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Category Archives: Opinion

Is Bell.ca the best commercial website in Quebec?

May 16, 2008 – 4:08 am | Also posted in Web design

Some consulting firm we’ve never heard of has released its rankings of the top 25 consumer-oriented commercial websites in Quebec. At the top of the list:

  1. Bell.ca, which doesn’t work with Safari.
  2. Radio-Canada.ca, whose address they got wrong, and which opens audio content in strange 1px-by-1px pop-up windows.
  3. Desjardins.com, which won’t let you me log into electronic banking with Firefox, and whose top-notch security includes such impossible-for-anyone-else-to-guess questions as “what high school did you graduate from?”
  4. Videotron.com, which admittedly I haven’t had issues with, even if their cable and Internet service has much room for improvement.
  5. Metro.ca, which uses Javascript needlessly, has a badly-designed site map page (the stupid web 2.0 sharing buttons hides some of the text) and shows 0 stores in Montreal with delivery service available.

Of course, when you judge websites through a mathematical formula that suggests quality of a website is directly proportional to the size of the organization running it, this is what you get.

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Municipal democracy is for losers

May 15, 2008 – 8:25 pm | Also posted in In the news, West Island

So the Ile Bizard 2004 demerger referendum vote has been annulled, because with the ridiculous requirements for the vote (i.e. that 35% of all those registered must vote yes, making everyone who doesn’t vote a de facto “no” vote), 400 people who were on the voter rolls but moved away or died before the vote made the difference between it passing and failing.

So now that we’ve rewritten history and Ile Bizard did, in fact, vote to reconstitute itself as a city, what’s being done to ensure the democratic will is being followed?

Apparently, absolutely nothing. The judge didn’t order a new referendum, nor require the government to reconstitute the municipality. Instead, it will be left to a “political” solution. In other words, let the government do what they want. In other words, nothing.

Isn’t that great?

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It’s Canada. Who cares?

May 12, 2008 – 3:19 pm | Also posted in Media

Number of foreign bureaus at the Washington Post: 18

  • Bureaus in the Middle East: 5
  • Bureaus in Europe: 4
  • Bureaus in South America: 2
  • Bureaus in China and Japan: 3
  • Bureaus in Canada: 0

Number of foreign bureaus at the New York Times: 23

  • Bureaus in Europe: 7
  • Bureaus in South America: 3
  • Bureaus in Africa: 4
  • Bureaus in Canada: 0

Number of foreign bureaus at the Los Angeles Times: 20

  • Bureaus in Europe: 5
  • Bureaus in South America: 2
  • Bureaus in Africa: 3
  • Bureaus in China and Japan: 3
  • Bureaus in Canada: 0

Number of foreign bureaus at CNN: 28

  • Bureaus in Europe:6
  • Bureaus in the Middle East: 6
  • Bureaus in South America: 3
  • Bureaus in Africa: 4
  • Bureaus in China, Japan and South Korea: 4
  • Bureaus in Canada: 0

Does anyone else notice something odd there?

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Vogels to talk dirty on CBC Radio

May 10, 2008 – 12:55 am | Also posted in Media, Montreal, Radio

Ex-Montrealer Josey Vogels, who was replaced as Hour’s sex columnist in October but is still doing weekly columns on sex and dating, will be joining CBC Radio One, where she gets her own “sexuality” show called Between You and Me.

That was part of a lineup announcement that included an interesting-obit show hosted by Gordon Pinsent, as well as a multiculturalism identity show hosted by CBC Montreal’s Geeta Nadkarni (CBC’s article calls her “Geeta Nadkami”).

The news about Vogels’s new show comes coincidentally at the same time we hear that Torontonian sex superstar Sue Johanson will be hanging up the dildo and retiring from full-time sex advising and ending her show’s run on the Oxygen network.

Roberts revisited

Speaking of Vogels, her replacement at Hour, Laura Roberts, asked me to critique her column. I admit that I’ve stopped reading Hour and Mirror regularly because they don’t have RSS feeds and have a very small news-to-advertising ratio.

So I perused through the archives, and I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. It’s a bit wordy, a bit opinionative (in the sense of spouting opinions without much analysis or research to back them up), and a bit too focused on the author’s personal life. These are all fairly common for new columnists still trying to figure out what works, and even then it may appeal to others more than it does to me.

In the end, even though it’s been six months already, it’s still a bit too early to tell if the column works or not. It’s definitely not Josey, nor should it be.

