Congratulations Montreal. We’ve managed to accomplish in seven days what Quebec City couldn’t do in a year.
Pat yourselves on the back. Mind the knife.
Category Archives: In the news
Business contacts are like magic
La Presse reports that a Montreal company has been given a contract by the Pakistani government to run a voter registration database which will be used in an upcoming election.
The company in question is Cronomagic, a tiny ISP that I used to work for (my first, and so far only, job in the IT industry). I was their 4th employee at the time, so I got to makeup my own job title (Executive Vice-President in Charge of Doing What My Bosses Told Me To Do). It was there that I learned how to manage a room full of computers, how to setup Windows 2000 Server (ugh) and how to make Bash and Perl do funny things together.
Most importantly, I learned the power of connections. Back then a lot of business came from Pakistan because the president had business contacts there. Now it seems those contacts have gotten the company some sweet business.
UPDATE: A story from CanWest and another from Agence France-Presse, with basically the same information.
GST, PST, MST?
Montreal is pressuring Quebec to approve a 1% municipal sales tax so that cities can get a piece of the lucrative extra charges tacked onto our purchases, just days after the federal GST got reduced from 6% to 5%.
I hope this isn’t a selective thing, in which some cities will charge different tax rates from others. That would be a recipe for disaster and rampant loophole-exploitation.
Instead, perhaps the provincial government should increase the provincial sales tax by one point, and put that money into something important like health care.
UPDATE (Jan. 8): No dice, Quebec says.
Le Devoir’s 6 big media issues for 2008
Le Devoir looks at six big issues the media will have to tackle in 2008:
- What do we do with TQS? Its current format isn’t working, what should we change it to?
- How do we finance television? Should cable providers be forced to hand over money to over-the-air broadcasters?
- How long will the Journal de Québec situation go on? MédiaMatinQuébec has been running for eight months now, and the two sides are just now getting together to talk. What will an eventual agreement say, and how will that affect other media?
- How do we handle journalist multitasking? Media are expecting reporters to write, take pictures and edit video reports without paying them anything extra. La Presse’s union has already ordered journalists to stop blogging. The Journal de Montréal is knee-deep in union issues about convergence (which is in part why it doesn’t have a real website). Will the media eventually realize that more manpower is needed to produce for different media, or will the quality of journalism drop as journalists spend more time formatting stories than finding them?
- How will online distribution royalties be handled? The WGA will solve this eventually when it reaches a deal with U.S. movie and TV producers. But Canada has problems too. Quebecor is still trying to figure out how to get more programming onto its crappy Canoe.tv site. Will content creators get what they deserve, or will they be screwed over en masse?
- Will we have Internet CanCon? Or will the pseudo-CanCon we already have get even worse? How will the CRTC deal with the blurring of the line between the Internet and cable providers, television/radio broadcasters and telecom companies?
Do you have any answers?
Your guide to media coverage of the 1998 ice storm anniversary
The floodgates opened this morning on ice storm anniversary stories. Every major local media outlet has something, and many have a lot.
Part of that is because there isn’t much news on the 5th of January. Part is because they’ve had 10 years (with constant electricity) to prepare. And part is because it had such a profound impact on everyone’s lives for two weeks to a month.
This is perhaps the first big project among local media relying on reader-generated content. It’s easy to see why: Everyone remembers the ice storm. The supply of stories is practically infinite.
The problem is that everyone’s story sounds about the same. We were without power. The roads were hard to drive. We had to leave our home and move in with a family member who had power. We communicated with our neighbours for the first time ever. We helped people in need. We were happy to see electricians from the U.S. who came to help. There was a lot of snow and ice.
That’s the problem with user-generated content. It can produce some stunning gems, but most of it is boring filler not worth our time to read.
The archives are fun to look at (particularly the audio/video from the CBC and the PDF pages from The Gazette), to see how different the media and the world was just 10 years ago (67 cents/litre for gas was considered gouging).
