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Tagged Cyberpresse

Cyberpresse launches widget, fails

July 13, 2008 – 4:52 pm | Posted in Media, Opinion

Cyberpresse editors are really excited about this new widget they’ve launched. There are versions for Windows XP, Apple Dashboard and Google Desktop. I tried the Dashboard version and I was rather disappointed:

  • They say it’s “really easy to configure,” which is true because there are only two configuration options: category and refresh time
  • Oh, and that “category” thing? You can only choose one. So if you want breaking news and health news, you’re out of luck
  • And the category list isn’t very extensive. It has hockey, for example, but no other sport. So if you want the latest Alouettes headlines, better try something else.
  • All of this could be made irrelevant by La Presse merely improving their RSS feeds and allowing people to choose the reader of their choice. Right now the feeds are limited to some very general categories and the blogs.

I know all the know-it-alls are saying widgets are the future of media online, but I don’t think this is quite what they had in mind.

This is 90s-era Pointcast technology, with a mindset to match.

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Steep learning curve

July 13, 2008 – 4:20 pm | Posted in Media, Opinion, Technology

Dear La Presse,

Maybe you should get out of the video business. Your people are great writers, but they’re not equipped to do standups in the street about business stories. It’s just embarrassing.

By all means, put up videos of things that require video to properly understand. But if the video is a talking head surrounded by B-roll, why bother?

(I’d provide a link, but Cyberpresse seems to have something against people linking to its videos)

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I don’t need your help, Cyberpresse

May 2, 2008 – 5:14 pm | Posted in Media, Web design

Like every other OMGWEB2.0WE’RE S000K001!!!111 media website around, Cyberpresse has added those dreaded share links to the bottom of every story. You know, the ones you click on and, through the magic of URL variables brings you directly to a del.icio.us bookmark-save page, Fark submission page or prefabricated Facebook post.

These things really annoy me for a few reasons:

  1. They’re entirely unnecessary. I already have a bookmarklet to save pages to del.icio.us. For any other purpose, it’s simple to copy the URL and paste it where needed.
  2. There are far too many of these. Del.icio.us, Digg, Fark, Slashdot, MySpace, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Furl, etc. There are so many, in fact, that other services have been created to be the middleman and make sure they’re all supported. If you’re not using one of the top three services, you’re not going to find those links on all pages, and so you have to find an alternative, and so #1 comes back into play.
  3. They’re ugly.

This unnecessary help doesn’t end there. Cyberpresse, like many of its bretheren, also has plenty of other buttons and links that pointlessly duplicate existing browser functions, badly.

  • Text size: Toggles between only three sizes (the default is the smallest). Changes only the article text, not the text of other type on the page.
  • Print: Normally, you’d expect this to provide a specially-formatted print-friendly version of the article. No, instead it just calls the print function through Javascript. Oh, and there is no specially-formatted print-friendly version, so you get the background image, navigation, headers and footers, and all the ads.

It’s all just a waste of HTML, much like everything else on the page that’s not the article I want to read.

Meanwhile, their entirely Flash-based video site provides no way whatsoever to share links to individual videos. I can’t bookmark them, send them as emails, save them to social networking sites, or post them to blogs.

Maybe you should start working on that instead?

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Fagstein in search demo video

April 26, 2008 – 1:40 pm | Posted in Navel-gazing, Video

You know what’s cool? Video demos featuring me. (Though I’m no longer the first result for “cyberpresse” apparently.)

Via Sekhmet.

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Oh Guy!

April 10, 2008 – 10:19 pm | Posted in Blogosphere, Canadiens, Media

La Presse has started a blog where female journalists talk about the Canadiens.

And they have their first scoop: Guy Carbonneau is hot.

Well then.

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Anglo ads on franco websites?

March 26, 2008 – 6:08 pm | Posted in Media, Opinion

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but some astute francophone bloggers are noting English-only advertisements on French-language websites like Cyberpresse and Le Devoir.

Assuming it’s not a technical malfunction or clueless advertising agency, should it be a scandal that an ad on a French-language website be in English? A lot of anglophones read French newspapers, watch French television and go to French websites when they can’t find what they need in English. Why not put forward some ads that cater to them?

For example: If The Gazette put a TV ad on RDS during a Habs game to promote its Habs Inside/Out website, in order to reach anglophone Habs enthusiasts who can’t watch the game on another network, or francophone fanatiques who want to immerse themselves in everything about Les Glorieux, would that be so bad?

Or if an anglophone school board had ads in French promoting… oh wait, they already did that. And people are pissed.

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La Presse to pay its bloggers

March 20, 2008 – 12:50 am | Posted in Media

Via Patrick Lagacé, La Presse’s union has ratified an agreement that will allow La Presse journalists to return to blogging and harmonize La Presse and Cyberpresse journalists.

