ChatRoulette: a Hazmat suit and a few too many naked guys

By Lauren Crothers

I’ve never been much of a gambler, but when I heard about ChatRoulette I felt compelled to throw in my chips and see what all the fuss was about. I only wish I’d worn a Hazmat suit before doing so. Launched in November, ChatRoulette, the brainchild of 17-year-old Russian Andrey Ternovskiy, was born from a relatively innocent place — a way for Ternovskiy and his friends to interact online in a chatroom-like scenario but through the medium of webcam.

But, but. It didn’t take long for the pustules inhabiting the Internet’s underbelly to scrape themselves off the floor, log in, switch on and … undress. And excite themselves for the displeasure of those, like me, who happen to click ‘next’ and find themselves confronted with such a sight. There is worse to be seen, the details of which I will not go into here, but I will try and recount my half hour experience (for the purpose of writing this very blog post).

The idea is this: you set up your webcam, with a choice to receive and/or send audio. Depending on which settings you go with, you can message or actually chat to the random stranger of your choosing.

There was a lot of clicking ‘next’ both on my part and that of the strangers I was connected with, though it appears there are far more men than women on the site and, as a result, females can expect entertaining feedback in the form of a look of relief, raised eyebrows, a smile and “thank god, you’re a chick … there’s so many dudes – clothed and naked – here.”

This is not a dating site, though there will be those who try to use it as such. It was never intended as a vehicle for voyeurism either, even though parts of its content may belie such a fact. What it is, is a social networking phenomenon. It began with no advertising and little fanfare and today, with only four simple ads at the bottom of the main page, its user base grows by the thousands daily.

Scrolling through a slice of the Internet’s vast demographic I encountered many partying teens basking in the cold glow of their screens, a few suggestive looking girls, many perverted men, one guy enjoying a bong, a few people in masks, bedroom walls, a pet cat and several placards imploring females to reveal their chests – for Haiti, of course. ‘Jesus approves!!’ said one.

After much clicking of the F9 key, I got chatting briefly to an artist from North Carolina who spent the last four years hopping from freight train to freight train. I then happened upon a guy in Sydney. We talked about bands we liked, spiders we didn’t. He’s going to Berlin next year, I told him he’d love it. He asked me what I thought of the site (we were both, as it turns out, scarred by the amount of self indulgent nudity). He told me he’d read about the site and figured he would see what the fuss was about (but made sure to let me know he’d be venturing out shortly to meet real, flesh and blood humans).

And really, the novelty of this site aside, he was absolutely right. By all means, dabble in what ChatRoulette has to offer (even though some of it might momentarily blind you). But keep in mind there’s a living, breathing, loud, wonderful world out there beyond your screen. And it has more to offer you than a few spins around this wheel ever could.

Lauren Crothers is a Star copy editor with one eye behind a lens. lcrothers@thestar.ca

UPDATE: The Star's Nicole Baute tries ChatRoulette and meets the (fake) Jonas Brothers.

You can still find a bridge over troubled muggings in Brooklyn

By Adrian Morrow

One of my favourite old newspaper traditions is the police blotter, a series of short write-ups of crimes not important enough to merit a full article but too interesting to ignore. It dates back to the days when newspapers were a community's only source of information and everything had to be squeezed in.

In the Radio Room, we try to keep the tradition alive by filling a column of briefs in the Greater Toronto section every day, often with stories of small crimes. The Toronto Police help us out by sending us a list of incidents that haven't received their own press release. They call it the "Major News Reports", or the Majors. (As if in salute to the old-school nature of this enterprise, it's the only thing the cops send the Radio Room exclusively by fax.)

The crimes listed in the Majors range from the routine (robberies of convenience stores are almost a nightly occurence in the city), to the bizarre (last spring, two muggers robbed a man of his clothes, leaving him sitting in socks and underwear on a chilly April night) to the terrifyingly whimsical (two Halloweens ago, a gang of girls sporting Venetian-style masks committed a string of late-night robberies at suburban bus stops).

The public will never hear about most of them. But every once in a while, when there's a little extra space to fill, we mine this list to find something newsworthy.

