Category Archives: On the Net

| Media, Montreal, On the Net, Technology

Gazette, Devoir newspaper archives online

Gazette Stanley Cup 1986

The Gazette, May 26, 1986

Mike Rivest points out that archives of The Gazette, from 1878 to 1986, are now available for searching on Google News’s newspaper archive.

For those unfamiliar with the archive, it scans countless newspaper pages, subjects them to optical character recognition, and encodes it all in a vast database. From there, you can search for stuff and it’ll take you right to the newspaper page in question, highlighting the appropriate text.

The system isn’t perfect. Some dates are wrong, some newspapers mislabelled. And the text you’re looking for might have gotten garbled up in the OCR machine.

And not every issue is there, so you might get disappointed if you’re looking for a particular issue or article.

But considering the number of requests daily to The Gazette about accessing old newspaper archives, I’m sure this will come in handy to many. (Kristian Gravenor just creamed his pants, for one)

Some quick searching has found me the Habs’ 1986 Stanley Cup win (above), and these two below:

The Gazette, Oct. 15, 1966: Metro opens, but it's not the main story of the day.

The Gazette, July 21, 1969: Something about a ladder?

There’s also all 172 pages of the bicentennial edition in 1978.

Le Devoir’s archives are also online, though Google’s newspaper search algorithm seeks out block of what it considers legible text, so what comes out are those bits of English that have been published in the newspaper.

Also available are archives from:

Non-Quebec papers include the Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen.

Happy hunting. (Just remember, if you’re searching for something significant, that newspapers are yesterday’s news, so you have to search for the day after.)

| Montreal, On the Net

Happy 150th, Victoria

Victoria Bridge

Thursday was the 150th anniversary of the first train crossing the Victoria Bridge. I took the opportunity to travel on it by train during what turned out to be a nice sunset.

The Gazette’s Andy Riga has a package of stories about the bridge, including a proposal to add light rail lines to its hangers (replacing the single lanes on each side being used by cars). I asked local rail expert Marc Dufour about that idea as we crossed the bridge, and he said it was silly, because there are already rail tracks on the bridge being used by commuter trains.

More Victoria links are on Riga’s blog.

| Media, Video

FPJQ conference video: behold the elegance

Projet J has uploaded two videos shot at the conference of the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec held last month. The first video (above) asks the members present about the future of journalism, and has brief interviews with culture minister Christine St-Pierre and Dominique Payette, who will be doing a study into the status of media in Quebec.

The second video (below) focuses on the contested election for FPJQ president, eventually won by Le Devoir’s Brian Myles.

Perhaps I’m missing the big picture here, but the sight of journalists wining and dining at a fancy dinner while complaining about how poor they are doesn’t quite jive with me.

Neither does the B52s soundtrack.

| Media, Video

The entirely unbiased history of the Journal de Québec lockout

The Syndicat Canadien de la fonction public publique (Canadian Union of Public Employees) has put together a 23-minute video (in French and with English subtitles) about the 15-month lockout of editorial employees (and subsequent strike by press workers) at the Journal de Québec in 2007 and 2008.

As you can imagine, being a union-produced video, it’s hardly detached from the situation and presents a somewhat distorted view. There are no interviews with Quebecor or Journal management (who knows if the SCFP even tried). Talk of the deal that was eventually reached talks of it being a huge victory for the workers, while in reality it was more of a reasonable compromise between the two sides’ demands.

Even though the labour disruption ended in the summer of 2008, the saga is far from over. The union is appealing a court decision that nullified a labour board ruling that the Journal used scabs as subcontractors during the lockout. There’s also a fight over Quebecor Media wanting to add additional Journal de Québec journalists to the National Assembly to make up for the Journal de Montréal journalists currently being locked out.

Looking back at the conflict also serves as a comparison with the current situation at the Journal de Montréal (and Le Réveil, whose 26 locked-out workers want to go back to the table). The chasm between workers and employer in Montreal is even larger than it was in Quebec, although many of the issues are the same.

But the union, and the documentary, are right about one big thing: The MédiaMatinQuébec experiment changed the face of labour disruptions involving journalists, and is serving as a template. The template couldn’t be entirely replicated by the STIJM in Montreal (Montreal already has two free newspapers – one owned by Quebecor – and the territory is larger than Quebec City), but the Rue Frontenac website might not have happened were it not for MMQ.

Unfortunately for the union members, Quebecor also learned from the Journal de Québec lockout. It learned how to get around anti-scab laws, and made sure its Agence QMI was setup so it could take news from other sources and reproduce them in the Journal de Montréal.

If the Journal de Montréal workers end up with a deal similar to what the Journal de Québec workers got, that will probably also be hailed as a huge victory for the union. But who knows how long it will be until that happens. Both Quebecor and the STIJM are prepared for the long haul.

