So you want to be a media mogul?

Try our quick quiz to see if you have what it takes.

I’m no fan of government intrusion, but in this country if you want to practice law, perform surgery, fly a plane, drive a car or get a summer job as a lifeguard at the community pool, you have to earn some kind of licence or permit, which means you have to pass some kind of test.

If you want to preside over a multi-media empire, however, all it currently requires is Daddy’s approval. Go figure. But if there were a test for potential media moguls — or at least a job interview — what would it look like?

Get out your pencils. If you can answer the following questions correctly, you may be media magnate material. You may be one of the Asper boys.

CREATING A MEDIA STORM: By the time that the details of the Russell Mills firing became public, the event dominated headlines.With its illustration of a big thumb pressing down on a trembling journalist, the Globe and Mail, itself part of a media conglomerate and CanWest's competitor, slammed the the Aspers for their heavy-handed and censorious ways.After refusing to comment for the first three days of the controversy, the media storm forced the Aspers to speak. The task was left to Leonard Asper (far left) to "set the record straight" during an interview on Global Television. The same day as his comments appeared on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen, the paper's journalists took out a full-page advertisement under the heading "Freedom of the Press," to denounce the Aspers and worry aloud about what his dismissal "means for the future of this newspaper's editorial independence and that of the entire Southam chain"

1. Your company is close to $4 billion in debt.You finesse your bankers by :

A) Attending quietly to the profitability of your properties.

B) Publicly berating your employees, throwing hissy fits, firing high-profile members of your organization, triggering a libel suit, undermining your own stock price, and all but inviting an official inquiry into your corporate conduct.

2. You decide to jettison a senior manager, but he gets all principled, digs in his heels and refuses to take the hush money. You respond by:

A) Issuing a clear, immediate and unequivocal statement of why this publisher has been dismissed.

B) Waiting for five days before trundling out the nominal head of the company to babble unpersuasively about insubordination, homogeneity and a lack of diversity of opinion at the newspaper in question.

3. By doing so, the reaction you seek to elicit from the public and working journalists is:

A) “Well, at the very least there’s a sure and confident hand at the helm.”

B) “I may disagree with this company’s actions, but I certainly defend the owners’ right to run the company as they see fit.”

C) “What’s with Junior’s goatee?”

4. Fill in the blank: Employees who sincerely believe their employers are more productive employees.

A) unhinged

B) thick as two planks

C) vindictive and capricious

D) unfairly caricatured by members of the central Canadian media élite

5. Lately there has been some suggestion that concentration of media ownership has allowed certain proprietors to use their holdings to propagandize the population in the service of a sitting Prime Minister. Your response is:

A) Don’t be silly.Any such allegation is utterly unfounded. Also, you’re fired.

B) Maybe yes,maybe no.You can’t prove anything.

C) Big deal. So what are you going to do about it?

6. Your company is based in Winnipeg.You use this to your advantage by:

A) Tiresomely carrying a chip on your shoulder.

B) Behaving like a bunch of yokels.

C) Giving Winnipeg a bad name.

7. Reporters at one of your dailies protest aspects of corporate policy by withholding their bylines. You respond by:

A) Offering to revisit any policy that would cause such disquiet among otherwise valued employees.

B) Staying up late at night, compiling a list of names.

8. Members of the public, angered by the conduct of your company, cancel their newspaper subscriptions in droves.You respond by:

A) Offering to revisit any policy that would cause such disquiet among otherwise valued customers.

B) Publicly disparaging such people as nattering, ill-informed malcontents.

C) Doing nothing. Since you know they can’t live without the lottery results, the sports scores and the horoscope, they’ll be back eventually.

9. The best way to contribute to the ongoing national debate is:

A) Through tortuously written national editorials commissioned by head office.

B) By igniting a national debate on freedom of the press.

10. Speaking of which, freedom of the press is:

A) A property right of owners.

B) A quaint, 19th-century red herring in this era of media convergence and multiplicity.

C) The rallying cry of pinkos, university professors and those who would frustrate the legitimate ambitions ofWinnipeg-based multi-media conglomerates.

11. Rank order the following in terms of pure evil:

A) Yasser Arafat.

B) Senate inquiries into concentration of media ownership.

C) Paul Martin.

D) CRTC Canadian content requirements.

Time’s up. Pencils down.

Highest scores can expect to receive the deed to a debt-encumbered, thoroughly demoralized media corporation of recently tarnished reputation.

A real fixer-upper. Christopher Dornan is the director of the Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication.