Malcontents pecking out their every brainwave through that security blanket called a keyboard might’ve brought blogging into your vocabulary, but a website of nothing but idiosyncratic opinion has become a pretty primitive format heading into summer 2006, as the medium evolves beyond pages of solitary text. Lately, it’s been all about the “Me Media”, motivating Rupert Murdoch to herald this a golden age – and even if the complete evaporation of print media isn’t happening tomorrow, nobody has the right to be entirely sure. The year of Rathergate (and Adscam) begat partisan trust funds shoveled into schemes like The Huffington Post and Pajamas Media, founded on the expectation that a higher calibre of malcontent would be motivated by a broader platform. But having access to every morsel of information has necessitated hierarchies not unlike a pop chart – especially when cranks get tired of feeding, let alone reading, comment threads – even prompting AOL to slap the dubious Netscape brand on a social news site. Wasn’t hyperlocal participatory citizen journalism supposed to be all the rage? Maybe not, considering how fears of being besieged by an onslaught of websites from amateur talent more compelling than pros have been tempered with time; a power shift that accommodates the people formerly known as the audience is more realistic than media companies expecting that “users” will do the heavy creative lifting on their behalf, then simply package that volunteer input for advertisers. The inability of Canwest’s Dose to harness that energy into print aimed at a supposedly elusive demographic was one such flop – however, the online audience isn’t receptive to anyone who tries too hard to bait their attention. Niche conversations endured the dot-com crash because there is no way to monetize most topics for the passive masses, but keeping topics closer to home has inspired cityblog franchises, where the monkey typewriter principle favours vague observations over interactive rants, although visuals are proving a more effective method of relaying local flavour anyhow. Waiting to be explored is the true definition of cyberjournalism, now that Wi-Fi will supply reporters with more room to roam, if they can appreciate the idea of delivering the first word on a subject rather than the last.
[Weekly Bloog cover courtesy of Paved's logo designer Brett Lamb]
Wither the made-in-Toronto celebrity? Y’know, those personalities who never aimed higher than recognition on this turf, due to their own ingrained inferiority, with federal regulations ensuring steady paycheques for mediocre effort. Mary Jo Eustace must’ve noticed the dearth of faces filling those roles – fortuitously, her husband left her for Tori Spelling just in time for the inheritance, and Mary Jo was the most searched name in this past nine months of this site, as she resumed cultivating the kind of fame afforded an ex-cooking show sidekick. During this period, where a program reporting on celebrities became a more coveted gig than getting chased for a quote, being the editrix of rag mags known for using as few words as possible to deconstruct the physiological condition of famous people was enough for a homecoming parade – as Bonnie Fuller earned more media fawning than copies sold of The Joys of Much Too Much. (The attention did the trick, since Fuller renewed her contract for at least $2 million a year.) Weekly Scoop, a CanCon variant on Fuller’s formulae, concocted by Torstar, lasted no longer than a baby bump, likely for lack of original reporting save access to the McDonald’s where a drunk Ashlee Simpson hurled epithets at the counter help. Yet, the lack of compelling homegrown grist in ground zero of the Global Village oughta be regarded as more opportunity than crisis, if only the remaining vestiges of protectionism can finish getting clobbered by technology. For the time being, Toronto remains a hicktown starry-eyed at the notion of Broken Social Scene getting profiled in The New York Times Magazine, even though the idea of investigating trends for a broad national audience was deemed unsustainable at Saturday Night. Last fall’s CBC lockout generated its share of online soul-searching, especially once it sunk in that public broadcasters could just as readily spout their words through a file uploaded directly from a picket line. A quest to overcome narrowcasting leads to Peter Mansbridge dislodged from his 10 p.m. porch once a week this summer, as part of the CBC’s gamble on another dodgy singing competition, although the age when all sound and vision is digitally delivered might make the process of generating new ideas return to a calling higher than the exec whose job it has been to discourage them. For now, take comfort in the small print clarifying that Ben Mulroney’s alleged salary is still just 40 per cent of a million bucks.
Nine months of this site have coincided with the flourishing of conversations about Toronto – although urban planning fantasies, enthusiasm for an upper-middlebrow cultural renaissance and self-laudatory tales of tolerance, diversity and pluralism don’t make the city seem any less mundane in the present tense. Mercifully, the current micro-realities of life in the GTA are increasingly being examined in various places, encouraged by the broadening reach of online media. Yet, the next municipal election may just turn out to be a dry run of how campaigns can be ignited by virtual debate in the future – David Miller seems unscathed by Jane Pitfield’s braying about decay, although Adam Vaughan and now John Sewell are bidding for council seats on the basis that misguided construction projects have cursed central Toronto with its own doomsday clock. Shouldn’t the number of cranes in the air reflect decades of prosperity ahead, though? The argument that corporate interests are destined to swallow the soul of every genuine neighbourhood may not wash when Yonge and Dundas and Queen and Dufferin are being transformed into less antagonistic intersections, if not more aesthetically rewarding ones. More recently, written off as unappealing to consumers have been the Starbucks-free environs of Chinatown, along with retail tumbleweeds at the three-year-old Distillery District. Now that Lord of the Rings doesn’t look to be saving the tourism industry, the mass marketing of Toronto could only benefit from turning inward. Photoblogs and thematic sets on Flickr can’t help but inspire greater attention to local architecture and design; 21st century publishing methods allow for a website obsessing over Leslieville, blogs about the Don River Valley and North Roncesvalles, and a zine about the 54 East bus route; topics like a smokestack demolition in Mississauga or expropriation of land for an airport in Pickering are closer to home for 416 snobs when the surrounding details are easily searched. Public transit and bike riding issues have been similarly elevated online. Walking seems to be the latest local media trend, though – surely influenced by the Toronto Psychogeography Society – with extreme pedestrianism celebrated in the broadsheets. So, where is the weblog about driving in this town?
