Category Archives: Navel-gazing

| Business, My articles

Getting biblical about spam

As promised, today’s article in Business Observer discusses brick-and-mortar companies who violate email netiquette and send unsolicited marketing emails to people. It’s based on three companies I talked about in my “not above outright spam” series:

  • Kanuk (which is still sending me such emails)
  • Rogers (my wireless provider, who seem to think being a customer is carte blanche for spamming)
  • CIBC

In all three cases, I can only theorize about why my email was added to these marketing lists, because not one of them responded to repeated requests for an explanation, the first as a regular spam victim, the second as a reporter researching a story. CIBC’s media relations guy asked for more information about the email, but I never heard from them or their email services provider Komunik again.

A fourth company, Chapters/Indigo, was left out because (a) the article was already way too long, (b) they responded to my request and investigated promptly, and (c) their investigation determined that my mother signed up for an account there two years ago. Here’s what it would have looked like:

Company: Indigo Books and Music
Date: Sept. 24, 2007
What they were selling: Book bargains
Email service provider: ThinData

Indigo’s email followed what has apparently become an industry standard of having people fill out web forms before they can unsubscribe from email lists. And like other companies, it assumed I have an account and wouldn’t let me unsubscribe unless I logged in. But Indigo responded promptly to my initial complaint with a thorough investigation.

Well, actually ThinData found a blog post I wrote with the complaint and then alerted the company. Within two days I had a response from Indigo’s customer service director explaining that someone else (my mother) had used the address to set up an account in 2005, and they have “only recently been reaching out to our past customers.” He unsubscribed me from the list and apologized for problems I had unsubscribing. Both Indigo and ThinData provided copies of extensive privacy and anti-spam policies.

The original message violated some best practices for email marketing that ThinData swears by, such as providing a simple one-click way to unsubscribe. Nevertheless, the provider accepted the response from Indigo and said they “consider this matter resolved.”

That last part sort of irked me. Despite promises that they’re 100% against spam, these companies seem to defer to their clients when it comes to actually determining whether policies are being followed. Explanations are accepted at face value and no independent investigations are done.

The article also includes some suggested best practices for commercial email marketers, compiled from industry sources and the Canadian Task Force on Spam. Hopefully some companies will be a bit more strict about conforming to them.

I’ll let you know if any of these companies decide to respond now that the article is out. In the meantime, do you have any spam gripes about companies that should know better?

| Blogosphere, Navel-gazing

On being a local blogebrity

Being subscribed to as many feeds as I am, I see a lot of different types of posts come up repeatedly. The meme post, the viral video, the apology for lack of blogging.

Among them is the anniversary post. One year of blogging, three years of blogging, 1,000 posts, 666 posts, etc.

On the occasion of Fagstein’s first anniversary, I’ll add some content so this isn’t a wasted post. But that content will be about me.

Media blogger Julien Brault interviewed me for his blog (reposted at CentPapiers). His questions included some FAQs that I figure I’d repost here in English:

You blog really late at night. Why is that?

My sleep schedule, mainly. My job is an evening one, that sometimes goes as late as 1:30am. There’s also the much more pathetic reason that I find late-night TV much more interesting than early-morning TV. So I tend to sleep between 3am and noon instead of more sane hours of other people.

I tend to blog near the end of the day because that’s when I compose my thoughts. Earlier parts of the day involve reading newspapers and other blogs and making note of those I want to talk about.

Why did you start your blog?

Because I like to talk. I had been blogging personally between friends and eventually decided some non-personal stuff should have a wider audience. I also wanted to build a personal brand, prove to potential employers that I understand the Internet and have an excuse to go to Yulblog meetings (since I write about blogs).

What’s the difference between your blog posts and articles?

I don’t have to have blog posts approved by editors before I write them. On the other hand, I’m not paid for blog posts. Articles involve much more attention to the writing, more interviews and research, and are written for a different format. With blog posts, I can have a bit more fun, talk about myself, and use links and comments to do stuff I couldn’t do in newspaper articles.

Do you ever expect to make money from this? Are you planning to add ads?

Let’s be realistic. My traffic isn’t bad for a local blog, but it’s nowhere near what I’d need to be able to make money off of it, much less enough to live on. Even the celebrity bloggers here have other jobs that pay them more money. If it gets to the point where ads will bring in some money, I might add them, if only to offset hosting costs. But there’s not much point now.

