The presence of 15,000 journalists in Tampa and Charlotte for the conventions was ridiculous but even wackier is the size of "Nation PR." Likely bigger than Newark or its governor, this is an industry of propagandists, bloggers, twitterers, scandal-mongers, pundits, spin doctors, pollsters, journalist-partisans who pen biased op-eds and columns, campaign operatives and dewy-eyed "Monicas" who will do anything for the boss. Nation PR never sleeps and now the fun, for the rest of us, begins as they launch their saturation bombing campaign on US voters to capture victory in November.

Seems that when you spend an hour watching Canadian TV news stories about politics, you get only about 15 minutes of real information. These scary numbers come from the highly respected charitable Samara Institute today. Samara has spent months doing all the research, the number crunching, and the drawing of conclusions. Will the newsrooms listen? Probably not.

When the Mirror was launched in the mid-1980s, it touted its independence and social purpose. I remember going to benefit concerts and parties organized to help it get off the ground and survive. But it's been shut down, and I fear even an online version wouldn't be able to pay even the most abysmal of salaries, or even reassert itself as a go-to source for young Montreal anglos.

These are my very own, real leaked documents about the fact that traditional, general-interest journalism is the crucial cornerstone of democracy and that social media threatens to destroy that cornerstone. They're written by students studying journalism. If you have any interest in Canadian journalism in our Canadian democracy you should read them.

What the hell has happened to Canadian journalists? In Canada, one of the world's most multicultural nations, our main media are controlled by a tiny group of almost entirely white newsroom decision makers who live in a world cut off from ordinary people like you and me. One result of this is that they produce journalism for each other.

Jan Wong was one of Canada's ace reporters. She won readers and admirers for the Globe and Mail. Then suddenly, a couple of years ago, she vanished from the pages of her paper. Why? Because she suffered from depression, and management refused to acknowledge the fact; they thought she was just being lazy. One has some sympathy with the Globe's misunderstanding, but it's come at the cost of the thinning of the ranks of honest frontline journalism.

What does Facebook sell? You could say advertising. They sell advertising to the tune of several billions of dollars each and every year. If Facebook is a media company, we then have to ask ourselves: What kind of media channel does Facebook provide and how does it compare to those other media channels?

Is Stephen Harper quietly working to "re-brand" Canada? Is his government emphasizing the military, the monarchy and select episodes of Canadian history in order to create a competing brand of right-wing Canadian nationalism and divert attention from the great symbols of Liberal patriotism, like medicare and Lester Pearson? The pundit class thinks so.

There are a lot of important things happening in the world right now. What are they? I couldn't tell you; I watch CNN.