Monthly Archives: August 2007

| Montreal, TV

Reporting LIVE from … nowhere relevant to this story

Why is CTV’s Annie DeMelt reporting live from a downtown Montreal street about a collision that happened last night on Highway 20 near Quebec City?

I know news stations, and CTV Montreal in particular, have this thing about needing reporters to report LIVE, even if it’s just giving the first sentence of their edited news package from the newsroom. It’s a pointless gimmick that just wastes everyone’s time.

But even then, don’t use it for everything. I know CTV’s viewers want to see as much of Annie DeMelt as possible, but it’s just distracting.

| Media

No more “I thought I was going to die”

It’s a headline that’s used a lot. I’m guilty too. When someone uses it in a quote, it’s very powerful.

But it’s also very common. Everyone seems to think they’re going to die when in an extremely dangerous situation. A terrorist attack. A plane crash. A serious illness lost in the jungle. An assault. Jail in a foreign country. So many news stories use the exact quote as a headline.

I just saw it again on CNN in reference to the Minnesota bridge collapse. Fortunately I can’t find any online news stories that use it as a headline.

I think the quote deserves a retirement. Find something more original to quote.

| Montreal, Video

The camera adds 10 pounds, and 6 civil rights violations

Montreal Police (“Montreal Police Service”? I guess it’s technically correct, but it sounds really weird) is upset at YouTube videos that show their officers at work.

Their beef specifically seems to be about two videos (shot by the same person) which identifies the officers by name giving him tickets. This one refers to the officer as “conne-stable” (very original). The SPVM’s beef with this one (a five-minute argument over a parking meter) is more curious perhaps, since the officer gives his consent for the video to be posted online.

They’re just two in a small sea of videos of encounters with police. It’s perhaps telling that some people are reaching for the camera the moment they’re pulled over, assuming that the officer might pull something illegal.

| TV

Just because it’s a rerun doesn’t make it historic

The CRTC has ordered Alliance Atlantis-owned History Television to stop running CSI: New York on its cable channel because, well, CSI: New York has nothing to do with history.

The company’s argument — and I’ll try not to laugh as I write this — is that CSI: New York deals with a “post-9/11 environment” and since 9/11 is history, this makes sense somehow.

The CRTC saw right through that, noting that just because an episode or two might have had something to do with 9/11 doesn’t make this a history program. They’ve given the network until Jan. 1 to pull the show.

This isn’t the first time a stretch of the rules has irked the CRTC. Ten years ago, CBC Newsworld began airing episodes of sketch-comedy shows This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Royal Canadian Air Farce, arguing that because the shows dealt with topical, newsworthy topics, they fall within Newsworld’s license. The CRTC disagreed, ordering Newsworld to pull the shows. The CBC then asked nicely for the CRTC to amend Newsworld’s license “slightly” to allow for them, but were rejected.

If Newsworld can’t air fake news, History can’t air cheap CSI reruns. Instead, we’ll just have to settle for watching them on the 17 other cable channels that air them ten times a day.

| Blogosphere, Media, Technology

Blogs aren’t special

The Star has an opinion this week on the nature of the blogosphere and its impact on traditional journalism. The conclusion is that the relationship is symbiotic, and they both help each other.

I agree with many of the article’s points (especially that blogging is more like books — anyone can do it and the quality varies widely), but it’s still a bit simplistic. People are separated into two groups: technophiles, who blog, and technophobes, who report for newspapers. There’s an implicit dismissal of those who think they’re in both categories or neither.

The other problem (and this applies to just about anyone who writes in a big-picture way about blogs) is that blogs aren’t clearly defined. Yeah, this is a blog. Is Boing-Boing a blog? Daily Kos? They say they are, so I guess so. What about Fark? Drew Curtis says no. If a newspaper uses WordPress as its content-management system, does that turn it into a blog? What’s the difference? Are web comics blogs? What about photo blogs? Or Web forums?

There’s this implication out there that blogs have changed the nature of journalism and the Internet in a way Web 1.0 didn’t or couldn’t. I disagree. There was plenty of original journalism and criticism of media before Blogspot and WordPress. There’s just more of it now.

High-quality blogs are successful because they’re highly-specialized and they’re written by people who know what they’re talking about. Even newspapers with large staff don’t have enough resources to hire a full-time astronomy reporter or a full-time public transit reporter. So people with interests in these things turn to blogs, which might be written by experts in their spare time or by professionals who get enough traffic to live on.

