Category Archives: Opinion

| Blogosphere, Media, Montreal, Opinion

Bilingualism isn’t a threat to Quebec

Chris DeWolf emailed me about this blog post on the two solitudes from Voir’s François Parenteau. In it, he argues that anglos are zombies (then he argues that we’re not zombies) and that we’re coming to get francophones so we can enslave them, or other such nonsense:

Et c’est vrai aussi que, d’un point de vue strictement francophone, les anglophones sont des morts-vivants. Ils sont vivants, en ce sens qu’ils marchent, travaillent, mangent, dorment, votent et font des enfants. Mais comme ils font tout ça en anglais, ils sont morts au regard de la communauté francophone. Ils ne créeront jamais rien en français. Ils ne consommeront aucun produit culturel en français. Ils ne retireront rien et n’amèneront rien à la sphère culturelle francophone. Ils la “compétitionnent” même avec la leur propre, indépendante, nourrie à même la culture majoritaire de ce zombie-land qu’est l’Amérique du Nord. Et pire encore, on le sait, ils transforment automatiquement en zombie les francophones avec qui ils entrent en contact. Il n’y a qu’à voir les communautés francophones hors-Québec pour s’en rendre compte.

My problem isn’t that he’s paranoid, or that he spews vitriolic hatred and xenophobia, painting hundreds of millions of people with one gigantic brush. My problem is how familiar this kind of language is, leading people to believe that such opinions are valid.

I wonder if I should even point out that the entire premise for the post is wrong. He says census data shows that French is the mother tongue of less than 50% of Montrealers (which is true), and that this is because of an increase in the number of English speakers. A quick look at the census data shows that almost all the change in percentages comes because of an increase in immigration and the number of allophones (who speak neither language at home). What’s more, a majority of these immigrants to Quebec are choosing French over English for the first time.

Of course, facts are irrelevant. What matters is what’s in his gut. And the irrational fear is there. Just like Americans think they’re going to get swarmed by illegal Mexican immigrants and have to speak Spanish, people like Parenteau think there’s an organized anglo conspiracy to rid Quebec of the French language, and that the percentage of francophones, now around 80% province-wide, will drop to zero.

I’m not suggesting that being surrounded by a population 50 times your size doesn’t put a melting pot pressure. It does, though nowhere near as big as alarmists make it out to be. And the shrinking population of francophones outside Quebec should be of concern as well to anyone who wants this country to promote bilingualism.

But it’s not equivalent to South African apartheid, as one commenter (who wants everyone to know he has a bachelor’s degree) suggested.

Facebook and YouTube have to change

Parenteau points to the English-only Facebook as an example of the assimilation of francophones into anglophonia. I think it’s annoying that Facebook is only now considering creating versions of itself in other languages. YouTube, which launched an English-only Canadian site despite already having translated versions, is even moreso.

But the blame for this should rest on Facebook and YouTube, not anglophones in general. And the suggestion that francophones should boycott these sites (yeah, good luck with that) is exactly how it should be dealt with.

Blaming anglos doesn’t solve anything

Even if we ignore all of that, the fact remains that Parenteau and company don’t put forward any serious solutions for the problem of “zombies” eating their brains. Some suggest sovereignty, which wouldn’t stop Quebecers from using Facebook, nor would it make French more common elsewhere in Canada. Restrictive legislation like Bill 101 just makes companies look for loopholes, which is why Momma’s Pizza House is now Maison de Pizza Maman but Burger King is still Burger King. Boycotts and popular campaigns don’t work.

And most importantly, blaming all us anglos for the problem and calling us names won’t do a thing for the cause. It’s not going to make us all run away to Toronto or start speaking French. It’s just going to get us riled up and start writing blog posts.

But I’m not going to stoop to François Parenteau’s level. I’m not going to pretend like he represents the majority of francophones. I know better than to suggest that 80% of Quebec’s population are ignorant xenophobes who want to rid the world of everyone who isn’t like them.

Why aren’t we happy with bilingualism?

Montreal is the most bilingual city in North America. It’s a place where it’s not uncommon to find people switching languages in mid-sentence. But rather than embrace that, the two solitudes are at each other’s throats. Yes, that means we have some unilingual anglophones, but they represent less than 5% of the population. Is this really the end of the world? The alien invasion? The apocalypse?

We should be celebrating the fact that we can speak two languages here. We should be promoting it as an economic strength. Instead, we have people like François Parenteau who believe refusing to speak another language makes him a better person.

| Montreal, Opinion, TV

HDTV Networks: Canadian TV on the super-cheap

UPDATE: DE-NIED!

A company nobody’s ever heard of is giddy over the CRTC’s decision today to hear its application for a new national high-definition television network broadcasting over the air in Canada’s eight largest markets, including Montreal.

HDTV Networks Inc., a company owned by John I. Bitove, creator of the Toronto Raptors and president of the Toronto 2008 Olympic bid, is proposing to setup a network based out of Vancouver, with what are essentially retransmitting stations in the following cities:

  • Edmonton
  • Calgary
  • Winnipeg
  • Toronto
  • Ottawa
  • Montreal
  • Halifax

All the transmitters will be digital over-the-air HD, and the programming will be all HD all the time.

(The network is not to be confused with U.S.-based HDNet, which has the same all-HD gimmick but does not broadcast over the air.)

But what’s really unique about this application isn’t the fact that it’s HD. It’s the fact that this would be the first national over-the-air broadcaster without any local programming.

