Category Archives: Navel-gazing

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Myanmar 101

This week’s Bluffer’s Guide is by yours truly, about the crisis in Myanmar following Cyclone Nargis.

I was actually responsible for the entire Seven Days page this week, replacing the vacationing Peter Cooney. So I ended up filing the story to myself (literally, in that I emailed it to my work address from home).

For those who don’t subscribe to the paper, Seven Days also includes a summary of headlines from the week, quotes from each day, editorial cartoons from papers around the world (this week it’s all about Myanmar’s reluctance to accept aid and its decision to keep on with a constitutional referendum to give its governing junta more power) and a few items from this week in history (it was 15 years ago this week, for example, that the Expos retired their first jersey, No. 10 Rusty Staub)

No online link for the bluffer’s guide, so I’ve included it below:

So, what happened? On May 2, Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Myanmar, and became the deadliest natural disaster in the country’s history, killing tens of thousands. International relief efforts have been stymied by the government’s reluctance to issue visas.

Wait, wasn’t that Burma? Yeah, it’s confusing. In 1989, the military junta unilaterally changed the English version of the country’s official name from Burma to Myanmar. Democracy activists reject the legitimacy of that decision and continue to use the name Burma, along with countries such as the United States and Canada. The United Nations, however, recognizes Myanmar.

So how bad was this cyclone? Bad. The storm grew in the Bay of Bengal during the last week of April. It then began weakening, before rapidly intensifying the day before it hit the coast. By that point, it had reached peak wind speeds of 215 kilometres per hour, the equivalent of a Category 3 or Category 4 hurricane.

What’s the death toll? Nobody knows for sure. The UN confirmed 38,000 deaths, while the Red Cross says the number could be anywhere from 60,000 to 130,000. The official government figure is 130,000 dead or missing. It is probably the deadliest cyclone since a 1991 storm hit Bangladesh, killing 138,000 people.

What’s being done to help? Western governments and the United Nations have begun relief efforts, but report frustration that the Myanmar government is being slow to grant visas into the country.

How are neighbouring countries responding? Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, countries hardest hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake (and receiving no assistance from Myanmar) offered millions of dollars worth of money, food and medicine. India, which still has close ties to Myanmar, has led efforts with 140 tonnes of materials.

What is Canada doing? The federal government has promised $2 million in relief aid, including 2,000 shelter kits that left Canada on Wednesday and are being handed off to the International Red Cross in Thailand.

Why is Myanmar resisting aid? Because it makes them look bad. Myanmar has been a military dictatorship ever since a coup d’état in 1962. Free elections in 1990 resulted in a landslide victory for democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, but the results were ignored by the government which refused to step down. Opposition political parties are banned, the Internet is strictly regulated, the media (what little of it is not run by the government) is thoroughly censored and prisons are filled with political prisoners.

Is anything getting in? Yes. Though the government accepted money and supplies from other countries (which it would then proudly hand out to its citizens to improve its image), foreign aid workers would embarrass the military junta, and are being resisted to an extent the UN World Food Programme called “unprecedented” in modern history. The first U.S. military relief plane was only allowed to land in the country 10 days after the disaster.

How will this affect the food crisis? It doesn’t look good. Myanmar is a fertile source of rice, and the cyclone hit at a critical time. Farmers lost 149,000 water buffaloes, which won’t be replaced before the critical plowing season. Aid groups are trying to replace them with Chinese-built machines, but time is running out. Farmers also need tonnes of rice seeds after the ones they had just planted were washed away. If the harvest isn’t saved, a famine might dramatically increase the number of casualties.

Bad timing: Only 10 days after the disaster in Myanmar, a major earthquake in neighbouring China (magnitude 7.9) caused a catastrophe on a similarly devastating scale. The earthquake has affected relief efforts in the region, which must now split between helping both areas.

Worse timing: In the aftermath of the disaster, the Myanmar government decided to proceed with a controversial constitutional referendum, delaying the vote only in the worst affected areas until May 24. The new constitution, which the government said was approved by over 90 per cent of voters and a 99 per cent turnout, reserves parliamentary seats for military officers and restricts who can run for president.

