City Notebook: Maybe you haven’t heard, but getting your news from Facebook was highly overrated anyway

By COLLIN GALLANT on December 2, 2023.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Could our long, national nightmare of not having news on Facebook soon come to an end? Personally, I hope not.

This week Google and Ottawa came to an agreement on online advertising revenue to aid publishers. It’s believed a pact with online colossus Facebook will follow soon.

That would end a ban on news organizations on the social media giant that, as it turns out, hasn’t been that unpleasant, or, in fact, at all costly.

Have you ever made money on Facebook? We neither.

Have you ever taken a break from Facebook? It’s quite refreshing.

Now, traditional media has done itself no favours more than 20 years of predictions that Facebook would quickly sink us (yet hasn’t).

In corner offices, there’s been a high and mighty attitude that print or TV executives know best. Couple that with a distinct lack of imagination and guts to battle for ad revenue that’s been hoovered up by social media companies.

That’s why papers are thinner and thinner, and those who worry more about margins rather than actual dollars, have responded with cuts, cuts, cuts.

While the “media” is often accused of “hive mind” or even grand conspiracies to enslave mankind, in reality reporters can’t agree from one desk to the next who is doing what.

Never mind major companies banding together to accomplish anything, let alone what’s best for the industry.

If so, I’d suggest “traditional media” leave Facebook to quips, your brother-in-law’s opinion, stupid videos and anonymous complaints. The “Media” should voluntarily boycott Facebook and bill itself as something entirely different.

End of an era

Friday marked the final time the city will release a monthly gas or power price based on the average of other retailers’ prices across the province. For your author, it’s been 14 years (about 180 months) of writing up a brief on the first of the month.

An interim power price formula was agreed to in late October after a summer of simmering controversy, and gas will move to a new cost-plus determination on Jan. 1.

So, that’s settled? Well, expect the topic to rise again to bold-type headline status in 2024 when a business model review is due.

There hasn’t been an obituary for the averaging price system, nor need there be, but a few points deserve revisiting.

Mostly lost in the local discussion, it seems, is that if the city’s price system (a mirror of the provincial system) is out of whack, where does that leave every other Albertan? And while Danielle Smith has called for a review of the regulation rate option (itself a mirror of the actual power market), doesn’t that mean a look at how prices are determined in Alberta?

This week she declared the deregulated market (whereby producers can wait until prices rise before pouring high-priced power on the grid) had worked well. A potential Alberta Crown power corporation would exist mostly to spite federal officials and their net-zero plan. Not mentioned was a built-in ability to add power to meet demand and smooth out high prices… which is the real gripe.

Back in the Hat, the former “average” system actually worked pretty well for a decade… until it didn’t.

But isn’t that what Ernest Hemingway once said about how businesses go bankrupt – gradually, then suddenly?

Staffers say it was a benchmark in that all-important goal of city-enterprises operating “like a business,” and so much like a business, it wound up alienating its customers.

Few would argue that after a decade, a rethink is needed.

A look ahead

City council meets Monday to discuss a host of committee reports and a discussion item about a potential sunshine list for public-sector compensation in the city.

100 years ago

There would be no annual civic election in 1923, the News announced on Dec. 4 of that year, as all positions were acclaimed.

Mayor Walter Huckvale was unchallenged, and while originally five candidates registered for vacant two-year aldermanic positions, Major James Bruce soon withdrew. School and hospital board trustees were also acclaimed.

The “world champion” cow was declared to be a Holstein from Brockton, Mass., which produced milk enough to make 1,396 pounds of butter during the year. As a liquid, the animal could supply 44 families with one quart per day.

Gas prices in Hamilton spark a “war” among retailers after the city’s auto club made a full statement declaring 27 cents per gallon as too high.

J.W. Hamilton, who’d made his name in real estate purchasing the McCutcheon ranch north of the river, died in hospital at age 57.

Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403-528-5664 or via email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com