HDTV’s plans are to have a national broadcast centre out of Vancouver, with seven local studios in the other seven cities. The smaller studios will be 2,000 square feet, which is about the size of a small family apartment.

But unlike Global TV’s plan to have “virtual sets” with local news and local anchors, the national news program will rotate among the local anchors. They have plans for “no locally-oriented programming, aside from possible segments of local news nested within a national news program.”

They want to be licensed as a national network, much like Global TV in Quebec is licensed as a regional network. As a result, they would take no local advertising and would provide satellite providers with only two feeds (one for each coast), much like specialty channels.

Proposed schedule

HDTV’s proposed schedule will broadcast 18 hours a day of regular content, which includes 60% CanCon during the day and 50% during prime-time (6pm to midnight). This is consistent with CRTC minimums for broadcast channels.

Their 13 hours a week of original programming will include the following:

  • “Live @XM,” a weekly 1-hour video version of a radio show on XM (Bitove’s Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings owns XM Radio Canada)
  • “Your Canada News Roundtable,” a weeknight 6pm 1-hour newscast in which panellists will editorialize about the news. Will also include “i-news” or “viewer-generated content” (more on that below)
  • “The World Show,” a weeknight 11pm 1-hour satirical news program, similar to The Daily Show or This Hour Has 22 Minutes
  • A Canadian documentary (1 hour per week), such as “Day in the Life of Canada,” in which videographers record … uhh, life …
  • A Canadian variety show (1 hour per week)

The rest of the week will be split between U.S. programming (10 hours per week) and programming from other countries like the U.K. and Australia (38.5 hours per week).

This part is interesting. With Global, CTV and Global’s CH network gobbling up Canadian rates to U.S. prime-time shows, HDTV was left with either getting third/fourth-rate U.S. shows or coming up with another option. They are looking at importing content from overseas, which would be cheaper and easier, not to mention desirable for those of us who have so little exposure to such programming.

Budget

Revenue is expected to come from national advertising (they won’t have local advertising since they don’t have local programming), as well as some infomercials, for a total that slowly rises to $100-200 million per year by the end of the 7-year plan.

Expenses will mainly be in Canadian programming, creeping up slowly to about $100 million per year, divided as follows:

  • News, information and documentary programming: 48%
  • Music, comedy, drama, variety: 15%
  • Non-Canadian programming: 37%

Viewer-generated content

Although the application says it will represent “a small portion” or “a minute portion” of their overall program schedule, the idea of viewer-generated content comes up quite a bit in the application, as “a fresh and cost-effective alternative to traditional network programming”:

HDTV Networks will also suggest and encourage Canadians to supply and feed content for news and current affairs, much of it with Internet-based video services.

Part of this is good. They’re championing the case for “providing an opportunity for the new wave of Canadian indie low-budget filmmakers,” giving the unpublished a chance to be seen. The application goes on about how CanWest/Global and CTVglobemedia are ever-expanding, ever-consolidating media empires, and that having a new, independent network will revitalize the media landscape.

On the other hand, looking at the network’s schedule it seems clear that they want to lean on cheap programming, which might cause them to try to exploit naive amateur content producers (like one-hit-wonder YouTube stars) and broadcast their content without any compensation.

Their “news” shows are perfect examples. While they produce a study that shows young viewers prefer engaging, funny and thoughtful over behind-the-desk boring hard news, HDTV Networks seems to take this as an excuse to dramatically downscale its news department:

We estimate that our news division will employ approximately two dozen people

Two dozen people for a national broadcast television network. That’s barely enough people to run a daily half-hour local newscast.

The other problem with user-generated content is that it’s hardly HD-ready. In fact, most of it isn’t even good enough for standard-definition TV. Their response to this was that they have the ability to “up-convert” to HD, which means they’ll either make it small on the screen or stretch it, and either way it’s going to look pretty bad.

Regional transmitters

City Channel (digital) ERP
Vancouver 18 300W
Calgary 25 10,000W
Edmonton 50 100,000W
Winnipeg 40 15,000W
Toronto 26* 160W
Ottawa 50 9,500W
Montreal 15 450W
Halifax 14 15,000W

*The application presents this as a temporary channel, to be used until Toronto stations migrate to digital TV at which point a more permanent home would be found.

The Montreal transmitter would be on a CBC-owned tower southeast of Brossard, which used to broadcast CBC Radio One on 940 AM. (They originally wanted space on the CBC-owned tower atop Mount Royal that just about everything else transmits from, but they were denied permission.)

The 450 watts proposed for the transmitter is painfully low for over-the-air reception. So low, in fact, that according to their own coverage map residents of the West Island would get interference from TVA’s CHOT station in Hull, which also has a license for digital channel 15. CFCF-12, by comparison, has an ERP of 316,000W, and is well received across the metropolitan region. Global’s CKMI, on Channel 46, uses 33,000W, and CBC’s CBMT on Channel 6 uses 100,000W.

What they really want

So if they’re so keen on being over-the-air (after all, it would be much easier and cheaper to just get approval as a digital specialty channel), why set up such low-power transmitters and have no local programming?

A skeptic (and I’ve occasionally been accused of being one) might suggest it has something to do with the preferential treatment the CRTC gives local broadcast stations in cable and satellite channel lineups. Local cable companies are required not only to carry local broadcast stations, but they’re required to have them as part of their basic lineup, and keep them low on the dial. (This usually isn’t a problem, since the cable companies currently don’t have to pay the broadcasters to carry their stations.)

