A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

I'm a communications strategist and writer with a journalism background, a drifter's spirit, and a growing sense of alarm at where this world is going. I am happiest when writing pieces that identify, contextualize and background societal problems big and small in hopes of helping us at least slow our deepening crises.

Showing posts with label social decay. Show all posts

Showing posts with label social decay. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

In case you were wondering: A surfeit of social realities to explain (a bit) about how we got here

Image by Taken from Pixabay I haven't worked as a full-time journalist for almost 20 years now, but people still pay me to go find th...

Monday, November 21, 2022

Let me tell ya, kid, back in my day...

When I was a kid and got too whiny about some little difficulty in my life, I'd get shaken back to reality by a parent or grandparent wi...

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Drugs don't kill people, poisoned drugs do

BC's crisis of poisoned street drugs is hitting men in the prime of their working years the hardest. Three-quarters of the 10,000 deaths...

Wednesday, November 09, 2022

Falling B grades signal community decline

Few things visualize the impact of the pandemic and the sad slide of social wellness in Greater Victoria quite so pointedly as the 2022 Vita...

Wednesday, February 03, 2021

Deniers, Hoarders, Invincibles, Worriers - the many faces of our COVID-19 tribes

Sixteen faces of COVID-19 “personalities” are emerging around the world as people react to unprecedented weirdness in very different ways. ...

Monday, August 05, 2019

The Great Hack: Watch It

I've been alarmed anew by the Cambridge Analytica horror story after watching the documentary "The Great Hack" last night ...

Friday, May 10, 2019

Journalism 101: Winning awards is one thing, consistent and solid local coverage is something else

Advice to Phillip Crawley, or any other boss poised to cut $10 million in salaries, none of which involves their own job: Don't try to ...

Monday, March 25, 2019

Open procurement and social care: Why that should scare you

Find me here in the Vancouver Sun writing on the scintillating issue of open procurement, and other strange happenings bombarding the comm...

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Opioid crisis: Those who manufactured it should pay their share

I like a good analogy for figuring out complex problems with moral overtones. I got to thinking about which one might work for understandi...

Monday, August 14, 2017

Homelessness is still a problem. Gee, go figure

Ten years ago now, I was part of a major initiative to address homelessness in Victoria. The Mayor's Task Force on Breaking the Cycle ...

Friday, February 17, 2017

May we be bent but not broken by the grief and despair of a post-Trump world

Ever since the election of Donald Trump three months ago, it's like I can't get my feet underneath me. I’m not even sur...

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Is the lure of authoritarianism what got Trump elected?

I'm feeling rattled by Facebook, no longer sure if there's any point in sharing serious things there. It was the Trump election th...

Saturday, November 05, 2016

Information dumps as a tool to smother dissent

This feels like an important piece. It's a New York Times commentary from Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the Universit...

Monday, October 17, 2016

The highs and lows of social media, as experienced through the issue I care most about

Social media is an interesting beast, most particularly for how each form appeals and responds to users in entirely different ways. This ...

View web version

Powered by Blogger.