About a year ago, Nick van Rijn (a veteran Star editor and re-write man) told me about a weekly paper in Brooklyn that still runs a lengthy crime blotter, complete with Runyonesque turns of phrase and neo-noir headlines (recent examples include "Bridge over troubled mugging" and "More thefts of iThings).

According to a write-up in the New York Times, the paper's reporters even go about collecting these items in the oldest-fashioned way possible, visiting every police station in person and poring over stacks of field reports. It's worth a read.

Adrian Morrow is a veteran of the Star's radio room. He also worked as a summer reporter last year. amorrow@thestar.ca

Star journalists tell tales of their time in Haiti

By Adrian Morrow

Last month, shortly after an earthquake heavily damaged Haiti, six Star journalists fanned out across the country to cover the nation's struggle to deal with the carnage and rebuild, and Canada's efforts to help. Today, all six have returned and shared their war stories with the rest of the Star newsroom.

What struck me was the huge variety of experiences among the group: reporter Joanna Smith and photographer Lucas Oleniuk saw some of the worst violence, witnessing robberies and beatings, including the brutal murder of a suspected looter who was pulled from the back of a police truck, tied up, tortured and set on fire in the street. As Oleniuk put it, for all the violence reported on during the crisis, there were many more murders that went undocumented in far-flung areas of Port-au-Prince or under the cover of night, away from the media.

Ottawa reporter Allan Woods described being able to approach anyone, including high-ranking government officials, on the street and get information from them, the usual barriers of PR men and divisions erased by the quake.

Everyone talked about the logistics of covering a country where so much infrastructure had broken down and the usual resources we take for granted as journalists are gone. Reporter Catherine Porter crouched next to a Fox News satellite to file a story; Jesse McLean stuck close to aid workers to get find clean drinking water; Smith delivered updates on the situation via Twitter, one line at a time.

But what will probably stick with me the most was Porter's point that so much more was happening than could be reported on. In every park, on every street corner, in every building was enough material for a 20-inch feature.

We spend a lot of our lives as journalists trying to squeeze out stories. Whether its pushing reluctant police officers to tell us the condition of a victim, trying for hours to track down a human face for a policy story or trying to brainstorm original story ideas, it often feels like we spend most of our time trying to chase the news down. Haiti, it sounds, was one of the rare occasions when all the news is lying in front of reporters, and the challenge is to get it all down.

Adrian Morrow is a veteran of the Star's radio room. He also worked as a summer reporter last year. amorrow@thestar.ca

Star reporters, left to right, Jesse McLean, Allan Woods, Brett Popplewell, national editor Tim Harper, Joanna Smith.

Photo by Lauren Crothers

What's the buzz on Google Buzz?

By Tamara Baluja

Google has launched its version of social hub, obviously taking on Facebook and Twitter. The new Gmail venture, called Google Buzz, includes many of the features that have made Facebook and Twitter so popular among web users. 

I'm all for the competition. The only way to improve social media is to bring in the competition.

Like Facebook, Google Buzz lets users share their thoughts with the rest of the world and track what the rest of the world is doing. And of course, you can upload pictures, weblinks and videos. The mobile phone app is also very Twitter-ish: It allows people to see the public updates of other people for the same tag.

My only objection is the lack of choice. If you don't want to be plugged into the rest of the world, you don't have to sign up on Facebook or Twitter. Google Buzz just presumes that all Gmail users will want to be hooked up to their new program.

When I signed into my Gmail account, it took me to a screen that said Google Buzz. I didn't want to read about all the features at the moment, so I clicked on the button that said "No, continue to Inbox," or something to that effect.

So imagine my horror when I discovered two seconds later that my landlord and former boss were following me! I didn't sign up for that! What the heck!

My initial panicked response was to turn Google Buzz off immediately. I'm happy to use Facebook and Twitter, but I draw the line when it comes to my personal accounts and professional relationships.

I'm not against using Google Buzz, so I will be cautiously resuming use at a pace comfortable for me.

And for all you Gmail users who care about your privacy, check who is following you on Google Buzz.

Tamara Baluja is radio room reporter, a journalism student and former GA at CFRB News. tbaluja@thestar.ca

Giambrone: Adam we hardly knew you

By Chantal Braganza

Adam Giambrone is a tough act to follow. Literally.

