Category Archives: Technology

| Business, Media, Technology

“Hyper-local” doesn’t mean anything

I just read another news story that quotes a media company using the term “hyper-local”.

Can someone explain to me what the heck this term is supposed to mean? I’ve looked far and wide over the Internet Googled for an explanation, and many of the “definitions” include words like “paradigm” that sound like they explain things but really don’t. In the end all I could find was that “hyper-local” meant “local news”. So why not just call it that? Why make up a new word for something that already exists and has been done for centuries?

Of course, the answer is it’s mostly marketingese, a way for newspaper companies to sound like they’re doing something new and exciting while they cut staff in their newsrooms.

Newspapers can no longer afford to each have their own foreign bureaus. So they concentrate their reporters locally, covering news that they can’t get from wire services. Maybe they’ll have one writer in the state/province or national capital, one on special assignment and one travelling with the local sports team. The rest comes from services like Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse who provide truckloads of content for a hefty annual fee.

(TV is even worse, with a handful of local and national reporters repackaging what was in the newspaper that morning. Most radio newsrooms, meanwhile, consist of a guy reading articles from the local newspaper on air — and maybe crediting the source)

So what’s new then, if reporters are already focused on local stories?

Well, there’s a trend toward “citizen journalism”, in which newspapers setup community websites and encourage its citizens to provide the site with free content. Then they can fire reporters who have the audacity to expect payment for their work.

From a business perspective, it sounds fantastic. It’s cheap, it’s new, and it’s local, so there’s less likely to be a lot of competition.

But from a journalistic perspective, it’s a nightmare: a race to the bottom to see how much news can be “crowdsourced” freely to the community. Investigative journalism, feature writing, fact-checking and objectivity thrown out the window in favour of political name-calling, thinly-veiled press releases and dozens of uninteresting opinions about the plot developments of prime-time TV shows.

Perhaps I’m being a bit too idealistic, but I’m not that worried. Most media companies don’t have the online expertise to understand how to make these websites work. They underestimate the amount of competition they’ll have for even the smallest markets, and they overestimate the quality of journalism that crowdsourcing can provide. They think they can replicate a for-profit version of Wikipedia (or, more accurately, Wikinews) without any incentives for contribution.

What I am worried about is how much further big media is going to sink in quality before real, quality competition from new media starts to emerge. My blog can’t compete with over a hundred experienced journalists at the local paper. But when the local paper is down to three interns and a web forum, that’s going to change.

| Technology, TV

Vlog cancelled

The rumours are true. TVA confirmed this morning that Vlog, Dominic Arpin’s web video show, will be aired for the last time on Dec. 2.

The network hasn’t shut the door completely on having an overhauled version come back in the new year, although that glimmer of hope sounds a lot like what your ex-girlfriend tells you about the possibility of getting back together someday, to soften the blow when she dumps your ass on the curb.

Arpin, who has stayed mostly silent since he heard the news on Friday, opened up on the show’s Facebook group. He’ll be technically unemployed by the end of the year after leaving both journalism and his blog to focus all his energies on this project which has now slipped through his fingers. He still hasn’t decided what to do with his future (welcome to the club), but he isn’t too keen on going back to his old job.

His text is reposted here for those who don’t have Facebook:

Désolé pour le silence-radio des derniers jours, les amis. Par respect pour TVA, il était préférable que le département des communications se charge d’annoncer le sort de Vlog plutôt que moi ou un membre de l’équipe. Ça explique notre discrétion ici depuis que le début des rumeurs. Ainsi donc, Vlog cessera d’être diffusé à compter du 2 décembre prochain. Nous l’avons appris vendredi dernier, sur l’heure du dîner. Déçu? C’est certain. J’ai dû me mordre l’intérieur de la bouche pour ne pas pleurer devant les producteurs lors de l’annonce. J’ai tellement investi de temps et d’espoir dans cette émission que je me suis senti anéanti, l’espace de quelques heures. Et puis j’ai réfléchi. J’ai réfléchi au bonheur que ce projet m’a procuré, à tout ce que j’ai appris durant les derniers mois, à ces nouveaux amis qu’il a mis sur ma route, au privilège que j’ai eu d’animer une émission novatrice en prime time à TVA. Ça, personne ne pourra me l’enlever.