Among the details of the agreement, according to Michel Dumais:

  • Pay equity between La Presse and Cyberpresse workers, including eight years of back pay for underpaid Cyberpresse workers
  • Extra pay for print journalists who blog
  • Print journalists can now take video, but only when a photographer is also taking photographs at the same time.
  • Print journalists will no longer be forced to file breaking news stories for Cyberpresse and articles for La Presse (really?)
  • Journalists keep copyright over their work, which is being sold back to Cyberpresse for a symbolic fee.

Hopefully this will set a precedent for other unionized papers in Quebec who are facing similar problems with journalist multitasking.

UPDATE (March 21): Tristan Péloquin has returned to blogging.

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Local newspaper union news

March 1, 2008 – 5:13 pm | Posted in Media, Montreal

La Presse: According to Michel Leblanc, an agreement in principle has been reached between the union and employer, which will remove the disparity between newspaper journalists and online journalists, and would bring back the blogs that were suspended in September, including that of Tristan Péloquin (remember him?). No word yet from official sources. Patrick Lagacé confirms, saying there will be a general assembly on March 19 for union members to approve the deal.

Le Journal de Montréal: Steve Proulx quotes Le Trente that a strike (or lockout?) is on the horizon, because the manager-to-employee ratio is high. JdM employees are paid generously (so much so that my colleagues were shocked to hear pay rates for equivalent jobs there), and Quebecor might look toward building on the “success” of the Journal de Québec. (See some analysis by Julien Brault) (UPDATE March 5: Proulx has an update based on statements from some anonymous sources within the Journal)

Le Journal de Québec: Tomorrow, the 10-month-old lockout/strike will set a new record for a labour dispute at a French-language Canadian newspaper, eclipsing the previous record set by Le Soleil in 1977. (The irony, of course, is that the Journal itself owes much of its early success to that very dispute.) Mario Asselin is starting to lose his zeal for the fight.

The Gazette: Also management-heavy in preparation for new contract negotiations this spring, the paper has decided to lay off 46 employees in its Reader Sales and Service department, transferring call centre operations to a centralized centre in Winnipeg as of May 30. The union is fighting the move, calling it a violation of a contract clause against outsourcing. (UPDATE March 5: The layoffs have been put on hold while arbitrators sort out the union issue.)

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Cyberpresse putting up 360 photos

December 19, 2007 – 1:46 am | Posted in Media, Montreal, Web design

Cyberpresse (which just started playing music on my laptop without permission) is putting up 360-degree photos on its website: already one of a snowy Gilford St. shovelling on de Mentana St., and a truck accident on Cremazie Blvd.

It’s just another example of how big media companies like Cyberpresse understand the Internet and are prepared to use cutting-edge 1994 technology* to bring things that are cool but uninformative to users. (The last picture is particularly apt at showing the weaknesses of the technology: a truck accident is shown from only one angle — it’s great that I can see out in different directions, but I can’t see the other side of the truck.)

*Actually, it’s a Flash-based emulator of cutting-edge 1994 technology, but otherwise indistinguishable from Quicktime VR (right down to the unintuitive navigation).

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Cyberpresse needs to quiz itself

September 21, 2007 – 4:10 pm | Posted in Media, Montreal, On the Net

Cyberpresse has another one of those quizzes going around to show parents are stupid (the Journal did a similar one last week on grammar). The questions (only 10 of them) are very random, and as Le professeur masqué points out, they’re riddled with mistakes of their own.

Oops.

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Cyberpresse bloggers shutting up

September 19, 2007 – 1:14 am | Posted in Business, Media, Montreal, Technology

One of La Presse’s unions has sent its members a notice asking them to stop blogging on Cyberpresse as a pressure tactic. As a result, bloggers Sophie Cousineau and Marie-Claude Lortie have stopped their blogs with notices explaining why. Both are regular columnists who will continue their columns as usual.

Unaffected by this is star blogger Patrick Lagacé, who explains that he’s under a specific contract to do his blog (unlike other journalists who blog as part of their regular journalistic duties). Tristan Péloquin has a post about it as well, but it’s unclear if he’s stopped blogging or he’s just pointing out the situation.

The local union news blog has more details on the situation.

This isn’t the last we’ll see of this. Employees at the Journal de Montréal are already arguing over online rights to their articles. And as media outlets start expecting journalists to blog, shoot video and do other “online extras” as part of their regular duties (and without extra compensation), we’ll be seeing a lot more of these kinds of disputes over the next few years.

UPDATE: Heri and Steph have some interesting comments on the issue, but they seem to miss the main point: Unionized employees are being told to perform duties outside of their collective agreements, and for no additional compensation. Say what you want about Cyberpresse’s approach to blogging, but these aren’t personal blogs being updated out of the kindness of their hearts. It’s work, and employees deserve to get paid for it.

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