January 31, 2009 – 11:47 pm|Posted in Fun, Opinion
Corporatization of fun: Friendly game of tag, or an ad for Orange Crush?
As an observer of society, I belong to some Facebook groups that may or may not turn into things. One of them was a generic flashmob group, which had hopes of organizing something fun at some point, but never actually did so.
Today I get an email from the group, which has been taken over by a "street marketing company" with big ambitions:
Objet : Hi flashmobers !
I am taking in charge your group.
My name is Ludovic and I am working in Trako Media, a street marketing company. We want to create an EVENT. A giant EVENT with thousands of flashmobers. We are already planning some future events where we would like everybody to activly participate. We gonna work full days and weeks to make it better than any other one in any other town.
Montreal is full of enthousiastic people who love having FUN.
We are already 46 members. Can you send invitation to your friends ? Talk to others ? Print and pomote the group on school or university walls ?
We need 1000 flashmobers for the first offical Flash Mob. Don't worry, I'm sure you 'll like our ideas :D
So let's start and feel free to message me !
Sorry for my english :P Je parle un peu mieux français...
Maybe I'm just picky, but nothing kills the spirit of a flashmob than having it be organized by a marketing company, which will no doubt have some commercial motivation behind such events.
Catherine Cullen (right) totally not flirting with Living Montreal's Sue Smith
Sue Smith, the host of Living Montreal (perhaps the only English television program left that's produced for a local Montreal audience) apparently ran out of ideas this week and did five shows themed on CBC Montreal and the Maison Radio-Canada.
Above is some little-known nerd reporter from CBC Radio who on Thursday's show did a chocolate-chip cookie recipe she got off the Internet. (Actually, it's my former classmate Catherine Cullen, whose career has now officially outperformed mine, allowing me to make fun of her with the photo below.) They're actually shown on a set in the basement made by the production department specifically for this segment, which is kind of cute (did it have running water?).
Catherine Cullen is just happy to be on TV
Sadly, too little of the 115 minutes over the week involved actually exploring the iconic CBC building (and too much on graphical segues and plugs for the website). The trips through various offices act more as a backdrop for various food/style/shopping/other chick stuff.
Still, if you're a junkie for inside journalism like me, take a peek at these:
CBC weatherguy Frank Cavallaro talking about local establishments he likes to frequent (spoiler alert: Little Italy), and tours of the costume and props department at Maison RadCan, which produces much of the network's comedy and drama programming in addition to news.
Monday and Tuesday's shows are at CBC Radio Montreal, where I spent all of two weeks but remember some of the faces. Tuesday's show has almost throw-away shout-outs to Julie Chamberland, Shawn Apel and Justin Hayward
And while you're exploring the Living Montreal site, you can take a peek at segments from the Flab Gab column which stars The Gazette's June Thompson, who was brought on board in December.
P.S. To Living Montreal (or whoever is responsible for its website): Your Flash-based video system looks cool and seems to work OK (except for the minor issue that if I pause a video I can't restart it ... actually that's a pretty serious issue), but this post would have been made a lot easier if you had some simple way to copy a link to individual videos. I had to get the ones above through the "Send to a friend" feature, sending myself half a dozen unnecessary emails.
His reason is about as stupid as you can imagine: He objects to the fact that the production of this scab paper is being done out of Toronto. That, it seems, goes against the whole Quebec-can-do-things-on-its-own idea, apparently moreso than the paper being filled with material produced by non-unionized journalists and translated copy from Sun Media ... in Toronto.
Methinks he might have been looking for an excuse to weasel his way out of a decision that he has recently realized goes against just about everything the PQ stands for, especially after all the proddinginthe media.
Steve Proulx is running a pool to see who the next columnist to leave will be. I'll put my non-money on Louise Deschâtelets.
Video
Proving that they have no problem with this whole Internet/video thing, journalists at Rue Frontenac produced their first journalistic video, a profile of boxer Antonin Decarie.
The video is a bit too reliant on still pictures, but it's a good start. You'll note the credits at the end: a photographer, a videographer and an editor are three separate people.
