Sunday, February 15, 2009

NDG MONITOR NOW ONLY ONLINE

I have a long history with The Monitor and other suburban newspapers. I wrote for The North Shore News, and for The Monitor when it was first The Monitor. I did a half page - full sheet - article on Magic Tom Auburn. Mr. Auburn, always the perfect gentleman - gave me access to all his personal files and letters . My article was so good that when I went to The Monitor’s editor - I think his name was Rice - to receive my pay for the article, he told me to ask Tom Auburn to pay me. After some talk about going to small claims court, the editor of The Monitor paid me five dollars to settle the matter.

I was employed as a reporter for The Suburban under the original owner, Sophie Wolloch. Everyone who worked for Sophie Wolloch was “under” her - or else, including her husband, Max who worked for the paper as its photographer.

In the 1970’s, I was a columnist on The Lakeshore News and Chronicle and later, in the early 1980’s, a full-time journalist covering all the area’s news, doing photography and I even had a cartoon about Rene Levesque published. The editor, Jeannette Burley Tremblay took my name off some articles, including a major front-page expose of Mayor Decarie, saying it would appear that I was writing the whole newspaper myself.

And now, here we are in 2009 with no real newspaper for the entire community of NDG. We are cut off. Many people who do not have access to the internet - the elderly, the handicapped, the poor, new Canadians, have no way to know what is happening and thus, they will lose any ability to participate in local politics, a boon for Mayor Michael Applebaum and his friends.
NDG NEEDS A REAL NEWSPAPER - NOW !

Phyllis Mass Carter

NDG NEEDS FREE PRESS

NDG NEEDS A HANDS-ON FREE PRESS

Don't tell me why it can't be done, Folks. Somebody offer suggestions how it can be done.

Before major newspapers, there was the hand press - I worked on one when I was a child - and before that there were hand written notices. We need a free press that will be available to everyone, not just those who have access to the internet.

We need a free press that may start out as only four pages of local news.

We need a free press that has reporters - amateur or professional - but honest and smart - who will go out in the street and talk to people, knock on doors, ask questions, report various opinions, and provide the Folks with access information about borough meetings and other important issues - tell people's stories. Make it interesting so that people will WANT to read it, not just the standard trite little bits of cold information we see repeated everywhere now that profit-making corporations have swallowed up the media worldwide. Who would publish THIS article except online ?

We need a pamphleteer: We need a Benjamin Franklin. Democracy requires it !

Phyllis Carter