Global TV, which has transmitters in Montreal, Quebec City and Sherbrooke, used this when it setup a low-power transmitter in Montreal and secured the coveted Channel 3 slot on analog cable here.

HDTV Networks have made it clear that they want to take advantage of this, and will provide a “down-converted” standard-definition signal to cable and satellite operators.

Conclusion

The prospect of another national television network is exciting. Even if it’s low-budget, relying more on independent producers than big production companies, it’s a net positive for media here. (And so long as these independent producers are properly compensated for their work, this is to be encouraged.)

But the privilege of using our airwaves to broadcast television signals comes with a price: Broadcasters have to provide local news and information programming, not just copy content from elsewhere and make money off the advertising revenue.

As it stands currently, HDTV’s programming would make a great digital specialty channel. But not a national over-the-air broadcaster in our eight largest markets. And since the number of people who own HDTV sets but don’t have cable or satellite service is insignificant, I think that’s the way they should go.

HDTV Networks’ full proposal (ZIP file of PDF documents) will be discussed by the CRTC on Feb. 11, 2008. The deadline for comments is Jan. 17.

Also on the docket, competing for an HD license in Toronto (Channel 21, 9,000W) is an outfit called YES TV. It seems even more based on user-generated content, specifically from young people of high school and college age. The proposed broadcast schedule looks more like that of a college radio station, and many parts of the original application were incomplete (leading to a long response to the commission’s initial questions). But if they can pull it off, it sounds like an interesting project.

YES TV’s full proposal (ZIP file of PDF documents) will be discussed by the CRTC on Feb. 11, 2008. The deadline for comments is Jan. 17.

| Opinion, TV

Car-wreck TV

Car accident on live TV (via Le blogue Canoë)This video is a clip of what would otherwise be a very boring unnecessarily-live stand-up about an intersection that is apparently prone to car accidents, except a collision occurs while they’re live. Talk about great timing.But what interests me isn’t the crazy coincidence, it’s the way the station acted about it.

The reporter, to his credit, quickly stops his reporting and goes to check up on the drivers of the two vehicles, who emerge without major injuries.

The station and its two anchors, meanwhile, instead of switching to another story and coming back to this one later, decide to ad-lib for a full minute telling us everything we could very obviously see for ourselves, in the most patronizingly condescending way imaginable:

Fortunately Ben, it looks like they’re ok. We’ve got the one person in the back pickup truck there, got out, and the person is moving in the van there and getting out.

The door’s opening, yes.

The door’s opening, so they look like they’re ok.

Live TV.

Live TV, yeah.

I don’t know if that’s a condition of the intersection like Ben was talking about, or sometimes people get distracted by the live shot and all the activity going on there. Both the drivers have gotten out of their vehicles. Again, the driver in the left hand black pickup truck there got out immediately. He’s walked out of frame. The driver, there you see in the red T-shirt has gotten out and is flexing his leg, he looks like he’s OK too. Don’t think any other vehicles are involved although there was one up ahead they’re thinking that the black pickup truck just missed.

That shakes you up. People are shook up and they’ll be a little sore tomorrow I’m sure.

It was a car accident. Not a bombing.

UPDATE (Dec. 12): Cartoons say things better than long rant posts sometimes.

| In the news, Opinion

We can’t accomodate freedom

Leaders of the FTQ and CSN told the Bouchard-Taylor commission that workers in Quebec should be forbidden from wearing anything that indicates what religion they are.

So I guess that means no more crucifix necklaces.

The article (I’m guessing it’s more their position) is a bit confusing, later going on about how they just don’t want employers to have to change any rules about safety or uniform codes in order to accomodate religious minorities.

It’s odd to hear about a trade union arguing for restricting workers’ rights, but then again these hearings are creating a lot of crazy ideas.

So when does the witchhunt begin for determining what constitutes a religious symbol? Does a black top hat make you Jewish? Does wearing a loose-fitting dress make you Muslim? Does a spaghetti-strap top make you a Pastafarian?

| Business, Canadiens, Montreal, Opinion

Habs want money for bricks

Habs Centennial Plaza bricks

The Montreal Canadiens, preparing to celebrate their 100th birthday, are redeveloping an area outside the Bell Centre, calling it “Centennial Plaza,” adding some statues and selling bricks.

The bricks, a seemingly a propos metaphor for the team currently (overpriced dead weight that people step on, defined only by the stubbornly unending support by Montreal hockey fans), are being sold at between $175 and $800 apiece (depending on size and location) to raise money for … uhh … the Montreal Canadiens. (With “a portion of the proceeds” going to the Canadiens Alumni Association.)

Some might call it a transparent money grab, but the hard-core fans will eat it up. After all, it’s a chance to be a part of Canadiens history and have your name be forever etched on a brick that you own, on the walkway to the greatest hockey arena in the world.
Provided, of course, your definition of “you own” is “remains the sole property of the Club de hockey Canadien, Inc.” and your definition of “forever” doesn’t last longer than five years.

The terms and conditions of the sale provide you no right to ownership, gives complete veto power to the club over the text you use, makes absolutely no guarantee to keep the plaza beyond 2013, and for that matter doesn’t even guarantee you that they’ll build it where they say they will.

I also note that the website is entirely silent about any obligation to maintain your brick, even for those five years. So if someone sticks gum in it, or scratches it, or takes a jackhammer to it, it’s entirely unclear who will pay the bill to have it replaced.

