By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
Since the beginning of 2009, Canadians and Americans have been bombarded almost daily with bad news about the mass media.
In particular, daily newspapers and, to a lesser extent, conventional television are being threatened by the proliferation of Internet-based, independent media.
WRISEUP.COM is just one among many serious attempts to develop an Internet media model that can become both highly credible and economically viable.
Almost a century ago, it was radio that was supposed to kill the daily newspaper. Then it was television that was supposed to kill both radio and the daily newspaper. Then it was cable TV that was supposed to kill conventional TV, radio and daily newspapers. And now it is the Internet that is predicted to kill cable TV, conventional TV, radio and daily newspapers.
Thus far, none of the pre-existing media forms has actually been slain by the burgeoning of an upstart medium. Each established medium was capable of adapting and occupying a very different niche.
Sure, many of the individual media outlets died but still every city and sizeable town in Canada and the U.S. has managed to retain a mixture of local media outlets, if only a local monopoly in each particular medium.
Now, however, for the first real time, this is all about to change. All conventional mass media really are seriously threatened for the first time ever.
To some extent, Internet outlets such as this blog/magazine/eventual-podcaster will be able to fill the void left by demise of the conventional mass media.
This will be both a good thing and a bad thing. Certainly, there will be much more choice and diversity. But there is also a real risk that much less real news will actually get covered.
Most Internet publisher/podcasters will be small. They will not have the resources to cover everything that is now getting covered.
And it will be much harder for Internet users to find accurate, authoritative and reliable sources of information.
WRISEUP.COM is striving to provide accurate, authoritative and reliable coverage of current affairs – from a progressive/leftist perspective.
After a few weeks of publishing, we have hundreds of readers across Canada and in at least three other countries. But we have very few subscribers and are generating even less advertising revenue.
If you like the kind of material you are finding in WRISEUP.COM, then please consider doing five things that will help us enormously.
1. Read WRISEUP.COM more often.
2. Comment on the articles you read.
3. Tell your friends about WRISEUP.COM.
4. Patronize our advertisers.
5. Subscribe to WRISEUP.COM – if you can afford it (It’s just five bucks a year).
If you could just do one or more of those five things, you will help ensure WRISEUP.COM’s long-term viability and ensure that there is a strong leftist presence in the Canadian marketplace of ideas.

By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
The shocking wave of drug-cartel-related mayhem and the revelation that the Mexican cartels control violent street gangs in 230 American cities should be a wake-up call to the proponents of drug prohibition in both Canada and the U.S.
And the estimate that drug exports provide $13 billion U.S. a year in revenues to Mexican drug cartels alone should be a wake-up call to all concerned by violent crime. It is the equivalent of providing a $182-billion-a-year source of revenue to organized crime in the U.S. and $20 billion a year to organized crime in Canada.
Drug prohibition has become not only the biggest source of revenue for organized crime across North America but also the primary cause of most violent crime on the continent.
read more »

By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
Over the past generation, more than a million well-paying, middle-class jobs have been permanently lost in Canada and replaced by low-wage McJobs offering no real benefits and no job security.
And hundreds of thousands of other quality jobs will be permanently lost before the current global economic crisis is resolved.
read more »

By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
Grand revelation: Wealthy corporate executives’ contracts are sacred, even when they are dismal failures; wage workers’ contracts can be scrapped at any time.
That appears to be the philosophy of both the Democratic and Republican parties in the U.S. and of both the Liberal and Conservative parties in Canada. No other interpretation is possible.
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