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MP’s ex is hot

May 9, 2008 – 9:47 pm | Also posted in Media

In this Canadian Press photo, you see Julie Couillard, a woman once linked to a Hell’s Angels member, being escorted by an unidentified MP to an official function. We’ve decided not to identify the MP in question, since he hasn’t been charged with anything and we don’t want to sully his reputation.

Wait, you say? It’s stupid of me to disguise his identity since his name and photo have appeared in Quebec media all over the place?

Tell that to Quebecor/Sun Media.

Quebecor-owned outlets, including TVA/LCN and the Journal de Montréal, pretty notorious for exposing gossip, decided to blur this woman’s face and refrain from mentioning her name in their news reports (though apparently the word didn’t get out to all their bloggers, nor to the anglo Sun Media papers which are running CP stories with her name on their websites).

Both are in the news recently because of allegations that she, the ex-girlfriend of Maxime Bernier, was once married briefly to a member of the Hell’s Angels biker gang.

Of course, no evidence whatsoever has been brought to light suggesting that she did anything wrong, much less him. In fact, it seems the guy, Stéphane Sirois, actually grew out of favour with the Hell’s for marrying her.

Now while the Conservatives are pleading for privacy and the opposition is screaming OMG biker warz NATIONAL SECURITY!!!111, most of the media outside of Pierre-Karl Péladeau’s control are milking this story for all it’s worth. They want to give it maximum exposure, reveal as much as possible, put it out there for everyone to gawk at.

(I guess the Journal, for one, had a change of heart after that, and decided to un-anonymize her later this morning)

Fortunately, the rather obvious and curious actions have not been missed by the bloggerati. Patrick Lagacé, Martin Patriquin, Richard Therrien of Le Soleil, 321Blogue, Julie Bélanger, MédiaTrib and others have pointed this out with curious looks on their faces. Could there be some collusion between Bernier and Péladeau? Could Quebecor be afraid of the biker gangs? Surely their explanation of not wanting to sully the reputation of an innocent person can’t be taken at face value considering what we know of the Journal et al’s ethics.

As we ponder the conspiracy theories, let’s get back to the story.

And really, there’s a very important reason this story is getting so much attention: Look at her. She’s hot. We-stiff-on-hard-for-thee hot.

Imagine, if you will, taking sex out of the equation. If this were an unattractive male friend who had, say, an important business relationship with someone alleged to be linked with the mafia or other organized crime, would it have gotten attention from the news media, even if there was no evidence of anything wrong involving the minister?

Of course it would. But it would have been a 500-word story in the politics section. Not Page 1, and not more than a brief on TV.

So, in the end, Quebecor is at fault for nonsensically hiding information from the public. And the rest of the media is at fault for sensationalizing this issue just as an excuse for running file photos of her boobies.

UPDATE (May 11): According to LCN, the woman (who they’re still not identifying) told the Journal her life has been destroyed by this scandal. Note that the Journal identifies her. But the LCN story about the Journal story doesn’t. How weird.

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Over the top

May 8, 2008 – 4:07 am | Also posted in Blogosphere, Media

Being a journalist makes you a quick enemy of a lot of people who take things very personally. They’ll take something you say as evidence of a personal bias against them, and start taking a fine-toothed comb to everything you write, pointing out every mistake and interpreting everything you say in the most negative way possible.

Political journalism is the worst. People take the most minute things in politics very seriously. I got a good taste of that in university covering the Concordia Student Union. National politics is worse because there’s a much larger audience, because it’s professional (people get paid big bucks to be politicians), and because people think that it’s really important.

So you can imagine what happened to The Gazette’s Elizabeth Thompson (an otherwise straight-faced reporter whose copy I have mercilessly slashed to bits lovingly edited with care many times) when she made a few good-natured but insensitively snarky jokes at the expense of the prime minister’s director of communications, Sandra Buckler, who’s having surgery as part of cancer treatment.

Though there was no malice intended, making fun of someone who is being treated for cancer is a bit lacking in taste, the kind of insensitivity I’ve shown myself on many an occasion when I post before I think.

Reading the comments attached to the post, however, you’d think she started cheering for her to die:

  • I’ve called the Managing Editor to bring it to his attention, and will be contacting CanWest advertisers to let them know I will be actively boycotting their products.
  • Liz Thompson of the Montréal Gazette whose lack of common decency and narcissism has lead the Parliament Hill reporter to refuse to take the high road and apologize for her vile blog in which she defamed the Director of Communications of the Prime Minister
  • That is about the worst thing I have ever read.

