Monthly Archives: May 2009

| Montreal, Opinion

BIXI’s economics don’t make sense

I find myself agreeing with La Presse’s Pierre Foglia about BIXI:

C’est seulement que je me demande à qui il s’adresse au juste. Je n’arrive pas à me faire une idée du client type du Bixi. Celui qui va travailler en vélo sur une base régulière? Me semble que celui-là va finir par s’en acheter un, un vélo de ville, non? Le touriste? Ne vient-on pas de dire que ce n’était pas un vélo pour se promener?

I like the idea of being able to rent bikes, and they seem to be getting good reviews in the technical sense (except from Foglia). But the high subscription rate and exponentially-increasing use rate make me wonder what kind of person would use this system and how.

As Foglia says, tourists will be easily turned off by BIXI because the system is designed to discourage long-time use. You can’t take out a bike and bring it back a few hours later unless you want your wallet sucked dry.

Commuters, meanwhile, will find the annual subscription fee expensive. You can get your own (used) bike for $78 a year and do what you want with it. Besides, the BIXI footprint is small (I don’t even have one near where I live), and a lot of people will find they’re coming from or going to a place where BIXI can’t go (like NDG).

I just don’t get the exploding scale. It’s backwards to the way economics work. You want to reward customers for purchasing something in bulk, not punish them.

Something tells me a lot of people are going to be spending half their time checking their watches and looking for the closest BIXI station to top up their ride and give themselves another half hour free. As long as they keep bringing it to a station every half hour, BIXI users can keep the bikes for as long as they want.

Does that make sense?

Right now, we’re still in the honeymoon phase, with BIXI reviews from journalists who wouldn’t spend more than half an hour toying with it even if it wasn’t time-limited. We’ll see after this year (or maybe next) whether regular people will find a use for this service.

UPDATE: Just to clarify, I support the idea behind a bicycle-rental system, even one that is partially subsidized by the government. My issue is with the fare structure that uses an exponentially-increasing scale instead of one that uses a flat per-hour rate.

| Media, Navel-gazing, Opinion

What do I have to do to get you to stop honouring me?

The Mirror, May 14, 2009, Page 14

The Mirror, May 14, 2009, Page 14

I give up.

Last year, I asked you specifically not to vote for me in the Mirror’s Best of Montreal poll. You (or at least some of you) wilfully disobeyed me and I placed eighth on the list of best blogs.

This year, I decided to avoid the reverse psychology and say absolutely nothing about the annual readers’ survey when it came out. That failed miserably, because this year I placed No. 2 (behind Midnight Poutine, who are again humble about taking the top spot) and the paper has an interview and picture for all my friends to see (it’s at the bottom, below the giant head of Ted Bird).

The article by Lorraine Carpenter is complimentary (though “Fagstein” wasn’t a schoolyard taunt – they really didn’t need to invent a new name to make fun of me), and Rachel Granofsky’s photo – well let’s just say she took about a hundred shots of me and that was probably the best one (the best photos of me are the ones where part of my face is hidden).

The full list of most popular local blogs, for those interested:

  1. Midnight Poutine
  2. Fagstein
  3. ThriftyTable.com
  4. Mike Ward (*cough*)
  5. Pregnant Goldfish
  6. Said the Gramophone (*cough*)
  7. Nouveau Queer (*cough*)
  8. Spacing Montreal
  9. Black Sheep Reviews (*cough*)
  10. Bitchin Lifestyle (*cough*)

Honourable mentions:

It’s sad that in order to place on this list you essentially have to whore yourself out to your readers (half of the top 10 asked their readers to vote for them in this poll, though some tried to remove the evidence after the fact – I’m looking at you Mike Ward). Two others – Spacing Montreal and Pregnant Goldfish – pimped themselves last year but not this year and subsequently fell in the standings.

But hey, it’s a popularity contest, and that means Céline Dion is on the list for “Most desirable woman”, Jean Charest is on “best politician”, Global on “best TV station”, Metro on “best newspaper”, 3 Amigos tops “best Mexican” and McDonald’s places in multiple food categories.

Unfortunately, that means many high-quality candidates are left off the list. Among them Montreal City Weblog, Coolpolis, Patrick Lagacé, Dominic Arpin, Indyish and Urbania (feel free to nominate your favourite unhonoured blog below).

