From my Google Reader feed
The video in question, whose short version has gone uberviral, is a bit less about language and a bit more about left vs. right, but it still paints the Conservatives with a big caricature brush that I think will be dismissed as unrealistic, just as the language confusion is being dismissed, since the Conservative heritage minister is a francophone from Quebec City.
Those of you who had Sept. 23 as the day when “erection” would be used in an election story and not be a typo, pat yourselves on the back:
But that statement was contradicted by a retreat participant, who said the New Democrat had a partial erection in front of the young girls.
So let’s discuss: How much of an erection is it appropriate for an MP to have in front of young girls? What qualifies as a “partial erection”? What if you just have to pee?
Who cares about issues when we can talk about penises?
(Though seriously, stories like this make me wonder: If the choice in a no-hope riding is between some unknown party loyalist and nobody at all, perhaps it’s best to go the latter route?)
Cyberpresse today went live with a redesign of its entire site, ditching the old coloured box motif in favour of a grey, white and red OMGWEB2.0 deal that seems to be in vogue with media sites recently.
The first thing you notice, as you do with all these new news websites, is that it goes on forever. You see, some web marketing genius decreed that users no longer care about vertical scrolling (which is true) and some web designer at an important media outlet decided this meant the homepage should be infinitely long vertically. And now everyone is mindlessly copying each other with these layouts that have no structure and look absolutely haphazard as far as placement of stories on the homepage:
Cyberpresse homepage goes on and on and on and on and on...
Still with me? Good. Since the page is so freaking long, I had to shrink it down considerably, so let’s take a zoomed-in look here:
Top of the Cyberpresse homepage
It’s a very boring, unoriginal layout. Some account-specific links at the top, then a horizontal bar for links to individual sections. Oh wait, it’s actually two horizontal bars. One is for sections, the other is for “websites” that Cyberpresse owns for sections special enough to get their own domain. If you’re not familiar with that system, you’ll probably get confused here and have to read the entire thing a couple of times to figure out which link is the best one to click on. Below that are main stories on the left, a search box on the right and some editor’s picks. Looks OK so far.
Middle part of Cyberpresse homepage
Here’s the meat below. It goes on like this for about four or five screens worth, and they’re all basically the same. Can you tell the logic behind what goes in which columns?
If you answered anything coherent to that question, then you’re wrong. The first column has sections like news and business, except for fluff sections like home, auto, environment, movies that are in the second column, except for arts, technology and lifestyles which are back in the first column.
Oh, and they have names like “Automobile” and “Maison” even though their names are “Mon Volant” and “Mon Toit” elsewhere. Whatever, consistency is for losers.
The third column at least has some consistency. It’s where all the interactive stuff goes. The polls, the “most emailed stories,” the user-generated content, etc. In fact, you’re encouraged to submit your own content (click on “Soumettre une nouvelle,” a page I can’t link to directly), which requires you fill out a form and agree to an 800-word terms of service (which I also can’t link to directly) with gems like these:
Well, when you put it that way…
One thing the website emphasizes is its Dossiers, in which stories on a single topic are packaged together, like the U.S. presidential election. Organizing stories by topic instead of more broadly by section is something you’d think media web types would have concluded long ago was boneheadedly obvious, but the news sites are only now really picking up on that. And there are plenty of important, recent topics that don’t have their own pages yet and really should.
Cyberpresse’s launch article also mentions a more powerful (i.e. less crappy) search engine that better finds what you’re looking for. I typed in “Patrick Lagacé” and was pleasantly surprised to see a photo, biography and even email link. Except nowhere do I find a link to his blog. I tried again with “Patrick Lagacé blogue” and the response was “Aucun résultat.” Bravo.
Putting in other search terms for important stories of the past few weeks, I become even less impressed with the search engine.
The blogs also got a redesign. The authors’ pictures are moved to the side, leaving a big space for “le blogue de X”in stylized letters. (Though it seems poor Sophie Cousineau and Nelson Dumais got left behind.) These designs range from the obvious clichés to the we-don’t-know-who-this-is-or-what-she-writes-about generic.
Finally, there’s the RSS page, which has lots more feeds for specific topics. This is good, though the wording on many of these feeds is strange and confusing (what does “ctrl::dossiers cbp” mean?). I managed to decode a few of them which have been added to my Google Reader.
Patrick Lagacé gives us a tour of Cyberpresse
Oh, and I just noticed there’s a video tour of the new website (honestly folks, if you have to give a video demonstration of how your website works so people understand it, then you didn’t design it properly in the first place). I say “just noticed” because the article announcing the new website has no link to the videos nor does it even mention them.
The videos star some tech dude or blogger I’ve never heard of. His intro video is unintentionally hilarious, as he invites people to see another video “en cliquant ici” (clicking on the video per his instruction does nothing), and then sits there and does nothing but stare at the computer screen for a minute and a half while we make up our minds.
Lagacé does his best blogger imitation on camera
In fact, it goes on for so long that he twice looks off camera wondering if he can stop yet:
Lagacé telepathically pleads with the director for permission to leave
The content of the video is basically him repeating the same thing that was in the introductory article, although he strokes his ego by using himself as a search example. Even though he got the same result I did (i.e. a picture of himself but no link to his blog), he pretends that it works.
Other than all that the site is great. I mean, it’s got gradients and JavaScript-controlled content tabs, so how could it not be?
P.S. WTF?
UPDATE: Michel Dumais has a positive review of the new Cyberpresse. Steph looks at it from a Web 2.0 perspective.
Interns once sat here.