There are also other (Conservative) blogs that have picked up on the issue and gone so far as to call the paper’s managing editor to express their outrage (another reason I do not covet his job).

To her credit, Thompson apologized to Buckler, and has left (most of) the comments attached to the post, many of which are a bit less hot-headed about her crossing the line.

In the end, hopefully everyone has learned that behind all the politics and professionalism, everyone is human.

UPDATE: Thompson follows up with a heartfelt, honest mea culpa, explaining the lessons she’s learned.

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Journalist, criticize thyself

May 1, 2008 – 3:00 am | Also posted in Media

This is why people don’t trust the media anymore: La Presse says TVA isn’t covering the Journal de Québec situation fairly, because both are owned by Quebecor.

There’s this thing with the media that’s always annoyed me:

  1. Journalists love to talk about their industry with other journalists
  2. People love reading about the media (within reason, of course)
  3. Journalists are hesitant to write about matters that are “in the family” (owned by the same company) or within the media outlet itself, whether because of paranoid self-censorship or orders from upper management not to pursue a story
  4. Journalists and their media outlets will never talk about their competition, unless it’s to report something bad about them, in which case they go all out.

La Presse isn’t immune to this. Neither is The Gazette (the paper I work for), nor any other media outlet I can think of. And the larger the corporate empire, the worse the problem gets.

Why can’t they be more honest about themselves? Giving a union boss criticizing a platform to criticize you makes you look bad, but denying that union boss a voice makes you look worse.

Remember: It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.

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Media won’t cooperate with Habs riot investigation

April 23, 2008 – 1:40 pm | Also posted in Media, Montreal

Mere hours after demanding that police ruthlessly prosecute anyone involved in the Great Habs Riot and some even printing photos of suspects and asking people to identify them to police, local media are now refusing to participate in the investigation by handing over photos and video of the rioters. They are now in the process of fighting search warrants while evidence sits sealed under police custody.

The media have a legitimate interest in fighting such invasions. If they were seen to be agents of the police, they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs properly. Perhaps more worrisome, in situations like this the media itself could become a target.

But can you really pretend to take the moral high ground and a tough law-and-order stance, asking people to get involved and cooperate with police, when you refuse to do so yourself?

None of these rioters received promises of confidentiality, and none could have been stupid enough to think photos and video of them smashing police cars and store windows wouldn’t eventually get in the hands of police.

UPDATE: The Gazette’s Andrew Phillips responds on his blog, using the “slippery slope” argument. The Gazette’s article presents both sides of the issue, and Thursday’s paper has an editorial explaining the decision. The Journal’s Benoit Aubin also responds, giving mostly philosophical arguments about how the media shouldn’t act as deputies to the police.

Meanwhile, Richard Martineau, always ready to disagree with everyone, asks the question: Aren’t journalists citizens first? Should they not report when they witness crimes?

UPDATE (April 26): The court date is set for June 17. Can you feel the overwhelming speed of our justice system?

UPDATE (April 29): A letter-writer calls cooperating with police “doing one’s civic duty,” journalist or not.

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Let’s make fun of Indian people

April 23, 2008 – 2:22 am | Also posted in Movies, Sports, Video

This is a joke, right? I mean, they’re not actually making a movie about the Maple Leafs, with Justin Timberlake playing a Québécois hockey player?

And one whose jokes are so racist that they end up making us look bad?

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The Great Canadiens Conference Quarterfinal Riot of 2008

April 22, 2008 – 5:20 am | Also posted in Canadiens, Montreal

I haven’t been a Habs fan for very long. Once, way back when, I wasn’t really a sports fan at all. I might tune in to the odd championship game and cheer for the home team, but I couldn’t name more than a couple of players, if any.

I never saw Rocket Richard play. Or Jean Béliveau. Or Guy Lafleur. And I think I saw Patrick Roy play once, in that Stanley Cup-winning game in 1993. Really, my affection for the team grew out of necessity. As a copy editor, I was assigned to the sports desk at the Gazette, and I would read everything there is about the team. Now I watch all the games and know all the names of the players.