Open-ended discussion question: How would this diaster have affected Myanmar if the country had a free and democratic government and a healthy economy like its neighbours?

| Blogosphere, Media, Montreal, Navel-gazing

I’m very disappointed in all of you

My request was simple: Don’t vote for me in the sad popularity contest that is the Mirror’s Best of Montreal readers’ poll. Instead, it appears, someone did do exactly that because I came in eighth.

I’d say I was honoured, but I placed just below Drunken Stepfather. That doesn’t exactly fill me with pride.

Still, congrats to those who did end up on the list, especially those who didn’t use their blogs to inflate their votes (Montreal City Weblog, Spacing Montreal, Pregnant Goldfish).

I should also point out some other blogs on that list, which I’ve never frequented because they aren’t about the city, but are still interesting:

I also think Coolopolis should have been there somewhere, as well as some francophone blogs. But this is about popularity, not quality, right?

No news here

As for the rest of the poll, nothing is particularly surprising for anyone who’s seen BOM results before. Chain restaurants still dominate the best eats categories (McDonald’s is there twice).

In the media categories:

  • CKUT won best radio station
  • CFCF best TV station (with Mutsumi Takahashi and Todd van der Heyden best news anchors, though the Mirror seems to think the later is the evening news guy, when last time I checked it was 8th-placed Brian Britt)
  • K103‘s Don Smooth best radio host (the Mirror has a profile)
  • Mix and CHOM’s morning shows as best radio shows
  • Nightlife Magazine won best magazine
  • The Mirror, shockingly, came in first for Best Newspaper, again. The Gazette was second, which I think says something, followed by the three franco dailies, Voir, Hour, The Link, Metro and the McGill Daily.
  • The Gazette’s Aislin won for Best Cartoonist, beating ballot-stuffing Radomsky and La Presse’s Serge Chapleau

And Boustan, who also mounted a self-promotion campaign to improve its standing, maintained its dominance in the Middle Eastern categories, improved in others and added two new ones:

  • Best Middle-Eastern (still 1st)
  • Best Falafel (still 1st)
  • Best Late-Night Eats (2nd from 3rd)
  • Best Delivery (2nd from 4th)
  • Best Cheap Eats (3rd)
  • Best Sandwich (5th)

However, people weren’t convinced enough to vote for it as Best Fries or Best Vegetarian.

Elsewhere in the bragosphere:

| In the news, Montreal, Navel-gazing

Worried about his kids

Last year, I wrote on my blog with some opinions about the proposed Cavendish extension to Henri-Bourassa Blvd. and Toupin Blvd., which would connect two neighbourhoods that would otherwise need a much longer detour to get between. I criticized complaints from residents in Cartierville as selfish NIMBYism from people who live in McMansions along the waterfront and drive their Hummer SUVs and BMWs to work every day through other people’s neighbourhoods.

One of the comments I got on that post was from one of those residents, who said he was worried about his kids having to cross a busy street to get to school every day.

I decided to interview the man for a Justify Your Existence piece. I figured I’d totally get him on that, but turns out I learned a thing or two (something I always enjoy doing as a journalist). Rather than drive to work every day, he takes a bike when he has to, and the rest of the time he works at home. His wife will use the family vehicle, in order to take the kids to school (they have three, ranging in age from about 3 to about 9, if I remember correctly). He’s very pro-environment and anti-car, despite living in a modest home in the suburbs.

Though still somewhat NIMBYish, the guy came off as a concerned father criticizing the creation of roads for the benefit of personal vehicles over public transportation.

Nice guy, nice wife, adorable kids. A fun way to spend an evening.

So why do I bring this up again?

The guy, 34-year-old Nicolas Stone, was arraigned in Longueuil today on charges he lured a 13-year-old girl into exposing herself online, and then had sex with her at least twice. I got a call from work to double-check it was the same guy.

The photo at right is stolen from his Facebook profile, since a scheduled photo shoot for that article fell through (had it happened, the paper would be running file art of the guy and his kids tomorrow).

All this to say, you can never tell just by looking at someone.

