Author Archives: Robert Basil

Anniversary

Posted on November 12, 2022 by Robert Basil

This month we begin the eleventh year of No Contest Communications. Tierney set the tone and the theme with her inaugural posts. I especially like “On Being Forgiven.”

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Apropos The Georgia Straight

Posted on October 24, 2022 by Robert Basil

Dan Savage was not exaggerating the problems faced by alt-weeklies in recent years. From The Tyee last week: The crew at the Georgia Straight wrote until the bitter end, filing stories and chronicling Vancouver’s culture after the paycheques stopped flowing … Continue reading →

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Savage Love

Posted on October 23, 2022 by Robert Basil

The prose of Dan Savage is bold and crystal clear – and edifying to a profound degree. It always has been. I started reading his column in the San Francisco’s alt-weekly back in the early 90s and kept up that … Continue reading →

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If you hadn’t noticed …

Posted on October 8, 2022 by Robert Basil

Here we go again. — Liberals loathe the political Right’s hypocrisy and unfairness. Conservatives loathe the Left’s immorality and delicacy. The groups’ estimations of their own qualities, though, are less precise. The question of “hypocrisy” is particularly interesting. La Rochefoucauld … Continue reading →

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Looking for new colleagues

Posted on October 6, 2022 by Robert Basil

Kwantlen Polytechnic University is a vibrant and splendid place to work. My own department – Applied Communications (in the Melville School of Business) – is looking for two new instructors. We’re a good crowd. Apply here.

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Job-seekers need their “weaker ties”

Posted on September 16, 2022 by Robert Basil

This is a really interesting study that fortifies an important intuition: A team of researchers from Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and LinkedIn recently conducted the largest experimental study to date on the impact of digital job sites on the labor market … Continue reading →

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How to write a lede

Posted on September 11, 2022 by Robert Basil

From the Irish Times: Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to … Continue reading →

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Silly professor

Posted on September 4, 2022 by Robert Basil

It is puzzling, perhaps, when the paper of record publishes a piece arguing that it’s a waste of money and time providing and receiving education in schools.

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Hootsuite blog

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Robert Basil

Hootsuite, Vancouver’s vaunted social media management company, has helpfully updated the design of its already excellent blog. There are fewer listicles and more how-to cheat sheets (a favourite genre of mine, as my students know). A couple of days ago … Continue reading →

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The scale of a work

Posted on July 25, 2022 by Robert Basil

Our friend Jonathan Mayhew, on finding the right size (for a book): I like saying that [my upcoming book on Lorca and music] is a medium sized book on a vast subject.  So it is with scholarship. You are rarely … Continue reading →

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