Saint John — After being taken to court by the Higgs government over a leaked carbon tax policy they had acquired, Brunswick News agreed earlier this week not to publish any of the information contained in the documents.
Sensing little public outcry, the company has decided that it might be in their best interest to cease publication of news altogether.
“Truthfully, we’ve been phasing it out for a little while now anyway,” said Brunswick News president Jim Irving. “We feel this is as good a time as any to make a hard stop.”
Starting with this morning’s edition, all papers under the BNI umbrella (including the daily papers Telegraph-Journal, Times & Transcript, and the Daily Gleaner) have removed all articles that contain any semblance of journalism, along with several “subversive” comic strips.
“Sometimes, we think that Blondie just gets a little too ‘real’ for our audience,” Irving explained delicately.
While one might assume that this sudden lack of hard-news content might make it difficult to fill out the pages of each paper, Irving assured New Brunswickers that generating content “will not be a problem.”
“Our layout software has this excellent feature where it automatically fills word boxes with dummy text,” he said. “Sure, it’s just nonsense, but with literacy rates what they are in this province, who’ll know the difference?
“Besides, there’s always plenty of room for Sudoku and advertisements.”
The journalism department at St. Thomas University told The Manatee that they would be outraged by Irving’s decision…if people still relied on newspapers for their information.
“So long as I still have materials to make paper mâché for my fine arts minor, it’s whatever,” said 4th-year student Amanda North, with a shrug.
The company acknowledges that the shift will necessitate a name change.
“There’s a few new names that we’ve been kicking around. Brunswick Entertainment, Brunswick Pottery Wrapping, Brunswick Bird Cage Liner…” said Irving. “It’s the age of the pivot. Who knows which direction we’ll take it!”
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In the meantime, The Manatee’s own Times & Gleaner Journal will continue to bring you the hard facts, reporting the news that nobody else will. Copies are still available here.