Here’s what I’ve found so far (some links via mtlweblog), recommended reading highlighted in bold:
Continue reading
Rock et tous les oreilles
I guess RBO’s Bye-Bye show was a success, considering the sheer number of articles written about the subject, on everything from its ratings (2.4 million people watched it) and the price of its ads to its use of makeup to Hérouxville’s reaction to being made fun of.
Even the Oscars don’t get this kind of coverage.
Maybe they should schedule them during the holidays.
UPDATE (Jan. 17): My God, they’re still talking about it. Three million viewers, plus another million and a half the next day on the repeat. CBC would kill for those numbers.
Wikipedia flame wars make good news filler
Janice Tibbetts of CanWest News Service has discovered the Wikipedia war between inclusionists and deletionists.
My favourite quote:
“…I started to see a sharp, sharp turn in what people considered newsworthy or inclusion-worthy…”
No kidding.
Even though I can’t find anything actually new about this story (no doubt it’s another banked holiday feature), and I haven’t been active on Wikipedia for a while, I’ll add a brief comment:
I’m not sure what camp I’m in. I think it’s funny that there are things like lists of Stephen Colbert’s Words and other pop culture minutiae. But when every article about some aspect of pop culture has a section that denotes what Simpsons or Family Guy episode references it, things are getting out of hand.
A limit has to be set, and sadly we’re still debating where to put that line.
CBC 2007 news quiz
CBC Montreal has a 2007 year-in-review news quiz. Like Kate, I got 20/20, though about four of those answers were educated guesses.
Gazette reporters look back
Nudged deep within hundreds of other 2007 look-backs that are starting to make us go crazy wondering if this forgettable year will ever end are a series of short stories by Gazette reporters about some of the stories they’ve covered this year. Most of them are of the “it’s such an emotional issue it’s hard to stay objective” style, but there are some interesting ones too that I’ll outline in bold below.
They’re posted online in three parts.
Part 1
- Peggy Curran aboard the CCGS Amundsen: Being objective is hard when you’re living with the people you’re writing about for 10 days in the arctic.
- Jeff Heinrich at the reasonable accommodation hearings: An anti-semite refuses to give his name to the Jewish anglo reporter. Except Heinrich isn’t Jewish.
Part 2
- Sue Montgomery on the trial and sentencing of the murderer of gas station attendant Brigitte Serre: How on Earth do you stab someone 72 times and not feel remorse?
- Michelle Lalonde on asbestos in Thetford Mines: Residents and workers accept health risks inherent in asbestos mining as an occupational hazard.
- William Marsden on the de la Concorde overpass collapse: I was right, the transport department was wrong about a telltale visible crack which should have warned engineers about an imminent collapse.
- René Bruemmer on the life of fire victim Joe B.G.: Not every fatality is an anonymous nobody. Asking a simple question can sometimes prompt a long and interesting story.
- Linda Gyulai on the City of Montreal’s cellphone recycling program: Not every story comes with a press release. Even the ones that make people look good.
- David Johnston on a story about drug addicts: Sometimes the more interesting story isn’t the one that fits the article.
Part 3
- Elizabeth Thompson on Parliament’s recognition of Quebec as a nation: Harper’s stranglehold on the media means some stories just don’t get reported. And many times, “no comment” means no story.
- Marian Scott on CKUT’s Avalanche show: The intellectually disabled are people too.
- Monique Beaudin on reducing her garbage: Projects continue long after the story is written (it’s now developed into a blog).
- Brenda Branswell on the victims of teacher Renwick Spence: There’s no easy way to ask someone to tell you about how he was sexually abused.
- Max Harrold on a kid who survived a 3-storey fall out a window: Reporters will move furniture for you if asked.
- Paul Cherry on the sentencing of mob boss Vito Rizzuto: Jail can kill arrogance.
- Katherine Wilton on a fire that killed five people, including former Gazette employee Kurtis Hansen (someone I knew when I was there): Even seasoned reporters dread speaking to victims’ families, and newspaper managers do have a heart sometimes.
