers (their union called it “the big one”); Time cut fifteen per cent of its union-represented editorial staff; the Wall Street Journal slashed positions at its D.C. bureau; and Sports Illustrated, which had been weathering a scandal for publishing A.I.-generated stories, laid off much of its staff as well.
The Fahrenheit 451 of everything without the fires.

4. Rankled by Rankings (again):
   The rankings game is played by most universities which hide low numbers and seek the higher ones. Although most would like to opt out, it is difficult to do so and arguments about how the rankings are done and disagreements between those ranked continue.
   Among the recent rankings disputes, you may have missed this one. It does not involve U.S. News & World Report or Maclean's. It does involve the Chinese (again) and math, but in this case neither of those subjects is inscrutable.

  To Disraeli's, "lies, damned lies and statistics," math can be added. It may even be the case that you can have a highly ranked math department in a university where there is no department of mathematics. Here is all you need to know and you don't need to know any math to understand it: "Citation Cartels Help Some Mathematicians - and Their Universities - Climb the Rankings," Michele Catanzaro, Science, Jan.30, 2024.

Cliques of mathematicians at institutions in China, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere have been artificially boosting their colleagues’ citation counts by churning out low-quality papers that repeatedly reference their work, according to an unpublished analysis seen by Science. As a result, their universities—some of which do not appear to have math departments—now produce a greater number of highly cited math papers each year than schools with a strong track record in the field, such as Stanford and Princeton universities.

   The ranking wars will continue, however, and if you google any university, the rankings will appear since good ones can be found somewhere. Those pictured are currently displayed at the university close by. 

Periodical Ramblings (15)

 More Magazines We Soon May Be Missing
  In Periodical Ramblings (13) I mentioned that National Geographic was laying off its staff writers and more recently, among some news stories, I indicated that Reader"s Digest Canada would soon cease publication (see, Palewall (5).) Now, two more periodicals are in trouble and may have to resort to a cover such as the one above. It is from National Lampoon, but obviously the threat didn't work since it stopped publishing at the end of the last century. 

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
   The headline this time is, "Sports Illustrated Employees Left in Limbo As Publisher Faces Money Troubles," (Joe Reedy, AP, in the G&M, Jan.19, 2024.) The magazine used to be a weekly, then biweekly and since 2020 has been a monthly. The illustrations were excellent and the coverage broad, as the cover above indicates (although I admit that the European Court of Justice didn't declare that bridge isn't a sport until 2017.) 

It has been loosing subscribers over the years, as have other periodicals. A while back, for just a few bucks, they sent copies to me all the way up to Canada and I got the jacket pictured as a bonus. I have to be careful where I wear it since Washington had not yet changed the name of the team to the "Commanders."

      

Beware  of hedge funds and investors bearing brand names like "Trusted Media Brands", which is closing down Reader's Digest, and "Authentic Brands Group" which owns Sports Illustrated. Authentic also owns the intellectual property for Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and Muhammad Ali, all of whom are dead, but still making more money than Sports Illustrated. 

BUSINESS WEEK
   Another dreaded headline if you like magazines is, "Bloomberg Businessweek to Go Monthly: The Publication Has Not Avoided the Persistent Headwinds Facing All Print Publications," Katie Robinson, New York Times, Nov. 30, 2023. Business Week has been published weekly since 1929, but it will now be a monthly, albeit on "heavier paper stock for a more high-end look and feel." Bloomberg bought the publication in 2009 and affixed his name to it, as he has to many things. I suppose the name will have to change again. It was a readable magazine, even it you weren't much interested in business.

The Loss of 'Local' News
  It is unfortunate that such publications are disappearing. You may soon have to rely on "Sam on Substack" or even MM, if you are only looking for "freebies" and don't want to pay for solid research and good writing that has been edited and proofed.
   It is also the case that the loss of these magazines can have a 'local' impact and I have written often about the devastating loss of local newspapers. I am using the term "local" here to mean "Canadian". We generally think it is a good thing to have journalists embedded in the community and poking politicians about local issues about which they care and have been following closely. 
   Back about the time Bloomberg bought Business Week, I was in charge of a business library at a university which has a good business school and had very good libraries. I received a call from Toronto from the folks at Business Week, who wanted to know if I was interested in getting their entire collection, since they were shutting up shop and the journalists covering Canada would no longer be based here. 
   This has happened before and it is likely that good coverage of 'local' Canadian news has suffered.  The Times of London shut its Ottawa office in the early 1970s and the New York Times closed its Canadian news bureau in 1999. Perhaps good journalism can be produced from afar, or by a reporter passing through, but it is likely better to have a local observer who, for example, goes out drinking at the pub with some politicians and people in the neighbourhood. 

