Your morning aaargh

Another weird-ass front page today, as the photo and no. 2 headline go to an agitated and disoriented Business columnist, under the mysterious headline "Will Danny's resource power grab pay off?" You see, Premier Williams of Newfoundland (as we bloggers with our olde-world courtesy prefer to call him) has expropriated hydro assets and timber cutting rights belonging to AbitibiBowater, in response to their plans to close their main mill in central Newfoundland and throw huge numbers of people out of work. But it takes a hell of a lot of work to find that out, what with having to wade through endless unfunny Hugo Chavez jokes and wipe off all the spittle. I don't know how much Abitibi stock Konrad Yakabuski owns, but he is a very very angry little man. (Actually, if he owns stock he should be grateful by the sound of it.)

If you read the other, background article on p. 4, you get much more information, including the somehow amusing fact that the government informed Abitibi of its plans by e-mail. Also that Williams claims Abitibi has reneged on its side of the 1905 (!) contract it had with the government.

The Premier quoted century-old documents to the legislature. He cited a 1903 letter from the president of the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company Limited, a predecessor to AbitibiBowater, and a 1905 lease agreement to argue that the company's rights were dependent on operating a mill in the province.

But neither article bothers to investigate the content of Williams' claims and work out whether they're true or not. So, though it certainly warms the heart to see a corporate hack that angry, there's absolutely no way for the reader to figure out the rights and wrongs here. (It does seem suggestive that they can't find a single Newfoundlander to quote as opposed to Williams' plan, not even the heads of the other major local employers.) The Globe knows what it wants you to think -- so much so that they're prepared to pass off the editorial as the news story and cut the news story down to a useless add-on.

UPDATE: Heh heh, about half the letters to the editor today are complaints about that dumb story. Well, you heard it here first.