But hey, who am I to stand between them and your money?

| Media, Opinion

Advertiser pressure on the media is subtle

The blogosphere is abuzz with the story of Jeff Gerstmann, who was fired from GameSpot after a negative review of an advertiser’s video game. The company that owns GameSpot insists that this was not the reason for his firing, but neither side will comment on the real reason, hiding behind laws that apparently prevent that.

Closer to home, La Presse chief editorialist André Pratte paid a visit to Francs-Tireurs this week (Part 1 of the interview deals with his views on sovereignty in case you’re interested). In it, he says there’s no “red phone” from the bosses to tell him what to write. However, the paper has an editorial viewpoint, and its opinions follow that.

Over the years, Big Media learned that it’s in their best interest to separate advertising from editorial content. Otherwise, readers wouldn’t trust them and would move on to competing papers.

But while many still follow that mantra officially, various methods have come up for advertisers to influence the editorial process that news media have accepted don’t cross the line:

  • Advertising features: Popular in newspapers, these are advertisements that have layouts that make them look like real newspaper articles. Headlines, bylines, photo captions. Only the tiny word “advertisement” (or in some cases confusing terms like “marketing feature” or “sponsored feature” or “advertising section”) at the top tells you that the content has been paid for. Some newspapers require that such sections use fonts that are clearly different from the editorial content, others don’t.
  • Press releases as news: Media outlets subscribe to press releases from Canada NewsWire and others as if they were wire services. In many cases, that’s how they find out about stories. When you read about that new medical breakthrough, or that survey, or damning statement from a lobby group, chances are the news outlet got that information through a press release. Because groups have to pay to have their releases distributed, it gives an air of authority to the statement. It also discriminates against poor, less organized groups to find your news in this fashion. Issues that people don’t want to (or can’t) pay hundreds of dollars to get in the hands of journalists don’t get reported.
  • Sponsored, but “hands off” coverage: This is what special sections are all about. Companies offer to place advertisements around articles about a specific subject. They make no demands concerning the content of those articles. This is why you see special sections on big-budget things like home renovation, travel, cars, business issues, fashion, but no special sections on world hunger. In smaller publications, this quid pro quo can cross the line even further. Many small businesses actually think they can demand articles be written about them in exchange for advertising.
  • Free gifts: Actual gifts are supposed to be strictly limited. But all sorts of exceptions exist: Free copies of books are much more likely to be evaluated, underpaid journalists are likely to accept a bribe of free food in exchange for attending a press conference or corporate event, and then much more likely to write about them.
  • Self-censorship: There don’t have to be official policies against pissing off big advertisers or owners, but journalists aren’t stupid. Many won’t take the chance if they can avoid it. They write good stories and gloss over bad ones. Meanwhile, behind the scenes they rant about how horrible the company is to fellow journalists, in a way they would never do in print or in public.
  • Finding an excuse: GameSpot said their firing decision was based on an internal review and not on a game company/advertiser’s complaints. That actually sounds entirely plausible. Nobody’s a model employee, and it’s usually fairly easy to find something about an undesirable that’s grounds for dismissal. Unless they’re part of a powerful union, you can fire them and have a ready-made excuse for their lawyer or the media. It also has the advantage of keeping other employees in line (see “self-censorship” above).
  • Buddy-buddy at the top levels: As Big Media get huge, and their advertisers too, big corporate bosses find themselves meeting socially often. Threats turn into favours, and bribes turn into unwritten mutual agreements.
  • Yes men: Middle-management quickly learn that in order to succeed they have to agree with everything their higher-ups tell them. Self-criticism is shunned. Original ideas are ignored or stolen. Advancement is more about ass-kissing than talent and experience. Not rocking the boat is paramount.
  • Cross-promotion: Media properties do stories about other properties belonging to the same owner. A Gazette article about a Global TV show, a TVA documentary about the Journal de Montréal. The coverage itself may not be biased, but the reason behind it is.

When Pratte says there’s no red phone by his desk, I believe him. Big Media publishers and owners are simply too busy making money to care about micromanaging the day-to-day news decisions of their media properties. They have other people hired to do that. It’s very rare that an order comes from the very top that seriously affects journalistic integrity. And when it does, there’s usually a backlash.

So pressures become much more subtle. Advertising is the biggest source of revenue for almost any media operation. They know that it’s hard to exist without it. And so they justify the blurring of the line between editorial and advertising as a necessary evil to stay alive.

Some even call it “innovative.”

| Media, Montreal, On the Net, Opinion, Web design

Media websites all Flash, no accessibility

Last week, a group called AccessibilitéWeb released a report that evaluated major websites for accessibility to the disabled. The Gazette described it as “scathing” for its exposure of the very poor performance of certain websites.

Canadian government websites, unsurprisingly, rated very high.

The other end of the scale will come as no surprise for those who read this blog regularly:

Media websites scored the worst, with an average rating of 5.48.

Later, the article explains one of the reasons for this:

To François Aubin, an expert at usability and ergonomics firm Cognitive Group, the numbers are not surprising. He goes as far to say that half of websites aren’t even accessible to able-bodied people.

Many times the text is too small for normal standards and the information is badly organized, he said.

“There’s a big paradox in Web accessibility,” he said. “Sometimes you make sites accessible, but not for the everyman.” As an example, the city of Montreal created a good accessible version of its portal, but the regular site remains confusing for the layperson.

“You can follow all the technical norms, but it’s more important for people to find info they’re looking for,” Aubin said.