All that said, I’d still like to thank those who think so highly of this blog and voted for me (which, in the interests of full disclosure, I should admit includes myself – but only once!)

If you’ll excuse me, I have to go pick up a few extra copies for my mom.

| Montreal, Radio

Mike Finnerty leaving CBC Daybreak

Mike Finnerty giant ad outside Maison Radio-Canada

Mike Finnerty giant ad outside Maison Radio-Canada

Mike Finnerty, the host of Daybreak on CBC Radio One in Montreal, announced this morning that he will be leaving the show at the end of June and moving to London (England, the good London) to take a new job as multimedia news editor for The Guardian.

The reasons are mostly personal. Finnerty’s partner moved with him to Montreal when he took the Daybreak job in late 2006, but had trouble finding work here. Finnerty’s partner got a new job back in London, and Finnerty decided two and a half years was enough sacrifice to ask of someone else.

Mike Finnerty leaving CBC Daybreak (MP3, 6:05)

Both of them came here from London when Finnerty was tapped for the Daybreak job to replace veteran Dave Bronstetter. He worked at BBC World Services for 10 years, and before that he was a radio reporter for CBC in Quebec City and Montreal. Lest anyone question his loyalties, the Esterhazy, Sask. native told The Gazette’s Kathryn Greenaway in 2007 that he still wants to be buried in Montreal. I assume that sentiment still applies.

Among Finnerty’s legacies at Daybreak are the Daybreak Daily Podcast (a daily “best of” featuring interviews from that morning’s show), the Daybreak Twitter account and the guest editor series.

Who wants to host a morning talk show?

Finnerty says that although the Daybreak crew has known about this departure for months, they don’t know who will be replacing him in the show’s anchor chair.

The job has a lot of exposure, but also involves a lot of work. Getting up at 3:30 every weekday morning is a deal-breaker for me (you know, in case they were considering me for the job).

So who should jump into the big chair now? With the budget crunch hitting the corporation, acquiring a high-paid external candidate would probably not look too good, and there are plenty of capable people from within the organization.

Two names that jump immediately to mind are Steve Rukavina, who has been a temporary host of Radio Noon and seemed to connect with some listeners until Sue Smith was given the job, and Sonali Karnick, who has been the hardest-working person in that office for years now and is currently on the sports beat for Daybreak. Both are young, dedicated, and most importantly adorable.

UPDATE: Brendan Kelly (who double dips as a Daybreak columnist) writes about Finnerty’s decision in The Gazette.

| Media, Video

Journal Weeklyish Digest: Péladeau speaks

Today was the annual general meeting of Quebecor shareholders, so Pierre-Karl Péladeau had to come out of his cave and answer questions about how he does business. Lesaffaires.com has video highlights of Péladeau’s press conference.

When asked about the Journal de Montréal lockout, Péladeau’s minions at Quebecor gave the usual response about how the unions don’t understand the seriousness of the financial situation the company is under thanks to the various economic crises it faces (which is forcing it to consider shutting down newspapers).

Of course, that’s not stopping Quebecor from wanting to buy the Canadiens.

Needless to say, locked-out Journal workers were protesting outside,

30 ways to lead your lockout

The Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec magazine Le Trente explores the Journal lockout in its April issue, with an article by Hugo Joncas that talks a bit about the months leading up to the Jan. 24 lockout. It’s mostly union accusations, since the Journal and Quebecor aren’t talking, but it’s clear that Quebecor was planning for a lockout for a long time. Among the things that happened, the Journal:

  • Hired more managers, ensuring most of them were journalists
  • Started up new columns by freelancers who could still write in the event of a lockout
  • Created Agence QMI, a wire service the allows Quebecor-owned media outlets to share stories
  • Setup a system so page layout could be outsourced to another company under Quebecor control (it’s believed this is on the floor above the Toronto Sun newsroom)

Another piece by Florent Daudens looks at Rue Frontenac, the centre piece of the union’s pressure tactics.

Carbo (the other one) soldiers on

Claudette Carnonneau, the head of CSN who is suing the Journal de Montréal over a misquote related to the Caisse de dépôt, isn’t dropping her case. She’s seeking $250,000 in compensation from the newspaper.

