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Manitok. Meatpacking. Postmedia. Manifesto
64 Plays4 years ago
We have friend of the pod Jeremy Appel on to talk about how his latest story for the Progress Report, The Manitok Manoeuvre, as well as the Sprawl getting shutout of the media bailout, the Herald caring more about "big beef days" than dead meatpacking workers and the Progress Report's transition to a full-time media organization. Show notes at www.theprogressreport.ca/jeremy_appel_manitok_meatpacking_postmedia_manifesto
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:16
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording here from my bedroom recording studio in Amiskwichiwa Sky again, otherwise known as Edmonton, here in Treaty 6 territory. And on the phone, joining me is a friend of the pod, Jeremy Appel, down in Medicine Hat, down
Media in Alberta
00:00:33
Speaker
in Treaty 7. Jeremy, welcome to the show.
00:00:36
Speaker
Hey, what's up, DK? Hey, Jared. So we've got you on. This is your second time on the pod. So at some point, I think on the third try, you get like a challenge coin or something silly like that. But it's your second time on the pod. You know, we've got you on to chat about a few things.
Investigative Piece on Orphan Wells
00:00:51
Speaker
You know, we just recently hired you to write an investigative piece for the progress report that
00:00:56
Speaker
Um, you know, really interesting, like has gotten shared a lot and has kind of really has gotten people talking online, but there's a bunch of other things I want to chat about too, uh, about the media landscape in Alberta, about the sprawl, some fucked up shit that happened with the sprawl over the weekend, as well as like where the progress report fits into the Alberta media landscape. But let's.
00:01:16
Speaker
Let's get into the story that you wrote for The Progress Report. It came out yesterday morning. The headline is pretty evocative, how to get away with dumping your orphan wells on the public. Why don't you walk the audience through the story and just so they're aware of it if they haven't read it. We'll obviously have it in the show notes, but what's the kind of Coles notes?
00:01:40
Speaker
I had forgotten that it came out yesterday because every day is the same. But in terms of the story, it starts with a company called Manitalk Energy, which goes bankrupt in 2018, I believe. I don't have the story right in front of me, but not that long ago.
00:02:03
Speaker
And at the time of its going bankrupt, it has hundreds of orphan wells facilities and pipelines that are left for the Orphan Well Association, which is supposed to be funded by industry, but it's increasingly becoming funded by the public, which is an interesting contrast between everything else in Alberta.
00:02:31
Speaker
Yes. But in any event, he goes bankrupt and then a new company called Persist Oil and Gas, I believe, purchases most of the assets of Manitalk
00:03:00
Speaker
And it happens to be owned by the same person. It's the same CEO. It's this dude mass or Massimo Jeremiah, Jeremiah. I don't know how you pronounce it, but. Yeah. Well, as a guy named Jeremy, I assume it's pronounced Jeremiah, but that's just my personal bias. So it's owned by the same guy. And they have the
Role of Alberta Energy Regulator
00:03:30
Speaker
agreement between them through their receivership. When a company goes bankrupt, it goes into receivership with a trustee, and then they sell off all the remaining assets that they can pay off to creditors. And the agreement, which needs to be approved by the Alberta Energy Regulator,
00:03:59
Speaker
was amended twice, first to like add and remove a bunch of projects like throughout rural Alberta, and then again to specifically remove some pipelines, wells, and facilities from the Nisku pipelines project.
00:04:27
Speaker
which is based in Foothills County.
Regulatory Capture Concerns
00:04:33
Speaker
So what's happening here is this individual is able to keep his good assets and start afresh while the bad assets that were no longer profitable get picked up by the public tab.
00:04:57
Speaker
Now, the AER's response to this is pretty interesting. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a hell of a deal for this mass Jeremiah guy in that he's just like, it's essentially a scheme where he goes bankrupt and is essentially able to profit from it. And we, the collective we are left holding the bag on tens of millions of dollars worth of cleanup costs.
00:05:28
Speaker
And all of this is done with the blessing and the tacit approval of the Alberta energy regulator because you're not allowed to buy or sell or operate an oil and gas well in this province without a license that comes from the regulator, right?
Public Liabilities and Media Coverage
00:05:43
Speaker
And what was the thing that you dug up in your, when you actually went to the AER for a response, what did they tell you? They told me that, well, Manitok,
00:05:59
Speaker
or sorry, Persist rather, the newer company owned by Mr. Jeremy. They had made them purchase some
00:06:22
Speaker
inactive assets to pay for their decommissioning on their own, in that in total, they purchased like 900 in something of Manitok's assets. Yeah, so they were trying to frame it as a win that they were able to force, persist to buy a handful of more things, right?
00:06:49
Speaker
But now, so they purchased more than 900 of Manitok's assets, but they also left like 400 and something to the Orphan Well Association. So it's kind of a, I don't want to suggest mendacious intent on the part of the AER Coms guy, but
00:07:17
Speaker
It serves as diversion from the point at hand, which is that they're leaving hundreds of wells to be picked up.
00:07:29
Speaker
by the public purse, largely. It is absolutely wild that an oil company goes broke, sells its profitable assets to a new company, which is owned by the same person, and then the public is left with a tab for hundreds of orphaned wells to clean up. It's a bankruptcy for profit scheme, which is happening with the tacit approval of the regulator. It is enough to make you furious at the fact that they're like, and you know this must have happened dozens of other times.
00:07:58
Speaker
If this guy feels comfortable getting away with it and this is just some random small time oil and gas guy, how often has this happened? We just have a regulator that allows this to happen and the whole mess.