Their table listing the top 200 websites accessible to Quebecers gives some more details on how the sites ranked. Only government websites received their top rating.

Here’s how the mainstream Canadian media sites did:

Radio-Canada

  • Ranked: 27th (C or “good”)
  • Accessibility problems: An over-reliance on JavaScript, missing or redundant/useless ALT text, unnecessary Flash, text in images, and a fixed, graphical-based layout.
  • My pet peeve: They have plenty of audio and video clips online, but make it almost impossible to link to them directly, assuming trying to view them doesn’t crash my browser.

Cyberpresse

  • Ranked: 109th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Missing ALT text, links with the same text, tables used for layout, pop-up windows
  • My pet peeve: Archaic pixel-measured three-column layout. 275 links on the homepage is way too much. And is that MS Comic Sans as the photo caption font?

TQS

  • Ranked: 141st (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Over-reliance on Flash and JavaScript, broken links, missing ALT text, linkes with the same text, pop-up windows, tables used for layout
  • My pet peeve: The only thing worse than an 800-pixel fixed layout is a 1024-pixel fixed layout. Homepage is a mess, and almost completely unusable without its style sheet. Over 300 links on the homepage.

Canoe

  • Ranked: 146th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Navigation by JavaScript, broken links, too much Flash
  • My pet peeve: Videos that play without you asking them to, >300 links, 1024-pixel fixed-width messy layout similar to TQS, text is way too small.

CTV.ca

  • Ranked: 155th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Navigation by JavaScript, tables used or layout, very difficult to navigate without stylesheets, iframes, missing ALT text
  • My pet peeve: Links open in new window, lots of images, video requires Windows Media Player

Toronto Star

  • Ranked: 158th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Missing ALT text, tables used for layout, lots of JavaScript
  • My pet peeve: Fixed-pixel layout, bottom half of homepage is a complete mess, can’t make heads or tails without stylesheet

Global TV

  • Ranked: 169th (E or “very poor”)
  • Accessibility problems: Missing ALT text, tables used for layout
  • My pet peeve: Video plays (with audio) without permission, a lot of things that should be links aren’t

If you’re thinking this list is incomplete, you’re not the only one. Le Devoir and The Gazette are notably absent. The list is based on the top 200 websites in Quebec according to ComScore, which I guess is an unbiased enough criteria. But you’d think exceptions could be made. Tetesaclaques.tv and Heavy.com are on there. Do we really care about those more than two major media sources in Montreal?

The other problem I have with the survey is its methodology: It seems to rely on a quantitative measure of the number of errors in the code rather than putting someone in front of a computer and seeing how well they cope finding information with each site. They just ran an online accessibility checker they created on each site and summarized the results.

I can live with that, even though it provides an inaccurate accounting of how accessible each site really is, but I’m not going to pay $500 for each site’s report. The only people who are going to do that are the owners of the largest sites, who can scan the report and make some recommendations to their code lackeys like “we should have ALT text for all images” that they should already know.

They’re still not learning

Automatically-playing audio, distracting animation, overcrowded homepages and bad JavaScript links are problems that have existed since the dawn of the WWW in one form or another. It’s shocking that these problems still exist.

But as Patrick Tanguay points out, the people who evaluate websites look at the wow factor rather than the ability to find information you’re looking for. Winners of the Infopresse Boomerang prizes show this very obviously: They’re all Flash-based, very inaccessible, and turn navigation into a frustrating game rather than an intuitive process.

One of their grand prize winners, Montréal en 12 lieux, is a perfect example. It has a lot of great content. Videos, pictures, stories. It’s really cool. But it’s also unnecessarily difficult to navigate. One level of navigation actually involves chasing after pictures that are spinning around at variable speeds. I had to stop watching the videos at one point because the strain on my poor computer’s CPU and memory became too much to bear.

At some point, people are going to have to learn that “cool” and “good-looking” aren’t synonyms for “good” when dealing with web design. Craigslist and Google should have proven that by now.

UPDATE (Dec. 12): A defence of the Boomerangs (basically about how they’ve honoured non-Flash sites in the past, which is a rather silly argument), and an idea for a competing competition, decided by users. And Patrick responds to responses of his criticisms of the awards.

| Montreal, Opinion, Public transit

Family transit fares don’t make sense

St. Laurent’s Alan DeSousa wants the STM to introduce “family” fares, which would supposedly give group discounts if a household buys multiple transit passes. He says his borough offers family prices for leisure activities, and we need to get more cars off the road.

DeSousa isn’t specific about what he means by family fares. It could be discounts (or tax rebates) when buying monthly passes, or it could be discounts when travelling as a group.

Here’s the thing with the latter option:

  • Leisure activities tend to be done as families, because families spend their leisure time together. Public transit tends to be the opposite: Everyone headed in different directions at different times. How often do you board a bus with two or more members of your immediate family at the same time?
  • Even the most fervent public transit supporters will concede that family activities will almost always require use of a car, if only to transport all the food, diapers and other supplies they need to take with them.
  • How do you enforce such a thing? I’ve gone to Ottawa and travelled on their “family” fare with a female friend, pretending she was my wife. The drivers there don’t care, it’s not like they’re going to ask for a marriage certificate. So it really comes down to a group discount, usually for two adults and up to two or three children. And why should group discounts be limited to families?
  • Families travelling together is hardly the most pressing need environmentally. In fact, environmental policies encourage carpooling. What we need to get off the roads are people who drive alone to work during rush-hour, not the family carload heading to the amusement park.

