Paved was a project commissioned by the Toronto Star, a unique effort to experiment with a hyperlocal weblog presence in the Greater Toronto Area, during the brief era when terms like “citizen journalism” and “participatory media” were intriguing (and confounding) traditional print newsrooms across the continent. Plans for the blog were sketched out over the course of September 2005, and the site went live October 6 (first workday of the Jewish calendar year 5766), with at least one post appearing each weekday (a few Fridays were taken off) through June 29. The very first proper prolific blog focused exclusively on Toronto, and not presented in the first person, was Better Living Centre (“BLC”), a voluntary effort launched September 1, 2004, published almost daily through mid-February 2005. Several other weblog format titles dedicated to Toronto emerged between fall 2004 and summer 2005, including Torontoist, blogTO, Reading Toronto and Spacing Wire. (The very invisible Metroblogging Toronto preceded all those.) Paved links appeared on the Toronto Star website on a regular basis, which was most effective when attached to a front page story, although results of that promotion varied. For a number of reasons, or maybe no reason whatsoever, the approach to the site evolved from a daily publication with multiple shorter posts, to a weekly publication updated with longer entries each day. Popular online topics during the life of Paved included Toronto’s alleged cultural renaissance, semi-unironic affection for – and frustration with – the Toronto Transit Commission, and the divorce of local actors Mary Jo Eustace and Dean McDermott after he had an affair with his next wife, Tori Spelling.
NOTE: Most images are in the process of being reformatted for this site.