The amount of coverage, columns and public comment on the ex-mayoral candidate's dirty laundry in the span of two days has been staggering to say the least. And a kind of exhausting end to a six-week press ride that began with him being mistakenly identified as gay, then married and now revealed as a two-timing, no, make that multi-timing lothario with a really bad sense of PR.

Oh, not to mention that in this time he's also apologized for running a sub-par TTC, been asked by his peers to step down from his job of running it and not-so-elegantly dropped out of the mayor's race altogether.

It's the difference between these two lists that have some irked. A few columnists fear that in the wake of a scandal that halted a campaign before it got well underway, we might be focusing too much on the sex, not the politics, of Giambrone's public presence.

"Infidelity is evidence of dishonesty" wrote Chris Selley of The National Post. "[b]ut it’s a brand of dishonesty that’s so hormonal and common that I don’t think it’s fair to extrapolate political disreputableness from it. And while Mr. Giambrone clearly is not the man to fix this crumbling city — the girlfriend’s claim that he sees David Miller “as a God” … now, that is disturbing — he shouldn’t suffer more for his infidelity simply because he’s completely unfit to be mayor."

The Globe and Mail's Adam Radwanski was a little more diplomatic about it:

"If you cover politics, you regularly hear rumours --some of them quite salacious--about what politicians are doing on their own time. A not insignificant number of them could probably be verified if anyone made it a personal mission. But in this country, journalists generally don’t. In fact, as Andrew Coyne somewhat ambiguously pointed out last week, we step very carefully to avoid even some revelations that aren't really very scandalous at all.

Personally, I'm just fine with that. It's difficult enough to attract good people to run for office ... To submit them to the level of scrutiny faced in the U.S. and elsewhere - whether it's about their sex lives or their health records or anything else that doesn't pertain to job performance - isn't going to do much to improve our level of representation."

To be honest, I like how the Star's Royson James summed it up.

"Torontonians knew too little about Giambrone before this," he wrote in Wednesday's column. "Now, we know too much."

Chantal Braganza is a Star intern copy editor and recent graduate of the Ryerson Journalism program cbraganza@thestar.ca

The 'P-word'

By Ann Hui

Is it possible to accidentally plagiarize?

Gerald Posner, a veteran journalist who's written for the New York Times, the New Yorker and Newsweek, says yes. And he's owning up to it.

Posner admitted on Friday to "inadvertently" lifting sentences from a Miami Herald article in his own piece for the Daily Beast.

Now, before we all get up in arms and call for a Howell Raines-style resignation from the Daily Beast's editor, Edward Felsenthal, let's hear out Posner.

He admits to the mistake, taking full responsibility for committing the act. Trouble is, he says he has no idea how it happened. The befuddled reporter claims to have no memory of ever having read the Herald article.

Still, he's making no excuses for it, telling Slate: "I must have had the Miami Herald there and copied."

Amongst some of the lifted material?

"Because her husband left her his estate, she is now free to sell his assets, including their home, his boat and his massive collection of Batman memorabilia." —Miami Herald

"Because her husband left her his estate, Narcy is now free to sell his assets, including their home, his yacht, and his massive collection of Batman memorabilia." —The Daily Beast

And this:

"Neither Abad nor her mother attended Monday's hearing in Fort Lauderdale." —Miami Herald

"Neither Abad nor her mother attended Monday's hearing in Fort Lauderdale." —The Daily Beast

Other copy cats

The problem of plagiarism isn't unique to our southern friends, of course. Here in Canada, we've had our share of sketch stories.

In August of last year, New Brunswick's Telegraph-Journal was forced to apologize after a freelancer plagiarized a story from a French-language paper.

Innocent mistake or lame excuse?

No one except for Posner can be completly sure whether his claim of "accidentally" plagiarizing is true. But it certainly seems possible.

With the amount of information journalists take in every day: from Twitter, blogs, rival newspapers, broadcast and more, it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of which ideas came from where. The unfortunate result, of course, is that a journalist can unknowingly take ownership over ideas or words that aren't theirs.

Journalists must be careful to avoid this. But it's an easy mistake to make, and, unfortunately, a hard one to erase from the public's mind. Just ask Jayson Blair.

Then again, can you blame us when we've got role models like these?

