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who employs me
I am a staff writer with CTV.ca News. That operation is part of CTV News, which is of course nestled into CTV Inc. and CTVglobemedia.

I don't speak for my employer on this blog. I don't comment about the internal affairs of my employer.

Any views expressed here are my own.
View Article  'Thousands of editors leaving Wikipedia'

From TheStar.com:

A sharp drop in Wikipedians, the volunteers who write and edit the online encyclopaedia, is a disturbing and inevitable trend, the Toronto man who was once their top contributor said Monday.

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View Article  Why the news media stumbles on telling the climate story

Toronto Star writer Tyler Hamilton apologizes on behalf of his craft. He then explains why an apology is due.

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View Article  Algorithmic Authority

Internet thinker Clay Shirky ruminates on how the Internet conveys authority.

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View Article  Gourmet burger rankings in t-dot

The Star reviewed six cut-above burger joints in Toronto. Top of the list: Oh Boy, which opened recently on Queen W. just slightly east of Portland St. (they started working on the space more than a year ago).

But old favourites like Utopia on College St. W. aren't included in the mix. I guess Dangerous Dan's really doesn't qualify as gourmet.

However, the Roxton (on Harbord, just east of Ossington) is reputed to make a great burger, but it's left off, as is Beer Bistro at King E. and Victoria.

Some like Allen's on the Danforth (south side, block or two east of Broadview, great patio!), but I don't count myself as impressed with theirs.

A commenter on the story reminded me that Epicure on Queen W. near Portland also serves up a good burger. Some other pointers from commenters, although not necessarily to gourmet burgers:

  • Watermark Lounge in the Radisson Admiral Hotel --- 249 Queens Quay West.
  • Sandwich Box on Richmond/Bay
  • Mitzi's Sister for lamb burgers
  • The Burger Shack, Oriole Parkway/Eglinton
  • The Artful Dodger, Isabella/Yonge
  • Hair of the Dog, Church/Carlton
View Article  If Hitler were a Leafs fan

The trusty old Downfall clip has been pressed into service again, this time to have Hitler ranting about the Toronto Maple Leafs.

However, the value of the clip is less in its hilarity, which is modest, than how it lays out the club's long history of drafting ineptitude: (Seen first at Toronto Mike)

I should say the Leafs did defeat the Washington Capitals in a shootout on Saturday night. As a result, they increased their total number of wins by 33 per cent in just one game!

View Article  A real disaster scenario for 2012

SNL did a very funny parody of the movie trailer for 2012, incorporating everyone's plain-talkin', moose-huntin' ex-governor, Sarah Palin: (seen via Twitter)

And if you want an entertaining analysis of the Palin Phenomenon, check out Matt Taibi's take at True/Slant: Sarah Palin, WWE star.

There were two takes in Saturday's Globe and Mail:

View Article  'To everything/Spin, spin, spin' ... and attack

The Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson on the Conservative government's reflex to attack its critics when under criticism.

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View Article  Viva a free press! Now I'll be happy not to take your questions

After trumpeting the virtues of a free press at a rubber chicken dinner in Markham on Saturday night, Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not deign to take any questions from the wretches of the fourth estate.

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View Article  The take-away graf on downsizing at the New York Times News Service

From the NYT's Media Decoder blog:

The New York Times News Service will lay off at least 25 editorial employees next year, and will move the editing of the service to a Florida newspaper owned by The New York Times Company, The Times and the Newspaper Guild said on Thursday. ...

The plan calls for The Gainesville Sun, whose newsroom is not unionized and has lower salaries, to take over the editing of the news service. Ms. McNulty said new jobs would be created at The Sun to handle the extra work. Five of the top news service employees will retain their jobs in New York.

View Article  Find yourself wondering what augmented reality is?

Mark Luckie of the blog 10000 Words pointed to this HowStuffWorks primer. (seen first on Twitter)

An excerpt:

Augmented reality adds graphics, sounds, haptic feedback and smell to the natural world as it exists. ...   more »

View Article  So what happens to people after their newspaper closes?

Ruth Teichrob -- formerly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which shut down in March -- surveyed her former newsroom colleagues to see how they are doing. Seventy-one of 140 responded.

The results are sobering.

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View Article  How best to present on the Web?

Lindsey Hoshaw, a young journo, travels out to a Pacific Ocean garbage patch. Blogs about it over a period of weeks.

Her travel is funded by Spot.us, which crowdsources funding for worthy journalistic ventures.

Spot.us does a deal with the New York Times to have a news story published. Approximate length - 900 words.

Critic Megan Garber, writing at CJR.org, pronounces the NYT story to be not so good:

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View Article  Fort Hood and citizen journalists

The kettle started boiling when Paul Carr, writing at TechCrunch on Nov. 7, wrote a provocative post entitled After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth.

A sample:

For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved.

Citizen journalism and social media defenders rode to the rescue.

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View Article  The Answer Factory

This could well be the future of media. A correspondent emailed me the link to this Wired story: "The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model."

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View Article  CBC panel on the media and swine flu

Last Thursday, CBC TV's The National hosted a panel discussion on the media's coverage of the swine flu issue. It featured Dr. Allison McGeer, an infectious disease consultant at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, and Dr. Richard Schabas, a former chief medical officer of health for Ontario.

Here are some tweets I made, in chronological order:

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View Article  How a communist Ukrainian newspaper covered the fall of the Wall

While travelling in the Ukraine in the fall of 1989, I met up with a fellow named Tom Koppel, a journalist working for a communist newspaper in Kyiv on an exchange program.

With the 20th anniversary coming of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, I thought I'd excerpt an article I wrote for Bulletin, then the magazine of the Canadian Association of Journalists. It was published in the Fall 1990 issue and outlines how the paper that hosted Koppel covered the Wall story:

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View Article  Bashing the Star's restructuring

John Miller, before he became a Ryerson j-prof, toiled at 1 Yonge St, home of the (once mighty?) Toronto Star. He's mortified by the paper's apparent plan to outsource its editing and page production work.

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