Editor Albert Kramberger at the West Island Chronicle announces that the Transcontinental paper’s website will be carrying national news headlines from Canadian Press for the benefit of its readership.

Why bother?

Seriously, there are so many reasons why this is a pointless waste of money that I don’t believe I’ll be able to list them all. But let’s try anyway:

• Canadian Press is everywhere. Metro and 24 Heures rely on it for almost all their content, and established media like the Globe and Mail, CTV and CBC use it to supplement their own online coverage. Even some websites not based here, like Breitbart and Yahoo! News use the service. This is because compared to the cost of actually hiring journalists, CP is crazy cheap, especially online. By now most people have found their preferred source of Canadian news and the last thing we need is another source.
• For some inexplicable reason, they’re providing national news but not international news. Does Chronicle readers’ interest stop at the border?
• Who goes to their local weekly paper’s website for national news? The website doesn’t even try to make itself into a portal for daily information, so it boggles the mind why anyone would use it as such.
• Most Chronicle subscribers, if they’re even remotely interested in news from outside their community, also subscribe to The Gazette, The Globe and Mail or The National Post which provides these stories in their papers.
• Further reasons are left as an exercise to the reader (read: I’m too lazy to think of more)

By the way, who the heck is this girl, and why must I see her on every page?