Morning Brew: March 10th, 2008
Photo: "And now I'm flying like an angel to the sun" by blogTO Flickr pooler alexindigo.
Your morning news roundup for Monday March 10th, 2008:
What a weekend. We were mostly holed up all day during the storm on Saturday, and woke up to a nice (long) day of sunshine and shoveling. We haven't quite broken the 1939 record for snowfall in a season (we're at 195cm, and the record stands at 207cm) and at this point, most of us would rather not.
Paper newspapers are on their way to extinction, mostly because we're clicking instead of flipping. The beloved Rosie DiManno calls blogs "all view, all comment, all personal whinge, graceless, and devoid of source reporting." I'm looking forward to Torontoist's response to her ridiculous notions with a revival of their "DiManno Watch" column.
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The SIU is investigating a police shooting of a suspect (who later died) at a Roncesvalles drugstore this weekend. The Star's Joe Fiorito reports on the incident in "all personal whinge", blood orange style.
On Friday afternoon, a high school problem migrated to a nearby elementary school yard where 30 teenagers mass attacked and beat three fellow teens. This all went down just as the young ones were being let out of their school, and probably wasn't something that a high school hall monitor could have prevented.
Former Liberal Finance Minister Greg Sorbara will take lead on a study to better understand and remedy the decline in US visitors to Ontario. International tourist visits are up overall, but fewer Americans are visiting our province (a trend which some people might argue is positive).
Comments (12)
I love the Star's "Better to just hold it at TTC pit stops" article on disgusting TTC public washrooms.
http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/326799
I agree with montrealshorts, especially regarding the blog you want to refute Rosie. And you have to admit that there isn't a lot of original, hard news reporting coming out of the blogosphere. Disagree with the "graceless" part, though.
@montrealshorts:
Do you really think we whine too much? While I do agree that there's a fair amount, I like to think that we also do a great amount of excellent, non-whining reporting as well (touting the likes of local music, fashion, arts, film, and food on a daily basis)!
It just so happens that the most viewed and commented articles tend to be the ones readers can contribute their own whinge to. If newspapers accepted reader comments (outside of their brief letters to the editor pages), chance are they'd be just as whine-ridden.
Not all blogs are created the same. As lucas says, the one you want to refute is the worst of the bunch. This blog is generally fairly good, funny, but not mean and snarky. Balance of some reporting at times, some comment at times.
It would do you well to not put yourself in the same class as "dimano watch" junk.
That said, the Globe and Mail is mostly comment and writing about the news, rather than reporting the news, so there you go. The Globe is a printed blog.
I for one am so very happy to see print media dying, it can't happen fast enough. You never know who is editing their "jouralistic integrety" to suit some corporate payout. Good on the general public to research and seek out their own interests instead of having some blowhard tell us all how we should think.
That's rather cynical mac. As much as I like blogs (and what I said above) if traditional print papers go down, who will do all that original reporting? Blogs can cover it here and there -- but reporters need to make money, and the revenue model of the blogosphere/online media just ain't there yet.
Newspapers do relatively little original reporting relative to their overall volume - it's mostly rehash from global news services. As for DiManno's comments, I have three words: Pot. Kettle. Black.
What is happening with increasing frequency is that a story is "broken" and sustained among the blogs, and later picked up and given wide circulation by conventional massmedia.
Believe my, my heart bleads rivers for corp. owned media, print or otherwise. If anyone can show me hard hitting reporting being done these days by any paper in North America that isn't toally biased or panders to the audience or editorial review, please enlighten me. The only half decent news reporting seems to come from the BBC or Sky news these days. By all means, if you wish to hold your grip on that environmentally wasteful printed paper, be my guest.
mac, who would have broken the Toronto Police profiling business a few years ago? Who could devote the resources, and withstand possible lawsuits, other than The Star?
One example....but I don't think you are so interested.
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