I also look at it as having an indirect impact. I’ve gotten story ideas from this blog, developed contacts, and learned quite a bit. These non-tangible things might help me later on. But mostly I do this for fun.

Will blogs be the end of newspapers?

It depends on what you mean by “blog” and what you mean by “newspaper.” Blogs aren’t some magical force, nor are they all the same. Blogging is simply a publishing system that has articles in reverse chronological order. What you put on it defines what it is. So it’s very hard to make blanket statements about “blogs.”

As for newspapers, their main feature is their team of journalists. TV and radio don’t come close, mainly because they have to devote so much of their staff to technical matters and their journalists have to spend more time on each story. So the stories everyone talks about (including the bloggers) mainly come from local newspapers. That hasn’t changed yet.

Right now, the primary source for newspaper revenue is print advertising. Eventually, that might change and online advertising will become the primary revenue source. Once that happens, you’ll see a lot of newspapers shifting gears (beyond the current lip-service they give to online media) and focusing on digital distribution methods.

I think the newspaper as a format may be on the decline (though it will take decades before they truly disappear), but the journalism that comes out of them is what matters, and there will always be a market for that.

What’s your traffic like?

Not sure how to rate it quantitatively. It’s higher than some, lower than others. I get about 15,000 unique visitors a month, or 1,000 visits a day. Most of it is from other bloggers, friends, people in the media stealing my ideas, and of course myself. I have about 65 subscribers through Google Reader, plus another 20 or so using other services. My top referrers include Montreal City Weblog, Spacing Montreal, Dominic Arpin and Patrick Lagacé. The latter creates a firestorm when he links to me in one of his posts (as he did today), tripling my regular traffic for that day. So I don’t pretend I’m all that.

Any other questions?

| Blogosphere, Montreal, My articles

TWIM: Mitsou-inspired cultural blogging

My latest blog profile is the relatively new Comme les Chinois, by Spacing Montreal contributor Cedric Sam. It talks about Chinatown, the local Chinese community, profiles local Chinese people, and basically talks about everything that relates to being Chinese in Montreal.

The blog’s name comes from Les Chinois, a 1988 pop single by Quebec singer Mitsou, the lyrics of which suggest Chinese people treat their lovers well. On his blog, Sam took a lyric from that song, “regarde les chinois” literally, and one of its regular features is interviews members of Montreal’s Chinese community.

UPDATE: Kate blogs about Spacing’s blogging about my article about Cedric’s blog. So I figured I’d blog that.

| Navel-gazing

My new job

A few weeks ago, I got an email from my old boss at The Gazette, asking if I’d be interested in filling in for a few weeks on the copy desk. Two of their copy editors just had a baby and are on parental leave. So I accepted a part-time contract until the end of March, which will see me writing headlines, editing copy and doing layout a couple of days a week. It will also see me having a real go-to-the-office job for the first time in over a year.

Sunday evening was my first shift, on the sports desk (if you noticed any errors in Monday’s sports section, feel free to blame me). Because I had worked as a copy editor there before, I didn’t need any training. But in the year I’ve been gone, they’ve replaced their computers (they now have awesome PowerMac G5 machines with two flat-panel monitors), redistributed tasks, dropped a major wire service, and put a much heavier focus on online tie-ins.

But as much as the job provides me a way to reconnect with old coworkers and bring in a bit more money, it also presents an unavoidable conflict of interest when it comes to my blog. Though I have always tried to be fair in my criticisms of local media (including The Gazette), I can’t ignore the conflict inherent in writing about one’s employer.

I intend to keep blogging about local media issues (on my own time), but so long as I’m employed I’ll keep from writing opinions about The Gazette and Canwest, positive or negative. Instead, I’ll bring the news to you and let you form your own opinions.

I also won’t be writing about company secrets or office gossip here (mostly to avoid people having to say “please don’t write this on your blog” after every sentence). Any behind-the-scenes stories will be relatively tame, like gloating about the pun-tastic headlines I come up with.

Just to be clear, this is my decision and in no way even suggested by The Gazette or Canwest. In fact, despite knowing about my blog (and visiting it regularly), The Gazette has never attempted to complain or interfere with my blogging, even when I’ve been critical of the paper. The only time it became an issue (when a source refused to talk to me because I’d made sarcastic comments in a post), the paper actually came to my defence.