Big advertisers fleeing

The Institut de coopération pour l’éducation des adultes pulled a lucrative ad contract from the Journal because of the conflict (as it did last year for the Journal de Québec) and spent more money having their speecial section printed as part of La Presse.

Similarly, the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste has moved a contract to print Fête nationale schedules from the Journal to Transcontinental-owned Metro.

Neither of these are surprising (both had previously expressed support for locked-out workers), but it highlights some of the advertising pain the Journal is facing. The question is whether the money they save from salaries offsets the loss of ads.

Having to pay a $10,000 fine (for a story that appeared years before the lockout started) doesn’t help either.

In other news

And at Le Réveil…

Not much, other than getting some moral support during the fête des travailleurs.

| Media, Montreal, Opinion

Why do marketing companies hate themselves?

On Île Bigras, they don't tolerate shit.

On Île Bigras, they don't tolerate shit.

Patrick Lagacé has a column in today’s La Presse (and accompanying blog post) about a fake blog put together by a marketing company to promote Montreal’s Bixi bicycle rental system.

Lagacé chronicles the various methods used to pull the wool over people’s eyes: fake authors with fake Facebook pages and a fake story about how they met. He tries to get professional marketing experts to denounce the practice and cites rules for marketers that prohibit astroturfing like this. Patrick Dion also outright condemns the practice.

But curiously, the company behind this fake campaign defends the blog, apparently suggesting that the creation of fictitious personalities does not qualify as deception. Lagacé rightly tears Morrow Communications a new one for that.

So why go through all this trouble?

The answer is mentioned in passing by André Morrow:

“Si on avait fait un blogue hébergé par Stationnement de Montréal, personne n’aurait été intéressé.”

Think about it: This guy runs a marketing company, and says that if people knew a marketing company was behind this, they wouldn’t be interested, regardless of the content.

What kind of self-confidence problem must you have that you need to create fake personalities because you’re convinced nobody will like you?

Of course, I reject the premise of what he’s saying. I subscribe to plenty of marketing outlets. I get press releases from public transit agencies, official notices from the government, blogs from newspaper editors promoting their content, even some CNW feeds. I do this because I want the official word from the company, and in a lot of cases that’s where the news comes out first.

The problem is that this stuff is informative but boring. It’s not edgy or creative, won’t get you talked about in the news or win any marketing awards.

But you can be creative and still be honest. Even knowing it came from a marketing agency, this video of a bike racing the 24 bus (legally) is still impressive. And there are plenty of other examples of this kind of marketing, even clearly labelled as such.

Morrow Communications needs to grow up and realize that they don’t have to pretend to be someone else just so we’ll like them. Be honest with us and we’ll appreciate them for who they are.

A marketing company being honest … now that’s edgy.

UPDATE: More reactions in the blogosphere:

| Opinion

Is B.C. the future?

UPDATE: Not even close. So B.C. remains with “first-past-the-post”, which is a misnomer because there is no post to pass nor is there a second person who passes it. Is it time to give up?

British Columbia votes today on what supporters hope will be the future of representative democracy in Canada: a proposal for electoral reform based on the principle of the single transferable vote.

STV is essentially a method for preferential voting, meaning that instead of marking an X for the person you want elected (or, in many cases, the person most likely to defeat the person you don’t want to be elected), electors rank candidates in order of preference, and the ballot is counted so that if the first choice is not elected, the vote is transferred to the next candidate.

The second part of the proposal involves merging of electoral districts, so that instead of 85 representatives of 85 districts, there will be 85 representatives for 20 superdistricts, between two and seven for each.

The goal is to bring British Columbia closer to proportional representation, a mythical utopia where the number of seats awarded to each party is consistent with the distribution of the popular vote.

Why I don’t like proportional representation

I’ve never been much of a fan of proportional representation. Not because I don’t believe small parties should have a voice, but because it assumes that legislators are mindless automatons who blindly follow party doctrine. Many such systems literally involve party lists, so that the party decides on its own legislators, who may or may not represent local interests.

It might make sense to some, especially with the way politics work these days, that this is the way it should be. Since most representatives are party loyalist automatons, and party switches so rare, why not recognize that in law?

The problem is that this ignores the very point of our current democratic system, that legislators are elected by communities to represent their interests. And if you go that far, why not take it to its logical conclusion – why have legislators at all? Just put the party leaders in a room and assign weights to their votes.