And this guy was worried about his kids crossing a busy street…

UPDATE: Let’s be careful with wording (unlike 940 News who don’t think they have to qualify calling him a “predator”) since he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet. All of this is alleged by police. And you never know, there could be a completely innocent explanation for a 34-year-old father of three having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

UPDATE (May 28): He’s been denied bail.

UPDATE (Aug. 4, 2010): After pleading guilty, Stone has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, minus time served.

| Media, Navel-gazing

No more erorrs in the Gazzete

The Gazette’s Andrew Phillips asks on his blog about whether errors — factual, style, grammatical, spelling — are more prevalent in the paper now than they used to be. He points to a blog post at The Guardian, which argues that spelling particularly was much worse back in the days before spellcheck and desktop publishing.

I can’t really offer an opinion on whether the quality has gone up or down over the long term, since (a) I’m only in my 20s and (b) I work as a copy editor and my opinion is necessarily biased.

But as a copy editor, I’ll note that, unfortunately, proofreading is the least important of our functions. Pages must be laid out, headlines, decks, cutlines and other “display type” must be written, and photos must be inserted. But if the page is mostly wire copy (which has been thoroughly edited by the wire service), sometimes it might get typeset (at least for the first edition) without getting properly proofread. An editor might ask another to just look at headlines and large type because there’s no time for a full readthrough (this is especially true in sports, where a game will finish at 10pm, the article has to be written by 10:20pm and the page must be typeset by 10:40pm, a seemingly impossible task that’s done on a near-daily basis).

With the recent round of buyouts cutting staff in every section, one of the copy editing positions eliminated was specifically responsible for checking pages for obvious mistakes before they were typeset. Now that job falls on the editor who laid out the page, or the managing night editor. And it works, most of the time.

Was that a mistake? Should a dedicated proofreader be hired? Should there be more copy editors to double-check each other’s work? And if so, what positions should be cut to make room in the budget for new staff?

Or, put another way, would you be willing to pay a dollar or two more a month for your subscription if it meant half the number of typos you see now?

Tell Andrew what you think.

| Blogosphere, My articles

I’m a lover not a hater

My latest local blog profile is Angry French Guy (Somewhat ironic since his latest post totally disses me. The profile was written weeks ago and has been sitting in the can while this whole .qc craziness erupted)

Angry French Guy, aka Georges Boulanger, is a francophone who is trying to explain the perspective of francophones to us anglos.

“Driving a truck is not a healthy lifestyle,” he says. “Getting angry about the reasonable accommodation debate, Jan Wong and other nonsense from home while listening to my satellite radio was putting my life in danger.”

And for that, he’s gotten grief from both sides of the divide, with some fellow francos calling him a traitor:

His response: “Fighting off Barbara Kay on one side and now these clowns on the other. I must be doing something right.”

Anger really is the great motivator.

| My articles

That whole Zimbabwe thing

Today’s paper features a Bluffer’s Guide by yours truly on the political situation in Zimbabwe. A full week after the vote, presidential election results have yet to be released. Unofficial tallies though put opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the lead with just under half the votes. If Tsvangirai defeats president Robert Mugabe in a runoff (required when no candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the vote), it would be Mugabe’s first election defeat since taking office 28 years ago.

Something to think about as I’ll spend the equivalent of 500 million Zimbabwean dollars tonight on a fast-food dinner.

| Navel-gazing

Introducing some changes to the Fagstein blog

UPDATE: Happy April Fool’s Day, folks!

Since I started this blog back in February 2007, it’s been slowly gaining in popularity. Wooed by my oozing charm, curious web crawlers have been coming here time and time again for opinions and information about Montreal, the media and everything else I care about.

But those same people have always seemed surprised when they find out that I don’t have advertising on this site. This blog isn’t monetized in any way.

Until now.

Starting today, I’ll be introducing some small, non-invasive advertising to the website (and eventually its feeds as well for you 128 freeloaders out there subscribed to it).

