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The morning walk through the Bell Center. Many Montrealers leave their cars in their garage and take this route to work. Let’s say for the sake of this blog that the Canadians lost a heart breaker the night before 2-1 to the dreaded Mapleleafs. This means many things. For starters, the Canadians magic number to clinch a playoff spot remains frozen, the david versus goliath efforts of encore baseball Montreal maybe receive a boost, and according to statistics Canada, the amount of women receiving punches to the face increases.

It may not be data produced from Statistics Canada, but there is proof somewhere out there indicating that spousal abuse is highest following a Canadians loss, in Montreal anyway.

So, during the morning walk to work, an irate man is pushing his way through the Bell Center underground ground and female slapping along his way. The shock of his antics amidst an otherwise sedate  morning stroll provoke citizen journalists into action.

Claire Rasputin is from Peirrefonds. She works at The Eaton Center selling perfumes and fragrances. She barely finished high school and actually completed her GED much later than her teenage friends, somewhere around the age of 24. Claire’s older sister Mary Lou is an actuary and earns a nice, fat income. Mary Lou prides herself on being up to date with all the technological gadgetry flooding the market, so she bought her baby sister a blackberry. It was a great gift, not only because Claire could barely turn on a computer and needed to know something related to the 21st century. Mary Lou’s generosity was far sighted and maybe a little clairvoyant, no pun intended. Clair took an immediate liking to her little blackberry. She even gave it a special name, Badinga. She searched on line, joined chat groups, took photographs, and even commented on perfume related articles she read on line.

On the morning following the Canadians devastating overtime defeat to the lowly Leafs, Claire received one of those slaps from the anonymous slapper roaming through the Bell Center underground. Claire reacted instinctualy when she pulled out Badinga from her purse and started clicking away. It turns out that the woman directly behind Claire and next in line to be slapped was none other than Celine Dion. This proved to be no ordinary slap. Celine fell to her knees and then lay flat on the floor unconscious. In a matter of seconds, her left eye swelled up and turned black, blue, and purple.

Claire shot off a round of photos that exceeded 100. She captured not only Celine’s condition, but a close up of the fleeing man. Celine knew what to do. She pitched her story immediately to the Gazette and relayed a message to the police precinct #9. Within a matter of cyber seconds, both the Gazette and Constable McGinnis replied with a financial reward if she would kindly produce not only the photographs, but a short article describing the events.

Claire had guts. She was sort of a clean slate. She was not polluted with the rules and etiquette of seasoned journalists and some say she was delirious most of the time due to inhaling perfumes for so many years. She fell to the floor with Celine, long before the police arrived. She clicked on her audio recorder and started popping Quebec’s most recognizable female star all sorts of questions. Claire was unknowingly preying on Celine when she was most vulnerable and without the protection of a media coach. Celine leaked all kids of information.

The details don’t matter for the sake of this blog post. What does matter is the role Claire played. She was in the right place and the right time and she was compensated financially. Claire Rasputin replaced the Gazette’s news reporter on this tragic Canadian’s day.

The question becomes, do we really need journalists anymore? Trained, university educated journalists? News happens everywhere and every moment of every day. There is no way journalists can be there to cover all of the going ons around town. The abundance of news would sky rocket or it already has if the doors to publication would by dynamited open for all the public to participate. If quality journalism is what the public wants, then why not open up online training schools. There are already many I would imagine. These training schools would provide the public with the necessary skills to crank out a quality feature story or cold news coverage. The course would be free, online, and completed in a matter of two months.

The public would become producers rather than consumers of news. This seems to be the trend these days anyway. Quebec Mile-Enders live by the locally organic grown vegetable and who doesn’t have at least one friend who skips University lectures due to their homemade windmill needing attention. The device traps all the wind produced from the centralized vacuum system or converts all the wind into usable energy. The poor student returns home from school and has trapped enough energy to boil some water for a cup of brown rice and light the lamp for some nightime reading entertainment.

All this to say, self sufficiency is as popular as Tellytubbies once were. The  elite group of educated journalists who ran around town with clipboard and tape recorder may be doomed to the dustbin. Personally, I welcome the change. The competition is a spring time cat fight to win the twelfth spot on a pitching staff out of spring training. The quality can only increase.

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