00:08:13
Speaker
with orphan wells in this province is because we have a regulator that is totally captured, that is, you know, unwilling to stand up to industry. And you even you got some very juicy quotes from Regan Boycek on this file, who's also been on the pod as well. And what was Regan saying about about all of this? That happens all the time, that in at least with the small players who, of course, want to be big players in the oil and gas industry, that's
00:08:43
Speaker
standard operating procedure was the words he used that this is behavior that's completely normalized because as he said the sheriff won't take his gun out of his holster. Now back to the AER's response it's also very much worth noting that they acknowledged that they were completely aware
00:09:13
Speaker
of the fact that these two companies were owned by the same person, but they didn't consider it an issue because it isn't a threat to public safety or the environment. It is, of course, as I believe Barry Robinson from EcoJustice, a lawyer, told me,
00:09:36
Speaker
Sorry, I just lost train of thought. So Barry Robinson, he's the, um, one of the lawyers with eco justice and environmental law charity. You know, he, his question, his quote is, you know, that's the interesting question. The remaining properties that the trustee holds, which are nonproductive, did the trustee get enough funds to do the cleanup on those, or are they just going to end up in the orphan well program as well?
00:10:00
Speaker
You know, while it's completely legitimate for a bankrupt company to sell off its assets to pay off creditors, it's another matter when those assets are sold to a company owned by the same people. You know, that Barry Rob. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But it's it's also perhaps I use this quote in the story, but it stands out to me now. He said that the. Oh, God, I have to think of it.
00:10:30
Speaker
Well, when it comes to me, I'll count down and then pick up from there. Is it in your notes or something?
00:10:52
Speaker
Oh, that he said that it may not be in danger to the environment or public safety, but it is a public liability. Exactly. Right. Like the idea that you can just drop the unprofitable parts of your business.
00:11:10
Speaker
of your oil and gas business onto the Orphan Well Association and just continue afresh with the parts that you do like, with no fucking consequences, it gets you mad. I mean, I don't know how you can read this story and get into the details of this and even just have the broad outline of explain to you and not just be like, what the fuck?
00:11:27
Speaker
It is a travesty, and I thank you for doing, for writing the story and getting it out into the world. One of the other things that I wanted to talk about as well is a little thread that happened over the weekend from not exactly a friend of the show, Jeremy Classus.
Federal Media Funding and Biases
00:11:43
Speaker
I know Jeremy. I went to the same journalism school as him.
00:11:48
Speaker
our live we have developed very parallel lives but so Jeremy classes is the I don't know what you would call him the editor of the sprawl which is a you know a journalism outfit based out of Calgary.
00:12:00
Speaker
And he got mad online. Jeremy is a very level-headed dude. Jeremy is almost too reasonable, I would argue. Yeah, I like him a lot. Well, I'm also working on a story for the Sproul full disclosure. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Jeremy's great, but it's like, so over the weekend, he had a thread on how he, the organization that he runs, essentially,
00:12:30
Speaker
was barred from getting federal money through what's called the local journalism initiative. This is the media bailout that you've heard so much about through maybe Jesse Brown or Ezra Levant, if you listen to that guy. But this local journalism initiative money is essentially
00:12:50
Speaker
the federal bailout money for the media industry. The trouble is, however, as is kind of elucidated and threaded, we'll have it in the show notes, is that it's the newspaper industry that's responsible for administering this bailout. Sorry, I'm just gonna let people, I have people in my entire family in the room here. This is home recording, baby. But do you have something to say, Roslyn? Yeah, you're always very shy whenever I put a mic in your face. Get out of here, go outside.
00:13:23
Speaker
Aw, I love you too. Bruce, skedaddle. Bruce is also in the room. Yeah, we're gone. Sorry. Is that your dog? Yeah, yeah. Loki Bruce is in the room for almost every recording of the progress report.
00:13:39
Speaker
So one other thing that I wanted to talk about with you is Jeremy Classus, the editor of The Sprawl, which is a local journalism outfit based in Calgary, getting mad online. And Jeremy's a very reasonable dude, very level-headed dude. So when Jeremy Classus gets mad online, I definitely stood up and took notice. And the thread is essentially Jeremy laying out how essentially he got screwed out of money
00:14:07
Speaker
from the local journalism initiative. And the local journalism initiative is essentially the fund that has been set up for the media bailout. This is something that the federal liberals have brought in. This is money that's going to media outfits, mostly newspapers.
00:14:22
Speaker
And the trouble with this is that the people responsible for dispensing this money are also the newspapers, and they see Jeremy as competition. And so we'll have the thread in the show notes, but the like, that's the central Cole's notes of it. You know, the Canadian government is
00:14:41
Speaker
And the way they're kind of structured is that they're funding reporter salaries for civic journalism. And so I don't know, did the Medicine Hat News, the newspaper you used to work at or that you've been laid off or furloughed from, did they apply for this? Did they get one of these local journalism initiative grants? Well, I think I can speak a bit more candidly about the Medicine Hat News than I did last time I was on here since
00:15:09
Speaker
I'm not employed by them anymore. But here's why I know. And it's not a lot. I mean, because there are two bailouts, right? Jeremy is referring, I believe, to the initial one from last year. Okay. Right. And but there's also the COVID like wage subsidy.
00:15:34
Speaker
And so all I know with regards to the local journalism initiative with the Medicine Hat News is that the intention was to apply for it, but the application didn't get sent. It was filled out, but not sent. And all I'm going to say about that is look up who owns Glacier Media.