In my short time as a devout fan, I’ve never been ashamed of that fact. Not after missing the playoffs because of a loss to the Leafs. Not during many slumps. Not when fans would sing “na na na na hey hey hey goodbye” during Game 2, or would so overwhelm other teams’ stadiums you’d think they were playing a home game.

Last night was different. Though the news networks and politicians are stressing until their faces turn blue that last night’s riot wasn’t caused by “real Habs fans” (how do they know?), the images shown to the world speak for themselves.

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.qc? No

April 17, 2008 – 3:13 am | Also posted in In the news, Technology

The PQ’s Daniel Turp is flogging the idea that the Internet should have a .qc domain. Separatists with nothing better to do are angry over having to type “.qc.ca” to get to Quebec-based websites

It’s this kind of thinking that has forced Quebecers to file two tax forms every year, pay two different kinds of sales taxes, and deal with all the other pointless duplication of federal services just to make us be different for difference’s sake.

And until Quebec reaches the promised land, which PQ hard-liners unilaterally declare to be an eventuality, websites based here will need to have both a .qc and .qc.ca domain.

Can someone tell these people that they lost the referendum? Twice?

UPDATE: Wow. 14 comments. Most are, of course, insulting, but I’ve responded to some of the counter-arguments brought up below.

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Bloc Québécois focuses on attendance

April 14, 2008 – 4:50 pm | Also posted in Media

Perhaps I’m just cynical, but as a journalist, seeing the Bloc Québécois’s new slogan “Présent pour le Québec”, my first thought goes to the inevitable opinion piece and/or photo showing Bloc MP attendance rates at meetings of the House of Commons.

How long before we hear the BQ coming up with a new slogan?

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Suburban border security

April 14, 2008 – 4:43 pm | Also posted in West Island

This prison-style gate between Pierrefonds and Kirkland makes the Great Wall of Acadie Blvd. look tame by comparison.

This is because of vandalism. People spraying graffiti and stuff.

Look, Kirkland, I know us Pierrefonds scum may scare you a bit, but we’re not all serial back-alley rapists. Perhaps you should tackle your vandalism problem in a less draconian fashion?

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Time to water the snow?

April 14, 2008 – 4:30 pm | Also posted in In the news

Stupidest thing I’ve heard today: People in Quebec City are watering the snow on their lawns to get them to melt faster.

Aside from the insane waste of a precious resource, the potential damage caused to a lawn that’s overwatered, the inefficacy of melting snow with water, and the much more sane alternatives available (like, say, shoveling it or just waiting a week for it to melt on its own), isn’t it a really bad idea to intentionally flood the area around your home during flood season?

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Time for another bagel contest

April 9, 2008 – 4:30 am | Also posted in Montreal

Forget Hamilton bagels, the real insult to our very being is in a new product from Kraft: cylindrical bagels filled with cream cheese. I honestly have no words to describe how wrong this is. (via AdFreak)

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Chronicle just misses the sport

April 3, 2008 – 4:28 am | Also posted in Media, Sports, West Island

Jealous, I can only surmise, at other news outlets and their blog thingies, the West Island Chronicle has announced the creation of Sportlight (yes, with an “R”), a “blog” about Montreal’s professional sports teams, the Canadiens, Alouettes and Impact. (It’s also available in French as Montréal en sport)

Sadly, despite their claims of being “experienced” and “up-to-the-minute”, they’re clearly neither. The journalists who write these blogs don’t cover these teams regularly (or at all). They’re just guys who watch hockey on TV and think they’re experts about it.

In other words, it’s just like all those other Habs blogs out there. Not worth seeing unless you know the authors personally.

The problem is that David is trying to slay Goliath on Goliath’s terms. The Gazette’s Habs Inside/Out blog takes advantage of the paper’s access to the team and its reporters’ experience to make it a comprehensive resource. Armchair sports analysts can’t compete with that, so why are they?

I noticed the same problem years ago with student media. Instead of concentrating on university sports where they have the access, time and resources to do a good job (and the lack of competition that would make them the best at what they do), some student newspaper writers prefer to rant about the Habs, doing bad imitations of professional sports writers.

There is no limit to sports that local reporters can cover. Junior teams, college teams, high school teams, all get ignored in big media because there are too many of them and they’re not interesting enough.

The ball is in the court of the local papers to write about local teams. Why is it trying to compete on a level it is guaranteed to lose?

Full disclosure: I work at The Gazette (though I don’t do anything on its Habs blog), and I once interned briefly at the Chronicle.