So in the interests of full disclosure, that’s what’s going on.

| Business, Montreal, My articles

TWIM: Are speeding tickets a government conspiracy?

This week’s Justify Your Existence is Alfredo Munoz of S.O.S. Ticket. You’ll recall earlier this month there was some dust kicked up at a new service from this ticket-fighting brigade setup by a former police officer. That service alerts drivers to radar speed traps, so they can slow down and not get a ticket.

The article (which Kate thinks has an editorializing headline but I think is a legitimate question, even though I didn’t write it) is cut off online. Here’s the missing text:

Alerts are given to drivers by text message on their cellphones. Doesn’t that encourage dangerous cellphone use while driving?

We can walk and chew gum at the same time. It takes a second to read, and you can hold the cellphone in front of you as you read it, to keep your eyes on the road. It doesn’t worry me. We’ve studied this. Ads on the side of the road or drinking a coffee are more of a distraction than a text message.

I talked with Munoz last week in the small company’s log-cabin-like offices in Old Montreal, around the corner from the municipal courthouse. He sat me down on his expensive-looking leather couch and we talked for a while about the ethics of his service and tickets in general.

Munoz, a young technically-proficient businessman, not only didn’t agree that what he was doing was morally questionable. He feels he’s helping society through this service:

  • It keeps the idea of speed traps in drivers’ heads, so they’re conscious that they need to slow down
  • Because it relies on members reporting speed traps, it’s not 100% and won’t encourage people to drive faster because they can never be sure a cop isn’t there
  • Everyone speeds anyway. It isn’t less safe
  • Speeding tickets don’t make highways safer, they just bring in more money to the police
  • Dangerous driving is caused by 16-18-year-olds who are taught about signage and the highway code but not how to drive safely or keep a car under control in an emergency

Munoz sees S.O.S. Ticket as the only true force representing regular car drivers. He philosophizes that nobody has ever changed the world by being liked by everyone.

Whether he does more good than harm is something for you to decide.

| Montreal, Navel-gazing, Radio

Bienvenue aux écouteurs de Rythme FM

Pour les gens qui m’ont entendu ce matin à Les matins de Montréal de Rythme FM, voici un lien vers ma carte des structures au Québec:

At-risk overpasses

Légende:

  • ROUGE: structures démolis, fermés ou qui vont être remplacés
  • JAUNE: structures dont la ministère a décidé de faire des travaux majeures ou qui ont encore des restrictions de poids
  • VERT: structures qui ont passé l’inspection et n’ont pas besoin de travaux ni restrictions
  • BLEU: structures dont l’inspection n’est past complet ou un décision n’est pas encore publié

D’autres liens utiles:

Autres pensées:

  • J’ai jamais pensé que le Courrier international à décidé que je suis un “ailleurs” ici. (En regardant le blogue encore, c’est plutôt parce que je suis anglophone, et il aime mon blogue alors j’ai rien contre lui)
  • Ma mère n’est pas fâché contre moi pour le truc “Jim FM” (je savais pas qu’ils lisait mon blogue en direct!). Mais elle pense que j’étais un peu nerveux. C’est vrai, mais j’étais plutôt fatigué!
  • Ma carte n’est pas à 100%, ça prend un autre mise-à-jour fini!
  • Je retourne à mon lit maintenant.

(Voici un enregistrement “rush” de baisse qualité de l’entrevue. Je vais le remplacer par un plus meilleur: .mp3, .ogg)

| Navel-gazing

Want to hear me practice my French?

I’ve just been booked as a phone-in interview for Rythme FM’s morning show tomorrow at 8am (105.7 FM). They want me to talk about my recently-updated map of Quebec’s overpasses.

Those of you willing to wake up early enough to listen to it will not only listen to my embarrassingly awful French being broadcasted to a huge audience, but that same awful French made awfuler by the fact that I’ll be low on sleep.

Anyone have a message for Patrice l’Écuyer?

UPDATE:

  • Mom: “Your dad wants to know what radio station it is.”
  • Me: “105.7 Rythme FM.”
  • Dad: “Jim FM?”
  • Me: “No. Rythme FM. Rhythm. 105.7”
  • Dad: “What are the call letters?”
  • Me: “I don’t know. They don’t use them.”
  • Mom: “He doesn’t know. It’s Rim FM. R-I-M.”
  • Me: “NO! RYTHME FM. R-Y-T-H-M-E!”
  • Mom: “Oh. Rythme FM.”
  • Dad: “What are the call letters? It’s C-something.”
  • Me (Googling): “CFGL.”
  • Mom: “CFGL.”
  • Dad: “Ahh! CFGL! Why didn’t he just say so?”