00:16:02
Speaker
which owns the Medicine Hat News and look up the requirements for being eligible for these funds. And I think you can take an educated guess as to why that wasn't. But again, this is stuff that happened
00:16:23
Speaker
presumably with head office in Vancouver. And I am not privy to that information. That's all I know. Okay, fair enough. I mean, so your company, I mean, they should have applied. I mean, if I was running the Medicine Hat News and I wanted free money to pay reporters that the government was giving out, I definitely would have. But that was the intention. We were going to hire another reporter.
00:16:53
Speaker
with those funds. But again, something happened and I don't know what, but the funds didn't get applied for. But the most kind of frustrating part of getting back to Jeremy Classus' thread on this is that
00:17:11
Speaker
You know, the reason given for denying Jeremy funds is essentially like they said the quiet part out loud, right? Like the local journal, this is a quote, the LJI, the local journalism initiative is a support program for the news industry. So do we not, we do not want to introduce new competition into already struggling markets. I mean, they quite clearly see Jeremy and the sprawl as his competition, right? And so he doesn't get any money. I mean, I don't think progress Alberta or the progress report like
00:17:42
Speaker
I don't really want the money. I think there is real value in saying to your audience that we do not take money from the government. We are totally and utterly independent. I do sub but subscribe to the Jesse Brown theory that this news bailout is a pretty bad idea and that just throwing money at the old newspaper organizations is by and large a bad idea, especially when you've got Paul Godfrey making however God knows how many million dollars a year.
00:18:11
Speaker
and still getting bonuses and all that shit while cutting newsrooms to the bone. We're having the same conversation in Alberta right now around bailing out the oil and gas industry, especially the shittiest parts of it. It's like, how do you bail out a fucking company that's literally already on the bottom of the ocean? It's fucked up. It's messed up, right?
00:18:39
Speaker
And I mean, Jeremy isn't suffering. You know, the sprawl got a $40,000 US dollar grant from Facebook of all organizations. Yeah, and that's something I think we should talk about a bit. Because as a result of media outlets that are, I think, the future of news like the sprawl,
00:19:10
Speaker
They can't get money from the government, so they have to go to the private sector. And I think a massive tech company that is, interestingly enough, driving a lot of ad revenue away from legacy media outlets
00:19:34
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Facebook is becoming- And I would say a lot of the arguments that guys like Jesse Brown make, who I like, and I just don't agree with him on this issue, that if you are a news outlet getting money from the government, then you're perceived as being beholden to the government. Well, the same thing is an issue with these private
00:20:01
Speaker
arrangements right you're beholden to facebook as opposed to i mean at the end of the day uh regardless how journalists get their money the more they have of it the more they're able to do their job but it does raise questions about who's funding um their work however uh the washington post which is owned by amazon has done a lot of critical work
00:20:29
Speaker
on Amazon somewhat surprisingly. So I personally think that the government has to do something to address the fact that all these community newspapers are being gutted by the massive companies that own them, particularly post media, but also Torstar.
00:20:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think I differ with you there, right? Because I think these companies just have to die, right? And it's not great to say, and like a lot of good people work at those outlets. But as long as the people at the top are still making money and these corporations still exist in whatever form,
00:21:14
Speaker
You're not going to get like sprawls, right? They're clearly they have every incentive to crush the competition and they have massive incumbency power to do so. And I mean, are we believing? I mean, I don't believe in capitalism, but do the people running these organizations believe in capitalism? Because
Nonprofit Journalism Debate
00:21:36
Speaker
I mean, there's every signal the market is telling them is that like they cannot exist in the ways that they used to exist and that they must do.
00:21:43
Speaker
entirely different new and different things in order to exist. And I just fundamentally don't believe that like the covering the news.
00:21:52
Speaker
is, is like a profit making enterprise. Like it's, it's not, uh, it's just, it should be regarded as, as public services should be regarded as a nonprofit. Like there's just no way, I mean, progress Alberta is, is a nonprofit. We're incorporated as a nonprofit. And I think that model is far better for the audience and for society than like the news. When, when you treat the news as a commodity, when the people who are at the top of these news organizations are
00:22:20
Speaker
these are like publicly traded companies and they're getting bonuses and like all of the incentives are wrong and bad and fucked up and that like we totally need to reorder how the news ecosystem like works and how it makes money and depends on for money. I'm real squeamish about government kind of enabling this old model to continue because it is so broken and bad.
00:22:40
Speaker
And, and so that's my kind of reticence around this model kind of continuing to exist. Yeah, I do agree with everything you just said, and I'm conflicted. And that's probably my own bias as someone who worked at you know, an old style newspaper, 1885, baby, it's been a medicine hat news, oldest newspaper in Alberta.
00:23:05
Speaker
Is that right? I mean, I knew it was a very old newspaper. I knew that it was that old, but I didn't realize that there weren't any older papers. But that makes sense. Well, Medicine Hat was the first city of white people in the province, I think.
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah, and that's why actually the Monarch Theatre is right by my apartment in Medicine High. I really hope it will be able to open after this is all done because it's really a gem. But that's the first movie theater in Western Canada, I believe. Sorry, maybe perhaps not the first, but the oldest. There you go. I find particularly outrageous about the excuse for denying Germany this funding.
00:23:50
Speaker
is that they're worried about competition. They're worried about competition in Calgary. Like how many newspapers are there in Calgary? There's an absolute corporate monoculture there. Post media owns the entire city basically, right? Like who does post media have to fight right now? How much competition do they have right now? Well, I think we can all agree that post media should not get a dime of bailout money.
