SUN MEDIA THREATENS THIS HERE FINE PUBLICATION WITH LEGAL RESTITUTION UNLESS IT CHANGES NAME. OL' PETEY BEGRUDGINLY OBLIGES

It’s true.

You might not think much of this little newspaper, but it has managed to garner the attention of those as far away as Toronto – the very centre of our universe.

Above is a letter excerpt from the devil’s advocate himself, Sun Media’s legal counsel (and you thought it was just a figure of speech). The letter asks the Nanton News Experiment to refrain from calling itself that as it is “confusingly similar” to the publication the Nanton News.

Below this is an excerpt of the letter and below that, my response to legal counsel.

EXCERPT

Dear Mr. Warden:

You are fully entitled to publish a community publication in Nanton. But you are not entitled to publish one under a name that is confusingly similar to the Nanton News, which is published by Sun Media.

The name “Nanton News” is the valuable intellectual property of Sun Media. By using the name “Nanton News Experiment”, you are very clearly trading on the public reputation of the Nanton News, a name associated in the public mind with Sun Media. The fact of that association could give rise, and may have already given rise, to public confusion between your publication and Sun Media’s, and this may cause Sun Media damage for which you are in law responsible.

Sun Media requires you to take immediate steps to change the name of your publication to one that is clearly and distinctly different from Nanton News or any confusingly similar variation thereof, and to confirm to me when you have done so. … If you fail to do so, Sun Media will consider itself at liberty to take all steps open to it to protect its business and will hold you responsible for all costs incurred in doing so, whether in the form of lost revenue or the costs of enforcing its rights or both.

Yours truly,

Tycho Manson

RESPONSE:

Dear Mr. Manson – Director Legal Affairs, Sun Media

That the name “Nanton News” is the valuable intellectual property of Sun Media – let’s maybe start there.

I quarrel with the use of “intellectual” mainly. This may be one of those things that invariably gets glossed over in legal proceedings, but in the court of public opinion let the record show that Sun Media considers itself valuable intellectual property and I, Peter Worden, do not.

Secondly, that the use of the name Nanton News Experiment clearly trades on the public reputation of the Nanton News, well now you might have me there. I have made many interesting trades in the past two months with my Nanton News Experiment. In particular, I traded one man a cigar for a copy of my newspaper. I traded another woman a pet of her new puppy for a newspaper, too.

What I am getting at is that in conversation with Nanton-folk, and in trading on your reputation, I haven’t sold any newspapers at all. There has been no cost for my paper and no advertising either.

As for the two names being “confusingly similar”, your remark doesn’t say much for the people of Nanton. For one, the Nanton News Experiment is one-sixteenth the size.

"The reputation you are trying to protect by seeking legal action, is – in my conversations with people – not all that great to begin with."

I certainly have not taken any business away from your treasured Nanton News, and I must be honest, the reputation you are trying to protect by seeking legal action, is – in my conversations with people – not all that great to begin with.

Sun Media shut the Nanton News office down. Sun Media has laid-off hundreds of workers. Sun Media doesn’t seem to give an absolute damn for Nanton. What damage then could I possibly be responsible for that Sun Media hasn’t done to itself already?

"What damage then could I possibly be responsible for that Sun Media hasn’t done to itself already?"

The mighty Nanton skyline.

The Nanton News Experiment is and has always been just that – an experiment of the modern-day local newspaper in the beautiful Alberta town of Nanton. While your letter is one variable I hadn’t taken into account, I must, like any good scientist, look at the entire equation. The equation, by my calculations, now requires tweaking otherwise the result will be an obsolete miniature newspaper no one’s ever heard of and its defunct editor several trillions of dollars in debt.

You indicate clearly that your concern is with the name of this publication and so, that’s fair enough. From here on in this news experiment will be referred to simply as: the Nanton Experiment. I’ll take my shots where I may and in the meantime oblige your concern as all my legal counsel monies are currently tied up at a bar of another sort in Nanton’s Auditorium Hotel.

Sincerely,

Peter Worden

Newest editor of the Nanton X

MY REVISED CONDITIONS

Aha Sun Media – it appears the shoe is on the other foot! Or at least now we’re both shoeless …

 

It’s been brought to my attention the Nanton News is again looking for a new editor (http://jeffgaulin.com/jobs/JobDetails.asp?id=6425).

 

When vying for the position as Nanton News editor but a short time ago, I made my only stipulation that the moribund Nanton News office had to remain open. I went so far as to even suggest paying the rent and inhabiting the news office myself. Sleep in, work in my underwear – how bad could it be? Not gonna happen I was told. When Sun Media’s foot comes down, it comes down harder than 2009 stocks. Zing! Everyone will work from home – no ifs, ands, buts, come’ons, pretty pleases or ‘even if I promise to put pants on’s’ and especially no other such outrageous stipulations.

Well Sun Media now that you appear in a bind, these are my revised conditions:

1. The Nanton News office stays open. End of story.

2. I want a non-fat, easy-foam latte delivered to me free of charge every morning by a pony.

3. I want a pony. (This pony will be for my personal conveyance around town. Not, I repeat NOT my coffee pony.)

4. Next, I want belly-dancers. All-day belly-dancers. EXCEPT for when I'm trying to eat lunch and when I’m in the bathroom. They must casually accept me if and when I do both.

5. I want, no questions asked, a computer that talks to me in the sultry voice of Cuddy from House. 

6. I want scratch n’ sniff bylines. Dibs on grape.

7. A lava lamp for my desk made with real lava.

8.  Phone line to God. (Always good for a quote.)

9. Freshly baked gnocchi from the Wild Thyme Café for myself and my harem of hungry dancers.

10. The Nanton News office roof to be punctured with 240 holes so I can enjoy a relaxing game of oversized cribbage and lightly imbibe on sunny days.