My dad’s a devout CHOM listener. The remaining stations he knows only by their callsign.

Let’s hope the station understands me better through my cellphone.

UPDATE (After the interview): Here’s a rush recording of the interview from my not-designed-for-broadcast digital recorder. I’ll replace it with a better version later: .mp3, .ogg

| Blogosphere, Media, Navel-gazing

Toronto Sun sorry for plagiarizing Torontoist

The Toronto Sun has apologized after Torontoist noticed an article the Sun ran copied a paragraph word-for-word from a blog post of theirs two days earlier. Though the blog considers the matter closed, Craig Silverman does his usual complaint that the apology is too brief, doesn’t explain how the error occurred and doesn’t say if there was an investigation into the reporter’s past articles for instances of plagiarism.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for one of the big papers to plagiarize one of my posts without credit. When is it going to be my turn?

| In the news, Montreal, My articles, Public transit

TWIM: Kenya and bus schedules

This week’s Bluffer’s Guide concerns the unstable political situation in Kenya, which has already claimed hundreds of lives in a country that was supposed to be one of Africa’s democratic leaders. Worth taking a look in case you feel bad knowing more about the status of Jamie Lynn Spears’s pregnancy than about the difference between Kenya and Rwanda. For more, check out the excellent special sections from The Guardian and BBC News.

This week’s Justify Your Existence concerns the STM’s bus service improvements I mentioned a week and a half ago. Asked why three buses (18 Beaubien, 24 Sherbrooke and 121 Sauvé/Côte-Vertu) had reductions in service (primarily on the weekend) when they were announcing service improvements, the response was that these are normal seasonal variations in service for these lines. The STM changes schedules four times a year, and compared to the winter schedule of January-March 2007, there are no reductions in service:

At each schedule change, we look at the weekend offering, and we adjust based on customer demand. The 24 line, for example, mostly serves business workers, so fewer people take it during the weekend. There will be about 14 hours less service on the weekend for those three lines, but we’re adding over 115 hours of service to those lines during the week.

| Media, My articles, Video

Should letters to the editor be paid for?

Thursday’s Gazette features some letters to the business editor responding to last week’s inaugural Business Observer section, and particularly my opinion piece about independent video producers being exploited by big media.

One of those letters asks an interesting question (which I jokingly alluded to last week): Should letter writers be paid for their opinions?

You are asking us for our opinion on using Web content with no payment to the producer. Well, how about you guys at the Gazette? Why don’t you pay the author when you publish his opinion, or even a letter to the editor? Writing something for publication doesn’t exactly take only a few minutes of his time. An opinion piece, or letter to the editor can take the author hours of his time.

So let’s be upright about this. When The Gazette (or any publication) publishes anything, there should be automatic payment for the author.

Martin Plant, Montreal

At some point, we have to have a discussion as a society over what line exists between freelance journalism (which should be paid for) and reader interaction (which shouldn’t).

| Blogosphere, My articles

TWIM: Ron Paul and other things sketchy

This week’s Justify Your Existence is Jacques Grondin, a member of the Montreal Ron Paul Meetup Group. Despite being a Canadian citizen, and not an American one, he’s campaigning for Paul here in Montreal, trying to raise his profile among American expatriates and Canadians who will be affected by this presidential race.

Montreal isn’t part of the U.S. Why campaign here?

Grondin: It’s a dilemma. Most of the people we talk to are Canadians and not Americans. But there are plenty of Americans in Montreal, plenty of tourists. Pierre Trudeau was very popular in the U.S. John F. Kennedy was popular in Canada and around the world. Paul fits into that class.

You’re Canadian. Why not get involved in Canadian politics, instead?

Grondin: There is no Ron Paul in Canada. The closest thing you’ll find is the Canadian Action Party, and I’m a member of that, as well. But getting into the White House is a bigger goal.

Also this week is a short profile of Matthew Forsythe’s blog at comingupforair.net. He’s an accomplished illustrator who likes to make sketches of the world around him. (He’s already put out the welcome mat for readers.)

| Blogosphere, Navel-gazing

Link to me!

