Little Sunlight in this Province

Last night, more than two hundred residents of the West End attended a meeting about their Community Plan.  It was an important enough meeting for Vancouver Director of Planning Brian Jackson to make himself personally available to answer questions from the citizens.  But if you get your news from one of Vancouver’s major newspapers, the Vancouver Sun or the Province, you would know nothing about it.

You would learn in big headlines about the execution of otherwise unknown actors in North Korea, and about the tax problems of an obscure polygamous sect leader — but absolutely nothing about the urgent concerns of a major section of Vancouver.

With the exception of a letter or two to the editor (and the pro-development op-ed rants of Bob Ransford), you would probably also know nothing about the resistance to enforced densification that has characterized political activity in Grandview this summer.  Is it any wonder that one (at least) of these papers is about to disappear when they don’t feel any need to cover local issues in any detail?

Many would say (and indeed have said) the local mainstream media are just covering Vision Vancouver’s mistakes by limiting their coverage. Hard to argue against that possibility.  But I don’t think we should completely ignore simple bad management.