Category Archives: Navel-gazing

| Montreal, Navel-gazing, Radio, TV, Video, Web design

Butter! Living Montreal stays inside this week

Sue Smith and Catherine Cullen

Catherine Cullen (right) totally not flirting with Living Montreal's Sue Smith

Sue Smith, the host of Living Montreal (perhaps the only English television program left that’s produced for a local Montreal audience) apparently ran out of ideas this week and did five shows themed on CBC Montreal and the Maison Radio-Canada.

Above is some little-known nerd reporter from CBC Radio who on Thursday’s show did a chocolate-chip cookie recipe she got off the Internet. (Actually, it’s my former classmate Catherine Cullen, whose career has now officially outperformed mine, allowing me to make fun of her with the photo below.) They’re actually shown on a set in the basement made by the production department specifically for this segment, which is kind of cute (did it have running water?).

Catherine Cullen on TV

Catherine Cullen is just happy to be on TV

Sadly, too little of the 115 minutes over the week involved actually exploring the iconic CBC building (and too much on graphical segues and plugs for the website). The trips through various offices act more as a backdrop for various food/style/shopping/other chick stuff.

Still, if you’re a junkie for inside journalism like me, take a peek at these:

And while you’re exploring the Living Montreal site, you can take a peek at segments from the Flab Gab column which stars The Gazette’s June Thompson, who was brought on board in December.

P.S. To Living Montreal (or whoever is responsible for its website): Your Flash-based video system looks cool and seems to work OK (except for the minor issue that if I pause a video I can’t restart it …  actually that’s a pretty serious issue), but this post would have been made a lot easier if you had some simple way to copy a link to individual videos. I had to get the ones above through the “Send to a friend” feature, sending myself half a dozen unnecessary emails.

| Montreal, Navel-gazing

Oh Concordia, how little has changed

The Evil Borg Cube (a.k.a. Hall Building)

The Evil Borg Cube (a.k.a. Hall Building)

I used to look back at my alma mater Concordia University, and ponder how student politics there had changed. In my years (2000-2004), there were scandals, recalls, backroom deals, lawsuits, riots, arrests and just general overall craziness. But since then it had been mostly quiet. A one-party system had been instituted at the Concordia Student Union, finances seemed under control and everyone stayed out of the headlines.

But thankfully, university student politics have a habit of repeating themselves every few years, as high turnover results in institutional Alzheimer’s and the same mistakes get made by a whole new group:

  • Person in charge of finances is left unchecked, money goes missing, and then she does as well? Check.
  • President proclaims innocence? Check.
  • Financial mismanagement so complicated even auditors can’t figure it all out? Check.
  • Recall petition to remove executive? Check.
  • Executive tries to find loophole to subvert democratic will of petition? Check.
  • Club money goes to questionable expenses? Check.
  • Comparisons to corrupt African regimes and measures put in place to make sure this “doesn’t happen again”? Check.
  • Patrice Blais? Check.
| Media, Navel-gazing, Photos, Technology

The other side of the scrum

Gazette reporter James Mennie gets interviewed by TVA

Gazette reporter James Mennie gets interviewed by TVA

Scrums are a fact of life in the news media. An important event happens, and every news outlet is there to cover it. TV cameramen, print photographers and reporters huddle around an important figure and save time by essentially doing the same interview.

(Despite the continuing threat of convergence, each outlet still sends its own team to major events, even if a particular empire might be represented by more than one journalist.)

No one knows the news business better than those in it, but even many of us were surprised when the media gathered outside the room where the Montreal Newspaper Guild was holding meetings on whether to approve a new contract.

Continue reading →

| Media, Navel-gazing

Gazette workers to vote on contract offer Sunday

I haven’t been updating much on Gazette contract negotiations, mainly because there hasn’t been much progress. Negotiations took a break for the holidays, then resumed with a conciliator, but the talks were placed under a gag order which prevented both sides from talking about what was discussed.

Nevertheless, sources close to the negotiations tell Fagstein in exclusive interviews that they really can’t talk about it and I should stop pestering them with questions.

In talks this week, the Montreal Newspaper Guild, which represents Gazette employees, agreed to present management’s contract offer to the units who are currently negotiating a new contract and who authorized a strike mandate last fall: Editorial, Reader Sales and Service, and (non-classified) Advertising.

