I'm your audience, Telegram — for now

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The Telegram's Russell Wangersky uses his column today to tear a strip off local CBC Radio, which he writes has “out-Heralded the Newfoundland Herald” in terms of self-promotion.

But Wangersky throws some pretty sharp knives for someone who lives in a paper house.

He writes that he’s tired of the self-promotion on CBC Radio.

The public broadcaster is supposed to be commercial free, but that’s apparently not the case lately.

Not when the CBC is constantly running commercials advertising its own content.

Many of the CBC’s self-promotional ads have all the subtlety of a 1990s B&K Carpet commercial, along with the use of CBC news reporters — primarily using Zac Goudie’s distinctively modulated pipes — doing the voiceover for the commercials.


But it was only last week, March 2nd, that The Telegram carried a full-page feature (Telegram goes high-tech in the classroom, page A4) about how the paper’s online edition is now available in all of the province’s schools.


There were also 8 photographs, including one centre-page shot of a bunch of school kids huddled around computer screens with The Telegram front and centre.


Now if that’s not self-promotion, what is?


And it’s played — not as a commercial — but as a legitimate news story.


When I worked at The Telegram reporters would be furious if their bylines (names) appeared on such a story, although that doesn't seem to be the case today.


To play on Wangersky’s words, I hate to have to write this, because I’m a dedicated reader.


At least of the editorial page.

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