Le Trente also has some discussion about the SCFP’s video.

| Blogosphere, Montreal, On the Net

Burgermongers

The Gazette’s casual dining critic Sarah Musgrave interviews Chris (Zeke) Hand (formerly of the Zeke’s Gallery craziness) and Ed Hawco (of Blork Blog) about their current project, the Montreal Burger Report, a radio show for CKUT, audio podcast and blog, all about reviewing local restaurants for their burgers.

The article, which was apparently written from the mythical “casual dining headquarters”, includes an absolutely adorable picture of Hand taken by Hawco.

You can subscribe to the Montreal Burger Report podcast here.

| Montreal, Sports, Video

The Expos Five Years Later

Elias Makos, who used to work in the Expos’ marketing department before the franchise moved in 2004, moderated a panel at the recent sports journalism workshop at Concordia University looking at Montreal’s major-league baseball team.

And, fortunately for us, his work teaching Concordia students to handle video has come in handy here, and the entire hour-long discussion is available on YouTube:

It has more to do with the Expos and sports business than journalism, but it’s still a fascinating look at what went wrong with this franchise from people who know.

The panel includes:

Jack Todd, of course, also has some thoughts on the matter, which he shared in a column. His talk at the conference is recorded audio-only here, though there’s a lot of noise.

| Montreal, Sports, Video

Concordia’s baseball team

Concordia journalism students François Nadeau and Steven Myers put together this short video documentary with the help of CUTV. It features some interviews with members of Concordia’s baseball team.

(See Part 2)

Concordia baseball has been trying for years to get the kind of recognition that high-profile sports like football and hockey get, though they say the university has been immensely supportive of their efforts.

Insert your own joke about Jeffrey Loria and the Expos here.

UPDATE: I should mention the team is going to the national championships. Let’s hope Rick Monday isn’t there.

UPDATE (Oct. 26): They won! National champions! W00t!

| Montreal, Video

Traffic problem: solved.

Matt Forsythe points out this video from the NFB’s archives, talking to Mayor Jean Drapeau about plans to improve traffic in the city, which has by now grown so much it’s on the other side of the mountain.

Among the plans discussed are, of course, the widening of thoroughfares like Dorchester Blvd. and Henri-Bourassa Blvd. (but don’t worry, they’ll still have sidewalks) and the creation of a new elevated expressway on the north side of the island, which will be totally awesome and maintain our status as Canada’s largest city.

Oh 1955…

(That sound you’re hearing right now is Richard Bergeron having a stroke.)

| TV, Video

The end of Call-TV

It’s official: the TQS disaster known as Call-TV won’t be returning to the airwaves.

The late-night infomercial, which I described as unregulated gambling when it debuted this summer, was a headache for the cash-starved network. The charges to people’s phone bills caused many complaints, and even led to a decision against it by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council on the same day they renamed the network to V. TQS-V’s response was to disown the show, which is produced out of Austria along with similar shows for other countries, mostly in Europe.

Those of you who hunger for such television can, Richard Therrien points out, still watch Play TV Canada, which airs late at night on CIII Global Toronto and CHEK Victoria. For twice the price.

| Media, Montreal, Video

Melnick Underground

Mitch Melnick, the afternoon host on the Team 990, has begun his own web video show online called Melnick Underground. The first episode was filmed and posted on Saturday. Discussions include music and, of course, the Habs.

The show, which is shot at Hurley’s pub and Melnick stresses has absolutely nothing to do with the radio station, has a very “underground” feel to it (read: the sound, lighting and graphics are all awful), but it’s the content that matters, and it remains to be seen if it can gain a following.

I’m noticing a trend developing where journalists and other media personalities try going out on their own online. In some cases, like Peter Anthony Holder or Jean-Michel Vanasse, it happens after they get fired. But some who are still comfortable in their current jobs are also considering similar moves because they feel they’re not getting something from their current employer (either editorial freedom, exposure or money).

I welcome these kinds of efforts, and hope Melnick finds an audience for his show. In that light, some constructive suggestions:

  1. Your intro is 68 seconds long. Way too long. Like 63 seconds too long.
  2. We can live with the imperfect lighting, but the sound needs to be better. You got microphones on the table, just make sure you talk into them, especially when you’re at a bar with loud music playing.

Any other remarks from the peanut gallery?

| Opinion, TV, Video

Oh Jean-Luc, lighten up

As part of the upcoming municipal elections all across Quebec on Nov. 1, the Directeur général des élections du Québec decided to pay an advertising agency to come up with a campaign to get people to vote.

Cossette, the agency in question, came up with this parody of a news/opinion TV talk show with an over-the-top anchor, which it released on YouTube (and fed to Dominic Arpin) hoping for it to go viral.

