On his blog, he talks about the Habs and recounts rumours (though at least he describes them as such).
Fanatique.ca is owned by Branchez-Vous, and while not the most spectacular poaching in journalistic history (talk to me when you've convinced François Gagnon or Red Fisher to come on board), it is a step toward making BV a serious media outlet in the city.
Branchez-Vous has the EXCLUSIF today: a poll it commissioned shows that about two thirds (literally 66.7%) of Quebecers support the 253 workers who were locked out by the Journal de Montréal in January.
But the full results of the survey show that about the same percentage (65.5%) support the employees and their union in labour conflicts in general. So it's probably fair to say that the level of support is more of a default position than any serious analysis of the conflict. This is backed up by results showing that while the vast majority (82.7%) of Quebecers are aware of the lockout, three quarters of them (70% in Montreal) say they know little or nothing about the reasons behind it.
Who wins in this is a good question. The union will no doubt consider this a big win, because it looks good on its face and because initially it seemed the public might turn its backs on the union because of the generous working conditions (32-hour weeks, high salaries, etc.). Despite Quebecor's efforts, this seems not to be the case.
But public support is irrelevant if people are still buying newspapers and advertisers are still putting ads. We don't know how this is affecting the Journal financially, but that will be the big decider in all this.
The online poll of 1125 adult Quebecers taken Feb. 10-16 (margin of error 3% 19 times out of 20) also breaks down its answers by region (Montreal, Quebec and other), though the only one that shows a significant difference is that people who live in and near Quebec City support locked-out Journal workers more than they would workers in general. This is probably a result of the long Journal de Québec conflict, which also began with a lockout.
In case you base all your decisions on what former Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Michel Therrien thinks, he's supporting the workers. He also says the Journal offered him a weekly column (to replace Jacques Demers and Martin Brodeur?), which he refused.
I just got alerted to this OMG EXCLUSIVE OMG story at Branchez-Vous, which claims that 1 in 4 francophone Quebecers over 18 is on Facebook, and that number goes up to 54% when you limit it to adults 18-24.
Those numbers seemed suspiciously high to me, especially since before this week Facebook was an English website and therefore its reach in Quebec was lower than the rest of Canada.
Then I came across this:
Ce sondage a été effectué en ligne auprès de 1257 répondants du 11 au 15 février 2008. Sa marge d'erreur est de 2,8%.
So this was an online survey. Not only does that outright dismiss the non-trivial (albeit dwindling) portion of Quebecers without regular Internet access, but online surveys are notoriously unreliable. More importantly, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that those willing to take online surveys are more likely to have the kind of free time to waste online that would make them more likely to be members of Facebook in the first place.
