Bad press

I'm kind of embarrassed by my old school Carleton University. Its student union voted to stop fundraising for cystic fibrosis through the Shinerama Campaign. The reason was that CF affects mostly white men, which is misleading. They are now going to reconsider the decision. I'm sure the outrage over this bout of political correctness hit them unexpectedly.
Chances are, the union feels under siege and the subject of unfair press coverage. They simply wanted to change the focus of their fundraising. It was the reason and the communicating that went wrong.
They shouldn't feel too bad. The top big three auto executives, with all their education and access to public relations firms, really stepped in it a few days ago.
What do people remember about their appearance before Congress?
It's that they all came down in separate private jets.
The private jets are inconsequential the bigger picture of what's facing the auto industry. In their minds, they did nothing wrong. That's how people travel all the time in their circles.
But the perception couldn't have been worse.
Till next time

Just got back from Myrtle Beach and now I'm greeted by the blast of winter that hit us in the Sault. Actually, I came up through Barrie on Sunday and almost had to spend the night there due to bad weather.
When you think about it, weather forms a big chunk of news coverage and by extesion every-day conversations on the street.
Our website has regular weather updates from The Weather Network located in the top right corner of our site. It's quite useful as it shows local road conditions and conditions across Ontario.
The weather was good in Myrtle. We got all our rounds of golf in.
Not sure about the local ecomony. It seems the recession has hit that tourist town. The restaurants, stores and gold courses were not as busy as they usually are.
Anyhow, talk to you next time.
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Obama wins

Barack Obama made history by becoming the first black man to be elected president of The United States.

I have a confession to make. Today's editorial was written before the polls even closed. I put my faith in the numerous polls and pundits who predicted this win. I'm glad I didn't have to come in last night to re-write the piece.

As a border town, Sault Ste. Marie Ontario has a special relationship with the United States. Travel back and forth between Sault Ont, and Sault Mich. for commerce and fun is a fact of life here. We sent reporter Frank Dobrovnik there last night to do a local reaction story. Chippewa County voted for McCain by the slimmest of margins, but in 2004 George Bush won the county with no problem.

Speaking of polls and pundits, it will be interesting to see what they talk about now.

The media has been accused of being in the tank for Obama. It's hard to tell these days when the commentary offered by FOX and MSNBC gets weaved in with news stories and features.

Most viewers and listeners are wise enough to form their own opinions. In my opinion, they were wise enough to reject the red herrings such as William Ayers and Rev. Wright.  

Hi there. This is my first blog

Hi there. For those who don't know, and that's a whole lot of you I'm sure, my name is Frank Rupnik and I'm the editor of The Sault Star. I've been editor for about two years now after a previous stint as editor of The Sun Times in Owen Sound. I won't bore you with list of the other papers I've work at, suffice to say that I've been hop-scotching from paper to paper in Ontario for a little over twenty years now.

My goal is to make this blog about a variety of topics, but its main focus will be about newspapers, the Sault Star in particular, and about what we do, why we do it and how.

It's a brave new world for those of us in the business as we strive to keep you entertained and informed on-line and in print. I hope you keep coming back to our website to check out our excellent videos. We've made substantial strides in a short time and there's more to come.

This blog may fall silent later this week. I'm heading for a golfing vacation in Myrtle Beach. But after that I'll be updating this as much as possible.

In the meantime, I can't wait for the U.S. election tonight.

It's about time they wrapped this thing up.

Talk to you later.

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