I’ve also signed up for Pay Per Post, a system that will provide financial compensation in exchange for blog posts. It wasn’t an easy decision to come to, but a thick, solid line will be setup that ensures my editorial independence. I believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. I will always give my honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences. The views and opinions expressed on this blog will be purely my own. I will never make any statement that I do not honestly believe in, no matter how much I may be offered in compensation. Anyone who requests advertising that breaks my code of ethics will be refused.

I look forward to this new era in this blog’s future, and I hope you will all enjoy the benefits that will come from the increased professionalism that this blog will show, now that it transitions from a hobby into a business.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.

| Navel-gazing, Technology

Playing with new toys

I’m experimenting with some plugins and widgets and toys in order to boost my visitor count make this blog better for its loyal readers.

One thing you may have already noticed is that individual post pages now have links to related posts (as determined by that post’s tags). Since I tend to write about similar things, you’ll likely find those posts interesting. Related posts are also included in the RSS feed, which you should subscribe to.

Meanwhile, I’m still experimenting with some social bookmarking techniques. I’ve setup an account at del.icio.us, which allows me to share websites and pages I find interesting. I also have my Google Reader shared items, which allows me to share some of the blog posts I read that I find particularly interesting. You’ll find that feed currently being burned so I can track its popularity.

Unfortunately, I’m having trouble combining the two together and/or automating their inclusion into the blog. del.icio.us has a feature that automatically posts links to your blog (as you see below), but it’s not very configurable, and I don’t find that many links that would necessitate a daily post.

If anyone has any ideas on how I can automate, say, a weekly roundup of my del.icio.us (God that’s annoying to type) bookmarks and Google Reader shared items into a weekly blog post, please let me know. Surely someone has thought of this before, but Google hasn’t helped me.

Links for 2008-03-22

| Business, My articles, Opinion, Technology

Don’t pay contributors (but don’t treat them like crap either)

In today’s Business Observer section, I have an article about whether or not companies setting up user-generated websites should consider paying those users for their content.

Revver tried it (paying users $1 million in its first year), but the overwhelming reach of YouTube has greatly limited their success. People who post videos to Revver have to also post them to YouTube or find someone else doing it for them.

And, of course, there’s Capazoo, whose business model involved having its users “tip” each other and getting a cut of that pie. This week, they appear to have died a horrible, horrible death, though it seems to have been more about bad management than a bad business idea.

I spoke to Evan Prodromou, who wrote an essay last July about the problems inherent with paying wiki contributors. The arguments hold true for video-sharing sites, blogs and just about anything where users are expected to work to give your site value.

His conclusion is that “it just doesn’t make a lot of sense” that websites pay for users, because payment makes it seem like work. Instead, they should focus on building communities, where work is valued in a non-monetary sense, and more importantly where the contributions provide value to the users themselves. YouTube allows you to share videos and give them a global reach. Same with Flickr on the photo side. These are user-generated websites, but they’re seen primarily as free services to users.

Many clueless latecomers to the user content game (and especially many media organizations) have been trying to push user participation to the point where they’re beating us over the head with it. Newspapers cut and paste uninteresting, anonymous comments from their message boards. TV weather presenters introduce photos of snow (and dogs in snow) taken by viewers. They all plead with you to share your news tips so they can get the exclusive (and not credit you for it) — provided that news tip doesn’t require too much investigation, of course.

When you try to share your family photos or stories about grandma, shocked that such dreck actually gets published/broadcast, you’re met with 1,000-word user agreements that state IN ALL CAPS that you give up all rights to your content including moral rights and (effectively) copyright, and they can do whatever they want with it without asking you or paying you a dime, even if it has nothing to do with the reason you submitted it. Oh yeah, and it also gives them the right to seize your home, take your dog and copy everything from your hard drive. Didn’t you read that part?

The result is that we get a lot of fluff, but very little useful information. Uninformed opinion, but little news. In other words, a whole lot of junk.

As a freelancer, I’m tempted to say that paying people is the answer. Forget this user-generated crap and get real journalists, photographers, videographers and writers to give you quality news and information. But that plea would fall on deaf ears of money-crunching media executives who see Web 2.0 as a magic ticket to free labour.