I don’t have any details of the terms yet. But I’ll let you know after Sunday’s vote how it turns out.

| Business, Navel-gazing, Technology

Rogers contract renewal: Just get a cheaper plan

The folks from Rogers Wireless have been calling me incessantly for the past week or two. They always call twice, from an unlisted Toronto number, and never leave a voice mail.

To get them to stop, I finally answered today. As I expected, they were trying to get me to sign on to a fixed-term contract by “offering” me a brand new phone.

Except my phone works fine. Sure, the plug for the charger needs to be jiggled a bit before it works, and the exterior buttons turn the ringer off when it’s in my pocket. But I can still make and receive calls and text messages.

So I told the guy I wasn’t interested. Then he decides he wants to sell me on cool new features, but I’m happy with what I have.

I ask him if there’s anything he can offer me that would reduce my bill and keep the same features. Then he pulls out this “exclusive offer” where I get 100 daytime and 1000 evening/weekend minutes for $15 a month, $10 cheaper than my current plan (which also includes unlimited incoming calls). Knowing that I only use about 100 minutes a month anyway, I figure it’s worth it (evenings also start earlier, 6pm instead of 8pm). I tell him to go ahead.

He also gets me to change my features package for another one at the same price which gives me more text messages and has caller name ID.

But when he told me I’d have to sign on for 36 months, I hestitated. I don’t know where I’ll be in 36 months, and I don’t know if I’m ready to commit that much. No problem, he says, he can do it for 24 months instead (that’s apparently the minimum).

So in exchange for a 24-month commitment, my already cheap cellphone bill is now $10 cheaper per month, and I have more features.

So if Rogers is calling you to get you to sign a new contract, consider the following:

  • If you’re happy with your phone, tell them that and see what kind of plan features you can get instead
  • Ask them what they can offer you to reduce your bill instead of adding new features
  • Don’t readily accept a 36-month contract. See if they’ll reduce the commitment to 24 months. (After those 24 months, you can bet they’ll be calling again to repeat the process.)
  • Do a quick calculation in your head to see if it’s worth it. If they’re not offering a significant discount, don’t accept a new contract. Either get a new phone or tell them you’re thinking of switching to a new, cheaper provider.
| Navel-gazing

Blog software upgrade

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.7, which has a whole new backend and some new features for comments. One is a reply feature, which allows you to respond to specific comments (I haven’t tested comment threading yet but hopefully it won’t explode). The other is comment paging, which will split comments to multiple pages when the discussion gets too much (ahem).

Let me know if you see any bugs as I’ve had to update the template myself.

| Navel-gazing

Soggy newspaper

Last weekend, the paper didn’t show at my apartment. I don’t usually make a fuss about it, since I work at the newspaper and can always get another copy there. And half the time I discover it in some hidden spot under a step or in a recycling bin.

Besides, it was exceptionally snowy and there were apparently problems at the plant, so few of my coworkers got the paper that morning. I figured it might be delivered later in the day or with the next day’s paper. It never was.

Or so I thought. Yesterday, a full week later, I found it in a receding snowbank. Frozen solid.

To add insult to injury, it happened to be the issue wrapped in the Christmas card from my carrier. (We’ll ignore for a moment the irony of having a French Christmas card wrapped around an English paper, especially since many carriers distribute more than one paper.)

It took a few hours to thaw out, and it’ll be a few days until it dries. Even though I picked up another copy of that day’s paper, I’m kind of curious if I’ll be able to read it.

| Montreal, Navel-gazing

Wanna be my neighbour? Just burn down your apartment

One of the tenants of my apartment building co-op has moved out, and is offering to help out with January’s rent if anyone who lost their home in the big Beaubien/Christophe-Colomb fire last week wants to move in. That got some attention at Montreal City Weblog.

$610 a month for a 4 1/2 (actually two big double rooms), heat included, is a good deal. But living near me? Well that’s just awesome, no?

(If nobody from the Beaubien fire takes it, it’ll be up to anyone who wants it and can convince the co-op they’d make a good tenant)

UPDATE: The Gazette has picked up the story.

| Media, Montreal, Navel-gazing, Opinion, Slow News Day

Fagstein’s 2009 suggestions

The fine folks at Hour asked me to provide some “suggestions” for The Man various powers-that-be for 2009, which would then be used as free holiday filler quoted in an article to come out on Christmas Day.

