Mr Media's Blog
Review by Mike Gange
Cheesy Tale of Late Night Kitsch
Let’s Just Change the Channel By Mike Gange But Wait, there’s More: Tighten Your Abs, Make Millions, and Learn How the $100 Billion Infomercial Industry Sold Us Everything but the Kitchen Sink By Remy Stern Collins Business, $24.99 (U.S.)$32.99 (CDN), 255 pages The world of info-mercials is one giant, electronic flea market. Remember the Ginsu … Continue reading
Scorecasting Review: Putting thinking into sports
Turning Play Time to Thinking Time. Review by Mike Gange Scorecasting: the hidden influences behind how sports are played and games are won By Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim Crown, $26 (US) $30 (CDN), 278 pages Sports sections of the news media are often considered to be the “sand-box” of journalism. ABC TV … Continue reading
New Ideas Needed in Stodgy Workplace
The Whack-a-Mole Workplace Reviw by Mike Gange A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger von Oech Business Plus, $18.99, 256 pages An innovative engineer proposed that since scraping paint from a house was such hard work, the house paint should be mixed with gun powder when it is applied to the house, … Continue reading
At Times, Pop Culture isn’t the Right Culture
By Mike Gange Rethinking Popular Culture and Media Edited by Elizabeth Marshall and Ozlem Sensoy Rethinking Schools Org, $18.95, 340 pages I have been teaching some form of media literacy for more than 25 years. Even while teaching courses such as French Second Language or Law, I used techniques that have come to be accepted … Continue reading
The Book of Negroes: Powerful and Disturbing
Out of the Mouths of Babes Review by Mike Gange The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill Harper Collins, $15.64, 487 pages I rarely read serious fiction. In fact, I had to ask directions to that section of the bookstore when I went looking for The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. This book was … Continue reading
Back Checking on Hockey
Thoughts from a Former Hockey Night in Canada Reporter By Mike Gange From the Broadcast Booth: My life in Hockey Broadcasting Brian McFarlane HBFenn, $32.95, 309 pages. “No cheering in the press boxes.” It’s a message that is rarely posted in the media booths at sporting venues, yet it’s understood by all who work there. … Continue reading
Taking Play Seriously
Review by Mike Gange The Best American Sports Writing (2010) Ed. By Peter Gammons Mariner Books, $18.95, 411 pages There are many valid criticisms of present day sports writing: too much emphasis on winners and losers, with winners being celebrated and losers being made out to be the goats; not enough analysis of issues such … Continue reading
The Mouse that Roared
Review by Mike Gange The Top 100 Canadian Singles By Bob Mersereau Goose Lane, $35, 216 pages In the year 1969, the U.S. seemed to be in the news for all the wrong reasons – race riots, inner city turmoil, and an unpopular war in Vietnam – all of which gave outsiders an impression that … Continue reading
Get Thee to a Press Box!
By Mike Gange Sportscasters/Sportscasting: Principles and Practices By Linda K. Fuller Routledge (2008), 371 pages, $40.50 Sports broadcasting might be easy to dismiss as shallow, hegemonic, and “the toy department” of the news business, but I can give you 213 Billion reasons you should pay more attention to it: sports broadcasting makes more than double … Continue reading
Sleepwalkers Path to Woodstock
A Sleepwalker’s Path to Woodstock Review by Mike Gange By the Time We Got To Woodstock: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Revolution of 1969 By Bruce Pollock Backbeat Books, $19.99, 332 pages “By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong,” wrote Joni Mitchell, in what has become the anthem for … Continue reading
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