Why I like BC-STV

British Columbia’s proposal avoids the problems I outline above with proportional representation by continuing to have local districts, and continuing to have electors vote for candidates directly. The only annoying thing is that with multiple seats you have multiple candidates per party (competing even against each other, some might argue), and that means if you live in an urban district you might see a list of dozens of candidates instead of just a half dozen or so.

The main argument against STV is that it’s complicated, which is kind of an insulting argument, I think. Besides, it’s only complicated to count. It’s not complicated to rank candidates when you’re voting.

Other arguments have been made against proportional representation in general that also apply to BC’s STV proposal, mostly along the same theme:

  • It encourages small extremist parties
  • It makes majority governments almost impossible to create
  • It results in unstable coalition governments

Of course, the entire point of proportional representation is to give a voice to small parties, and I like the idea of minority, coalition governments. Sure, they’re not as disciplined financially, and will tend to do what’s popular more often than what’s right, but is that really so different than what we’re used to in politics? I’d rather have the checks and balances even if it means having too many cooks in the budget’s kitchen.

Besides, if you get Judy Rebick and Deborah Grey to agree to something, it must be good.

If it passes, other governments should study the outcome and consider whether they too should have a similar system.

| Sports, TV

RadCan to air Quebec university football games

For those who think Radio-Canada hasn’t been doing enough to fulfill its mandate as a broadcaster of sports since the last Soirée du Hockey, the Queen’s network has announced that it will air live telecasts of Quebec University Football League games, including the annual Shaughnessy Cup matchup between the McGill Redmen and Concordia Stingers, and playoff games including the national Vanier Cup championship game.

Last year, these games aired on RDS.

The schedule includes two other games involving Concordia University, but no others involving McGill.

Which is as it should be because the Redmen suck.

Go Stingers!

| Media, Opinion

Freelancers get a union/agency – but will it work?

The Canadian Writers Group launched today. It’s essentially an agency that represents freelance writers in their negotiations with publishers (and taking a cut of their income). Or it’s a union which hopes to raise freelance rates by uniting writers behind a common front. Or both, depending on your perspective.

The Toronto Star explains a bit about the group.

The key to the CWG’s success is whether or not it can get to critical mass and keep members in line. With only 50 members so far, it wouldn’t be difficult for publishers to simply blacklist the group and deal with writers willing to accept less. On the other hand, if the group can get enough quality freelancers to sign up, publishers might decide it’s easier to deal with one group than dozens of individuals, even if it means spending more money. And other writers would notice they have a better chance with the group than without it.

But even if the CWG does reach that critical mass, it has to ensure its members don’t start taking deals “under the table”, either by convincing publications to deal exclusively with it or by punishing members who work outside the agency.

Its a tough road ahead, but if it helps freelance writers get better pay and better contract rights, it’s worth the fight.

| Blogosphere, Montreal, On the Net

Our honoured mothers

Sunday’s Gazette, in honour of mother’s day (Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!), features an article about Montreal’s mommy-bloggers, including of course the Mère Indigne. The article comes with a giant picture of Caroline Allard and kids, as well as a sidebar focusing on Quebec’s most famous mommyblogger.

I wrote about Allard and Mère Indigne in 2007 when her first book came out. The article isn’t online, but I just posted it here, along with questions I asked her back then via email. She screwed me over saddened her readers back then by announcing she was putting her blog on hiatus. Of course, like a bad drug she couldn’t stop with the blogging, posting stuff to a second blog. And she wrote another book. And created a web series for Radio-Canada.

All while raising two children.

Susan Semenak’s article also discusses other Quebec mommybloggers, whom we honour on this day:

| Navel-gazing

How to score a newspaper internship (I think)

I promised an aspiring student journalist I’d post this to my blog a while ago, but never got around to it. Apologies if she’s been checking this site every day since.

In March, I was invited to give a talk to a group of students from university newspapers across Quebec and Ontario at a regional conference of Canadian University Press. Unfortunately, I was up against Todd van der Heyden, so my audience was small.

I talked about a few random things, like blogging, copy editing and freelancing. I also figured these kids would like some tips on how to get a job once they graduate, so I dug up my old internship application for The Gazette.

