Rrrrrrrrowr!

Do I strike you as a pussy?

The National Post's Siri Agrell has a berth aboard the online mag Maisonneuve where she asks "Are Canadian Bloggers Pussies? (Why Canadian Bloggers Have Yet to Break a Major Political Scandal)"

Only one major Canadian political story broken by bloggers has made its way through to the mainstream media and into our consciousness: the leaking of Jean Brault's testimony to the Gomery Inquiry. The leak revealed a new dimension of the sponsorship scandal and showed us just how powerful an independent online voice could be. Unfortunately, in this case, the voice was American—that of Edward Morrissey, aka Captain Ed, who influenced the course of Canadian politics from his Minnesota-based Captain's Quarters blog.

"It's not that we're pussies or afraid," says Catherine McMillan, the Saskatchewan-based author of the Canadian political blog Small Dead Animals. "The key difference, I think, is that our traffic levels need to build and the network itself has to build. But it's growing, it's coming."

It will take time.

But one major problem is that most bloggers who are against the current government are based out west, far from the action and the political contacts and connections. Second, no bloggers in Canada, at least none to my knowledge, are supported by think tanks or philanthropists with political agendas. Third, and not least, despite all their puffery to the contrary, the blogosphere in the U.S. has not really accomplished as much as it likes to believe it has in terms of breaking scandals, or doing original journalism. It has mostly amplified under-reported stories, sending them bouncing through the blogosphere until the echo gets heard in the mainstream.

Anyway, Canada now has Frank back to do some of the dirty work. And I'd tell you what it 's gossiping about this week -- except that its password protection system has gone all funky on me again.

Time to pounce on their techheads.

Comments

[Skysaxon]

Antonia, how can you promote that anti-Canadian blog SDA, when they are such hate-filled, racist, pro-Bush wingnuts? Don't Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Catherine McMillan and other hatemongers get enough free publicity from the rest of the pliable and lazy media without you joining in that chorus?

[Antonia Z]

Know thine enemy. Cast light upon the darkness. Over turn the rocks and see what crawls beneath. Out the little rats.

It's important to expose these people and their hateful ideas.

Anybody who thinks doesn't take them seriously.

[True North]

The main difference in blogging north or south is the right wing clamp on US MSM where even the "liberal" media constantly bury the lead in deference to the Bush agenda.

That leaves it to blogs to keep the buried news items alive until MSM can't ignore them any more - like the Downing Street Memo for example. The abysmal state of American journalism has created a role for blogs that is no less than heroic.

In Canada we have real mews reporting thanks to the CBC, the Toronto Star, The Globe & Mail and others. Frank? maybe on a good day.

So maybe Canadian blogs aren't "breaking" big stories - but they are starting to weigh in with a vibrant new stream of timely news detail and opinion that is growing in importance every day.

A fine example of which is Azerb.

[Ivan Prokopchuk]

Funny you should say western bloggers are far
from the actions and political contacts and
connections. But they are like us to the Chinese. We are scrutable to them. Check out
Aaron Braaten's lead blog in today's GRANDINITE. You are mentioned, along with Paul Wells and others.
Ivan

[Antonia Z]

Why thank you True North!

[victor immature]

Only a question of dimension, AZ!

[Antonia Z]

Welcome Victor. How did you find us?

:)

I am trying my best...got a little bit of interest (even from the Star once).

You are a pussy.

It's hard to break a major political scandal when you're busy writing gossip like the National Enquirer. Blogs are a waste of time and journalists who believe the unsourced rantings written here are fools.

[Antonia Z]

Thanks for stopping by and wasting your time.

[JKelly]

I'm sure you're aware, but your readers my not be, that Maisonneuve is not just an "online mag", but a Montreal-based treeware magazine as well, and a fine one at that. In fact, it won the President's Medal at the last National Magazine Awards.
I'd accuse you of Torontocentrism, but, well, you write for the Toronto Star so that'd be kind of like accusing the sky of being blue. Also, I know full well that you're a transplanted Montrealer like me.

[Bill-Muskoka]

Antonia,

Isn't it amazing how totally filled with fear the neo-cons are of blogs that counter their diatribe?

These are the ones, down south of us, that are always waving the flag (a symbol for the 'symbol minded'), talking about freedom (it should be spelled free-dumb for most of them), liberty (I have mine...screw your's), democracy (my way or the highway because we have the power), and love to use war to achieve peace, and write laws to protect themselves, but toss them out when its not helping their latest quest.

They, of course love the term 'rights' because that is the only world they know..the right, and using the plural makes them feel they are not alone.

Then they come here and flame you anomynously. They are real heros, real courageous, real hypocritical LOSERS!

[Mike]

Oh, I don't know about not "breaking" major stories...Buckets of Grewal seemed to have the dope on the Gurmant Grewal and the tape editing fiasco long bfore the MSM.

Maybe it didn't "break" because the MSM didn't credit him or notice that we all knew about the editing before they did (except for you, of course AZ).

[The Middleman]

I abandoned my own semi-successful Prairie Canadian politial/media blog for lack of time to keep it good.

In my experience, I can guarantee you somethingthat with minimal effort, Bourque or Nealenews could start cross-posting blogs - much as they do with the media - and with moderate effort, they could actually blog.

If they did. Poof. A whole new market would be created of people vying to be "picked up" by those widely read sites. It requires a measure of editorial souci.

The day one of them does this is the day that Canada gets its own Instapundit.

[PhantomObserver]

Problems with your analysis:

1. "But one major problem is that most bloggers who are against the current government are based out west, far from the action and the political contacts and connections."