00:24:19
Speaker
Given the way that the company openly conducts itself, and nor should Tor start, but I think in a time like this, if they want it, if startup media outlets like the Sproul
00:24:40
Speaker
could use government funding, then they should be the ones getting it. But I would also just say I would love to see, I would love to read the nationalized post. Yes, very much so. Just just purely for the wordplay in the name. But I mean, the editorial cartoons would still be just as racist. Would it though?
00:25:09
Speaker
Well, I mean, we'd have an opportunity to create it in a new image, but I mean, there's, I mean, it couldn't be more racist or awful. Uh, but I mean, let's, let's talk about the Herald for a second. So, um,
00:25:23
Speaker
There's a couple of things that I think are noteworthy. And I don't want this to turn into an episode of Big Shiny Takes, Jeremy's new podcast, just quick plug in the show. I mean, he's obviously going to play it at the end. But Alicia Corbella, who is just an absolute clown show most of the time,
00:25:41
Speaker
when it comes to everything that she writes. I mean, someone who was literally a member of the UCP and voted for Jason Kennedy to be leader of that party didn't disclose it to anyone, to her audience, or to her bosses. And when it was finally revealed, they like scrubbed a bunch of her articles off the internet that we're talking about Jason Kennedy. Like, Leisha Kobella is a bad person with bad takes. And I'm sure if she hasn't been on Big Shiny Takes already, she soon will be.
00:26:08
Speaker
Oh, you haven't been listening. We did do Alicia a couple weeks ago. Very good. Okay. I haven't listened to every episode, but Alicia Corbella... No, no, no. I know people are busy and stuff. I haven't listened to every episode of this show either. There we go. But Alicia Corbella is actually a fucking comrade when it comes to the ongoing disaster in Alberta's meat packing plants.
00:26:31
Speaker
You know, and there's been, you know, better reporting. You know, the CBC had a really good timeline. You know, the Globe and Mail had a really good story. Even McLean's had a really awesome story. Like, like journalists have kind of come and done good work on this story, but it totally unexpected to see Alicia Corbella kind of actually being sympathetic to labor and like working people, you know? Well, you know, it's interesting meat packing plants
00:27:00
Speaker
have always been sort of a big story with like working conditions. And then if you go back to Upton St. Clair's The Jungle, I mean, that was, I haven't read it full disclosure, but I'm familiar with the concept of it. And it's a expose of the meat packing industry in the United States in the 1920s, I believe.
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, an absolute just like piece of canon when it comes to journalism afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. In the Alberta specific sense though, I think everyone who has lived in the southern half of the province and who interacts with working class people has a sense that
Meatpacking Industry Issues
00:27:47
Speaker
The plants are not a great place to go work. And the conditions in the plants have always been pretty bad. I know when I got out of high school, a lot of my friends ended up going to the all-emile plant. And I used some other folks who went down to work down in Brooks. And you would hear the stories. One thing in particular that always stuck with me
00:28:14
Speaker
was when someone told me about how the jobs tended to get distributed in the plant down in Brooks, where the people of color, like the Somali workers and so on, they were the ones who would get sent to the kill floor, whereas the white workers were the ones who would get sent up to the production market instead. The kill floor is not a great place to be if you
00:28:42
Speaker
care about your mental health. Like that's where they bring the animals in and stun them and you listen to them kind of do their weird cow scream as they do that. Like everyone knows and has always known. It's one of those secrets that everyone in Alberta has always known that working in a meat packing plant fucking sucks.
00:29:03
Speaker
Yeah, which is why it was so incredible to see Leisha actually step up to the plate and write sympathetic stories, actually speaking to these workers, getting them on record, presenting an unflattering portrait of what it is like to work for Cargill, what it is like to work for JBS. She followed it up with some other absolute dogshit pieces.
00:29:26
Speaker
recently, but I just wanted to note that Leisha Corbella not actually awful in this one case. A lot of these professional reactionaries have that one issue where they mysteriously develop human compassion. I've noticed
00:29:52
Speaker
I can't think of one off the top of my head. It is a very convenient way for liberals and conservatives to demonstrate that they're not total monsters and not total bootlickers.
00:30:06
Speaker
You've got two groups, I think, in these kind of conservative commentator types, right? You have people who have sworn their fealty to the movement, and like the party, the political establishment, and so on. And then you have people who are more just loyal to their class.
00:30:26
Speaker
And I think I would assume, I've never met Misha, but I would assume that she's more of the latter, right? She's wealthy and she has the politics of a wealthy person, but she's not, you know, she's not like a Ben Shapiro kind of annual type of figure. So every once in a while her humanity is going to peek through. Leisha Corbella destroys Jason Kenney on meat plant conditions.
00:30:56
Speaker
destroyed with facts and logic. Yeah, but no, she's not. She like I would agree that she's not as odious a figure as some of her contemporaries in the post media echo chamber. Even her some of her contemporaries at the Herald. Yeah.
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah. And to just jump right into the next thing, I mean, the Calgary Herald did publish something absolutely psychopathic on this exact same story on what's going on with the. They sure did. And the headline here is, I mean, you can kind of guess what's in the story from the headline because it's pretty clear. But headline meat plant disruptions cast long shadow as summer barbecue season heats up.
00:31:52
Speaker
And the story goes on to talk about how the plants that typically process most of Canada's beef are running slower and there's been delays because obviously, if you haven't heard, COVID-19 shut down the cargo plant for quite some for two weeks and they've come back, but the production is nowhere near as fast as it was before. And the JBS plant, which is the other large plant in Brooks, is also running at kind of half speed. They're down to one shift.