Bien sûr, il y a ce sentiment d’échec qui me tourne autour, qui tente de m’écraser de tout son poids. Il a bien failli réussir, d’ailleurs. Mais savez quoi? Il n’arrive pas à la hauteur de la fierté que j’ai d’avoir participé à ce projet. Je suis fier de ce que je vois en ondes, fier de notre petite équipe qui travaille comme des malades depuis septembre, fier d’avoir créé la première émission du genre au Québec. Tant pis si elle ne revient pas en janvier, on en aura toujours bien fait une dizaine. Et TVA dit ne pas fermer la porte à un retour futur de l’émission.

Que va-t-il m’arriver maintenant? Honnêtement, je n’en sais rien. Techniquement, je peux retourner travailler dans la salle des nouvelles de TVA, mais je dois réfléchir avant de prendre ma décision.

En terminant, merci de votre support, merci pour le groupe Sauvons Vlog sur Facebook, merci de vos messages de sympathies, vous m’avez fait un bien immense durant la tempête des derniers jours. Presque autant que ma collection de scotch single malt ;-)

There was also a note from director Jean-François Desmarais:

Ce qu’est Vlog?

Vlog se veut être une représentation de la communauté web à l’antenne d’un généraliste. Avec Vlog on peut faire une intégration parfaite de la famille Québecor tout en donnant une voix à la masse. Enfin l’empire peut être en lien avec sa base. Enfin, le public peut participer de façon active au fonctionnement d’une émission. Enfin, le spectateur peut influencer un contenu et enfin le web rejoint entièrement la télé.

Vlog se veut être le porte voix des phénomènes hétéroclytes que l’on peut retrouver sur la toile.

Partir un nouveau show demande réflexion et énergie de la part de bon nombres d’intervenants. Partir un nouveau concept exige une dose de courage et de persévérance.

Pour moi, Vlog fut l’occasion de travailler avec une équipe qui voulait apporter un vent de fraîcheur ;)avec un nouveau look et un nouveau contenu.

Mais avant tout Vlog fut une porte qui nous a mis un lien directe avec ce qui est le plus important en TV: notre téléspectateur.

—

En terminant, ce fut un réel plaisir de travailler avec toi, Dominic, et je me dois de le mentionner publiquement. Merci pour cette expérience!

PS. En mon nom, je vous remercie sincèrement, membre du groupe Vlog et l’autre (comment y s’appelle encore;)))) pour votre support et vos commentaires.

Maintenant, moi, j’opte pour un rhume on the rock!

Jeff
Réalisateur Vlog

The Facebook group to save the show, meanwhile, already has 172 members and is growing. (The official Facebook group is at over 1,200.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an article to rewrite.

| Blogosphere, Canadiens, Montreal, Web design

Habs Inside/Out redesigned

The Gazette’s Habs Inside/Out blog (which is liveblogging the game going on right now) has undergone an overhaul, switching from Movable Type to Drupal. Among the sweet stuff coming in as a result are user registration, comment threading, comment rating, avatars, comment preview, and those annoying social bookmarking links on each post.

The design still needs some ironing out, so expect the look to change slightly (hopefully including getting rid of that awful sea-green). I also noted that “associate blogger” Kevin Mio has been promoted to having his picture on the homepage again.

The backend of the site, administered by techies John MacFarlane and Dru Oja Jay, is separate from the CanWest online canada.com nightmare, and that’s a good part of why it’s so successful.

| Business, Technology

CIBC not above outright spam

I was going through my junk mail folder and I came across an email from CIBC whose subject line is in French. French-language spam is pretty rare, so I tend to give it a second look.