Sources (And A Bit More): That's Why 'Ramblings' Is In The Title!

  For more about Business Week: "Who Ever Said Magazines Need to be Ink on Paper?", Peter Coy, New York Times, Dec. 4, 2023. On the importance of BW, he notes: Business Week's editorials offered perhaps the most sophisticated Keynesian-style economic analysis of any mass publication, and its influence may have been disproportionate to its circulation, as it targeted an elite audience of businessmen." He is quoting, Professor Ranjit Dighe: “Business Week and the Coming of Keynesianism to America.” Research in Economic History 35: 25-57 (2019).
   The Times of London announced it was shutting its Canadian bureau in 1970, but that was delayed until 1971 by Canadian-born Kenneth Thompson, who was the chairman of the Time's board. "Times Decides to Close Bureau in Canada," Globe and Mail, March 31, 1971.

   The New York Times closed its Canadian bureau and moved it to Denver. The reason for the closure was TAXES. They were prohibitive: "During the 1990s , one American newspaper after another quietly folded its tent in Canada. In an exodus largely unnoticed by the Canadian public, The Detroit News, closed its Ottawa bureau. The Chicago TrIbune closed its Toronto bureau. The Los Angeles Times  moved its Canada correspondent to New York and The Wall Street Journal adopted an informal policy of not sending Americans to Canada." ("Why The New York Times' Canada Bureau Isn't in Canada: Canadian Taxes on Taxes Have Made the Cost Prohibitive. But the Story Is Larger Than the Times," James Brooke, The Globe and Mail, Oct. 4, 1999. 
   The Columbia Journalism Review explained the exodus in this article:  "Why Canada Is Shrinking: The New York Times  Berlin Correspondent covers Germany from Berlin. Its Nairobi Correspondent Covers Kenya From Nairobi. And Its Canadian Correspondent Covers Canada From ....Denver, Colorado." (by Dayna E. Simon, Mar. 2000):
" The Times joined the exodus last summer after paying $114,000 in income tax to Revenue Canada for its resident reporter. The sky-high bill results in part from "tax equalization," in which the company pays the tax bill that is over an above what employees would pay if they were working in the U.S. An American in Canada could be taxed as high as 52% when federal and provincial rates are combined. But, it isn't the higher rates that the Times objects to -- it's what happens next. Under Canadian rules the money paid for tax equalization is added to the correspondent's salary as income in the following year. Thus, the amount builds, year after year." Plus, the reporters didn't qualify for Canadian benefits. 
  This long tax digression is interesting, but provided only because Toronto may soon be loosing Tavares because of tax issues and therefore it has some relevance: "Maple Leafs Captain John Tavares in $8M Tax Dispute With CRA," CBC, Feb.7, 2024 and many other examples c. Feb. 2024.

  The basic point is, I suppose, that while the Internet has led to an increase in the number of sources available to us, we are losing magazines, newspapers and other reliable sources and are surely not getting any smarter.

The Bonus:
  Unfortunately, billionaires may not be able to bail us out. Here is another recent headline: "Billionaires Wanted to Save the News Industry. They’re Losing a Fortune. Time magazine, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times — owned by Marc Benioff, Jeff Bezos and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong — Are Still Losing Money," Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson, The New York Times, Jan. 1, 2024.

Quote of the Week (1)

 It has been sad to see our local newspapers disappear. The loss is not ours alone. As Tom Zoellner points out in the quotation below this map, those who follow will know much less about us. 

News Deserts

“What were we doing with all those shorter items we slammed into the paper, however imperfectly, was logging a record of events into the permanent memory of the nation. Crack open any civic history at the bibliography, and odds are excellent that most of the details are sourced from the local paper. If we didn’t publish it, it might as well have never happened, so far as future consciousness is concerned. Now that a daily record of happenings is vanishing from America’s towns and cities, so with it will come amnesia. The stack of newspapers that mattered most, and which we spent no time thinking about, was delivered to the library archives. Future urban historians will come across an abundance of detail about virtually every town and city in the U.S. up until the first decade of the twenty-first century, when the record starts to trail off and the permanent record of what happened across America begins to disappear like brain cells under attack. How far this new Dark Age will last is, as yet, unknown. The COVID-19 lockdown and recession tore through an already feeble business, killing dozens of newspapers that had served their towns for more than a hundred years and leaving the civic lights dimmed, perhaps permanently.”

From: “Late City Final,” in The National Road, by Tom Zoellner, pp.133-134.

The answer here in London, for the London Free Press, is the Postmedia Network, and much of the content in it looks very much like that found in other Postmedia papers across the country.

The Bonus:

The maps above relate to the U.S., but the situation is similar in Canada. A good source for data is the Local News Research Project at Ryerson University's School of Journalism.