00:32:22
Speaker
And what, around 1500 workers have been infected with COVID-19 with many more kind of infections of COVID-19 kind of spreading out into the community. The Cargill plant, I think is the single largest single facility outbreak in North America. Four people have died due to these outbreaks in these meat packing facilities. And the story does not mention that at all.
00:32:51
Speaker
Instead, the story talks about the beef industry. It talks about how the difficulty grocers are having sourcing local beef. It's just absolutely murderous capitalism on display. It's a luxury too. The beef is
00:33:12
Speaker
I mean, aside from maybe the last like 30 or 40 years in North America, it's something that you would look at as a treat, right? Like this lifestyle that we live these days where you have meat at every single meal, and not just cheap meat either, but like nice, nice cuts of beef.
00:33:33
Speaker
We're really indulging. We're really living kind of a richy rich lifestyle up here. People don't have that perspective. They don't realize that for almost the entirety of human civilization, people are not having meat three meals a day and certainly not expensive cuts of beef. It's not gonna fucking kill you to have lentils for dinner tonight.
00:33:57
Speaker
It precisely and I think my friend and colleague Mo Cranker will be quite proud of me for making this observation, but you don't need to eat meat. Like that is an option, especially today.
00:34:15
Speaker
like like eating like it's a luxury and look i like eating meat like i'm not a vegetarian though i'm somewhat sympathetic to arguments made in favor of abstaining from meat wholly but this freak out that
00:34:39
Speaker
what does this slow down of meat production mean for consumers without a single mention of any of the workers who've died is completely abhorrent. I mean they could have mentioned it at least once in the story but then of course it would expose what a god-awful atrocious angle that this story is promoting.
00:35:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's pitching to people's entitlement. It's an entitlement that you always deserve to have a nice big piece of meat in front of you every single meal. Think of like, even in the past, what, six to 12 months, there have been similar kind of political freakouts about meat. Was it
00:35:28
Speaker
A few months back, was it Greta? Greta suggested people eat just a little bit less meat, and Premier Kenny was beating her up on Twitter. This happens every few years, which is that a politician or a public figure in Alberta, or who's connected to Alberta, talks about being vegetarian or eating less meat.
00:35:48
Speaker
Like, it's happened to Katie Lang, it happened to Shannon Phillips, and the entire, like, Orthodox, like, Alberta Orthodoxy, like, Cattleman Association, Feedlot Operator, I Love Alberta Beef, Beef Lobby, like, crashes down on you, and you become, like, an instant pariah in Alberta. But this is an awful piece of reporting for sure, but I...
00:36:14
Speaker
lay the blame wholly at management at the Calgary Herald. I think it's kind of obvious at post media papers now when the whip comes down from upper management that they need to fall in line behind the Conservative Party and industry lobby groups, especially with columns. But this is a piece of reporting that I suspect was imposed
00:36:44
Speaker
Well, these are largely editor driven papers now, right? Like the editors have stuck around any reporter worth a damn or that's any good at their job has moved on to a better working situation, right? We've seen that in editing. I wouldn't say any. There are a few good reporters at the Herald Journal.
00:37:02
Speaker
Sure. A lot of the ones that are left, a lot of the ones currently working are like you younger, earlier career, like the columnists and the editors are the ones that stick around. The reporters are, have like a half life of like two years, two and a half years. Right. And, and when that happens, you get situations like this where it's like, Hey, go write a story about, um, you know, how people are going to be sad that they're not going to get beef on mother's day or father's day.
00:37:28
Speaker
And without mentioning the fact that workers are dying, so you might not be able to get the stake you want at the price you want this year.
00:37:40
Speaker
I mean, it could have been worse. They could have straight up pinned it on the workers in this article. I would not be surprised to see a Herald piece along the lines of, you know, you don't get ribs this summer and it's because those damn Filipinos didn't wash their hands. But isn't it? It's both to work together. Isn't that the subtext of this? Isn't that?
00:38:01
Speaker
what readers are supposed to take away from it. A little, yeah, I would agree. I mean, the final paragraph is just like absolute psycho shit. So it's like, they're, they're quoting some like,
00:38:12
Speaker
grocery store, beef analyst. I don't know how you get that job, but it's like, here it is, quote, this weekend is the start of the barbecue season and Mother's Day weekend is usually a huge weekend for beef. Then you've got Father's Day coming up and the candidate weekend and the August civic holiday. But I think all of these big beef days are going to be flops this year. End quote. That is the last paragraph in that story.
00:38:34
Speaker
The civic holiday is a big beef day. Beef analyst sounds like a Tim and Eric bit. A little bit, a little bit. Um, I mean, COVID-19 is not the only infectious disease that will ever exist in the world. Uh, these meat packing plants are going to end up in this exact same situation within another, what, two to four years, probably. I mean, uh, it's already happened before.
00:39:00
Speaker
We kind of got lucky with the last couple of months and they weren't as bad as COVID, but like the conditions in this entire industry need to change and not just for the protection of the workers. I'm pretty sure that these corporations don't want to have to shut down production for two to four weeks every time some kind of infectious disease is going around, but that's the new normal.
00:39:26
Speaker
that industry is going to have to change. And if people want to have access to their beef on all of their big beef holidays, then they also should be advocating for this industry to change in a very significant way.