The other option (giving families discounts for buying monthly passes) has its own problems:

  • We already get a federal tax break for buying transit passes.
  • Once again: Why is this treated differently from any other form of group discount? Certainly others, like offering a discount for someone who buys a transit pass for 12 consecutive months, would be more popular and more successful.
  • It increases paperwork, which benefits accountants and civil servants more than it does anyone else. This is especially true if families have to prove relationships before they can get the discount.
  • Unless more people start buying passes as a result, this would decrease revenue for the STM, requiring either more cash from the city, reduced services or higher fares for everyone else.
  • There’s no direct link between number of people in a household and ability to pay for public transit. There are plenty of poor people without families (indeed, for many of them that tends to be why they’re poor in the first place), and plenty of rich people with families (where mommy and daddy both have their cars and drive them to work, coming up with some flimsy excuse why they can’t take public transit).

It’s a gimmick, and I doubt it’s going to do anything to help public transit. Instead, more buses, lower fares and more investment in things like reserved bus lanes will bring people out of their cars. It’s boring, but it works.

| Business, In the news, Montreal, Opinion

Private security giving speeding tickets sounds like a bad idea

Playing the Bianca Leduc card with little shame, western off-island mayors want the Quebec government to give them the power to give private security firms the power to hand out tickets for moving violations (such as speeding). They say the SQ is insufficient at the job, partially because their officers are paid so damn much.

Currently, with two notable exceptions, only police officers (municipal police, SQ or otherwise) can hand out legally-enforceable tickets to people. The two exceptions are Stationnement de Montréal (the green onions), who hand out parking tickets (but cannot ticket motorists for moving violations like going through a red light or making a wrong turn), and private security inspectors who patrol the public transit system (like the inspectors AMT hires to check proof of purchase on commuter trains), who can ticket for failing to pay a fare or other minor violations. In neither case are the agents armed, and they cannot make arrests or otherwise forcibly confine citizens.

What the mayors want is a system more like we see in the U.S., in which private companies have a limited role in law enforcement, and their actions are under constant scrutiny (to the point of having video cameras record alleged infringements).

Only one mayor, Michel Kandyba of Pincourt, has stuck out as having reservations about the idea:

Pincourt Mayor Michel Kandyba said he doesn’t agree with the other mayors that it’s a good idea to create a new category of unarmed agents to issue tickets for moving violations. More SQ officers doing more Highway Code enforcement is the better way to go, he said.

“Just imagine all the things that could go wrong with unarmed officers, given the lack of respect people have for authority in Quebec,” he said. “Imagine someone unarmed, who is not a police officer, saying to you, ‘Hey, you’re speeding, I’m giving you a ticket.'”

I think his point is very important, not because I think people are going to pull guns on these unarmed enforcement agents, but because being a police officer is more than just putting on a uniform with a big belt. There’s a reason that SQ officers are paid more than these glorified bouncers that work for private security firms, and that reason makes them much more qualified to handle the high stress situations that will arise when you stop someone for speeding.

Another reason I have reservations about this idea is because of the inequities it creates. Cities with big budgets and rich property owners will be able to afford better security. And then what’s next? Their own private court system? Private hospitals? Will their citizens get a discount on tickets compared to visitors from out of town? 2-for-1 deals?

Maybe I’m just being paranoid and silly. But can SQ officers just be replaced on the roads of Quebec’s small towns with private security officers who are paid half as much?

| Blogosphere, Media, Navel-gazing, Opinion

Do bloggers have to fit the stereotype to be accepted?

In October, blogger Mario Asselin asked his readers to evaluate what makes a good journalist blog. He was researching an article that has just been published in Le Trente about Quebec’s journalist-bloggers. In it, he concludes there are only two who fit the proper definition: TVA’s Dominic Arpin (ironic since he’s since stopped blogging) and freelancer Nicolas Langelier.

Now, I’m not upset that he didn’t include yours truly in his über exclusive list (especially now since Michel Leblanc has my back). I’m used to being left out of the Quebec blogosphere as an anglophone (mostly because there’s an assumption that “Quebec” and “francophone Canadian” are one and the same). What bothers me more is the criteria used to distinguish a good blogger from a bad one.

It’s something I see a lot of. Because “blog” doesn’t have a very clear definition other than “website with entries displayed in reverse-chronological order,” people are making up their own definitions, putting additional restrictions on the term.

Among the restrictions Asselin and his readers seem poised to apply:

  1. Must have comments enabled for each post (and respond to those comments)
  2. Must be personal and talk about personal, behind-the-scenes issues
  3. Must produce original content (instead of aggregating the content of others)
  4. Must comment on other people’s blogs and otherwise have a presence outside their blog, like going to YULblog meetings
  5. Must update at regular intervals (at least one post a week)
  6. Must write about other bloggers (and especially competing bloggers)

Though all of these things sound great, are they all absolutely required in order to produce a good blog?

The Kate McDonnell’s Montreal City Weblog doesn’t have comments. Craig Silverman’s Regret the Error doesn’t discuss personal issues. Pierre-Léon Lalonde’s Un Taxi La Nuit has sometimes gone weeks without updates. The Gazette’s Habs Inside/Out is mostly aggregation of other people’s content (including that of The Gazette), and Stony Curtis is almost entirely just reposting stuff he’s found online.

Are these not blogs? Are their authors not bloggers?