One of the lessons that should probably be taken away from this is that in order to get good content from your users, you have to respect them and at least not seem to be evil. They have to feel like they’re doing something valuable that’s worth their time (paid or not). Right now, getting your picture in the paper or on TV is still a pretty big reward for those seeking their 15 minutes. But if nobody reads that paper or watches that TV station because they don’t have quality content, will that continue?

As the article mentions, there are some coming out on the pro-payment bandwagon. Jason Calacanis says that top contributors (that 1-2% who represent the majority of content) are providing much more value to these websites than they’re taking back, and it makes sense to pay them if only to keep them loyal.

Even Wikimedia (which runs Wikipedia and related sites) is paying contributors for the first time with its Philip Greenspun Illustration Project. It’s an exceptional case, with money donated for a very specific purpose. But it represents a step toward paying users for their work.

Prodromou himself agrees that some work should probably be paid for. Administrative work, editing and other non-sexy contributions probably wouldn’t get done otherwise. It makes sense to have a small staff of employees to concentrate on that work. At the same time, web projects must be careful about not instilling a sense of resentment among its non-paid users. It’s a fine line to travel.

But what do you think? Does paying users cheapen what they contribute? Should only extreme superusers get paid for what they do? Or should the economy be allowed to give a monetary value to even the smallest contribution, even though for most people payment would be orders of magnitude less than what we would consider a minimum wage?

(Side note: This article sets a new record for the delay between filing and publication. I completed the article in November, and it sat on the shelf while the Business Observer section was being planned. Since it wasn’t particularly timely, it stayed there until just this week.)

| My articles, Technology

Facebook watches you poop

Facebook

This morning’s paper features a big story by yours truly on the issue of privacy on Facebook.

Specifically, it talks about Montrealer Steven Mansour, who last summer found out that in order to delete his Facebook account he would have to first delete every wall post, comment, photo, note, everything he had ever done since he first registered his account. One at a time. It took him 2,504 steps. He’s not crazy about having to go through all that effort.

The same issue annoyed UK blogger Alan Burlison and others, but Facebook wouldn’t budge until the New York Times took it up last month. That led to the company proclaiming it would be easier, without making clear exactly what it was changing about the process.

Currently, on Facebook, you can “deactivate” accounts, which makes them inaccessible (though reports of fragments being left behind are common). But deleting them completely requires an outside-the-box email exchange with Facebook staff.

Not unexpectedly, Facebook didn’t respond to my request for a clarification about their policy.

Neither did Canada’s Privacy Commissioner’s Office, when I asked whether it had received a complaint from Mansour and/or were investigating Facebook. The office’s PR contact got back to me finally, and says he’s looking into whether there are any investigations concerning Facebook.

Mansour has a roundup on his blog of reaction to his story and other Facebook privacy issues. Only some involve conspiracy theories about links to the CIA and stuff.

The article also touches on TRUSTe, an organization that counts Facebook as a member and seems to do nothing to rein them in; Facebook’s draconian terms of use; and what Mansour thinks needs to be done to safeguard privacy rights online.

| Media, Navel-gazing

Headline fun

You know, the job of a copy editor can seem unfulfilling at times. You work during prime-time, you don’t get your name in the paper, and the only creative thing you can do is write headlines.

But every now and then you get to write a headline you particularly enjoy. Like this one, over a story about a study showing computers in schools can actually be counter-productive to learning.

This is about all the fun we get. Well, that and the occasional impromptu pun-off.

| Fun, Montreal, My articles

The underground city scavenger hunt

Underground City scavenger hunt participants

I have to admit, part of me totally expected last weekend’s underground city scavenger hunt to be a complete dud. It’s happened before with these organized-on-Facebook just-for-fun events. Facebook had 35 people attending, but those numbers are always hyperinflated due to the way Facebook works.

As it turns out, there were 39 participants, and that was way more than was needed to have fun.

For my article in today’s Gazette, I spoke to organizer Robin Friedman while boyfriend-and-co-organizer Jody McIntyre was registering people. I then followed a team through the two-hour hunt.

Photos, the list and more after the jump below.

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