Quebecor's paper in the Saguenay, Le Réveil, might also be facing a lockout. The situation is similar, with the employer demanding concessions from the union so drastic they have no choice but to refuse.
An anonymous crazy-leftist person says that the Journal journalists aren't worthy of left-wing support, because they're The Man. Which I guess means they support Quebecor? They do specify, though, that they support non-journalist union members who are locked out.
Cyberpresse is now requiring all comments on all blogs to be approved before they are published, according to Richard Therrien and Marie-Claude Lortie, similar to what currently happens on the high-traffic Patrick Lagacé blog. The reason is simple: Cyberpresse considers itself responsible for all content on its website, no matter their origin.
The mood in the negotiation of this contract was a huge departure from the previous one, which was negotiated after the CBC locked out its employees in 2005. They were out almost two months before they approved a contract to bring them back to work.
Most of the errors are fairly small (misspelling hockey players' names), some are a bit more severe (getting a hockey player's team wrong), and some are just grammatical nitpicking. What is clear, though, is that they spent a lot of time going through the paper in order to catalog and report on these flaws. I guess they have a lot of free time on their hands now.
One of their criticisms, of the use of the phrase "setting a new record" (as if one could set a record without it being new) made me smile because it's something that I've done a few times in headlines and has been marked in red ink by fellow editors more than once.
The rest
Patrick Lagacé, who was impatient about Rue Frontenac launching, is now praising it.
Raymond Viger says the Journal, made up of mostly wire stories, has no soul.
Last week I got a consumer survey in the mail, inviting me to fill it out and win crazy prizes. I actually started filling it out until I noticed it was asking me information that went way beyond what I'm prepared to divulge.
I did notice it had a section on what newspaper you read. But something didn't seem right.
Francis Vachon, a Quebec City-based freelance photographer who has shot photos for various news agencies (and The Gazette), created a four-hour time-lapse video of his infant son playing with toys, and posted it on YouTube so he could embed it on his blog.
I thought it was cute.
Then I noticed it was getting attention from the local blogger-vedettes like Dominic Arpin and Patrick Lagacé.
Less than a week after it was posted, the video has been watched 172,793357,655times, favourited 9351,677times, and has received 32 most-viewed and most-discussed honours.
Will his Rue Petit-Champlain time-lapse get as much attention? Is this a YouTube star in the making? Will Weezer have to feature him in their next video?
I used to look back at my alma mater Concordia University, and ponder how student politics there had changed. In my years (2000-2004), there were scandals, recalls, backroom deals, lawsuits, riots, arrests and just general overall craziness. But since then it had been mostly quiet. A one-party system had been instituted at the Concordia Student Union, finances seemed under control and everyone stayed out of the headlines.
But thankfully, university student politics have a habit of repeating themselves every few years, as high turnover results in institutional Alzheimer's and the same mistakes get made by a whole new group:
Person in charge of finances is left unchecked, money goes missing, and then she does as well? Check.
Le Devoir looks at QMI, the wire service setup by Quebecor to allow its publications to share stories (in other words, have underpaid kids at 24 Heures scab for the Journal)
Michel Dumais says neither side of the conflict has come out on top in the public relations battle yet, and both are putting out an acceptable product.
Chrystian Guy says that the newspaper industry is in crisis and Quebecor has to do something about it. He adds some rapid-fire comments in another post, including the opinion that journalists should be well-paid but that "dead wood" overhead jobs (like accountants) should be eliminated. I'll just quote him directly: "on devrait niveler les salaires par le haut, mais couper le bois mort ou mourrant"
@FrancisVachon Actually, the trick is to use a photo that's so poor its creator would be ashamed to claim copyright on it ;) 13 mins ago
@FrancisVachon It's okay as long as you say "COURTESY: FACEBOOK" 13 mins ago
Investigative reporting! RT @SunNewsNetwork: #SunNews Exclusive: @michelebachmann rips @BarackObama in an interview with @BrianLilley. 16 mins ago
@in92days Really depends on the article 35 mins ago
@S_Tsirgiotis apparently 1 hour ago
RT @BasemBoshra: Thanks for retweeting every bit of praise you get. I was on the fence about you, but now that I see other people like y ... 1 hour ago
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