Turns out it’s a legitimate CIBC email (they have a copy of it on their website) having something to do with their VISA card.

And just like the Chapters email I got last month (their email provider promised to get back to me “ASAP” but I never heard from them again), it’s something I never asked for, sent to an address that gets just about nothing but spam, from a company I’ve never done business with in my entire life. Neither I nor anyone in my family does banking with CIBC, and I have no idea how they would have my email address.

Like I did with Chapters, I checked their unsubscribe process. The link sends me to this web page which asks for, among other things, my name, phone number and last four digits of my CIBC VISA credit card. All fields are, of course, required.

There’s a few problems with this:

  1. The URL for this page starts with www.email.cibccards.com. Sounds kinda phishy to me.
  2. The fact that they ask for part of my credit card number based on an unsolicited email makes this even more worrisome. It’s encouraging bad habits and horrible security practices.
  3. Why is anything beyond my email address needed to unsubscribe from a mailing list?
  4. I don’t have a CIBC VISA credit card number because I’m not a CIBC customer! Since they require information from me that simply doesn’t exist, I can only conclude that it is impossible for me to unsubscribe from this mailing list.

Considering that this message seems to clearly violate CIBC’s own anti-phishing policy, as well as being outright spam, I’ve sent them an email asking for an explanation. I’ll update this post if they provide one.

I’ve copied the email to Komunik, makers of Konversation, the CIBC’s email marketing provider, demanding to know how they don’t consider this spam.

| TV, Web design

Vlog: Getting better

I just finished the third episode of TVA’s Vlog, which I’ve been following since its debut with a critical eye.

I find myself liking the show a bit more this time around, partly because of subtle changes made to it, and partly because I think I might have been a bit harsh in my original analysis.

The show is showing more videos I haven’t seen before, and is showing more of them. The hosts also seem a bit more comfortable in their roles, and their banter seems a bit less fake. The fact that host Dominic Arpin is listening to his audience is also worthy of praise.

Nevertheless, there’s still some issues with the show, and I hope Arpin & Co. will take this criticism constructively:

  • A fantastic video of George W. Bush singing Sunday Bloody Sunday was shown with subtitles explaining the lyrics. I’ve always gotten annoyed by Quebec media (and especially Montreal media) who seem to ignore the fact that 40% of Quebecers are bilingual (in Montreal, the percentage is even higher, around 50%). But even if you ignore the statistic, what’s important isn’t so much the lyrics as the editing that made the words match. (Or am I on the wrong track here? Francophones who can’t understand English can respond below)
  • Can we be done with the Occupation Double Top 3 videos please? They’re not funny, they’re not interesting, and for some strange reason they’re not even of very good quality. Due to how fast they go through them, it seems the Vlog people are being ordered by TVA to plug the show in this way, which would be a shame. It serves no useful purpose.
  • Any chance you could start on time once in a blue moon? I’m sure there’s a valid reason why the show is always delayed by up to half an hour. But this is not the way to gain viewership to a new show. The few who remembered to tune in an hour later than “usual” this week saw some woman being interviewed on a terrace. If you don’t care about anyone but those who watch Occupation Double and want to stick around, that’s fine, but some of us don’t want to watch that crap on Sunday night.
  • When asking people to submit videos of themselves doing things, don’t relegate them to a tiny corner of an otherwise blank screen showing the credits while an announcer promos upcoming shows. Give them at least a bit of spotlight, or they’ll stop producing.
  • And Dominic, as for your dancing…

One thing I’ll stop criticizing the show for, however, is using old videos. The Sunday Bloody Sunday video referenced above is good, and many people haven’t seen it. I don’t see any reason it shouldn’t be showcased on the show. (If anything, an old video that’s out of the spotlight will have been seen by fewer viewers than one that’s burning up YouTube.) Unless it’s tied to some dated news event, go ahead and show it.

