Comments on: Thoughts on local media

By: wkh

wkh — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:08:05 +0000

It bothers me when people actually refer to you as "Fagstein." I keep imagining you as this weird frankenstein in velour pants and a boa and aviator shades. Hey. You could actually GO as Fagstein for Halloween!

By: Jamie O'Meara

Jamie O'Meara — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:24:25 +0000

The very fact that Kate feels she needs to justify her work speaks volumes about the self-involvement of so many of those, Fagstein included, working in a blog format. Not to diminish this form of media: far from it. I'm a huge fan of the work of both of Fagstein and Kate, no word of a lie, and am a daily reader. That said, I think a little honesty might advance the discourse. I would no sooner go to Kate's or Fagstein's blog for an interview with a local indie rock band or theatre or dance company than any reader would come to Hour for a 2,000-word blow-by-blow breakdown of Fagstein's frustrations with his latest hacker. It's apples and oranges, and to hold Hour to the editorial agenda of blogs that, by definition, have no editorial agenda, is as unfair as it is disingenuous. We are an arts and cultural and community based publication. Nothing more, nothing less. I agree that The Suburban is doing above-average work in terms of news coverage, especially of West Montreal. If that was within our editorial mandate, I'd be worried. As it's not, I, like some of the rest of you, welcome their coverage. Perhaps there are those among you who, like Kate and Fagstein, feel that it should be part of our editorial mandate. I'd be hard-pressed to disagree. Unfortunately for me, my staff, and our readership, it's not 1995 anymore. When people don't buy ads, as is the case right across the board right now in print media, we are severely hamstrung in terms of the quality (or more accurately, quantity) of the product we are able to offer our readership. To blame that on the editors and journalists who are doing their best not just to preserve the integrity of the paper they work for, but to put food on the table, as Kate and Fagstein suggest, is not just ignorant, it's offensive. We're in a long-term battle, as the only independently run media outlet in the city (Mirror is operated by Quebecor as a loss leader and loses more money every week than many of us earn in a year), to keep English journalists employed and to provide Montrealers with cultural and arts news that they won't get anywhere else. To wrap this up, we're making a dedicated effort to get news and information above and beyond what our print edition calls for out on our website, on our new blog, Up to the Hour. Which, incidentally, none of us are getting paid for either. All of that said, and I can speak for the larger Hour crew, you guys do great work and we'll continue to support.

By: Fagstein

Fagstein — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:29:05 +0000

The occasional local news tidbit. The Suburban covers the Côte-St-Hamp-West area fairly well.

By: Kate M.

Kate M. — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:42:52 +0000

If the Weblog could be my full-time job I'd enable comments, but what with chasing down spam, responding to comments, clarifying my statements, putting out flame wars, too much of my life would have to be given over to it. I have a day job in which I am categorically not able to mind the blog for a certain number of hours every day, and that would not work out. NoDeli is right – it's a conscious decision not to have comments. Yet. There's another oddball reason I've stayed with Blogger and (thanks Neumontréal) a simple layout. It's suited to short posts, which by chance has turned out to adapt well to Twitter. I've actually tried doing a more CMS-based version for awhile (offsite, it was an experiment) and compacting a day's news into one post, bullet-point style, and it was much less fun to do, and I think a lot harder to read. Not entirely sure why. That said, montreal.com is going to move to a CMS-based design eventually, and we're going to have some discussion forums and stuff so that commenting on my blog would be redundant anyway. The blog will evolve at that point, whenever me and the boy can set aside the hours to work on it.

By: Singlestar

Singlestar — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:16:23 +0000

"find I get more interesting news from The Suburban than Hour or Mirror"
I won't argue with you about whether the Hour and Mirror have gone downhill, but what have you (ever) found of interest in the Suburban?

By: NEUMONTRÉAL

NEUMONTRÉAL — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:23:30 +0000

Is she really the best person to be giving advice on layouts?

By: Pepper Boxer

Pepper Boxer — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:16:09 +0000

Publishing a blog update via Twitter is probably somewhat redundant. As you pointed out, RSS already exists. But, I think there are still a lot of folks out there who don't know even know about Google Reader (or any other RSS client). Twitter, on the other hand, has been popularized by Hollywood celebrities.

By: Jean-François Codère

Jean-François Codère — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:40:46 +0000

If the comments were enabled, I wouldn't have to come here either to mention that you can use the little squares at the top left corner of our rotating news to navigate through them, in case you miss one. Granted, if the design was good I wouldn't have to explain it, but there it is anyway!

By: No Deli

No Deli — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:21:49 +0000

Your plea notwithstanding, I bet she's thankful every day that she's never enabled comments.

By: jean.naimard

jean.naimard — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:20:54 +0000

Métro has actually worsened. At the beginning, it was covering a lot of left issues, nowadays it's yet some more run-of-the-mill croporatist dozing-off news you heard on the web 2-3 days before.