September is always a sad time around the office, though perhaps my opinion is somewhat biased because I’ve had two contracts run out during that month. It’s when veteran staff return from summer vacation, when new mothers return from maternity leave, when retirees return from the dead and when Red Fisher returns from suspended animation for the new hockey season.
The result is that understaffing issues suddenly disappear, and the young contract workers they bring in as temporary replacements are no longer needed.
That, combined with the summer interns returning to school or otherwise continuing on with their lives, means that a lot of young, talented people are leaving the office (and raising the average age back above “back when I worked at the Star” level).
It’s not all “tough luck kid, you fall off the ladder.” Some are leaving voluntarily and have other plans. A couple are going back to school (one to law school where he’s concluded that he can get a real career), three others are moving to Europe for some reason, and the rest have a vague idea of what paths their future careers will take.
It’s a fact of contract life, temporary work is by definition not permanent, but it’s still sad when the end finally comes. This past weekend I gave a big hug to a departing coworker who failed to escape the culling of temps and is already being missed by her colleagues.
Kate Molleson: Behold her adorableness (Gazette photo)
One of the more visible faces to leave the office is Kate Molleson, who joined as an intern last year on the copy desk and has been blogging about cycling issues since April (she also wrote and blogged about classical music, because she’s just that much more cultured than I am). She has already left to London to study music, and gives her goodbye post in which she introduces three experts who will replace her on her blog.
Kate practices her Queen's wave
By my count, the paper is losing five reporters, two copy editors, a graphic designer and at least one web editor. And they will be sorely missed, at least until next May when a whole new crop of interns and temporary workers comes in to fill gaps in the schedule.
(In case you’re wondering, I’m sticking around at least until January, assuming there’s no strike or lockout before then.)
Of course, since many of the people who leave the Gazette go on to bigger and better things, perhaps I shouldn’t feel so bad.
Stephanie Myles, who’s in Roberval covering the Canadiens’ preseason exhibition game against the Sabres tonight, has an article in today’s paper about the Hockeyville-winning city, as well as a picture-laden blog post at Habs Inside/Out.
I just finished watching Michael Moore’s free-to-web (but only in the U.S. and Canada, wink wink) documentary “Slacker Uprising,” about his tour of swing states just before the 2004 presidential election.
Well, you get what you pay for, I guess.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about Michael Moore’s work. I liked Sicko, The Awful Truth and Bowling for Columbine, and I was ok with Fahrenheit 9/11.
But Slacker Uprising doesn’t explain any issue. It doesn’t argue any point. It doesn’t actually try to change anything, despite Moore’s pleas that the film be screened before the election. It’s just a bunch of videos of stump speeches pieced together with a bunch of videos of artists performing protest songs. This review from the Ann Arbor News explains it pretty well.
There are some interesting parts, about how Republicans attempted to stop the speeches, offered money to get student unions to cancel them, and even showed up, chanted and prayed out loud while Moore was speaking, but there’s already a documentary about that.
For those used to Moore’s passionate, personal arguments about political issues, you’ll be disappointed. He doesn’t even narrate the movie. Instead, you just hear him speaking to the converted, to the point where the hyperpartisanship of those audiences might turn you off from voting for Democrats.
Michael Moore chanting “one more day” isn’t entertaining, moving, inspiring or educational. And it’s not worth watching.
Last week, the Bloc Québécois started running a minute-or-so-long podcast in which Frédéric Savard gives a fast-talking roundup of political news and ends each item with a pun or other bad joke about other parties in the election.
As a master of punnery and bad jokes myself, I have to say that some of them are funny (black holes and Denis Coderre) and some are beyond groaner territory (Stéphane Dion being “tragically un-hip”).
Still, it’s pretty entertaining as far as party activities online go. The Liberals and Greens don’t have podcasts that I can find. The Tories’ podcast is nothing but stump speeches by Stephen Harper, and the NDP podcast hasn’t been updated since 2005.
On the heels of a report from La Presse that the Conservative candidate in Papineau (who, let’s face it, is going to lose anyway) doesn’t speak French very well, Angry French Guy calls around to some local campaign offices to see how they respond in Canada’s official languages.
Admittedly, it’s not the candidates but just random people who answer the phones, but you’d think the campaigns would make sure that front-line workers were bilingual.
Members of the Ottawa Newspaper Guild, which represents workers in the newsroom of the Ottawa Citizen, have accepted a contract offer that includes wage increases of 2.5% the first year, 2% the next three years and 2.5% the final year.
This sets the stage for a coming strike vote at the Gazette this Sunday.
And the union executive isn’t happy about the rejecting of their recommendation.
As part of incremental changes to reduce the amount of newsprint it uses and otherwise cut costs, The Gazette has made its weekly tabloid Books section into a monthly one, while increasing its size to about double what it was.
For you math experts out there, doubling the size of a section but having it run only a quarter as often will result in 50% less content overall on average. (It’s actually a bit better than that, because on Saturdays when the section doesn’t appear there will be a page from it in the Saturday Extra section).
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to people who have been following the newspaper industry worldwide, as fewer and fewer papers still have such sections at all. If anything, the surprise is that the section wasn’t eliminated entirely.
The Science section, which appeared at the back of Books every week, gets cut loose from that odd-couple relationship and will rejoin the Insight section (which is now part of the A section) on Sundays.
As part of the metamorphosis, the paper gets a new online Books page, which includes a blog called Narratives, and both will get updates between appearances of the big monthly section.
I’ve never been a big book-review-section person myself, so I’m not particularly affected by this decision.
Perhaps that’s the problem.
UPDATE: Andrew Phillips has a post about this on his blog. He mentions that the local literary community was consulted and that, generally, it’s an agreeable compromise.