Your website still sucks

I’m debating putting that subhead in bright orange just so the powers that be at Canoe figure it out. As far as I can tell, not a single improvement has been made to the website for the show since its launch, despite some very serious problems with it:

  • The URL (tva.canoe.com/emissions/vlog/) is way, way too long
  • The homepage automatically plays a video with audio without asking permission
  • Navigation is done using Flash instead of HTML links (overuse of Flash and Web 2.0-ish bad design is a problem all over the site)
  • There’s a button to watch the show live, but it only works when the show is on TV. This goes against the entire point of the Web.
  • Links to videos featured on the site force new windows to pop up instead of just being HTML links that people can control based on their browsing preferences
  • Clicking on the link for “Blogue” still brings you to a page that’s devoid of content and is missing the navigation buttons related to the show.
  • Doing anything on the website requires going through the 17,000-step Canoe registration process.

All these things need to be dealt with before we can even get to suggestions to improve it (like having an RSS feed with links to all the videos seen in the show).

| Media, Web design

Star PM: Good on paper, but still a failure

Just over a year ago, with much fanfare, the Toronto Star launched a new service called “Star P.M.”, which was a dozen-page letter-sized PDF file that could be downloaded on weekday afternoons.

The idea was simple: Office workers would download the paper, which had afternoon updates of important stories, as well as things like Sudoku puzzles, print it out and take it with them on the ride home. There are certainly lots of people who take public transit to whom this might appeal.

And from some who fit that criteria there was initial praise of the project, which was the first of its kind in North America.

But there was also criticism with what now looks like keen foresight, pointing out that people won’t download as a PDF what they can get faster in HTML. And then there were numbers to back that point up.

And so it was, this week the Star announced it is killing Star P.M. to focus more on its mobile website, which is a format more friendly to the cellphone-toting workforce. The last issue will be Wednesday, October 17.

The format is what ultimately killed Star P.M. The Star underestimated the amount of effort involved in printing such a document every weekday. They overestimated how fast non-junkies need to get their news (busy workers could just wait until the next morning to read stories in the paper). They underestimated how much time news junkies would spend bored at work reading the paper’s website, or getting any news they cared about from their favourite blogs.

The new mobile website (“mobile version” is the new “non-Flash” or “low-bandwidth” — making me wonder why the rest of the website can’t have such a simple design) is a better way for the Star to spend its time. It updates faster and it’s much more interactive.

But what about the other PDF papers out there? The Ottawa Citizen has Rush Hour, which is still running. Other such papers in the U.S. and Europe have quietly shut down. Expect Rush Hour to have a similarly sad end.

You might also see obituaries being written for “Game Day” issues, which are special afternoon before-the-game downloadable PDFs with rosters, last-minute updates and other stuff the newspapers think you’ll want to take with you to the game. The Ottawa Citizen has one for Senators games, the Vancouver Sun just started one for Canucks games, and the Montreal Gazette runs one for Alouettes games. Considering these publications have even stricter audience limitations, I just can’t see them getting popular enough to support the work put into them.

There’s also G24, the PDF paper produced by the Guardian, which has the advantages of being somewhat customizable and more up-to-date because the PDFs are produced automatically. This also means that even if nobody reads it, it doesn’t cost the paper anything. Sure, it doesn’t have the newspaper-like modular layout, but is that really necessary in these kinds of circumstances?

By the end of the year, we’ll probably be able to conclude once and for all that these PDF papers are a failed experiment. But, as one blogger commented, at least it was an experiment. We have to at least give them that.

UPDATE (Jan. 9, 2008): The London Daily Telegraph has killed its “Telegraph PM” PDF paper. So I was off by a few days…

| In the news, Media, Technology

Nicolas Ritoux, h@x0r

La Presse’s tech freelancer Nicolas Ritoux … err… |\|içø145 ®1†0úX … has exposed some security flaws in government websites, a story that got him good placement in today’s paper.

For obvious reasons, he doesn’t go into too much detail about the pages or vulnerabilities involved, but he mentions SQL injection, which is a serious problem for any website with a database backend.