00:39:41
Speaker
Well, Jim, you said three years or so before this happens again, but I would say it's going to be a matter of a few months because we all know there's going to be a second wave of COVID because Donald Trump has decided the economy needs to reopen. And when the United States does that, at least now,
00:40:04
Speaker
the rest of the world, particularly Canada, needs to fall in line because otherwise their industry will get destroyed because we're so dependent upon trade with the US. So yeah, maybe NAFTA. Not such a good idea after all.
00:40:24
Speaker
I mean, I'm not a virologist, but everything that I've read suggests that, yes, there is going to be a big second wave of COVID in the fall, regardless of what the Americans do, really, just given that the virus does very well, transmits very easily in cold, damp conditions. So when the summer is over, the virus is going to get another second chance. Yeah, and just one final bit of
00:40:52
Speaker
comment on this before we kind of move on to the next one, which is Paula Simons, now Senator Paula Simons, breaking the news that 21 Alberta-based food inspectors got infected with COVID-19. Of those 21, 18 came from the Cargill plant. And so that's like,
00:41:17
Speaker
I mean, it bears out there's like 37 inspectors that work that plant 18 got infected. So like literally half, like almost exactly how many of the workers got infected, but like Jesus Christ, like shut it down. Like you're a food, you have the ability to shut it down as a food inspector. I mean, that just broke like today, earlier today, but Jeremy, any final comments on this before we wrap up our, our, uh, psycho Calgary Herald story on, uh, on Alberta beef.
00:41:46
Speaker
It's bad. Newspaper editors do better. Don't dump awful stories on your reporters. And yeah, burn Post Media to the ground. Yes, Post Media must be bad. I think that's my conclusion.
00:42:08
Speaker
Post media must be destroyed. I do post that every few months. OK, this the final part of the program, we're going to be kind of be going back to the original, the very first thing, which is that if you've been paying attention to what we do with the progress report and you may have noticed the fact that we are producing more and more original content, original news, original reporting.
Progress Alberta's Media Focus
00:42:26
Speaker
We hired Jeremy to look into this Manitok energy story of some oil and gas executive using the Orphan Well Association as a recycling depot going bankrupt for profit. I was just recently down in Southern Alberta reporting on the situation at the cargo plant in High River and the JBS plant in Brooks and speaking to workers and we're working on another podcast on this as well where we actually have spoke to the workers who are still incredibly scared and concerned about what's going on in their plant and
00:42:56
Speaker
And so that is something that we're doing more of. And this was, this is part of a pivot at Progress Alberta where we are pivoting to becoming more, we've always been like a media and advocacy organization, but I know we're much more, we're pivoting to becoming much more of a media organization. And that's kind of come about for kind of a couple of reasons. You know, one of which is that like Jason Kenney was going to introduce a bill
00:43:23
Speaker
in, it was going to be in the spring session and it's been delayed because of COVID, but he was going to introduce a bill in this spring session essentially targeted at us and organizations like us who raised money from organized labor and do campaign work. And so Jason Kenney was going to make that illegal or incredibly difficult to do so.
00:43:43
Speaker
And that's part of the work that we do. That's part of how we raise our money so that we can continue to exist and pay the bills and pay mine and Jim's salary. And it looks like it was going to be hard for us to do that or it would have been illegal or there would have been some long ass legal fight. It's very likely that this bill that Jason Kenney is introducing is unconstitutional. Unions are democratically run organizations. And when the union decides on what to do with its money, that's what it does with its money.
00:44:10
Speaker
And if you don't like it, like you can always run for president. Unions are not a la carte. You don't get to pick the parts of the union that you want to apply to you or not. And that's like Rand formula stuff that's been like jurisprudence for God knows how many years, but likely, unlikely would have failed, but wouldn't have mattered because in the immediate term, we would have been unable to operate. And then also, or unable to raise money from those groups. And then also when you look at
00:44:36
Speaker
Um, just the skill sets of, of Jim and I and, and, you know, progress over it has been around four and a half years now. Uh, when you look at the things that we are good at, the things that we want to do, the things that have the most impact, I think we've realized that we're much better at investigative journalism news and analysis, you know, digging into the stuff that rich and powerful people don't want us to be digging into. And, uh,
00:45:01
Speaker
And that's the other big thing. We've tried to do organizing. We've done campaign work and organizing work. And honestly, it's hard. It's hard-ass fucking work. And kudos to all the organizers who are better at it than us out there doing it because
00:45:17
Speaker
It's really fucking hard. And it's also really hard to get people to pay in and do it. And so, yeah, I think the goal here is to transition, you know, Progress Alberta to a media organization. And part of that process of pivoting to becoming a full-time media organization is having this conversation, right? And talking about, you know, what holes are we going to be filling in, you know, the Alberta discourse? What are our values? What are the things that we are going to concentrate on?
00:45:47
Speaker
And I think that's where it's time to talk about our progress report manifesto.
00:45:53
Speaker
I don't think people are writing enough manifestos these days, so we definitely wanted to jump into that ring. I wanted to be in a conversation between you, who is taking the time to listen to this, who cares about this sort of thing, who's clearly 40 minutes into a podcast from us at Progress Alberta and wants to see us succeed and wants to see this type of project succeed.
00:46:17
Speaker
And so I'm going to kind of run through kind of a very first, I feel like a first draft of this manifesto. And I want to get, you know, reaction from, from Jim and Jeremy. So very first thing, you know, progress report is an independent online media platform focused on reporting and analysis concerning Alberta politics. I think that's pretty easy and makes sense. Right. Right. Jeremy. Yeah. Checks out.