I’ll admit it, I’m vain. I check my logs regularly and scour the Internet looking for people who are talking about me. I get giddy when other blogs (no matter how insignificant) link to mine, and even giddier when it’s praised by people more important than me.

This week Nicolas Cossette of the Montreal Social Media blog put mine in a list of seven important local blogs. It’s a very subjective list, and it doesn’t include some smaller but very interesting blogs about Montreal, but still yay me.

Included with the entry on me is this statement:

I would say that if (traditional) journalism has difficulties to reach a younger audience, that’s partly because of blogs like his where you can find all the news about the city plus a lot more.

There’s this idea a lot of people have that my blog (and/or others) serves as a replacement for newspapers. There’s two reasons why I disagree with this:

  1. This is not the place to get your news. I see a truckload of interesting news that I don’t post about because I have nothing interesting to add. Kate’s Montreal City Weblog does a much better job covering the local news, but then it’s just news about Montreal. These blogs are great sources of information, but they should be used in tandem with newspapers, not instead of them.
  2. The primary sources for information from both my blog and especially Kate’s are local newspapers. Without them, we wouldn’t know half the stuff we do, and those links we put in our posts to read the full stories would go nowhere. It’s amazing how much people forget this sometimes.

Speaking of Kate’s blog, every month she’s consistently one of my top two referrers (traffic that comes to my blog through links from other websites). The other is Patrick Lagacé. Both have me on their blogrolls and link to me occasionally.

But when Patrick links to my blog in one of his posts, I have to pray my cheap server doesn’t fail it dwarfs all my regular traffic with a flood of curious French-speaking people (who apparently all take one look at my blog and close it). So I’m expecting something similar this month as he linked to me in two consecutive posts.

The first calls Fagstein the best media blog in the city (thank you) in an unrelated post about some silly criticism of him. (Despite how vain I am, I’ve developed a pretty thick skin when it comes to criticism. Most of it is brainless loudmouthing, which should be dismissed. The rest is useful criticism which should be embraced.)

So yeah, I’m awesome.

| Business, Media, My articles, Opinion

The vlogolution will not be televised

As promised, my first opinion/analysis piece appears in today’s business section as part of the new Business Observer weekly page, which includes other pieces from academics and a small glossary of bizl33t from Roberto Rocha.

The crux of the argument is this: YouTube wonders and other amateur producers are being exploited by big media companies who want to reduce costs. Instead of being offered a freelance fee for their work, they’re offered give-us-all-your-rights contracts and no monetary compensation in exchange for the opportunity to have one’s video put on TV.

Some of you might remember a column from Casey McKinnon in the Guardian last year that was along similar lines, and my article is a blatant rip-off an homage and expansion of that idea. I talked to her and to Dominic Arpin, who hosted TVA’s Vlog show during its brief run in the fall. Vlog, as a news show, relied on fair dealing provisions to side-step copyright. They didn’t ask permission before screening 30-second clips of popular videos online.

Though the article focuses on video, the situation is analogous for audio and text. Media organizations seek “user-generated content” because it’s free. That’s fine for letters to the editor and small comments attached to articles, but what about photos and stories? The line between freelancers and free content is blurring.

Casey’s advice is useful for all independent content producers:

Start thinking like businesspeople and stand up for their rights. Demand fair contracts and proper compensation, and ignore fast-talking TV executives when they say “you don’t need a lawyer.”

If you have any comments about this issue, you can of course add them here (I won’t pay you either, suckers). The Gazette is also soliciting responses to the idea: send them to businessobserver (at) thegazette.canwest.com

(I’ll refrain from pointing out the irony of big media soliciting free content on an article denouncing big media’s exploitation of free content. But at least here you’re doing so willingly.)

UPDATE: Digg it?

| Business, Navel-gazing

Gazette launches Business Observer tomorrow

The Gazette tomorrow launches a new feature page in its business section called FP Comment Business Observer, a weekly page on Thursdays that will focus on commentary and analysis about the business world.

It will include articles from Gazette staff (including a column by tech columnist Roberto Rocha), academics and businesspeople, as well as some freelance writers like myself:

Business Observer preview

Always fun to get my name in the paper.

The first article by me to appear will deal with independent web video producers and the mainstream media (particularly television) producers who wish to exploit them.

Stay tuned.