Ontario News Watch

...like National News Watch, but smaller, and with all the boring non-Ontario stuff left out.

There's A New News Aggregater In Town

There's a new news aggregater in town. Its called CanadaNews Desk, and its got a nice look to it. Of course, whether it can compete successfully with NN or Bourque will depend on way more than the look. One strike in its favor: CND used one of my stories as a top story. Way to go, dude! Stick with BCL and I'll lead you to glory (as distinct from, for example, riches).

From Blogosphere To MSM

Kate Allen has expanded her piece in The Thundebird on the role of bloggers in our last federal election campaign and it appears as "Federal election gave bloggers the taste of blood". In it I muse as follows:

Murphy thinks downsized newsrooms and lack of time mean that reporters don’t have the resources to look into the kind of stories he is breaking. His relationship to the traditional news media is cooperative, rather than competitive. “You’re hoping the mainstream media is going to pick up on something you do and broadband it,” he said.

In practice, a Canadian bloggers best shot at getting material into the MSM (unless perhaps you're working as an unpaid word-slave for The Post) is via National News Watch. If you ever discover and blog about something that appears news worthy, I strongly suggest emailing "Paul" (if I remember his name right) and letting him know. As Kady O'Malley has written, if National News Watch has it, then the MSM has it (because journalists all read the NNW). It also helps if you can arrange the post to (more or less) resemble a news story. When Cherniak was still writing, it always used to bug me because he would have information nobody else had access to, but would stick it in the 2nd to last paragraph in a boring long post about something else entirely.

How Much Does Bourque Charge To Keep Your Story Out Of The Headlines?

Notice anything? No mention of yesterday's disastrous Tory press conference at all. First time in ages Bourque has done anything more than cop the from page of National NewsWatch.

Maybe Bourque was on the private guest list.

Is Bourque Copping Headlines From National Newswatch?

It is pretty clear that Pierre Bourque's news aggregater service has been hitting the skids lately. Biased, seldom updated, it often appears as though his racing career, though itself quite lacklustre, is taking up all of Bourque's energy.

In fact, if you look at today's headlines:

DION HUNKERS DOWN
IGGY SQUAD ENGAGES COUP ATTEMPT
Stephane's great makeover ...Weston: Trap set for Libs ...Thompson: Libs close ranks around embattled leader ...StarPhoenix: Dion's tenure as leader appears short ...Gazette: Grumblers undermining Dion ...Martin: Dion left with two bad options ...McParland: Harper press schmoozer puts boot to Opposition ...Cernetig: First, he survived Martin debacle, now Marissen will survive Dion debacle ...NatPost: Quebec meltdown ...


...it looks very much like Bourque's current technique is to visit his competition, National Newswatch, and do a simple cut-and-paste job with the links to stories posted there:

Trap set for Liberals, Dion left with two bad options, Dion's tenure as Grit leader appears short, Quebec meltdown

Of course, there are only so many headlines you can choose from each morning, and I don't know how you would prove something like this, but if I were one of the Tories funding Bourque, I would be wondering exactly what my money was buying me.

The Many Faces Of David Maclean

As most progbloggers know by now, GPM scored himself a heap of blogging glory yesterday when he discovered that several of his trolls were all none other than David MacLean, the CTA's Saskatchewan representative. I asked if GPM could provide me with a list of David's pseudonyms, so I might see if he had ever written nasty comments on BCLSB using one of them, and GPM was kind enough to comply in a comment to one of my earlier posts. Because he hasn't published this list on his own blog, I will do so here. David MacLean writes as:

100% Known

David MacLean
Tommy Douglas
The artist formerly known as...
Moneybags4me

95% certain

Farmer joe
r.s. porter
(These might also be ran by other Taxpayer Federation people sometimes/always)


Unfortunately, I have had no luck in my search, but others might be interested in trying something similar.

Also, I notice that GPM's efforts have landed him a spot on nationalnewswatch, the most popular Canadian news aggregator. Because people have wondered, and I have never seen it written anywhere, here is the deal with NNW. While the person behind it seems to have a strong Tory slant, what they are really interested in (they claim) is material that has not appeared in the MSM. So if you, like GPM, unearth new facts, even if the issue is fairly small bore, NNW may well link to you. If you retail stuff that has already appeared in print/on-line, they will usually just link directly to the original URL, although if the source is obscure enough you may get an H/T. Stories can be submitted to the email given at the site, so you don't have to wait to be "discovered".