The fact that many government-run websites are vulnerable is hardly surprising. I see plenty of examples of horrible web programming every day.

| Blogosphere, Business, On the Net, Technology

Is Techmeme a splog?

There’s an interesting discussion going on in the comments of a post at the Instigator Blog (or as I like to call it, Yoskoblog) about a new website called Social Rank which is launching dozens and eventually hundreds of niche blog aggregator websites.

It struck a nerve for me because I’m noticing a lot of automatically-generated “blogs” pinging my posts and upping my Technorati rating. These blogs work by searching the blogosphere for keywords, scraping a quote, adding a link and sending a pingback. The posts are all of the same structure:

[Name (sometimes a random name or literal “unknown”)] wrote an interesting post today about [Title of blog post]. Here’s a quick excerpt: [excerpt from post].

I’m not sure if the business model is to get traffic through pingbacks or if they’re part of some larger splog scheme, but needless to say the pages are filled with Google ads.

I commented that people are going to be turned off by Social Rank’s websites if only because of their similarity to the autoblogs. People want aggregated content, but evaluated in some way by real people (think Fark or Digg).

A couple of bloggers also got pretty pissed because Social Rank was sending them pingbacks, which the website quickly stopped and apologized for.

The other concern is that if these websites become popular, spammers will begin to figure out ways to game the system. I imagine it’ll probably happen accidentally, a side-effect of traditional splogging methods. But once they figure it out, expect it to be exploited.

Ben made an interesting point to my main argument: Is Techmeme a splog? It’s automatically generated, with excerpts from other blogs. It has ads and is trying to make money. But it feels different somehow. It’s like Google News for blogs.

Is there a difference? Is Techmeme bad? Is Social Rank good? What is the real difference between a junk splog and a good automatic aggregation website?

| On the Net, Technology

Insert witty Facebook phone pun here

There’s apparently a race going on to see what group is going to produce the first VoIP application for Facebook. (It’s surprising one hasn’t gained popularity already.) Apparently a bunch of companies have either just launched ones or are working on them: WalkieTalkie/Tag, Jangl. Others are in development.

One of the recent additions to this list is being developed by Montreal-based BabyTel. Called simply Telephone, it works as a downloadable Java application that uses Facebook as a calling directory.

I was recently asked to visit their offices and give my thoughts on their new application. The back-end was OK (it was based on pre-existing VoIP software), but the front-end could be generously described as pre-alpha. I gave my two cents on the Facebook application page as well as the application itself, both of which seemed to have improved from my input.

Now it looks like they’re taking it to beta, producing a “viral video” with Bitchin Kitchen‘s Nadia G. (I wouldn’t really call it “viral” since there’s nothing but a bit of excess enthusiasm that would cause people to want to share it.)

I’m not one for VoIP in the first place, so it really doesn’t matter what I think, but from a user interface standpoint, my biggest issue with the software was that it’s a downloadable program instead of a web app. They’ve tried to make it as painless as possible, but I still have this .jnlp file on my desktop. Getting people to accept the “do you want to download this executable file” dialog is a pretty big step.

Whether or not it’ll be a dealbreaker for users remains to be seen.

| TV, Video, Web design

TVA’s Vlog: Not horrible, but not fantastic either

I just finished watching the last few minutes of the long-awaited first episode of Dominic Arpin‘s new show Vlog (auto-play video warning) on TVA. (Forgive me, I was watching a lot of Family Guy and American Dad on Fox and forgot all about it.)

The point of the show is simple: Arpin and co-host Geneviève Borne (who makes a rather unconvincing web geek if you ask me) present clips from videos they find online.