Where do you draw the line between a “real” blogger and “fake” one?

| Business, Opinion

Bar owners want last call to be the beginning, not the end of drinking

Quebec bar owners, apparently miffed that they can only stay open until 3am, are proposing a change in the law that would allow them to stay open until 6am, serving non-alcoholic drinks and allowing people to detox before heading home. They expertly play the drunk-driving card to try and get public support on their side.

It sounds fantastic at first glance, but knowing how desperately bar owners depend on alcohol sales to stay afloat, I’m asking myself why they would want to stay open three hours later, incurring more expenses, but gaining no further revenue through their cash cow.

I think the immediate benefit from bars due to this legislation is that while it would prohibit selling alcohol after 3am, it would not stop the drinking of alcohol. So instead of packing it in and stumbling home as the chairs are put on the tables, “last call” would be the cue to buy a few more pitchers to get around the law.

But that’s just me being paranoid. I’m sure bar owners care about their customers’ well-being much more than the bottom line.

| Media, Montreal, Opinion

Transcontinental to talk about their black friends more

Transcontinental’s Serge Lemieux: Cultural communities Yay!!!!!111

Transcontinental, which owns 61 community weeklies in Quebec (22 of them on the island of Montreal), has decided to reverse its position banning brown people from its papers.

At least, that’s the best I could figure out from this editorial, which is running in all of Transcontinental’s newspapers this week. In it, the general manager of Transcontinental Newspaper Group, Serge Lemieux, has finally clued in to the idea that covering community issues involves covering cultural communities as well. Apparently it took the Bouchard-Taylor Commission into reasonable accommodation for him to figure this out.

The article doesn’t mention exactly what they’re going to do, only that they’ll be “celebrating cultural diversity.” In fact, it goes into more detail about what they’re not going to do, specifically that they won’t be publishing articles in “all the world’s languages” because they find it “undesirable” to do so. Instead, they’ll publish articles “exclusively in French or English (as the case may be)” (French versions of this editorial don’t mention articles in English).

We’ll see what they have in mind.

Speaking of nonsensical Serge Lemieux columns, this one, which in the same breath blames the media for oversensationalizing the issue of reasonable accommodation and says the commission looking into the issue has been a good idea, is also appearing in Transcontinental papers this week.

Ironically, both these articles serve to remind us, in case we didn’t know already, how little local journalism actually comes out of Transcontinental weeklies. A large amount of content is syndicated across many papers, their websites are identical and even most of their logos have the same design elements. All that’s left are some fluff stories about aging grandmothers, rewritten press releases about local events, and a couple of local issue stories written by overworked, underpaid journalists.

But I guess “celebrating cultural communities” will fix that.

| Montreal, Opinion, TV

New Fox 44 newscast still has kinks to iron out

Tonight was the premiere of WFFF Fox 44‘s ingeniously-named 10pm local newscast “Fox 44 News at Ten.”

Before today, the Burlington/Plattsburgh/other small Vermont/upstate New York towns nobody’s ever heard of market (ranked 92nd in the U.S.) had only two local newscasts, despite its five network stations (six if you count PBS twice):

The premiere was preceded with what I’d like to say was great fanfare, but was really just a brief by Associated Press and a story in the Burlington Free Press. I didn’t even hear about it until I noticed it was on.

The format is pretty basic. Two anchors, one male (Greg Navarro) one female (Lauren Maloney), a weatherman (Jason Caterina) whose accuracy has to be constantly reaffirmed through mentions of SkyTracker technology, and a sports guy (Kristian Read) who talks about local minor sports leagues and some major-league stuff out of Boston.

The newscast’s set is just as generic. The same red, blue, white and black colours of Fox News, graphics with blurred swooshes and 3D lines and all sorts of unnecessary noise. The set itself consists mainly of large flat-panel HDTV monitors that the anchors stand in front of.

The only particularly interesting thing about the show is the use of high-definition (WFFF-44 is available in HD on channel 43 over the air, or Videotron Illico channel 654). Anchor segments and even most (but not all) locally-produced reports are in HD format. (To demonstrate how much this matters to them above everything else, take a drink every time this story mentions that the program is in HD.)

The station hired 22 people to prepare the newscast, which is three less than what WVNY fired when it cancelled theirs.

The Free Press story notes that they’ve been preparing for the newscast for a month, even doing rehearsals. So when it came to actually airing the newscast, it should have been down to a science, right?

Wrong.

The premiere half-hour broadcast was riddled with technical glitches and timing flubs. Some of these are to be expected from a team that was just built from scratch, but the sheer number was kind of embarrassing, considering how important first impressions are. (My favourite was a reporter introducing a local business story by saying “It’s retail central in downtown Berlin.”)

Among some of the problems:

  • Dead air (shots would continue far longer than they were supposed to with no audio)
  • Sound cut-outs (one report was almost unintelligible)
  • Video cut-outs
  • Mid-sentence sound level changes
  • Overlapping audio feeds
  • Control room orders making it to air
  • Static image where video (of something else) should be
  • Jumping the gun on timing between segments
  • Music being played over anchors’ voices

These things are all forgivable and will no doubt get better as the show matures (though I’d argue that trying to run a local newscast with only 22 people is part of the problem). What annoyed me most though is how the anchors handled the situation. Rather than acknowledge their technical clutziness and relax, having some fun at their own expense, they put on fake smiles, telling bad pre-written fake-ad-libbed jokes. Hopefully it was just first-show jitters and that too will improve.

