Canadian Blogs.net

Blogging, particularly political blogging, is considered by many to have moved into the mainstream, especially after the last U.S. election. As a result, some of the early adopters of Web 2.0 have thrown in the towel, because blogging is no longer "revolutionary" or "maverick" enough – such as Jason Calacanis. If this is their true reason for ending their blogging careers, it is foolish one. From the start, bloggers have craved the kind of recognition usually reserved for the mainstream media. Now that many of us have achieved mainstream status, are we seeing a revolution that eats its children?...

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On Sunday, Prime Minister Harper will pay a visit to the Governor-General to ask her to dissolve Parliament and call for an election. From that moment on, the election campaign will be in full swing. You all know what this means: blogging will go through the roof. So far, we have all posted our personal thoughts and observations on the various parties and leaders – sometimes in a professional tone, at other times in less-than-professional language. Before I say what I am about to say, let me get just one thing out of the way (because afterwards I won't...

Following up on the previous post, Warren Kinsella, as reported by Jeff Jedras, made another erroneous observation: Bloggers that think they can really affect political change should give their heads a shake, blogs will not supplant the main stream media. This is blatantly wrong, of course. In the U.S., for example, one only needs to look at the influence of bloggers like Michelle Malkin and Ed Morrissey, or Iain Dale in the U.K., have to know that they can and will make a difference in the outcome of elections. People don't trust the mainstream media much, as polls regularly...

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There you go: the mainstream media do favour left-wing ideas and parties. (h/t small dead......

Yesterday, U.S. President George W. Bush took Orwellian audacity to a new level by calling the Cuban government “criminal.” In a speech, Bush stated that “America will have no part in giving oxygen to a criminal regime victimizing its own people…. The operative word in our future dealings with Cuba is not ’stability’.  The operative word is ‘freedom’.” (source) To the surprise of no one, the fact that this statement was akin to the kettle calling the teapot black was lost on the members of both the United States and the Canadian press. So, just to re-cap: U.S.:  One of the few countries left in the world which still executes children.  Moreover, “The country which has carried out more documented executions of child...

Is it state-sponsored propaganda yet? I was reading up on the recent offensive Turkish incursion into Iraq in the New York Times (here) and at first I didn’t notice too much out of the ordinary (other than, of course, that the Turkish government is portrayed as angels having done nothing themselves). But, as an interesting exercise, then I decided to look at the sourcing that the putatively ‘liberal’ New York Time newspaper — the publication ‘of record’ — used to file this story. Needless to say, if you are interested in looking, you’ll find that, if this is the situation in the supposedly ‘best’ publication in the U.S., the situation is much the same, if not worse, in most other ‘lesser’ publications. What’s...

From Bolivian President Evo Morales’ recent speech to the United Nations (the text of which has never been seen in the mainstream media). “It is important that we learn lessons from some sectors, from some regions. Let me avail myself of this opportunity: I come from a culture based on peace, from a lifestyle based on equality, of living not only in solidarity with all people, but also living in harmony with Mother Earth. For the indigenous movement, land cannot be a commodity; it is a mother that gives us life, so how could we convert it into a commodity as the western model does? This is a profound lesson which we must learn in order to resolve the problems of humanity that are being discussed here, climate change and pollution. Where does this pollution come from? It comes...

A new poll just released by Environics, shows something more revealing than it bargained for. What it shows can be considered even more proof that the media does not have a left-wing bias. The Environics poll asked Ontarians what they thought the most important factor/issue determing their vote in the upcoming election would be. The results are interesting. Now, some of these factors can be broadly categorized into socialist/social democratic issues (namely heath care and social programs/poverty/minimum wage) and conservative/capitalist issues (namely the economy and taxes). Recompiling the list with these ideological concerns grouped together results in this list of what Ontarians care about: So what do Ontarians care about? Notice that by far, the answer, according to Environics,...

Here's another example of why bloggers are better than those hacks working in the mainstream media. CTV maintains a politics blog on its website, which is run by David Akin and Bill Doskoch. I have been following their silly-looking blog for a while now and have commented on the occasional post over there — but nothing ever gets published, while some truly inane comments by some "Anne M", etc. are published all the time, no matter how silly they are. So I contacted the site to find out why comments are systematically ignored and told them that this was not a very professional way of doing things. David Akin replied in a snarky and highly unprofessional manner — in other words, if I were his boss, I'd have fired him now. Makes you wonder again what sort of people CTV hires,...

The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph is cracking down on bloggers. The Daily Telegraph launched a crackdown on its bloggers today, ordering them not to blog about the paper and exercise caution about revealing journalistic "tricks of the trade" as it sought to limit the fallout from relevations about its reporting of Saddam Hussein's execution. The crackdown comes in the wake of the US editor Toby Harnden's blog about Saddam Hussein's execution, where he admitted that he filed a report about the dictator's execution hours before the dictator was hanged.A memo has gone out to the paper's bloggers:"Please avoid blogging about your relationship with your employer, whether the Telegraph Media Group as an entity, 'the desk' or 'my boss', even in jest. Such comments are frequently...

by Werner Patels The Canadian edition of TV Guide has recently announced that it will cease its print edition at the end of November and continue on in online form (www.tvguide.ca). Just one more example of the Internet winning out over the mainstream media. When it comes to online publications, blogs have become the ultimate in (personal) journalism and democratic tools. Bloggers all over the world have reached critical mass, to the point where governments and corporations have started paying attention. CBS newscaster Dan Rather's long-time career was terminated by a group of US bloggers, as a result of which CBS News is now stuck with Katie Couric and the lowest ratings for any of the primetime news shows. When MP Garth Turner was kicked out of the Conservative caucus last week,...

There are thousands and thousands of bloggers around the world, and each day their number increases by several hundred, if not several thousand. Some observers have said that blogging is the journalistic equivalent of grassroots politics. Everyone with a blog can make his or her voice heard and become editor-in-chief of his or her own "newspaper". The majority of blogs, however, are still quite “infantile”, and reading them on a regular basis would be a complete waste of time. But there are also many fine and well-written blogs that do a better job than many journalists in the mainstream media. It is those few blogs that give journalists a run for their money, which is why more and more columnists in the traditional media scene feel compelled to write articles about the blogosphere...