The piece, which puts me the bottom with the rif-raff and interest group leaders, includes pretty well verbatim what I sent them.

Specifically, that:

  • Gérald Tremblay and Benoît Labonté think for a few more seconds before their next project to blatantly pander to voters before next December’s election
  • STM provide real-time updates online about metro service disruptions
  • Montreal police and other emergency services post their breaking news about car accidents, fires and murders online so that curious Montrealers can check for themselves what’s going on instead of having to wait for one of the media outlets to take dictation from the PR guy
  • more Montrealers start up niche blogs about their communities and their areas of expertise
  • TQS and Global TV, who are third in the franco and anglo TV ratings for their local newscasts, realize that slashing budgets isn’t the only answer and start experimenting by covering the news in some unique way
  • 940 Hits die a slow, painful death for having replaced 940 News with crap
  • Montreal music radio stations stop desperately clinging to the lowest common denominator and take a chance by allowing their DJs some freedom in choosing what goes on the air
  • Montreal newspapers, radio and TV stations stop giving lip service to the Internet and put some real focus online – the Journal [de Montréal] could start by dealing with its union issues that are preventing it from launching a real website
  • local TV stations start creating local programming that goes beyond the evening newscast that gives us the weather, fatal car accidents and fluff every day
  • Montrealers stop complaining about the snow and take public transit if they’re so annoyed at having to shovel out and move their cars all the time
  • Amir Khadir brings hard work and new ideas to the National Assembly instead of spending his time as an MNA whining about how the government isn’t helping poor people enough
  • the next major public transit expansion project take fewer than 20 years to plan and execute.

Any you’d like to add?

| Navel-gazing

Fagstein’s Subscription Challenge: Thanks to all 402 of you

$450 of my money, and I just gave it all away! Im crazy!

$450 of my money, and I just gave it all away! I'm insaaaaaane!

I was supposed to do this on Saturday, but work kept me on a pretty hectic schedule. Now that I’m home for the pre-holidays (I’m back in the office on Christmas afternoon), I have some time to deal with unfinished business.

Last week, you’ll recall I promised to give $1 for each RSS feed subscriber (through Google Reader and other online applications that report them) to Dans La Rue, my charity of choice this year.

Having just checked the logs and done some quick math, I whipped out the ol’ credit card and made the donation tonight.

There wasn’t exactly a stampede of new subscriptions (most of the people who read the blog are subscribed already), but about 17 of you came on board to bump the number past 400.

Counting Google Reader (304 split over three feed URLs), NewsGator (41), Bloglines (36), Netvibes (18) and miscellaneous (3), that makes 402 subscribers that I know about. I bumped the donation up to $450 (mostly because it seems weird giving exactly $402 to charity). For my embezzled hard-earned I-can’t-believe-they-pay-me-for-this-job money, I get a nice tax receipt, my name gets printed in a book somewhere, and oh yeah some kid gets help.

On behalf of my inflated ego, I’d like to thank you all for reading this here blog and making my opinions sound important enough for journalism students to think I’m some sort of expert.

P.S. To my fellow bloggers with your so-called charity campaign, I just donated $1 for every RSS subscriber. Can you beat that, chickens?

| Navel-gazing

Fagstein’s Subscription Challenge

During all of 2007, I was technically unemployed. A mixture of EI, freelance work and tax rebates from the government (I never quite figured out how that all worked) kept me afloat.

In January, I got offered an eight-week contract at my favourite job, as a copy editor at The Gazette.

I’m still there.

Facing the continually impending unemployment that contract workers must always prepare for, I’ve been pretty responsible with my money, putting most of it away in the bank. It’s gotten to the point where I can start considering things like RRSPs for the first time.

Being a bleeding-heart liberal, I’m also overcome with guilt that I’m not giving the money away to help homeless people or something. So, I figured, why not just go ahead and do that?

Rather than just cut a cheque, though, I figured I’d have a little fun with it, and involve the dozen or so people who read my blog.