You’ll remember a few months back when ABC launched iCaught, a similar show which was supposed to find the “stories behind the videos“. I was highly critical of the show for various reasons (mainly because it sucked). Most of the mistakes are repeated in Vlog, but thankfully to a much lesser degree:

  • The inclusion of commercials, clips of network TV shows, or marketing experiments which seem to be the antithesis of the YouTube revolution of anybody-made videos. Fortunately in Vlog’s case, their only infraction so far in this area is a series of crazy Japanese game show videos, for which there appears to be an infinite supply. But if I wanted to see that, I’d switch the channel to Spike and watch MXC.
  • Showing only a few seconds of each video. iCaught would brag about how “this song will get stuck in your head”, but then show only three seconds of it. Showing only clips from these videos only serves to remind us of the time constraints of network television, combined with its frustrating lack of interactivity.
  • Being weeks or months behind the times. I’ll cut Vlog some slack for their first episode, but OK Go and Will it Blend are ancient.
  • Having the hosts stand in front of an all-white screen. What’s with this? Does nobody have a better idea for a set? At least Arpin and Borne don’t “click” things with their fingers which are obviously not there.

Website disappoints

As you can imagine, a show like this should have a very involved website. In visiting it, I got nothing but frustration (and since most people will visit the website right after the first show, first impressions are everything):

  • The URL is way too long: tva.canoe.com/emissions/vlog. It took me quite a while to copy it down off the TV screen. “vlog.canoe.com” or something similar would be much better (or even getting its own domain).
  • As mentioned above, the homepage automatically plays a video with sound. Arpin should know better. It replays every single time you go to the homepage.
  • There’s a “blog“. I’m not sure if it’s a community blog or something. Either way, it was blank half an hour after the show ended.
  • Navigation is very confusing. Clicking on the “blog” link (which isn’t actually a link but a Flash animation which interferes with my browsing habits) leads to a “community” page that has a big logo for the show up top but no link back to the show’s homepage. Instead, clicking on what looks like a “home” link brings you back to the Espace Canoë homepage and you’re lost forever.
  • Their page of videos interestingly links to YouTube pages and official websites (this is good). But clicking on those links forces these pages into pop-up windows. The prevalence of target=_blank is bad enough, but this is just stupid.
  • The big-media-website navigation:

Vlog website

Viewer-generated content

Like iCaught, Vlog isn’t content (pun!) taking its material from YouTube’s most viewed videos list. It also wants you, the viewer, to provide them with content. In their first episode, they ask viewers to submit their best lip-sync to Mes Aieux’s Dégenération (I’ll spare you the English subtitles). Is it just me, or is this the lamest type of video people can produce? On very rare occasions such videos can be downright entertaining, but most people make fun of it unless you put in a lot of effort.

But feel free to do so, send them your videos. Oh, according to their giant give-us-all-your-rights contract, they can then use the video, free of charge, in any media over and over again forever and ever throughout the universe. And if it’s shown that the video contains copyrighted material (say, including audio of a complete pop song without the artist’s permission first), then you agree to pay any damages.

You’ve been warned.

So that’s what I think of Vlog. What about you?

Elsewhere in the blogosphere:

| Business, Technology

Chapters/Indigo not above outright spam

I just received this spam email from Chapters/Indigo:

Chapters/Indigo spam

At first I thought it might be a phishing exercise, since I’ve never received such an email before, I haven’t shopped at Chapters/Indigo in ages and I certainly never gave them an email address I haven’t used in about as long. But there was no “your account will be deleted within 24 hours” warning nor any request to log in. A few quick clicks confirmed that the email did in fact come from the organization.

I might be able to forgive a small-time local outfit who sent out a quick ad for itself to people in the CEO’s address book unfamiliar with netiquette… 10 years ago. This is just inexcusable. I did absolutely nothing to request this email. My best guess is that they dredged up their archives from years ago and just harvested the email addresses assuming no one would complain.

The unsubscribe process adds insult to insult. You’re asked to “sign in” using a password that you don’t know because you never signed up with them. You then go to the “forgot your password page” and input your email address. Then you click “submit” and … nothing happens. No confirmation page. No email with your password. You’re stuck on this list forever.

