Lisa Hrabluk

Last June I did a CBC Radio commentary about cancelling my cable and my newspaper subscription. The decision was an easy one, made moments after opening the $100-plus cable bill that forced us to receive a bunch of channels we didn’t want in order to get the ones we did. As soon as the hockey playoffs were over (how very Canadian, I know), we pulled the plug. Being on a bit of a roll, I cancelled my subscription to the Telegraph-Journal, my local paper and the source of my income for eight years.

As I said in the CBC commentary:

My own version of spring cleaning: out with the old media and in with the new.
I don’t need yesterday’s news on my doorstep, when I already read it yesterday on my desktop.

That’s me the consumer talking, but I’m also a writer, so I’m torn as to how any of us are supposed to earn a living in this digital age. All those unpaid bloggers over at Huffington Post can’t be the future, can they?

We are in the midst of a massive migration.
Not of people, but of content.
Information is on the move – away from traditional providers like newspapers, cable companies, music labels, movie theatres and yes, even radio stations, and onto the web, where it can find a much larger audience.
Finding profits, that’s a little more difficult.
In these early days of the digital information age, it is easier to earn a reputation than to earn a living online.

Now it is November and we’re still cable and local paper-free. Michael’s order GameCenter from nhl.com, I’m watching Mad Men off a live stream on ctv.ca and I’m reading way too many American election blogs – mainly because they are always a day or two ahead of conventional media.

Seriously, have my fellow journalists forgotten how to tell a freakin’ story? They’re between a blogger and the campaign plane – watching both so intensely they’re lost all hope of originality. Blah.

Barack Obama told a new story; journalists need to follow his lead. I can’t believe the future of journalism is gawker.com; that’s part of it, but I believe, more than ever, people want context. They want their world explained to them in a homespun kind of way. Rather than political and corporate spin.

I’m still here and I’m still watching, listening and reading.
I, and others like me, still crave the content.
The question is, who’s going to provide it.
I read an interesting study recently that offered a dash of common sense with its analysis: there is only so much information each of us can absorb each day and that going online doesn’t mean we’re getting more information – we’re just getting it from more sources.
That should offers a glimmer of hope for traditional media and entertainment companies – but only for those brave enough to let go of that old business model that has them choose the content and the delivery system for me.
The online world doesn’t work that way.
Old Marshall McLuhan was right – the medium is the message.
All the Internet did was change the delivery.
And that’s changed everything.