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Gary’s got you covered!

April 1, 2008 – 6:00 am

Even though I have a love life that would make Eliot Spitzer feel bad for me, I always make sure I have some vi@gra and ci@lis at the ready in case the time comes and a wave of ED suddenly strikes.

But those drugs are so expensive. How does a guy get stiff without getting stiffed?

I don’t have those worries anymore, since I found Gary’s Vi@gra and Ci@lis Emporium. There, I can get my pills at prices as low as 2 cents apiece. Sure, they’re not blue or diamond-shaped, they don’t have the logo on them and they taste a lot like chalk, but at 2 cents who cares if you get a dud every once in a while?

And while I’m shopping there, I can get low-priced Rolex watches, Adobe software and all the incest porn I could possibly imagine.

Give them a shot, so they can give you a shot.

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Daddy Day Camp… on demand!

April 1, 2008 – 4:00 am

If you’re like me, you think Daddy Day Camp is the best movie ever created. This fun-for-the-whole-family film, starring award-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr., is the smash hit sequel to “Daddy Day Care” (notice the last word is different there, how ingenious when they could have just called it Daddy Day Care 2!).

If you never got a chance to see it in the theatre, now’s your chance to see it in your home theatre, at just a bit more than the price of a DVD rental and with none of those annoying extra features and deleted scenes and stuff.

Videotron’s Illico digital service offers Video-on-Demand, a service whereby for only $5, you can download a new release and watch it as many times as you want on your digital terminal over a 24-hour period. If you wanted to rent the DVD, you’d be billed less, which means you’d have to deal with change and stuff, and you’d have anywhere from two days to a week to see the movie. With such a long rental time, you’re bound to get confused and forget the movies altogether, until your living room is filled to the ceiling with rented DVDs you forgot to return.

And if you don’t have Videotron Illico digital TV? Well now’s the time to buy! A basic digital terminal costs $99, but for a limited time only Videotron will give you one for only $49 with contract! That’s practically giving it away! Or you can upgrade to high definition and a personal video recorder for only the low low price of your first-born child! How can you not take advantage of this opportunity?

Buy now!

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Moved by the Hawaii Chair!

April 1, 2008 – 3:00 am

Hawaii Chair

Ever hear of the Hawaii Chair? It’s all the rage. They’ve had it on Oprah, Dr. Phil, Ellen and all sorts of other shows. It’s been Dugg, YouTubed and talked about all over the blogosphere. Don’t you think it’s time you get in on the action?

The Hawaii Chair combines the ancient art of the Hula with patented health science technology to create a machine that takes the work out of your workout.

Rather than going through the trouble of walking, running, biking, jogging or doing other strenuous, time-wasting exercises, the Hawaii Chair does all your work for you, rotating your bottom and burning the fat while you sit at your desk eating donuts.

And for a limited time, you can buy your own Hawaii Chair for under $300!

Wouldn’t you like to get more informations?

I haven’t tried the chair myself, but the idea alone is enough to sell me. (I’ll get a free chair if this post is seen by at least 100,000 people, so when that happens I’ll update with a more comprehensive review). With a name like Perfect USA though, this company can hardly go wrong.

Be sure to check out some of their other ingenious devices that will save you time, make you healthier and guarantee six-pack abs forever.

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Snap Shots(TM) are so convenient!

April 1, 2008 – 2:00 am

SnapShots(TM)

If you haven’t had the chance to use Snap Shots(TM) yet, then you’ve been missing out.

Snap is one of the largest distributed media networks on the Internet, already reaching 9% of the US audience (WOW!) and 35 million unique global users each month in 48 languages. Over 100 times per second, they reveal the content that users want, in the best form possible, and deliver it to them right where they are, without forcing them to click links or conduct searches.

Snap Shots (TM) products are used on over 2,000,000 websites and blogs. That’s pretty impressive, and a clear sign that these folks are doing something right. Why would 2 million people use something that wasn’t worth their while?

The way Snap Shots (TM) works is very simple: You install some code in your browser or website, and then when you hover over links, it shows a snapshot of what that link will look like. You can see a webpage before you even go there! Isn’t that way cool?

Because they’re a good corporate citizen, and there are always crazy people out there who are afraid of new technology, Snap even provides a way for people to opt out of the system, disabling it completely.

So there’s nothing to lose. Why not give it a shot?

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