Ann Hui is a radio room reporter at the Star. She's also in her final year of the master of journalism program at Ryerson. ahui@thestar.ca

Transit has never looked so newsworthy

By John Rieti

Big news organizations, whether it’s right or not, still have the ability to take a story and make it explode – think magnifying glass concentrating sunlight onto tinder.

Journalists are increasingly collecting these flammable items of all sorts from social networks like Facebook, Twitter and others. The complaint is already public, the “TTC Sleeper” already spotted. We, well we like to think, tell everyone.

Now, legions of riders, maybe emboldened by the outrage TTC Sleeper sparked, or perhaps just angry, are filming bus drivers behaving badly and capturing every confrontation with TTC staff to post online. Meanwhile, Facebook groups started by riders and workers alike debate who is jerkier.

Different news agencies stand in awkward positions all around the debate. I’ll let you decide who is siding with who here.

What is obvious, though, is how things that weren’t stories just months ago could easily fit into today’s news. Here, I’ll show you.

My first place after moving to Toronto was a Cabbagetown basement apartment and my ride was the College streetcar.

Some nights I could walk all the way home from College-Spadina at night without one of the “24-hour” streetcars rattling by. I’d think “Hmm, that’s not great, "but I gave the TTC the benefit of the doubt. Big city, I figured.

I loathed the long wait at Yonge-College after popping up out of the subway, so if the weather was nice (and sometimes even not) I’d walk.

Once, transfer in hand, I made it one block before a streetcar pulled up alongside me. I could see the empty seats. A lazy ride would hit the spot, I thought. So I climbed to the streetcar’s top step where I was flatly denied.

Transfers only good at subway stations, I was told. I knew that. It said the same thing on the transfer itself. But, really?

Fuming, I stomped off. I considered writing the TTC. I debated calling the Star’s transit reporter, or maybe the paper’s urban fixer. But the walk soothed my anger. By the time I was home I may have written an angry Facebook post, I can’t remember.

Although it seemed inconsequential then, my little sob story might actually get some play in today’s news.

The new (debatable) narrative seems to be this: the TTC has pushed riders too far with recent fare hikes that haven’t yet brought any discernible improvements to trip quality. But, what riders are most upset about, is abysmal service.

The debate now is nasty and personal. It’s riders against workers, unions against management, and Adam Giambrone against … er, won’t go there today.

In a press conference today TTC Union head Bob Kinnear had one message for riders and newspapers. “Stop it.”

That means riders shouldn’t point cameras at TTC employees, and when the media are given this information we should refuse it, then write to our audience to say “this isn’t appropriate.”

Sorry Bob, neither of these things will happen.

What needs to happen, I think, is that TTC employees and their customers (of which I am a Metropass-carrying member) need to play a bit nicer. That said, if we’re doing a good job the media should run the images its audience is finding, and at the same time strive to do smarter stories about the TTC.

Transit, it seems, has never looked so newsworthy.

John Rieti is a Toronto Star radio room reporter and studies in the Master of Journalism program at Ryerson University. jrieti@thestar.ca.

Spoof Olympics highlight Vancouver poverty

• A guest post
  

By Fabiola Carletti

Chewy the Rat grinned at curious onlookers as she wove through Vancouver streets carrying a knock-off designer purse. She’s not the Olympic icon that visitors expect to see. 
Along with an oversized cockroach and bedbug, Chewy played mascot for the Poverty Olympics, a satirical version of the winter games that ran a mock ceremony Sunday afternoon, just five days prior to the launch of the official games on Feb. 12.

The event was organized by a motley crew of community groups from the Downtown Eastside, a roughly 15-block area known as Canada’s poorest postal code. Their goal is to challenge the province’s official branding as the best place on earth by calling attention to a series of social challenges faced by underprivileged Vancouverites, especially in regard to affordable housing.
 “People are on our side for once!” cried out a smiling woman, who waved at a motorist who honked in support.

She repeated the phrase several times during an organized march to the Japanese Hall, where the sit-down event was held. The venue, which has a seating capacity of 500, was packed with a diverse crowd of participants, many wearing t-shirts that replaced the Olympic rings with handcuffs.
“At the real Olympics, somebody wins and everybody else loses,” said Robert Bonner, a campaigner who helped open the ceremony. “Everybody is a winner here.”