At the very least, the anchors have to start developing personalities. Maloney in particular has the same annoying mannerisms that other anchors feel makes them somehow communicate better: A head tilt any time she speaks, asudden lateral head-movement mid-sentence, followed by a nod at the end, as if to reaffirm what she just said. Words are overemphasized, and she has the same tone and expression for every kind of story, which sucks when she’s reporting on bad news or fatal accidents because her expression includes a slight smirk.

Editorially, the show was entirely forgettable. News stories focused on the fact that snow fell today, and that Christmas is coming up, and then a bunch of briefs. That’s all I can remember. No investigative journalism, no in-depth reports. Nothing that would make me want to watch this show on a regular basis, much less a compelling reason to switch from WCAX or WPTZ.

The team clearly hope that smoke and mirrors are going to get them viewers. Everything is either “team coverage” or “continuing coverage” (and includes the time-wasting giant graphic to remind you about that), which is kind of laughable considering how woefully understaffed they are.

They’re going to have to do better than a cookie-cutter format in HD if they want to be successful.

Fox 44 News at Ten airs at 10pm daily on WFFF Fox 44.

UPDATE (Dec. 4): The second episode was a bit better technically. Still some video and audio problems and still plenty of timing issues (a segment starting up half a second before the previous one has finished).

A couple of additional things I noticed this time around:

  1. They have segments that include video from across the country (I imagine from other Fox affiliates and Fox News). For some reason a lot of these are police videos.
  2. Republican presidential candidates are really milking this show, trying to get into the heads of New Hampshire primary voters.

UPDATE (Dec. 12): Vermont’s Seven Days has a short interview with General Manager Bill Sally and News Director Kathleen Harrington.

| Blogosphere, Media, Opinion

Was Paul Pritchard a freelance journalist?

Via J-Source comes this blog post from Frank Moher complaining that the big TV outlets paid big money to Paul Pritchard, the guy who shot the video of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski being Tasered at the Vancouver airport. Dziekanski later died from injuries he sustained during the incident, and that has prompted an investigation into Taser use by police.

Normally, paying for news is outright prohibited by journalistic ethics codes. The reason is simple: It encourages people to make news for profit rather than report on events for altruistic reasons.

The media’s response is that Pritchard was a freelance journalist, who sold his footage just like any freelance reporter would sell a story to a newspaper or magazine. He wasn’t directly involved in the incident, and he had no ulterior motive other than to expose what happened.

The ever-growing field of freelance journalism, where regular people are contracted and paid for individual stories rather than employed as a part-time or full-time journalist, provides for a certain loophole in these areas. Instead of paying a source for an interview, you can pay a “contributor” to discuss a topic with a news anchor, or pay a “columnist” for insights into insider politics or whatever else they might specialize in.

How do we separate the ethical from the unethical payola? And which side does Paul Pritchard fall on?

| Media, Opinion

There’s no such thing as a journalist

Radio-Canada’s Philippe Schnobb has a post about citizen journalism, in which he waxes rhetorically about whether “citizen journalists” can be trusted. It’s similar in scope to my recent post about the subject, but I think both are missing an important point that’s always bugged me when talking about journalism theory:

There’s no such thing as a journalist.

Unlike other professions, journalism has no certification board, no test to pass, no government regulation. There’s nothing to separate journalists from regular people in the law.

Certainly there are professional journalists, who make their living (or a large portion thereof) performing journalism (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), usually for a big media outlet. But there are also unprofessional journalists, amateur journalists, part-time journalists. Anyone can be a journalist just by telling a story to another person. And professional journalists can easily become non-journalists, by telling lies, introducing bias or keeping the truth from themselves.

There’s no such thing as a journalist, only people who do journalism.

I prefer to think of journalism as a verb rather than a personal attribute. You might not be a gossiper, but you can spread gossip. You might not be a snow-clearer, but you can clear snow.

When it comes down to it, the only differences between the guy on the news and you is psychological conditioning. They have the big media backing, the access to the airwaves, the professional training, the well-coiffed hair. Politicians pick up the phone when they call. Businesses respond to them when they run exposés. But they don’t have to (and, in fact, many times they don’t.)

So if there’s no real difference between professional journalists and regular people, why can’t we trust citizen journalists?

Because trust is earned, not given away. And even professional journalists (for the most part) can be trusted only so much as they’ve earned that trust.

Because trust translates into good PR and ratings (and really that’s the only reason), big media do their best to give the appearance of trustworthiness. They become members of organizations like the Quebec Press Council, they publish codes of ethics, they apologize for mistakes, they fire plagiarizers and liars, and they impose their own rules on their journalists to ensure that what they produce can be trusted.

Not all big media are successful at that. We have tabloid newspapers, the Fox News Channel, Rush Limbaugh and others who aren’t deserving of our trust. And thanks to media consolidation we have media companies where one outlet produces a one-sided piece glorifying another. There are advertorials, sneaky PR campaigns, rewritten press releases and a bunch of other trust-eroding developments in the media that are rightfully causing us to question them.

This is not to say, of course, that new media outlets are inherently not to be trusted. In fact, many of them are more deserving of our trust than traditional media, especially in niche areas where their journalists are more specialized and know what they’re talking about. I certainly trust Michael Geist to deliver copyright law-related news better than any major newspaper in Canada (even those that run his columns). He’s earned that trust through his reputation.

That reputation takes a long time to build, and it’s at zero when it comes to the anonymous or mostly-anonymous contributions of some forms of citizen journalism.

Elsewhere in the Quebec blogosphere: