PMO Rant
So, part of my job is identifying articles containing information relevant to Joe Canadian. Articles we can write a press release for, because they'd be of interest to the general public, and not just academics.
The journal I used to edit was pretty dry. The only press release we ever successfully issued was about the mapping of the turkey genome. Yes, the bird. We released it just in time for Canadian Thanksgiving. It was hokey, but it got our journal's name in the press. People ate it up, so to speak.
The journal for which I am currently working deals with a lot of issues of importance to modern Canadians: heart disease, type 2 diabetes, nutrition, exercise, childhood obesity. In pretty much every issue, there is information that should be disseminated to all Canadians, not just the scholars and ivory tower types. The only problem is that Stephen Harper's government doesn't think it's that important for you to know some of this stuff. You see, Mr. Harper insists that everything for which a government agency, not unlike the one I work for, wants to issue a press release go through the Prime Minister's Office. His staff has to read it, and agree with it. They then send it out to all other departments who might have an issue with the release. All of those other departments, headed up by unelected officials or people who were elected, but rely on funding from lobby groups to seek their re-election, then get to have a go at quashing the release, too.
The end result for timely information like that found in an academic journal is that the whole process takes far too long, and we stop bothering to draft press releases, as they will no longer be relevant by the time they're made public (relevant in terms of citing information found in the most current issue of a journal). Anything that appears old, you see, doesn't get picked up by agencies like the Associated Press or Reuters.
So, I've decided that when I think an article is of interest to Canadians in general, particularly those who read this blog, I will publish a link to the article's home page. Sadly, if Stephen Harper doesn't think you'll be interested, downloading the article will not be free...however, you can read the abstract for free, and if you have any questions about the rest of the article's content, you can always ask the girl who did the copy-editing. Right?
Our first installment in this series will be an article published in January. I thought issuing a release in time for the holiday imbibing season might be appropriate, but we received the article far too late to go through all of the right channels before the New Year. So, for your reading interest, here is
Alcohol consumption: the good, the bad, and the indifferent
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