The Free Press

What is the point of publishing a newspaper? Once you get the attention of a lot of readers, what do you want, as an editor or publisher, to do with it? Surely it isn’t all about just turning around and selling them to advertisers. Wouldn’t you want to influence their thinking a bit on some issues you consider important? I don’t think a publisher and editor can resist the urge, I just think some are bolder and more up-front than others about what they’re doing and how they try to do it. Take the West Ender, for example. The only obvious piece of editorial opinion in the whole thing is a fluffy self-deprecating apologia for having nothing of import to say to TV viewers despite much face time, authored by Steve Burgess. Otherwise, it’s all CDs, concerts, films, nightclubs, eating, drinking—that is, all the totally self-centered, self-absorbed, self-pleasing activities in life the editors could think up, and nothing at all about the broader social milieu, like the city, the country, or the world. Clearly the editorial direction here is: stay focused on your own body and its flitting needs and desires, do not look at what is going on in those places where decisions are made about your life and those of everyone around you in the city, the country, and the world in ways that affect your life in more meaningful, interesting, and lasting ways. It’s nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about, says this deceptively paternalistic, newspaper.

An interesting, and unexpected, dilemma is diagnosed in BC Christian News, published by the Christian Info Society in Langley. Tithing with credit cards . . . should churches accept or reject the practice? On the one hand, credit cards allow for easy giving. But they’re also devilish about steeping families in the whirlwind of debt. Using debit cards is more widely accepted, but there is still a discussion about whether it too might be “unbiblical.”