April 5th, 2006
New media vs. old media
By Matthew Blackett // 4 Comments
On most days, the Spacing Wire tracks what is going on in the public realm of this city, linking to articles and columns in the major daily papers, the weeklies and on blogs. On the odd occasion, we do our own reporting. So it is nice to see when the new media (us) gets a story first and the old media (them) follows up on it. It happened when we helped publicize the motorist vs. courier altercation in Kensington a few months ago, and it happened again last week when we reported on the removal of the sidewalk carvings on King Street West outside the St. Andrew's Church (the Post, Star, Eye Weekly, and NOW all ran features). Today in the Star they had two pieces that we were the first (or one of the first) to get out: the debate over "Beach" or "Beaches" (which Josh Hume wrote about for us on Monday's Wire post) and columnist Joe Fiorito chats with Tattoo, the former homeless artist who did the above mentioned sidewalk carving.
While it is nice to be breaking news, what we at Spacing find more important is that these news items are being spread to a large audience which hopefully prompts a discussion about the details of this city. As a blog, we have the advantage of immediacy, while the Star et al have the massive audience. In these cases, new and old media are more than just competing, they are complements of one another.
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Techincally, I did write that we were "one of the first", and meant that about the Beach(es) debate. Though, I did hear through the grapevine that the Star picked it up when someone came across the Wire post.Just trying to illustrate a point, is all. Thanks for trying to keep us honest!
With all due respect (and that truly is a lot) City Pulse did a report on this issue last week. I remember the deeply annoying commercial with the reporter guy starting to talk about "the Beaches" and someone passing by yelling "the Beach!" and then starting to talk about "the Beach" and someone yelling "the Beaches". City is sooo cornball sometimes.
As a beach/beaches resident, I don't want a new sign if it's one of those crappy looking immitatations of the old signs.
The Wire did not “break†the news about the Beaches BIA’s poll; it reported on an existing Web page, as Weblogs tend to do. (It included two original quotes.) And while it’s nice that newspapers picked up on it, that seems to imply that everyone else who writes about it online is less important.Incidentally, this will teach me to post something the day I learn about it (Friday, by reading the sign on the door of the library) rather than assuming I can take the weekend off. On the other hand, I seem to be the only one who thinks the ostensible discussion (singular or plural?) is complete nonsense and that more practical issues are being ignored or misrepresented, as illustrated by the graphic you borrowed for this posting.
Comment by Joe Clark
April 6, 2006 | 12:37 am