“Blog” isn’t a magic word. It’s just a form of content delivery. The Internet — which allows people to find exactly what they want fast — is still the problem that’s killing mainstream media. Some are learning how to deal with it, by launching their own blogs about specialized topics. Others still have cluttered homepages and make it impossible to quickly find content they’ve spent a lot of money to buy or produce.

They’ll learn eventually. They must in order to survive.

| Blogosphere, Media, West Island

West Island isn’t immune from British tabloidery

With news that West Islander Autumn Kelly is going to marry a member of the British Royal Family, the tabloids are all trying to get information about her roots here. Even local blogger Kristian Gravenor is on the case, offering money for photos (and handing out flyers all over Pointe-Claire — an act I tried to explain to him might get him on some enemies lists).

Casey McKinnon, who went to school with Kelly at St. Thomas High, isn’t game. She’s steadfastly refusing to cooperate with the many requests she’s gotten for information.

If your morals aren’t so fortitudon… fortiti… fortati… strong, and you went to St. John Fisher in the 80s, St. Thomas in the early 90s and McGill before 2002, you might be able to score some nice moolah invading some girl’s privacy.

| In the news, Media

Grow up and stop repeating yourself

Stop me if you’ve seen this one before:

  1. Party A makes a scathing criticism of something, overblowing a legitimate but minor disagreement to turn it into some national crisis.
  2. Party B criticizes Party A for crying wolf and comes to the defence of the person or action being criticized. Uses a history of similar wolf-crying as evidence to bolster the case.
  3. Party A accuses Party B of trying to silence them and take away their right to free expression, repeats arguments of Step 1 in different words.
  4. Party C comes to the defence of Party B, makes the same criticisms of Party A from Step 2, only in different words.
  5. Party D issues an ad hominem attack on Party B for completely personal reasons, and doesn’t deal with the dispute at hand.
  6. The general public gets bored of everyone accusing everyone else of trying to silence them and moves on, while letters to the editor stack up to the ceiling on both sides as everyone wants a chance to repeat arguments already laid out, in their own words.

Everyone needs to just take a deep breath. B’nai Brith criticized Liberal candidate Jocelyn Coulon. Josée Legault came to his defence. It should have ended there.

I was exposed to this same routine many times at Concordia when I ran the student paper there (naturally, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was usually the subject there too). I though that I wouldn’t see that kind of childish back-and-forth when I stepped out into the real world.

I guess I was wrong.

| In the news, Montreal

Rats or humans: Who is stupider?

There’s an episode of the Simpsons where Lisa performs a science experiment comparing the relative intelligence of her brother and a lab rat. The rat learns quickly that the cheese is hooked to electrodes and stops trying to eat it. The brother doesn’t.

You hear stories about things being stolen for their value as scrap metal. Statues, plaques, etc. Some of the really stupid guys go after electrical wire, while it’s still electrified. In all cases I’m aware of, they cause serious injury to themselves, and never succeed in their task. And yet, they keep coming back.

How can humans be that stupid?

| Blogosphere, Fun, Navel-gazing

I stand by my choice

Montreal bloggers have some odd choices for fantasy vacations. (Marge Simpson? Really?)

Gimme some of this and some of that. Or maybe merge them somehow?

Speaking of YULblog, it seems Happy hates me. Why? Everyone loves me, especially dogs. Now you might argue (as Christelle did) that Happy has never met me before, and that it was in a bar packed with people and loud noises late at night. But I think it’s because Happy is a stupid, mean dog. She doesn’t even read this blog!

| Blogosphere, Slow News Day

I’m a dirt-eater and proud of it

940 News’s Ken Connors talked this morning about the good ol’ days, when children ate lead-encrusted dirt, played with fire, sniffed spraycan propellant and shot each other with BB guns. And somehow they’re still around to whine about all the safety measures society has put in place for children.

Well, there’s a few things wrong with that argument. First of all, we can’t talk to all the people that died from those things since they’re, well, dead. Just because all the people we find now survived those days doesn’t mean the survival rate was 100%.

Secondly, life expectancy at birth has increased by about a decade over the past 50 years. Part of that is due to new medicine and treatments, but increased safety can’t be discounted as a part of it as well.

Finally, if you want to go back to the good ol’ days with none of society’s current overprotections, you’re welcome to emigrate to a developing country and eat their lead-encrusted dirt.

That said, some points are worth considering. It’s becoming common knowledge that the increase in allergies today is due in part to the sterile lifestyle of some children who aren’t exposed to small amounts of toxins at an early age. And the drop in outdoor play activities (has this really occurred among children?) is making us fatter and lazier.

I think we can find some middle ground between sterility and Darwinism.