Bonner said that B.C. has the lowest minimum wage in the country, the highest child poverty rate, sub-average welfare rates, and a deficiency of affordable housing.
Glenn Coulthart attended with his son, a first-grader who had only heard great things about the Olympics at school. 

 “We thought it was important to bring him down to show him the other side of the story,” said Coulthart.

To tell their stories, performers put on a series of mock sporting events that pit caricatures of powerful figures against community representatives. In the first game, Anne-Marie Monks played a disabled pensioner trying to secure a home by getting past several housing hurdles.   
 “I was homeless for five years. I lived on a park bench,” said Monks, who noted that her stage story resembles her true story. Still, she insisted, “there are broken spirits here but there’s also strength and community.”

But the Poverty Olympics’ endorsers are not the only voices representing their community.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman unveiled Downtown Eastside Connect on Feb. 1, a centre designed to be an information hub for journalists seeking information about the area. The centre involves 30 other local non-profit groups that have various approaches to the area’s troubles.

"It's not a spin centre," Robertson has publicly stated in response to critics, "There is no disagreement we have much more work to do. We just want to highlight the work being done."

Gena Thompson, who played Chewy, also works with the Carnegie Community Centre. She claimed her group refused to work with the media centre because some of their material was deemed “too negative.” 
“It’s pretty clear that they don’t want the truth. Just the rosy side,” she said. 

- - -

Photos by Fabiola Carletti

Left photo: A marching band filled Vancouver streets with upbeat music.

Right photo: Children representing the Downtown Eastside community take on the government in a wrestling match.

Fabiola Carletti is a graduate student in the School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia fabiola_carletti@hotmail.com

Picture this: an awards season without a red carpet in sight

By Lauren Crothers

Spring is coming, pregnant with the weight of all the photographs taken in the past 12 months. And boy, am I getting excited.

Because it's awards season, with the World Press Photo on Feb 12, followed by the NPPA and the Pulitzers in April. Photos, glorious photos. Hundreds to pore over and dissect.

You'd better believe I will be squeezing every last drop of blog milk from these three events once the winners are announced.

Until then, do you have any past favourites? Did you agree or disagree with the judges' decisions . . . did any of the images grow on you?

This is the place to talk about it.

Lauren Crothers is a Star copy editor with one eye behind a lens. lcrothers@thestar.ca

Keeping the stereotypes out of crime stories

 
By Thandiwe Vela

At Yuk Yuk's comedy club recently, comedian Daniel Woodrow (funny looking lanky guy, big hair) started by telling the audience he was afraid to walk in his neighbourhood (The Beaches, I think) because of this wanted poster put up with a little sketch of a crime suspect that said something along the lines of Wanted: Black Male.

Now Daniel, who is of mixed race, doesn't really look like he'd be the object of a citizens arrest in The Beaches based on that wanted poster, but his seemingly unreasonable paranoia about returning to his neighbourhood made me think of all the crime news stories broadcast and published that offer similarly vague suspect descriptions.

"Police are looking for three black males. The suspects should be considered armed and extremely dangerous."

With such a sweeping description I don't have to look far: My dad, my older brother and my younger brother - who's only 12 - to find someone who fits the suspect description (though no one in my family should be considered armed and extremely dangerous).

Perhaps this is why data continues to show that Toronto police stop blacks more often than whites.

I've probably written about half a million crime news briefs and stories in the past 15 months - as anyone who's ever worked in the Star radio room must, and I get a lot of ambiguous suspect descriptions from police (the victims and witnesses rarely have a moment to whip out their phone cameras).

I strive to never include indistinguishable suspect descriptions in my stories - preferring instead something like 'the suspect descriptions were unclear,' or 'police have not yet released suspect descriptions,' but even the best of us make mistakes. So if anyone comes across a crime story of mine published in the past, today or the future with some useless, blanket suspect description at the end, I lose.

Thandiwe Vela is a student, a track athlete and secretary of the Canadian Association of Black Journalists. Her goals are to graduate, to be president of her native Zimbabwe (if the position finally frees up), and to beat Usain Bolt in a 60-metre match race. tvela24@hotmail.com