My challenge

So here’s the plan: One week from today (Saturday, Dec. 20), I will donate $1 for every subscriber to this blog’s feed through web services that report such information (Google Reader, Netvibes, NewsGator, Bloglines) to Dans La Rue, a Montreal charity that helps street youth, up to a maximum of $1,000 (you know, just in case this hits Fark or something and I have to contemplate taking out a mortgage on a home I don’t own just to keep my promise).

By my calculations, I have 383 subscribers through those four main feed readers already, which means I’m $383 in the can. Let’s see how high I can push that number up (I’ll be keeping a close eye on traffic and other indicators, so don’t think about artificially inflating those numbers through fake subscriptions).

If you don’t subscribe via RSS and don’t know how, check out What is RSS and the video RSS in Plain English to explain it to you. My feed’s address is http://blog.fagstein.com/feed/

Your challenge

Now this second part is, of course, entirely optional, but while you’re getting me to donate a buck on your behalf, consider making a $10 donation on your own to a favourite charity. Don’t make me give out those “cup of coffee” metaphors to show you how insignificant $10 is.

If you want a charity idea, here are my suggestions:

Let’s work together to make Christmas merry for everyone. Especially my ego.

| Media, Navel-gazing, Web design

New montrealgazette.com now live

Take a look, take the tour, read the note from the editor.

The biggest change is that it’s wider (setup for 1024px instead of 800px) and it uses its own domain and branding. There’s also a lot of technology behind it that dates from this millennium, which allows you to comment on each article and see which articles are popular.

Feel free to comment there (or here, and I’ll pass them along) about the redesign, which took about seven months to complete, and is chain-wide (the Vancouver Sun site is also up, and the first review is positive).

UPDATE: See similar comment threads on redesigned Canwest newspaper sites:

UPDATE (Dec. 3): And if you need it in marketingese, that can be arranged. Nothing is more hip and in touch with young people of today than a press release quoting the general manager and senior vice-president of digital media saying that “Each execution will be customized and branded to reflect the values and personality of each local newspaper.”

| Fun, Montreal, Navel-gazing

Underground Scavenger Hunt 2: Can you do better than me?

Winners of the second Montreal Underground Scavenger Hunt

For those of you who missed the underground scavenger hunt a few weeks ago, above is the winning team (they were also the only team with four players, which helped). But if you divide the score by the number of players to get a proportional score, I alone come out on top. So in a way I won.

In any case, there’s no real reason why you can’t try it out on your own if you have an hour and a half to spare. Here’s the list of stuff to find in the underground city:

  • Cinéma du parc monthly handout
  • One-cent stamp
  • Car rental company business card
  • Something with the Travel Cuts logo
  • La Mini lotto results from last night
  • Two medical professionals’ cards (must be two different doctors in two different offices) (2 points)
  • Chopsticks
  • A store reward card application
  • Underground parking stub
  • A packet of brown sugar
  • A beer coaster
  • A catering menu
  • Three spa treatment pamphlets
  • Something with the Bluetooth logo (your cellphone is not eligible)
  • Something Hanukkah-related
  • Something Halloween-related
  • Nightlife Magazine
  • Weekend edition of the Metro newspaper
  • The old Bell logo
  • A flyer for a Montreal-area attraction (must be in the 514 area code)
  • Four napkins from different coffee chains (must have establishment’s name on it) (2 points)
  • Something that smells like a green/granny smith apple (+1 if it is a granny smith apple)
  • A banking services flyer (2 points)
  • A bus schedule for a route with the number 3 in it (+1 if it’s bus #3)
  • A photo of an outdoor pool with people swimming in it (must have a member of the team in the photo) (5 points)

I got 15 points. Can you do better?

| Navel-gazing, Photos

The orange sky

Taken at 3 a.m. on Nov. 25

Taken at 3 a.m. on Nov. 25

I dislike snow. Or at least I always complain about it. Snow means it’s cold and winter has officially arrived. On the other hand, I enjoy playing with snow, even when everything I wear is soggy afterwards.

The other thing I like about snow is the night sky after a snowfall. The city’s lights bounce off the bright, white sheet that has covered everything, then bounce off the low, white cloud, and scatter off the millions of little snowflakes falling to the ground. The result is an orange, almost purple sky that creates a strange middle ground between night and day.

Usually by the next night, the snow has finished falling, the streets have been plowed or the thin sheet has melted, and the clouds have dispersed. And night becomes dark once again.