Monthly Archives: February 2009

The Great La Presse Habs Scoop of 2009

February 21, 2009 – 3:47 pm| Posted in Canadiens, Media

La Presse scored the jackpot in Friday's paper when it combined the four things that journalists and their bosses have wet dreams about:

  1. A scoop, a story that nobody else has
  2. A story filled with anonymous sources about a crime boss/drug lord/mafia king
  3. A story about a celebrity scandal
  4. A story about the Canadiens

The news dominated coverage yesterday and today, even as everyone was talking about Alex Kovalev's performance problems.

Part of that was because of La Presse, whose hockey analysts were dropping hints on every TV sports show they could find Thursday night to say that a huge scoop would appear in the next day's paper.

The various news sources did all they could to try and match La Presse's story before it came out, but couldn't gather enough before publication to put it all together. So while most just waited until it was out and summarized La Presse's story or re-researched it, Quebecor-owned 24 Heures put out its exclusive story that four Canadiens players had been arrested.

The story, still available in the Google cache, by reporter Maxime Deland, quotes a single anonymous source "very close" to the Canadiens saying four players had been arrested on Thursday night on their return from Pittsburgh.

Of course, no such thing happened, so 24 Heures deleted the story. I found no correction on their website, and the story was not in Friday's edition of the paper.

The story has gotten so big now we have the second (third?) day stories about whether the media is blowing this out of proportion. This piece at Fanatique summarizes the timeline of stories from the various news outlets, while Yves Boisvert, Patrick Lagacé and Mike Boone defend the media's insane interest in the Canadiens as a mere reflection of what the fans want to read.

UPDATE (Feb. 26): Pierre Trudel says La Presse did a good job with its scoop... in an article in La Presse.

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Who needs press releases when you own the newspaper?

February 21, 2009 – 2:48 pm| Posted in Media
24 Heures, Feb. 20, 2009, Page 20

24 Heures, Feb. 20, 2009, Page 20

From Friday's 24 Heures. Neither of these sound like news stories (even entertainment news stories), but when you remember that Quebecor owns 24 Heures and also owns TVA and Videotron, the advertorials make sense.

This, I can only assume, is what Quebecor wants to see in the Journal de Montréal.

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The block that time forgot

February 20, 2009 – 10:30 am| Posted in Montreal, Navel-gazing

Funny story: I was walking along Ste. Catherine St. W. with a friend from out of town yesterday after having seen this Slumdog Millionnaire movie that everyone's talking about (and now I know why). As we walked by the boarded one-block slum between Lambert-Closse and Chomedey, I described the old Seville Theatre as "the block that time forgot" and how the fact that it's dead space has put an economic damper on the block and its surroundings.

As we get to the corner of Chomedey, I spot Gazette reporter Jan Ravensbergen and photographer Pierre Obendrauf. Turns out they're doing a story about how the Seville Theatre building is going to be torn down for a development project.

This actually got turned into two stories for today's paper: one about the development project itself and another about local reaction to it.

The project would require the tearing down of a once architecturally significant building façade. But even the architects and heritage activists admit there's nothing worth saving anymore.

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STM to add Habs West Island shuttle bus

February 20, 2009 – 9:48 am| Posted in Canadiens, Public transit, West Island

Thanks to Linda Gyulai's most excellent CityHallReport Twitter account for tipping me off to the fact that starting Tuesday, the STM will be offering a shuttle service for Canadiens fans in the West Island as part of a partnership with the team and its The Goal is Green campaign.

It's a one-way shuttle, leaving the Bell Centre 15 minutes after home games, and dropping off at "three specific locations": Dorval, Pointe-Claire and Fairview.

Regular STM fares apply.

Speaking of the Canadiens, they're looking for an in-game animator. Must be pretty photogenic and of a "pleasant appearance" and be fluently bilingual.

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Post wins pointless design award race

February 19, 2009 – 12:25 am| Posted in Media

The Society for News Design has announced the winners of its annual awards.

For the uninitiated, the Society for News Design is the big newspaper design group and winning one of their awards is a badge of the highest honour for newspaper designers.

Or, at least it would be if they were more selective. The SND gives out almost a thousand awards each year, and considering there are 10,725 entries from 346 newspapers, that means that each entry has a one in ten shot of winning an award, and each newspaper should get three awards on average just for showing up.

Perhaps for that reason, the number of newspapers participating in this exercise has dropped. Notably missing from the list below is the Globe and Mail, for example.

Still, it's seen as a penis-measuring contest, so let's whip out those rulers. The 108 awards given to Canadian publications break down as follows:

You can seee a full list of winners by searching the database (there's too many of them to list all on one page, after all). You'll probably also see special pages devoted to SND wins in the above publications. Updated with links to self-laudatory stories in the four multiple-award-winning papers.

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Transcontinental cuts 1,500

February 18, 2009 – 2:13 pm| Posted in Media

The press release issued this morning is being rewritten at media outlets all over the place. Transcontinental is cutting 1,500 jobs, requiring unpaid vacations and forcing senior managers to put in unpaid work, all in an effort to cut costs.

There are 28 cuts coming to Canadian magazines, but so far no word on newspapers. Transcontinental owns Metro as well as dozens of community weeklies.

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Christian Bale + Habs suck = win

February 18, 2009 – 12:53 pm| Posted in Canadiens, Humour, On the Net

From Elias Toufexis, apparently a local actor, comes this inspired adaptation of a very popular recording.

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Be like Céline!

February 18, 2009 – 3:21 am| Posted in TV

Radio-Canada is sponsoring a "Young correspondent" contest, which is actually more of a one-week internship where you follow a reporter around. The twist is that it's a foreign correspondent, which means it's a trip abroad too. Anyone age 18-25 who isn't related to someone working at RadCan is eligible to apply. Applications have to be received by March 20.

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Big neighbourhood

February 18, 2009 – 2:21 am| Posted in Montreal

Speaking of Concordia, the Côte-de-Neiges/Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough (which really needs a new name) is conducting a public consultation about a request from the university to make dramatic changes to its sports complex on the Loyola Campus, which would include the creation of a removable dome which could be installed over the football field to protect the Stingers from rain. (And... uhh... some educatiomanal stuff too... right...)

(Some) details in this PDF.

Google Map: A long way to walk

Google Map: A long way to walk

What I especially love is that the consultation isn't taking place anywhere near the people most affected by this. Instead, it's taking place 4 km away in Côte des Neiges, forcing local residents to take a half-hour transit trip or walk an hour each way.

I suppose there are worse examples (Pierrefonds, for example), but it just seems to me if you're going to hold a public consultation about a neighbourhood project, you should hold that consultation in the neighbourhood.

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CSU OMG WTF FYI: Week 2

February 18, 2009 – 1:59 am| Posted in In the news

It's said that student politics are so dirty precisely because the stakes are so small.

At least with the Concordia Student Union, the stakes involve some serious money.

A week after the scandal of the year broke out, the student papers (especially The Concordian) are all over the news, even though there's nothing actually new happening, mainly because the target of the $25,000 bribe accusation hasn't spoken publicly about it. It's even making the McGill papers.

Meanwhile, in other scandals keeping the CSU so busy they can't deal with regular business:

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