I have sent Chapters/Indigo an email demanding an explanation. I have also contacted Toronto-based ThinData, as the email was sent through their servers. I will update this post if one is given from either company.

UPDATE (9:30pm, 4 hours later): I’ve received an email from a VP at ThinData asking me for a copy of the email I received (do they not keep copies of the mass commercial emails they send out?). The email, naturally, came not after I emailed them as an irate web user but after they discovered this blog post. He promises to look into the matter “ASAP”.

| Blogosphere, Media, Web design

Constructive criticism for old media online

Kate posted a comment to my post last week about newspapers’ online mistakes, pointing me to some tips on another blog.

They’re really good, so I feel the need to repeat them here with some commentary:

  1. Forget linear comments. This is one thing that’s always bugged me about most online forums. Slashdot solved this problem almost a decade ago with threaded comments and user moderation. YouTube has only recently introduced a similar system. Why is this still so complicated for most content management systems to replicate?
  2. Don’t treat podcasts like radio. The suggestion to not edit podcasts is perhaps a bit extreme, but there are some solid ideas behind this. If someone is listening to a podcast, they probably have plenty of time on their hands anyway, so there’s no need to rush. (One of my complaints about A Comicbook Orange — the video podcast by Montrealers Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan — is that Casey talks too fast as if she’s trying to keep up with a nonexistent clock. Hopefully as the show evolves she’ll relax a bit more.) It’s a good form for long discussions on specialized topics, and shouldn’t be interspersed with cheesy sound effects or cut down into news-style packages. The Habs Inside/Out podcasts are a good example: they sit seasoned reporters at a table and have them discuss issues related to the team. The most important thing about a podcast though is that there needs to be a reason to use technology over text. Raw interviews are a good reason.
  3. Aggregate. Newspapers fear each other. Some are actually under the impression that if they speak another’s name it will cause a decrease in subscriptions. Newspaper bloggers seem to be getting over this somewhat, but there’s still very little good aggregation out there. (I blame the technology, as WordPress and its ilk are designed more for long posts than short links.) Fark.com is crazy-successful as a simple news aggregator. Many of my posts (and my “From my feeds” sidebar links) are inspired from other blogs and news sources.
  4. Put more detail online. Newspapers like to make crappy online videos that have a talking head repeat the main points of a feature article. Some put second-rate stories online. But what people want are resources. Links to original documents, previous articles on a subject, technical specifications, analysis from others. Much of this is easy to compile and put online for those who want to see it.
  5. More editors, fewer writers. I can’t really comment on this objectively since I’m an editor. I must admit it was surprising to read, since blogs don’t have editors and that’s considered a factor behind their success. (Meanwhile, one of the big complaints about newspapers these days is the sloppy editing.) This item seems to be more about having experts write articles instead of having journalists quote them. I’m not sure if I necessarily agree with that entirely, but it’s a good idea for certain occasions (science articles especially).
  6. Offer tailored feeds. My biggest beef with Le Devoir is that there’s only a single RSS feed for their entire website, and that produces about 60 items a day. If I just want news and letters, I should be able to get that. Nobody here offers RSS feeds tailored per author, which would be a big improvement as well.
  7. No registration barriers. I really don’t need to explain this do I?
  8. Make content work on mobile devices. A simpler explanation might be “make content simple.” Bloggers link to “print-friendly” pages as it is. Reading some of these websites on small devices must be damn-near impossible. While I haven’t tested this blog on a phone yet, I imagine it’s somewhat simpler.
  9. No Flash. I would edit this to “do not use Flash unnecessarily.” It’s needed for video or interactive maps or audio slideshows, but don’t use it for navigation or to wow us with intro pages. It’s just an obstacle to us getting what we’re looking for.
  10. Don’t put effort into online video. This is the exact opposite of my advice and one I strongly disagree with. While I don’t think you should be hiring TV crews to do your online video, there does need to be some minimum standard for clear audio, proper lighting and editing. I don’t need flashy animated credits, but I want to be able to hear what people are saying and understand what’s going on without too many time-wasting awkward pauses.
  11. Link directly to your sources. Yes. This is done on blogs all the time, why not in newspapers? Link to previous articles when you’re doing a follow-up. Link letters to the pieces they’re responding to. Link to CRTC decisions when you’re talking about them. Let people research stuff on their own to get more information.
  12. Pay bloggers for their content when you want to use it. I’m not sure how widespread it is to lift bloggers’ content wholesale without attribution. I had a comment lifted once by a newspaper, but they attributed it (incorrectly) and kept the quote somewhat brief. I certainly think bloggers should be hired if their content is good enough for newspapers, and that nobody should be expected to work for the media for free. But … does that mean I should pay for this blog post?
| Business, Media, Montreal, Technology