It was the fall of 2004, and I really wanted a job at the local anglo newspaper. I collected clippings (I selected five stories that I wrote, edited and laid out myself), compiled a CV that highlighted my experience in the student press, and wrote a cover letter.

I also included this:

A page from my internship application to The Gazette

A page from my internship application to The Gazette

Since I was applying mainly to be a copy editor, I figured I needed to demonstrate my skills. I took a page from the newspaper (I went through a couple before I found one with enough errors), scanned it and pointed out things that were wrong with it. It took me hours to lay it out properly, but it was worth it.

In January 2005, when I was interviewed by then-city editor George Kalogerakis, he asked me the usual boilerplate questions (I completely bombed a question that asked me for story ideas – among my answers were “it’s winter … maybe a story about that?”). I quickly learned he hadn’t seen the special page I spent hours working on. Leafing through dozens of applications, it apparently didn’t catch his eye.

I’m not sure what bearing it had in the decision, but I got a phone call while I was at a CUP conference in Edmonton later that month offering me the summer copy editing intern position.

A few months later, when I first met my new boss (who wasn’t Kalogerakis, because he abruptly left for a job at the Journal de Montréal), she identified me as “the one with the page.” As the person in charge of copy editors, she’d clearly been more impressed.

Anyway, enough about how awesome I am. The moral of this story is that when you’re applying for a job, especially in an environment where demand is much higher than supply, you should consider thinking outside the box to get noticed. Companies get dozens of CVs for every job, and even after throwing away those with spelling or grammar mistakes, there are a lot of candidates left to choose from.

I had learned that lesson from Andy Nulman, the former Just for Laughs organizer who has since become an expert in surprise marketing (you can see him with his fly open on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on Tuesday). He had done a television segment long ago (I don’t even remember for what program UPDATE: Nulman tells me it was a five-part special for CBC Newswatch in the mid-90s) about resumés, and said candidates who want to get noticed should eschew the standard resumé for a “presumé” that stands out (within reason of course, it should still have a CV and references). He talked of a CV he’d received that was in an oversized envelope that said “don’t read this” (or something to that effect). Clearly, he couldn’t not read it.

I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader how this idea can be used to apply for other kinds of jobs.

| Navel-gazing, Radio

Geeking out with Macadam tribus

Samurai Swords game at Geek Montreal's GeekOut

Samurai Swords game at Geek Montreal's GeekOut

Last month, as a small group of local geeks gathered at Burritoville for Geek Montreal’s kinda-monthly GeekOut, we were joined by a journalist from Radio-Canada, Stéphane Leclair, who wanted to do a story about the group for Radio-Canada’s Macadam tribus. The story was broadcast the next week and is available online here.

It includes a few short quotes from yours truly. (My interview was awful and I didn’t have anything interesting to say, so there’s a lot more from other attendees. Leclair also used a lot of editing to make us seem more interesting than we really were.)

For those interested, Al Kratina also talked a bit about Geek Montreal for The Gazette last year.

Sadly, Macadam tribus was one of the victims of CBC/RadCan’s 800 job cuts, and will disappear from the airwaves on June 20. That decision can be read between the lines of a piece on the disappearance of live overnight programming on radio, which aired this week.

| Media

Another newspaper doesn’t like Mondays

Message from the publisher in Victoria Times-Colonist, May 9, Page A2

Message from the publisher in Victoria Times-Colonist, May 9, Page A2

The Victoria Times-Colonist announced in Saturday’s paper that, because of the weakened economy and the business crisis facing newspapers, the TC will stop printing on Mondays as of June 22.

That’s a week before the National Post does a similar cost-cutting measure. The difference is that the TC move isn’t temporary and they’re not producing a smaller online-only edition, just promising to post breaking news online seven days a week.

(The TC story is closed to comments, but the Globe and Mail story about it is open.)

The Times-Colonist case is also unusual because the newspaper will still print both Saturdays and Sundays. Unlike most other Canadian newspapers, the TC has a strong Sunday paper with plenty of advertising.

I’m not sure if this is a coincidence, but the this-week-in-history column in Sunday’s paper focuses on the decision of Victoria’s two newspapers, the Times and Colonist, to move in together and share space, though keep their editorial matters separate. We all know how that turned out.