- Julian Armstrong on a fundraising dinner organized by recent immigrants: Food brings us all together.
Another eBay story too good to be true
Hey, remember that guy who sold a snowbank on eBay, getting $3,550 to donate to charity?
Yeah, it was a junk bid.
I appreciate that journalists did their due diligence and contacted the guy who was selling the snowbank, to determine that 1. He’s really selling a snowbank and 2. He’s really donating the proceeds to charity.
But once again, they seem to take an unconfirmed winning bid as if it’s a completed transaction. And when the bid is ridiculously high after lots of media coverage, there frankly should be an assumption that the bidder isn’t going to pay.
Same deal with the Guitar Hero auction, which sold at 100 times its suggested retail price just because it came with some story of a guy whose son smoked pot. Though the winning bidder in that auction is a long-time account with good feedback, the deal hasn’t been concluded yet so we shouldn’t assume it’s good.
Is a little bit of healthy skepticism (and patience) too much to ask?
Bhutto assassination: Why is it big news?
Major newspapers around the world and in Montreal gave huge play to the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Which of these reasons best describes the near-unanimous decision to put this on front pages?
- The news media is starting to seriously pay attention to international news, giving it the importance it deserves.
- The news media hasn’t changed. The assassination of a top political figure is an unusual and important story.
- The news media is desperate for a real news story in the otherwise dead year-in-review banked-feature time around Christmas and New Years.
- She’s hot.
Bell Canada, our Do Not Call overlords
Bell Canada has been awarded the contract to manage Canada’s anti-telemarketing Do Not Call list.
Because when you think “customer service” and “convenience,” the name “Bell Canada” inevitably comes to mind.
No doubt the Bell Canada-run Do Not Call list will be fast, efficient, error-free and in no way a nightmare for thousands of Canadians stuck in customer service hell.
Oh, and the reason Bell won the contract? It was the only bidder.
Can you feel the irony biting you in the ass?
VISA reports from the future
The news outlets were buzzing today about the fact that spending on Boxing Day went down this year compared to previous years.
I find that funny because, you know, Boxing Day hasn’t happened yet.
The news, naturally, comes out of a VISA press release, which they based on a survey that asked people what they planned to do. This, I guess, is somehow infinitely better than waiting two days and just finding out what they did.
But VISA knows a slow news day when it sees one, and the news fell for it.
Craig Silverman on Reliable Sources
For those who missed it, Regret the Error‘s Craig Silverman was on CNN’s Reliable Sources this weekend, shamelessly plugging his book discussing some of 2007’s most hilarious corrections:
- Video (he’s the last segment)
- Transcript (ditto)
UPDATE (Jan. 6): The Gazette’s Bill Brownstein also writes about Silverman, crediting him as having been interviewed by CNN for his newspaper-corrections expertise.
TWIM: Violence in the NHL
For those wondering, today’s paper has another Bluffer’s Guide from yours truly (Page B5, but not online) about violence in the NHL. It deals mainly with Chris Simon, who was suspended for 30 games (the longest suspension the NHL has ever given for an on-ice event) for stepping on another player’s foot with his skate. This, after he had just come back from a 25-game suspension (which itself had set a record) for a deliberate slash to the face.
The debate over the level of acceptable violence in the NHL is going to continue forever, and probably only get worse, until the seemingly inevitable point where someone dies on the ice as a result of a slash, a collision or a fight. Players (at least those who speak out publicly) tend to be in favour of fighting because they think it regulates tempers and protects star players. That is, until they themselves become the victims of violence.
Others, like Gazette columnist Pat Hickey, say this is all nonsense. Football doesn’t allow fighting, and it’s a much more physical sport.
UPDATE (Dec. 25): The Toronto Star says the NHL only pretends to hate fighting, while Dave Stubbs reminds everyone of Billy Coutu, who was banned for life in 1927 for attacking a linesman off the ice (though he was reinstated 5 years later to play in minor leagues — he never played an NHL game again). This is why we hear the term “on-ice” in most explanations.