The Black Rod

  Six months ago it was a piece of gossip posted on a message board for architects and urban design enthusiasts. Today, it's another notch in the noose tightening around Winnipeg mayor Sam Katz. Winnipeg Jets [Archive] - Page 38 - SkyscraperPage Forum forum.skyscraperpage.com/archive/index.php/t-160936-p-38.htmlCached Posted: Mar 1, 2012, 4:59 PM BKB Registered User 3712 Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 48 42 posts - 20 authors - Feb 8BKB. Mar 1, 2012, 4:59 PM. Seen at a recent Jets game: Phil Sheegl sitting in Shindico's corporate seats. Hmm.. So the mayor's best friend, and the most powerful administrator in the city, is enjoying the hospitality of the mayor's lon...

Two months ago the Stephen Harper government announced they were shutting down the Experimental Lakes Area, a one-of-a-kind science research project, run by Winnipeg scientists. They said it was to save $2 million a year, a half-a-gazillionth of the federal budget. The ELA consists of 58 lakes near Kenora. For 44 years scientists were able to use the closed ecosystems of the lakes to do groundbreaking research on acid rain, toxic metals, the effect of phosphates on freshwater lakes, what spawns algae blooms that kill lakes, and climate change. One story on the closure declared "the ELA was to water ecology what the supercollider is to physics." As a result of the defunding of the world-reknowned project, 40 biologists, chemists and other scientists from Winnipeg will lose their jobs. Scientists from around the world have decried the Harper government's action, giving Canada a bad name in science circles everywhere. But the governm...

The sun is shining on Winnipeg today in more ways than one as we announce the recipient of the coveted The Black Rod Newsmaker of the Year Award for 2011. It wasn't even close. He was a shoo-in. The man of the hour. If we had a laurel wreath we would crown him with it. Mark Chipman. He brought the Winnipeg Jets back. You don't need to say another word. He's 50; he's co-owner of True North Sports and Entertainment; he's got a degree in economics and worked as a lawyer. Blah blah blah. Who cares? He brought the Jets back. Now there's an accomplishment. It's like Prometheus bringing Man fire. Or Dr. Frankenstein seeing his creation twitch and breathe for the first time. "It's alive! It's alive!" For the return of the Jets has brought life back to Winnipeg. Life and sunshine. And song. And confidence. And hope. Can love be far behind? Chipman did it, and he did it without massive government subsidy or a massive ego...

Waiter, a double serving of crow for the Winnipeg Free Press table, please. The first week of the new year isn't even over and already the corrections are piling up and apologies flying over at the Free Press. Facts wrong? Political bias? Yep, just business as usual. First, there was the public face-plant by columnist Lindor Reynolds whose front-page story about the closing of a family-run fabric store named the wrong store throughout the story. So sorry; heh, heh, we all make mistakes; now quit calling me, she told readers the next day. And then there was the story by Ottawa reporter Mia Rabson which revealed that the series of Conservative Party-bashing stories she'd written throughout 2010 were w-r-o-n-g wrong. Full-out, completely wrong. Vaccine centre had quiet death -- Bidders not told of decision for six months -- Timing rules out local politics as factor By: Mia Rabson Posted: 5/01/2011 1:00 AM OTTAWA -- Canada's chief pub...

The blogosphere is humming with the revelation of emails showing left-wing journalists on a private web forum (Journolist) discussing ways to coordinate their coverage of the Obama presidential campaign to divert attention from his 20-year-association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his incendiary pastor. Pick one of Obama's critics, anyone will do, and accuse him of being a racist, was one suggestion. The editors, reporters, and columnists on the site swapped ideas on the best line of attack to undermine Sarah Palin as the Republican running mate, and, for good measure, they tried topping one another in showing their hatred of prominent conservative voices like Rush Limbaugh. Nine years ago CBS reporter and producer Bernard Goldberg wrote a book simply titled Bias . Calling on his 30 years of experience in the news business, Goldberg described how the mainstream media slants its reporting to promote the left-wing viewpoint without even thinking about it. There's no...

We had barely started to write about the latest smear campaigns by the Winnipeg Free Press when---look out----we were swamped by a BP gusher of bias in the mainstream media. Obviously, of course, we had to roll 'em all into one post on a theme. First, there was the NAACP racism video featuring Shirley Sherrod, which was followed almost instantly by the most intense leftwing MSM diversionary assault on truth in reporting since, well, Obama's election campaign. Speaking of which.. . The same day as the NAACP firestorm, t he public learned from leaked emails how leftwing "journalists" discussed amongst themselves how to save Obama's 2008 campaign from the damaging effect of association with his preacher of 20 years Jeremiah Wright, perhaps, one suggested, by diverting the debate by accusing one of Obama's critics of racism. But let's start with the NAACP. Obama, you see, has been such a disaster as President that his popularity ratings a...

We had no sooner started our spring cleaning--which consists of clearing our desks of stories we haven't gotten around to---when the first story we picked up almost caused us to spit out our morning coffee. Winnipeg Free Press Editor Margo Goodhand had written an "open letter" to Manitoba MP Vic Toews defending the FP's Parliament reporter Mia Rabson. She is not a Liberal Party shill, declared Goodhand. "Mia Rabson's just doing her job." "She's a good reporter..." Rabson "accurately depict(s) what's going on, as she has all along," according to Goodhand. Bwahahahaha. We needed a good larf. Right there in our story pile was the proof of how "accurately" Rabson depicts what's going on. The week before Parliament reconvened, Rabson went to work--- on the Conservatives. For the Saturday, Feb. 27, 2010, paper, she wrote a story not-so-subtly accusing the Conservatives of hypocrisy for scut...