Ball’s in your court, Mr. and Mrs. Evil Corporation. I shall await your call.

 

No News is Bad News

This is the full-version content of a miniature (4.5x3") newspaper, The Nanton News Experiment, which debuted yesterday in Nanton, AB. 

Nanton, a town of 2,600 south of Calgary whose tagline is: Where History Lives, bid farewell to its downtown news office on April 6 this year. Staff of the hundred-year-old newspaper will now compile their newspaper from home offices, sparing the Sun Media newspaper chain the expense of upkeep on a historic building.

...

DEAR READER,

You hold in your hands right now (OK maybe just hand) history.

This is not your average newspaper. Not at all. For one, it is only one-sixteenth the size. And two, it exudes enormous optimism during a time when the small-town newspaper – what you might familiarly call “the paper” – is being scaled back and closed altogether in towns just like Nanton all across Alberta. This tiny paper you are perhaps straining to read is likewise straining to be read. It’s trying to grow.

Right now as I write this at exactly 7:15 p.m. April 24, 2009 there is something happening in Lloydminster that should be of relative concern to Nanton-folk.

The Lloydminster Booster, a Sun Media-owned tri-weekly newspaper employing more than 40 workers is hosting a party. The party is an old fashioned drinkin’ send-off for the 17 workers laid-off since January this year. It will be hosted beside the Booster’s mammoth blue 1960s press, which, as of this moment is now forcedly retired, too. The Booster will be pressed 240 clicks away in Edmonton because it makes better business sense (read cents) to have 15,000 copies of the “local” newspaper trucked in thrice-weekly. We will rejoin this party in a moment – first, however, a word on history.

I said earlier you are holding history in your hand. I understand this might sound a little overblown. Nanton, after all, already has a newspaper: the proudly-Sun-Media-owned Nanton News. And it is more than a whole century old. Now that is ‘history’. Surely some gimmicky playing card-sized chapterette does not deserve the distinction of ‘history.’

Look – it can’t even fit a paragraph on its page! It’s hardly any kind of newspaper at all!

I concluded that history is more than just sustaining the past. It implies sustaining the past, too, yes – the physical, even the metaphysical, etc – but the ephemeral ideal in beginning a quality newspaper is as historic as the downtown brick building where that paper exists. Like most workplaces the newsroom is a collaborative atmosphere; one of sharing and purpose. When that building closes, as the Nanton News office did April 6, it takes with it that sense of purpose. Maybe not right away, but it does.

Lately I’ve been giving this a lot of thought.

I badly wanted to see the Nanton News office stay open. I wanted to see something more profound than human-less economics trump the “conditions currently prevailing in both the local and global economies,” as Craig Martin, Sun Media Executive Vice-President Operations, Western Canada cited. I wanted to see something momentous happen in Nanton, a town whose Lancaster bomber and welcome sign tagline happily exclaim: Right here! Look! This is where history lives!

Luckily for you and I, dear reader, history does not only mean staving off death. History needs to be made.

The Nanton News Experiment is just that. It is an experiment to see if the perfect newspaper can exist in Nanton. Who I am is a 24-year-old writer with a stupid, almost cosmological faith in the newspaper. I have no money – and I’m not asking for any. I just want that canopied downtown building with the cream-coloured sign that once read Nanton News to re-open. If it means I have to start my own tiny newspaper and buy the building some day, well, OK.

My plan is this:

Pending feedback, I want this little newspaper to grow weekly, monthly, from the four-inch black-and-white paper you’re holding to a colour version, then an 8.5x11 layout, then real newsprint, then Nanton-willing, a full newspaper – innovative, enlightening, humorous, and locally shared with no sloganeering, no Toronto-based corporate b.s., and best of all, the downtown news office not only re-opened but refurbished with a great big garden in front.

The symbolism, I hope, is obvious. The petunias you most likely plucked this paper off of were grown in an Alberta greenhouse from seed. It’s my peace offering to local shop owners for letting me promote this idea in their business. As a reward, the petunias can be planted in two week’s time. It’s a reminder for everyone who comes in contact with this little paper, myself included, that the most beautiful gardens, the biggest trees and the best ideas start out as seed.

If you’ve read this paper, I thank you. There is no cost, no donation tin and no advertising department to contact. The finest form of payment you could give me is to pass this miniature newspaper on to someone else or simply relay the gist of it. The greatest compliment you can give me is feedback. If you’ve taken the time to read this essay in its entirety, please take five minutes over the next week to say how you feel about it. In fact, if you care to see another issue (or even if you don’t) I need to hear from you.

There are two ways.

Email me at: nantonnewsx@live.ca

Or, write on this very newspaper (pages A14,  A15)  and return it from whence you picked it up. 

Oh, I almost forgot – the party in Lloydminster.

It’s after midnight now the press, having run its last run now quietly sits in the mercury lights. Employees and former employees have gone home. Some of the Booster’s lay-offees have young families and a few were mere months away from a coveted full-pension. One just bought a new house. There’s some resentment towards Sun Media but mostly everyone understands that for a company that laid-off 600 workers in 2009 alone, it’s business as usual. No doubt one or two jokes floated about the irony of Quebecor World (owner of Sun Media) currently in a bidding match with others like Celine Dion to buy the Montreal Canadiens hockey team in the midst of a crippling recession. 

Sun Media’s bloodletting is understandable and there’s nothing inherently wrong with being cost-conscious. (Hence my tiny newspaper being all I could afford.) But when a company grows so large, so impersonal and uninventive as to downsize without trying any alternative, innovative tactics to boost revenue, this is when to worry. The closure of the Nanton News office is the first step towards the newspaper’s  obsolescence – not just in Nanton but everywhere. 

Help me make history where history lives.