00:46:40
Speaker
Um, progress Alberta is funded by its audience is free of ads and is beholden to no other organization. So again, kind of taking the, the Jesse Brown Canada land model, the sprawl model, uh, and applying it to the, to how we raise money, how we kind of bring money into the organization. You know, I just don't think you can, I just don't think you can, and I mean, Canada land also does ads. I just don't think given our politics and the stuff that we talk about, that there's advertisers interested in it.
00:47:10
Speaker
nor do I think our audience is large enough, nor do I really want to take the time to actually engage advertisers and do it, nor do I really want their money. So I was like, yeah. Well, as I suggested earlier, it seems to me that the future of media is outlets like
00:47:33
Speaker
The Sproul and Candleland and APTN, which are funded by support rank and file is another one that are funded by people who actually care about the journalism and aren't just seeking to make a buck off of it. Exactly. And I just don't think it would like if we started reading out mattress ads, I just think everyone would walk away.
00:48:00
Speaker
Let me tell you about Raid Shadow Legends. Yeah. Uh, okay. Point number three. Um, you know, the progress report will publish regularly, but not necessarily on a set schedule, you know, because we don't have a paper product to feed. Like it's not necessary that we like always publish. Um, but we will always have at least one podcast and one newsletter a week. Um, but as far as our other stories, it's kind of gonna, gonna depend on what it is we're working on and that type of thing. But like.
00:48:26
Speaker
And that's somewhat similar to Canada Land, which they do a couple of podcasts every week, but their actual original stories come out when they come out. Yeah. I think that Canada Land has been doing some of the best journalism in the country, despite what
00:48:48
Speaker
reservations people may have with particular projects. Like I know Oppo is the one people love to hate and I actually haven't listened to it. And Jesse Brown's like shitty politics too. I mean it's
00:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, but he's like he's good, right? Like when you're a good journalist, in my view, it doesn't matter really what you're I mean, to an extent, if you're like, he's not just a journalist, he's like, I'm sure like he is an actual like he he has created and he owns the platform itself. He's not just producing content, you know? Yeah. And that's when the politics matters more. And yeah, like I'll never give any organization any money that has Jen Gerson on the payroll. But that's just me.
00:49:29
Speaker
You know what, like Jen, I obviously don't agree with her politics and she has a lot of bad takes, but I've always had like, I guess somewhat an affinity for her work. From back when she was writing for the National Post, I think maybe just by comparison, she was very level-headed
00:50:00
Speaker
Um, but then she wrote a piece for Quilla after she got laid off from national post and I was like, uh, yikes. Okay. Uh, point number five. Um, you know, we're not seeking to find balance. You know, we're not here for a debate. You know, our objective is to, you know, amplify, educate, motivate our fellow workers. You know, we are not partisan, but we are absolutely a political organization. Um, you know, go ahead, Jim.
00:50:30
Speaker
I mean, this is something that is technically true for nearly every news organization in Canada, that they are political. Some of them are partisan, aboutly partisan. I mean, post-media is
00:50:47
Speaker
The receipts are there. The paper trail is long. They are absolutely in bed with the conservative political parties. But anyone who writes and publishes content is political. They should just admit it. And I think that often people conflate non-personship, meaning not
00:51:15
Speaker
supporting a particular political party or not with not having an opinion or not having a worldview or a frame of analysis. And
00:51:29
Speaker
That's a very important distinction to make. You know, we are going to aspire, you know, we want our work to be anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-fascist, anti-patriarchal, anti-heteronormative.
The Progress Report's Mission and Audience
00:51:39
Speaker
And in pursuit of the goal to be all those things, you know, we are going to be platforming and giving voice to, you know, folks who are marginalized by those systems. We are also creating
00:51:53
Speaker
a readable and approachable mass media here. We want this, think of this as like a Calgary center at Edmonton Sun, but good. Um, we want a mass audience. We want it to be easy, easily, easily understandable. And you know, the intended audience here is like people who work for a living, people who work for an hourly wage. Like when you look at what the sun has been able to do, um, you know, it really is incredible, right? They've created this product that like,
00:52:22
Speaker
you know, you can find in almost any lunchroom.
00:52:26
Speaker
of any kind of like, you know, business that has workers lying around around and people pick it up and read it. And it is an incredible like way that the conservative movement has, as kind of like inserted themselves into the lives of working people. Because I mean, if they're just reading sports grade, I mean, if they maybe just look at the sunshine girl or the headlines on the front page, but like they actually read the like op ed shit. Like it is like just super toxic, awful, nasty shit. They're smuggling in.
00:52:55
Speaker
into this paper and and so if you want to do that, but obviously like good ideas Exactly. I think that the left There there are things the left can learn From post media in terms of having this National or in our case provincial hub for
00:53:22
Speaker
progressive takes just as post media has done for the right. But obviously their business model and politics are something that should be disposed of.
00:53:37
Speaker
Exactly. We want to write about things that are immediately relevant to people's lives rather than big abstract concepts. So stories about landlords raising rents during COVID-19, for instance, rather than essays about political theory. On this end, we do want to, I mean, we still want to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. And I think there's lots of great organizations doing
00:54:00
Speaker
you know, work on political theory, and who talk about those like the Alberta Advantage is a fantastic podcast, which if you don't listen to, you should listen to it. But I don't think that's the space that we're trying to fill. I think we're very much more of a like, you know, a gutter press for the left.
00:54:18
Speaker
Progress Report is also going to be doing media criticism. This is something we've done since we've begun. But when you look at Alberta's media ecosystem and how deeply fucked up it is, because post media pulls everybody to the right, and because of post media's overt hostility to labor and climate action and indigenous sovereignty, that media criticism is part of what the progress report has to do.
