Skip to main content

Asking for more from local media

A little letter to the FreeP:

Thank you for the work of your newsroom. Hearing how PostMedia has taken over Canada, including the major newsrooms in the largest Canadian cities, I'm proud scrappy little Winnipeg has maintained an independent free press. 

If I may be so bold as to offer some suggestion/critique...

The constant air quality warnings and drought conditions we're experiencing are deeply worrying. What is equally disturbing is the general conversation around it which acknowledges the unpleasantness, blindly hopes it's temporary, and moves on, without addressing the climate change at the root of the conditions – and most importantly, that it is crucial we act in as many ways as we can as quickly as we can to do things to address it. Notably, pressuring our politicians that more pipelines are not the direction to go. 

Public transit is an important climate mitigation as well – getting people out of wasteful private vehicles into more efficient buses and onto bikes. There has been commentary in your pages on the new public transit rollout but I really want to see our politicians put their money where their mouth is. Or rather put their posteriors where their words go. I'm not interested in what Councillor Lukes has to say about plans. I want to hear how she personally experiences riding the bus. I would avidly read a series that follows each one of the councillors riding the bus regularly over a sustained period of time &nash; i.e. not just during rushhour from the suburbs to downtown and back home. 

Thanks again for working to keep Manitobans informed and for fighting to keep it local. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whose death matters?

In June of 2024, a man was just riding his bike to work. Early in the morning when traffic should be low to nonexistent. Wearing a helmet and a reflective vest.  A racing driver lost control and plowed him over.  Anyone who bikes in this city was grieved and outraged.  This stretch of roadway is designated as a bike route. There's a little green sign with a bicycle icon to tell you that. The wide road that invites speeding certainly doesn't. How does a person even drive 159 km/hr on a sleepy residential street within city limits? (Because the street is too damn wide.) For about as long as it has existed, the cycling advocacy organization has identified this stretch of roadway as a route in critical need of remediation to make it safer.  So, within a week, temporary safety measures had been rolled out. Reduced speed limit signs were erected, poly posts narrowed the roadway and speed cameras made sure folks took it seriously.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha. No. 20, 40,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bike 19

It's Earth Day today. It's a day, not to worship creation, but to pay mind to it, and in so doing, to worship the creator. So, says Sarah Pulliam Bailey , was the intention of Earth Day's originator. I confess I'm not doing anything special for the day. I take pride -- perhaps too much -- in the "eco-morality" of the normal things I do. That morality, sense of self-righteousness, is not the reason for my choices. Instead, it's a conviction that it is, in fact, worship when I climb on my bike; dig paper out of the recycling bin or stock used envelopes for reuse; dissect a teabag so the paper tab goes in recycling, the bag into compost, and only the string into the garbage; use my thrift store dishes; even when I carpool with someone else. The little bits of inconvenience that I subject myself to in order to reduce waste are intended for the sake of the Creator. The attitude is not always worshipful; on my way home today, I was once again muttering i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bike 7

Steady falling snow against grey skies did not encourage bike riding. But when the sun broke through late afternoon, I got up my gumption to leave the house for a short jaunt to the Forks. Leaving behind the gloves was a mistake but otherwise, it wasn't too bad. Underneath the Norwood Bridge, the bike path was covered with rivulets of ice from meltage dripping down from the bridge, and for the width of the two bridge spans, the river was flowing water right up at the surface, whereas the rest of the way appeared to be completely snowed over yet. That small view of open water was a reminder of the pending flood we'll see this spring, and of the great vulnerability we have to the elements: all it would take is the combination of above zero temperatures and an enormous ice jam, and we'll have some seriously rising water.
Post a Comment
Read more