Cyberpresse bloggers shutting up

One of La Presse’s unions has sent its members a notice asking them to stop blogging on Cyberpresse as a pressure tactic. As a result, bloggers Sophie Cousineau and Marie-Claude Lortie have stopped their blogs with notices explaining why. Both are regular columnists who will continue their columns as usual.

Unaffected by this is star blogger Patrick Lagacé, who explains that he’s under a specific contract to do his blog (unlike other journalists who blog as part of their regular journalistic duties). Tristan Péloquin has a post about it as well, but it’s unclear if he’s stopped blogging or he’s just pointing out the situation.

The local union news blog has more details on the situation.

This isn’t the last we’ll see of this. Employees at the Journal de Montréal are already arguing over online rights to their articles. And as media outlets start expecting journalists to blog, shoot video and do other “online extras” as part of their regular duties (and without extra compensation), we’ll be seeing a lot more of these kinds of disputes over the next few years.

UPDATE: Heri and Steph have some interesting comments on the issue, but they seem to miss the main point: Unionized employees are being told to perform duties outside of their collective agreements, and for no additional compensation. Say what you want about Cyberpresse’s approach to blogging, but these aren’t personal blogs being updated out of the kindness of their hearts. It’s work, and employees deserve to get paid for it.

| Business, Montreal, Slow News Day, Technology

Mike Boone LIES!

Hey, remember back when Gazette columnist Mike Boone was having problems with Sympatico Internet, and because he talked about it in the paper, he got a call from a VP in Ottawa to give him special treatment?

Recognizing that he was obviously getting better service because he was a newspaper columnist, and that prevented him from pretending he was like the rest of us, he promised not to take advantage of it next time he had a problem:

I still have the phone number of the guy in Ottawa who QBed the rescue effort. But as a gesture of solidarity with all the other schmos, I’ll report any future problems to Sympatico tech support – with one small adjustment.

“Next time you call, press 1 right away to choose French,” a neighbour advised. “That way you get connected to a techie in Canada.”

Well, less than two months later, it seems he’s gone back on his word, using the number to short-cut his way to a solution after the common-folk customer service people scammed him into paying Apple to diagnose a non-existent software problem.

I gave up. When I wrote a column, in July, about the nightmare of trying to set up the wireless system that Sympatico sold me, I got a call from the office of the vice-president of customer relations.

They arranged for a house call.

After some initial difficulties owing to unfamiliarity with Apple, the technician got me up and running.

I kept the phone number of the Sympatico’s VP’s office. When I called about my latest nightmare, they promised I’d hear from a senior technician that evening.

To Boone’s credit, he didn’t reach for the Special Treatment Number right off the bat, and the resulting grossly incompetent service gives him plenty of fodder for another column. But it’s hard to think of a columnist being one of us when that magic VIP lifeline is available to him to use at his convenience.

UPDATE (Sept. 24): Letter-writer Ruth Taylor, who had a similar problem, blasts Boone for taking advantage of his journalist status. She asked for a “Mac specialist” as Boone’s column suggested, but got nowhere. Unlike his gold-plated solution, she had to pay her own techie to diagnose her problem.