12 Jan Examining Nova Scotia
Last Saturday, El Jones, the poet-activist who writes and edits the Saturday edition of Tim Bousquet’s online publication, The Halifax Examiner, added this footnote to her weekly contribution:
I want to use this space to say something about Tim Bousquet and the Examiner. I started writing here in May after writing a guest Morning File while Tim was away. I contacted Tim about the possibility of writing for him further, and he immediately agreed. Tim has given me a space where he allows me to write whatever I want. He doesn’t demand I write certain things for page views, or censor less popular views. He has been incredibly supportive of me as a writer and as a person — and he has paid me incredibly well, and at a time when I was unemployed and struggling financially he began paying me more (perhaps more than a small publication can afford) and he doesn’t even really know this, but pretty much his money is what allowed me to eat the last few months (it’s okay, I’m working again now. Holla EI auditors!) He has allowed me the space to experiment, whether it’s writing satire, or writing more serious articles, or using too many cat memes. I have always consciously made the column a place where news from the Black community and Black viewpoints are centred, and Tim has always been completely supportive of that project.
My own thoughts about Bousquet are a jumble of contradictions.
At his best, he is a dogged researcher who pursues a story with the single-mindedness of a Scotchtown beagle: yapping and nipping, running and howling, ’til his prey goes down in a riot of feathers and noise. His most prominent victim: former HRM Mayor Peter Kelly, caught by Bousquet neglecting and abusing his role as executor for an overly trusting widow. The take-down was a beautiful thing to see.
At his worst, he’s a lazy scold, dispensing cornpone leftist nostrums peppered with casual slurs against those he regards as class enemies, without regard for their accomplishments, risk-taking, motives, creativity, or dedication to making things work in Nova Scotia, when they could make ten times more money elsewhere. If the subject is a successful businessperson—or worse, a developer—that’s all Bousquet needs to pronounce him guilty of crimes against the people.
At his best and worst, Bousquet is a low-RPM dynamo, turning out an unwavering daily diet of aggregated news, observations, commentary, investigations, links to under-appreciated Nova Scotians, and small stories from all over. He is the only Halifax-based journalist who regularly lifts his gaze beyond the Armdale Roundabout. He scans the province’s under-appreciated weeklies for stories the rest of us should know about, stories hiding in plain sight that the mainstream media missed. Every issue includes a republished “cranky letter of the day,” a citizen somewhere in the province, growling at her local newspaper. He uses a smartphone app to track the comings and goings in Halifax Harbour—a topic no beat reporter has covered for decades—occasionally throwing in a past scandal besetting a visiting cruise ship or cargo vessel.
Bousquet frequently breaks the fourth wall, talking to readers about what he’s doing, pointing out the scaffolding and duct tape that holds the venture up. I honestly don’t know how he does it, but as a model for reporting and story-telling in the Age of Disrupted Journalism, his digital rag is an admirable and impressive experiment.
All of this pales, however, alongside El Jones’s encomium. Amidst his Herculean efforts to keep HalifaxExaminer.ca’s head above water, Bousquet has consistently made space and money for other writers, often young and eager to make their way in journalism, but stymied by the monsoon that besets print publications today.
In giving Jones a weekly platform, Bousquet has done what no newspaper, newsmagazine, or broadcast newscast has done before: Make unmediated space for an African Nova Scotian voice: eloquent, angry, informed, determined, relentless, insistent, and—often—funny. There are times I wish Jones would broaden her focus, consider topics other than the one that burns in her soul, but I get why she does not. Other Nova Scotia writers can ignore the racism that flourishes here if they choose—they’ve done so for decades. Jones cannot.
All of which leads to the paragraph that followed Jones’s comments above:
I’m saying all this really as a way of saying — if you like reading the Examiner, and you like what Tim and I and others write, it would be great if you could subscribe to the Examiner. That money isn’t going into Tim’s pocket, it’s going to the site, and to being able to pay writers. Tim was kind of embarrassed about asking me to give a funding link, actually, but I think it is important that we fund the media we want! So if you’re able to, and you like Morning File and you want to support the site, think about getting a subscription HERE!
Whether you love it unreservedly, or merely admire it grudgingly, SUBSCRIBE! It’s $10 a month ($5 if you’re a student, or hard up). Better still, front him $100 for a full year, save 20 bucks, and Bousquet him hire an admin person to mind the nuts and bolts of the operation.
Tomorrow, in partial penance for this fawning tribute, I will deconstruct the asinine commentary from Bousquet, Graham Steele, and former Herald Editor Rick Conrad on the pending lockout of reporters and editors at the Chronicle Herald.
[UPDATE – Feedback]
A Cape Breton reader points out:
Sherri Borden-Colley is a black woman who has worked at the Herald for 10 years, and she is a damn good journalist. Sherri had nothing handed to her, and she has quietly done more for black journalists in NS than anyone I can think of. How? By working hard and getting things right. For years she covered courts, where you cannot screw up.
I have a high opinion of Sherri Borden-Colley, but her role as an established, senior staff reporter at the Chronicle Herald differs from what El Jones is doing at HalifaxExaminer.ca. Every Saturday, Jones gets a free hand to write passionately about the experience of racial prejudice, without mediation or second guessing. I believe that’s unique in Nova Scotia journalism—which is not to detract in any way from what Boston-Colley, and others, have accomplished.
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