Selinger doesn’t say much

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/12/2011 (5373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a tough time of the year to be in the daily news business.

Planned events dry up and we’re left covering last-minute shoppers, Christmas dinners or New Year’s Eve party preparations. Reporters seem to all want a well-deserved break from the stress of their jobs right around now to spend time with family, friends or on a ski hill.

Sources ranging from government spokespeople, to organization heads, to those carefully groomed “deep throats,” all seem to conspire to be away in the days between Christmas and New Year’s.

In fact, the only guaranteed sources for stories are shoppers, trapped by reporters like so many fish in a barrel for the dreaded annual Boxing Day “streeter” interviews.

In fact, editors have to resort to those admittedly banal features — “So little girl, did you get what you want for Christmas?” — as it’s also the time of year that advertisers clamour to fill the pages of newspapers such as the Brandon Sun with their stories of low-low prices and tales of two-for-one sales.

So we have large papers, with lots of space to fill.

So that’s why, dear readers, you will also come across the annual year-end features that take a look back at the year that was.

While some are truly interesting — such as the photographer’s favourite photos of the year, unpublished or not — some are just diaries of events that prey on the fact that people simply forget a lot of what has gone on in the past 300-odd days.

And then there are the year-end interviews with politicians.

Like chestnuts roasting on an open fire, these tried and true seasonal goodies often leave readers feeling hungry for more.

Simply put, there is usually far more sizzle than steak to these year-end interviews.

It’s just not going to be a time where politicians drop a news bomb.

And so we weren’t expecting much from Premier Greg Selinger in his year-end interviews with us and our sister paper, the Winnipeg Free Press.

And he didn’t disappoint.

Selinger began 2011 facing the start of a historic flood, and ended the year leading the New Democratic Party to its fourth straight majority government.

So he had a pretty adventurous year.

But after the election, the only tangible development from his practically invisible government was the slowly leaked confirmation that the provincial deficit will be in the neighbourhood of $1 billion.

And he basically bobbed and weaved through a series of questions by both newspapers.

He told the Freep that he’ll be “looking for efficiencies” when preparing the upcoming budget.

He told us to “stay tuned” about his plans to fill vacant cabinet posts.

But it’s not as if we were expecting much. And some of the questions were seasonal softballs.

However, it did fill up a couple of pages on what is, admittedly, a very slow news time of the year.

So it’s not as if we aren’t trying to offer some local content.

But in reality, a lot of readers really aren’t that interested in hard-biting investigative journalism this time of year.

All those ads in the paper and the flyers it comes wrapped around are often of far more interest to many folks right now.

So please excuse us for serving up a few chestnuts this week.

We’ll do our best to make them tasty.