Ottawa

Welcome to the horror show

Spent at least a few minutes last night trying to think of an analogy for the experience of covering the events of the last few days—though admittedly I have little experience in covering unprecedented history as it unfolds. Nearest equivalent might be trying to understand what’s going on with and within a moving high-speed train while standing on the platform.

Which is to say it’s difficult enough to know what’s going on inside and where it’s all going, but whatever information that does come is almost certainly out-dated by the time it reaches you. And depending on how you want to extend the analogy, there could be as many as half a dozen trains to follow (the coalition talks, the Liberal leadership talks, the situation with the PMO, the debate within Liberal caucus, etc, etc).

Those on daily deadlines whose bosses are demanding new information are almost hopelessly screwed. Those of us blessed with weekly deadlines have a bit more time to make sense of it—or imagine we’re making sense of it—but at this point almost no one knows exactly what’s going on and it is impossible to reasonably guess what the situation may be in a week.

All of which is to say, this is probably to be both the best and worst of times for journalism in this town. Careful reading.

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