The video is well done and pretty funny, and most who see it will immediately think of former TQS anchor Jean-Luc Mongrain, who now has a show on all-news network LCN. Probably for that reason more than any other, it went crazy viral, with over 30,000 views in under four days.

The reaction from Mongrain and LCN’s owner TVA when they saw the video was surprising: they’re furious. Mongrain took the ad’s creator to task on his show for not letting him know ahead of time about the parody. TVA sent a letter to the DGEQ demanding that the video be taken down because it sullies his reputation.

Here’s the thing: Nowhere in the video are the words “LCN” or “Mongrain”. The show is called “Chouinard en direct” for the fictional network “RDN” (a mix of “RDI” and “LCN”). The set isn’t the same, the graphics aren’t the same, and the host doesn’t look like Mongrain. The only thing that ties the video to Mongrain is the theatrical way the actor acts and gestures.

TVA’s complaint is that the video might negatively affect Mongrain’s reputation. Setting aside for a second whether his existing reputation could be dirtied by portraying him as an over-the-top drama queen, there’s an inherent contradiction in this logic. Either this video is aimed directly at Mongrain because his style is mimiced so exactly, or his reputation is taking a hit because they’re portraying him as something he isn’t.

I can see TVA’s point that this is a government-funded ad for an election, and so should take great pains to be as non-partisan as possible. But despite TVA’s objections, I can’t see how this could put Mongrain in a “delicate situation” in the run-up to the election.

TVA and Mongrain saw a guy acting crazy on TV, and concluded it damages their reputation. That only works if you already know that Mongrain is crazy. And if you already know that, how is his reputation affected by this video?

Judging from the comments on Mongrain’s blog, it would seem he’s not getting that much support playing the victim here.

Jean-Luc, this video isn’t an over-the-top caricature of a crazy TV news man. You are. Lighten up and learn to laugh at yourself.

UPDATE: The DGEQ has refused TVA’s request to take the video down and cancel the ad campaign.

| Media, Technology, Video

Relive the PodCamp Montreal experience

Former TQS tech reporter Jean-Michel Vanasse kicks off the PodCamp Montreal conference with a talk on new media

Former TQS tech reporter Jean-Michel Vanasse kicks off the PodCamp Montreal conference with a talk on new media

On Sept. 19-20 I attended the PodCamp Montreal conference, and a smattering of the 40 seminars given there. Fortunately, bring a technology conference a lot of it was recorded, twittered, photographed (some by me) or otherwise saved. So for those who missed it, I’ve collected some resources below. Some are videos from the UStream feeds that were setup in two of the four rooms. A few are my own videos taken through the iSight camera on my laptop. And others are blog posts or posted slides from the presentations.

Continue reading →

| Opinion, TV, Video

CKX, the TV station nobody wanted

The final moments of CKX-TV (the complete newscast starts here).

The news came suddenly: Bluepoint Investment Corporation said on Thursday that it would back out of a deal to buy CKX-TV in Brandon, Man., from CTV. CTV, which had threatened the station with closure if it couldn’t find a buyer, didn’t waste any time, announcing that Friday’s newscast would be its last and the station would go off the air at 7 p.m. All 39 employees are now unemployed, and the community of Brandon is left without a local commercial television station (only the cable community channel, and a community station in nearby Neepawa). While the Brandon Sun still provides reporting for the community, television news for the entire province of Manitoba now originates from Winnipeg.

The news is devastating and humiliating for CKX, which had been a pawn in a bad-faith sarcastic deal negotiated by way of newspaper advertisement between CTV and Shaw. The latter said it would buy the station and two others from CTV for $1 to convince the CRTC that local television did indeed have a profitable future. Then, when Shaw took a look at the stations, it decided it wasn’t such a good investment after all.

In July, the station’s hopes were raised again when Bluepoint came on the scene, with what seemed like a more serious offer (though for the same nominal amount of $1). But Bluepoint has come to the same realization as Shaw: small-market TV stations aren’t worth it.

Bluepoint’s official excuse is that they couldn’t get carriage guarantees from satellite companies, and since most people in the area get their TV that way, they desperately needed that. I’ll leave it as an exercise for readers to determine how much of the decision was satellite coverage and how much was Bluepoint realizing the true economics of conventional TV.

So CKX is off the air, its website replaced with a thank you message and a link to CTV’s “Local TV Matters” site (as if a message to everyone that more stations will fall unless local TV is saved). CTV had two stories on the closure, both of which mention the larger issue of conventional television and fee-for-carriage.

For those keeping score, here’s how the CTV and Canwest stations threatened with closure this year stand:

That’s three stations sold, two kept running and three shut down.

You may not agree with fee for carriage, or that the conventional television model is even broken, but small-market stations are closing down, and nobody is moving in to even rescue them from the trash heap.

CKX logo