00:54:44
Speaker
Uh, another part of what we will ask you to do is we will ask you for money. Um, if we're going to be reader funded, um, you are at least three or four times a year, there's going to be, you know, direct asks for money. There's probably going to be campaigns related to specific projects or stories that we want to tell that we're going to ask you where we're going to ask you for money. But like part of the process of being reader supported means, uh, if you're not giving us money, we're going to, and you listen to our stuff, you're going to hear it. And, um,
00:55:12
Speaker
When I started Progress Alberta, I was not an expert fundraiser. I definitely was very anxious about asking for money, but it's something you get over, over time as you run an organization where no one is obligated to give you money and you've got to go out and pitch it all the time. If you ever wanted to be cured of asking for people, I was on the Bernie email list and twice a day that Bernie email list was getting asked for money, sometimes three times a day.
00:55:39
Speaker
And you don't get what you don't ask for. So, um, if, if you like us, you listen to us, uh, on a regular basis, there are going to be calls for money. Frankly, Mr. Shankly give us money. And finally, um, you know, we will cover,
Manifesto and Marginalized Voices
00:55:59
Speaker
the excesses, the failures, the mistakes, the fuck-ups of politicians, lawyers, cops, corporate executives, and other members of the elite. I think framing this as a populist project, as an anti-elite project, is absolutely key. And one of the reasons why The Sun is successful. And that means bad actors on ostensibly the left as well. And so we do have to be able...
00:56:28
Speaker
One of the things is that if we are going to be reader supported is that and we are going to be independent is that we do have to create. We do have to have that credibility that we are able to go after you know the stuff that's bad on our own end. So I think that's that's the kind of final bit of the manifesto. This is obviously still very much a work in progress. We're still Gemini are still figuring out.
00:56:49
Speaker
you know, what, what this organization is going to look like, what its values are going to be, how we are going to present those to our audience and our supporters.
Jeremy Appel's Podcasting and Journalism
00:56:56
Speaker
But that's a kind of like intro to the progress report manifesto that we're working on. So thanks so much for coming on the pod, Jeremy. I think we're going to leave it there. Now is the time to kind of plug your pluggables. How can people follow you? You know, what's the podcast that you're working on? I know you've recently joined the ranks of podcasters. Um, you know, now is the time to kind of like let people know how to follow you and what you're all about, what you're up to.
00:57:18
Speaker
Yeah, I host two podcasts, actually. Both, I think, would be of interest to your listeners. The first being Big Shiny Takes, which you mentioned before, where we take the worst takes in Canadian media and also non-Canadian media sometimes and subject them to harsh criticism and ridicule.
00:57:48
Speaker
The second podcast is The Forgotten Corner, which I host with a guy you may know named Scott Schmidt.
00:57:59
Speaker
The news boys have got their own podcast. Yes, that's right. Unlike myself, he still works at the Medicine Hat News, but we're doing a lot of long-form interviews. We're actually recording tomorrow with Steven from Lethbridge.
00:58:19
Speaker
Yeah. And that should be a great discussion. He's been absolutely crushing it since the pandemic started by just doing independent journalism that you should all check out if you haven't already. And you can follow me on Twitter at Jeremyappell1025. And yeah, thanks so much for having me on the show, Duncan and Jim.
00:58:46
Speaker
Always a pleasure. Yeah, man. No, we love having you on. Again, once you get your third time, we'll send you some swag, maybe a t-shirt or something. Who is the progress report reigning champ? I don't know. I think we have a couple people at two. I don't think anyone has gotten to three yet. I know Bashir's been on a couple times. I know you're at two now. There might be someone I'm missing, but I think that's it. I mean, we've only got like 36, this is our 36th, 37th episode.
00:59:15
Speaker
All right, Bashir, I'm coming for you. There you go. I love Bashir. He's awesome. Definitely check out his work at Progress Alberto. Yeah, we had him. He wrote an op-ed for us on the M.
00:59:28
Speaker
on the disaster and the meat packing plants as well. Folks, if you like this podcast, if you want to keep hearing this podcast, there are a few quick and easy things you can do to make sure that we continue. One, very easy, like us on Facebook, share our stuff with your friends. Word of mouth is actually the most important way. We don't spend money on advertising.
00:59:48
Speaker
So, if you want this project to spread, you do have to kind of promote us to your friends and family. We really do appreciate it. If you really like this podcast, and again, I did talk about this earlier, you can give us money. It's really easy to give us money. You go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons, you put in your credit card, you become a monthly donor, you know, 5, 10, 15, someone just signed up for $50 a month the other day.
01:00:12
Speaker
whatever you're able to afford, obviously, because it is kind of a fucked up time economically, but theprogressreport.ca slash patrons, and that's the kind of easy, easiest way to support us financially. Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, comments, things you think I need to hear, I am on Twitter at Duncan Kinney, and you can reach me by email at DuncanKatprogressupboarda.ca. Thanks so much to CosmicifyMeCommunist for the amazing theme.
01:00:36
Speaker
Thank you to Jim, producer Jim, as well as our guest Jeremy for appearing on the show. And thank you for listening and goodbye. Did you know that Progress Alberta is part of a national community of leftist podcasts on the Ricochet Podcast Network? You can find the Alberta Advantage, 49th Parahel, Kino Lefter, Well Reds, The Progress Report, Laffey Sales, Out of Left Field, and Unpacking the News, as well as a bunch of other awesome podcasts at Ricochet Media or wherever you download your podcasts.