Angry_in_TO, one of the more widely-read blogs, is based in Toronto. Andrew Anderson, who operates the Canadian Conversation Blog Index (canconv.boundbygravity.com), is based in Ottawa.

There ARE bloggers in central Canada who are against the government. It's just that MSM media up here don't pay too much attention to them.

"Second, no bloggers in Canada, at least none to my knowledge, are supported by think tanks or philanthropists with political agendas."

Non sequitor. Betsy Newmark of http://betsyspage.blogspot.com is in this category, and she wields enough influence to be profiled in the Washington Post. Ditto Hugh Hewitt.

"[The U.S. blogosphere] has mostly amplified under-reported stories, sending them bouncing through the blogosphere until the echo gets heard in the mainstream."

That's one interpretation. But there's one condition which you may not have noticed: almost all the stories pounced on by the blogosphere represent catastrophic failures by the Mainstream Media.

The Gomery links? Happened because Canada's MSM were afraid of the publication ban. Rathergate? Happened because CBS not only refused to verify the original story, they tried to shut down argument about it. Swift Boats? Happened because the MSM wouldn't bother to give the Vets the time of day.

For the blogosphere in Canada to explode into public consciousness, an accelerant would be a similar failure on the part of Canada's MSM. We've already seen a flowering of blogs -- of sorts -- with the shutdown of the CBC and the proliferation of blogs on the part of staffers. Coverage of the upcoming federal election could provide opportunities for another trigger.

[wsam]

What is the differnece between what Capt Ed did and US newspapers publishing the details of other banned-in-Canada material?

Has anyone here ever read his Blog?

He claims the Gun registry was a plot to keep the RCMP underfunded so it couldn't act as a check on 'executive power' ...?

Flit (www.snappingturtle.net/flit) makes clear the RCMP doesn't adminster the Gun Registry the Canadian Firearms Centre does.

Except as an occasional way to leak info what do Blogs like Captain Ed's add to the debate? I think nothing.

More uninformed analysis tinged with right-wing paranoia.

We've already got Ezra 'Stock-a-holic' Levant's Shotgun for that.

Was I only one who found the Maisonneuve story a little weak? Well intentioned. And with a great lead to grab attention but analytically weak.

[Mark Federman]

"It [the blogosphere] has mostly amplified under-reported stories, sending them bouncing through the blogosphere until the echo gets heard in the mainstream."

That is precisely the effect (ie. "purpose," if you will) of the blogosphere. Blogs amplify voice in a way that MSM cannot, and do not. The multiple amplifications of voice, perhaps each voice having a slightly different tone or nuance, creates the phenomenon of emergent transparency that allows bright lights to shine where those who exercise political (and economic) control would prefer they wouldn't. In this way, the blogosphere provides a collective "moderation" (thumbs up or down) of what is deemed to be important by those who participate, rather than a particular newsroom editor or publisher. It is, in a sense, participatory journalism: the point is not that everyone becomes a reporter so much as everyone becomes a part of a complex, emergent, collaborative "editor" relative to the strange attractor of various stories that are not otherwise a focal point of public attention or awareness.

[Scott Tribe]

My opinion is that the bloggers up here (notwithstanding the far-right loonies of the Blogging Tory group) really dont see themselves as rivals of the MSM. We dont seem to have a lot of blogs up here that do consistent fact-checking on newspapers editorials or reporters accuracy of stories (and if they do, as you say, we get ignored. I think a lot of us who blog view themselves as either complimenting the MSM or at worst as alternative opinion. THe hope is perhaps that at some point down the road blogs will be able to shape and influence Canadian public opinion.. but thats a ways away yet.

I wonder how many of the Canadian public do any real blogging and even know we're around. Jim Elve who runs BlogsCanada, the multi-partisan bloglisting site, is probably one of the busier blogs for traffic out there.. yet I know from talking to him he might duting a busy political time get a few thousand visitors a week... compare that to Daily Kos in the US, who gets a few hundred thousand visitors in a week.. and you see our disadvantage up here.

By the way, I'll join Mike of Rational Reasons who want to give props to Buckets of Grewal who did indeed get some media attention from Azerb here as well as a CTV news story. I wonder if that got "overlooked" by Maissoneuve for partisan reasons. One can expose a good juicy political story that doesnt involve the government of the day but the Opposition.. that still counts as exposing a story.

[Bill-Muskoka]

Okay, now here is a question I really hope others will comment on. Why does CNN have this on their website, but not a word here in the MSM, that I have seen today?

'Palestinian: Bush spoke of Iraq as divine mission'
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/10/07/bush.report.reut/index.html

I would say that we need to have a little more carryover between sources internationally. Just a thought!

[Antonia Z.]

Maybe because we reported it when it happened?

This is from my column of July 3, 2003, "Bush's Hotline to Heaven." Unfortunately, I can't seem to fuind a functioning link anywhere.

Bush told Abbas, "God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East"
"The alleged Bush quote, Ha'aretz explained, came from 'minutes'' acquired 'from one of last week's ceasefire negotiations between Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and faction leaders from the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular and Democratic Fronts.' "

[Bill-Muskoka]

Antonia,

Thanks. I must have missed that one. So many quotes, so little time, eh? LOL

Gee, if that happened back on July 3, 2003, why, Hmmmmm, why would CNN be posting it now? Could it be they buried the story?

I think Katrina definitely blew some cobwebs out of the MSM in the U.S.A., then again, maybe they forgot they ran the story, if they did. Probably hard to see through all the pro-war flag waving back then!

Wow, we could start another conspiracy blog with material like that, eh?