Comments on: All the news that’s fit to crib

By: Kenn Chaplin

Kenn Chaplin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:13:06 +0000

(in my Ted Baxter voice) :

Back when I was working in radio newsrooms it was a function of the early shift to go through the papers. Long before blogs I used to get some interesting stories from the small-town weeklies who, for whatever reason, had their ear to the ground around them better than we who tried to be both local and national-from-the-local-angle.

And, if you’ll pardon this pop culture example, would CBC National have ever reported about a seemingly quite ordinary Scottish woman on Britain’s Got Talent had YouTube not been overwhelmed with hits? Cellphone video news, twittering anchors…all these changes will add to the body of journalism in the long run even if the body is getting old at the same pace as the rest of us.

By: Rev Dave

Rev Dave — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:58:26 +0000

It seems to me that your last paragraph hits on what is probably at the core of the problem: traditional media feels threatened, and lashing out to discredit its competitors and maybe some of its potential replacements might be a good way of at least prolonging the inevitable.

I don’t think bloggers could ever replace traditional media. They have resources, frankly, that we can’t match on a reliable basis. That said, corporate media is not playing much of a critical watchdog role in today’s society anyway. So, as you say, bloggers can help fill the gaps.

Anyways, strip away the wire services, and a lot of newspapers would look pretty bare too. I guess you could call them “distributors” too.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:27:29 +0000

I honestly don’t believe that either the Star or the Globe deliberately minimized Torontoist’s part in the story. With the Star, the writer was confused as to whether I was working in my Torontoist or Toronto Public Space Committee capacity (a nuance that was understandably missed, given that I discussed both things when he interviewed me), and I personally don’t mind the TPSC getting the credit. With the Globe, I felt the author wrote what was important.

But thank you for the compliments.