Locate your twitter contacts on an interactive world map with this simple mashup. Let your cursor hover over the bottom right corner of the map (not the one above, which is just a screenshot, but the interactive map linked to here) and a Twitter Account sign-in dialog will open. H/T: Nathan Yau...
PostMedia's Stephen Maher, whose blog post on the Toews contretemps I featured moments ago, has weighed in with a critique of Contrarian's first two posts on the subject. Here's what he wrote (and then let's close the subject for now): In your post on the Parliamentary Press Gallery, you say the gallery met @vikileaks30 with a "frenzy of denunciation," but provide no examples. You do not accurately describe the gallery's reaction to @vikileaks30. The journalists I know found it to be a matter of lively interest. Nobody reacted with anger, fear or embarrassment. Also, to point to the failings of the gallery, you...
Parliamentary scribe Stephen Maher, formerly of the Herald and now with PostMedia, offers a different view on why the Press Gallery all but ignored Vic Toews’s infidelity prior to #vikileaks30. (Previous views here, here, and here.) Maher's blog post is the more refreshing for its inclusion of updates from people who disagree with him. It rewards reading in full. I actually agree with most of what he says. Generally, I have little stomach for exposing the private lives of public figures, let alone their sex lives. But unlike Maher and his colleagues, I think there are clear grounds for an exception in Toews's case. Maher wrote: If [a] secretly...
In response to my critique (here and here) of the national news media's handling of the @vikileaks3o dustup last Friday, CBC's Kady O'Malley has offered a more thoughtful rebuttal (more thoughtful than this): Here's the major flaw in @kempthead's thesis re: "Hill journos" allegedly enraged at having "the news cycle snatched from their grasp"...
Press gallery' tweets in response to this and this (best read from bottom to top): My favorite response was Glen McGregor's question, "Do you know any journalists?" Yes, Glen, I have two National Magazine Awards, one Michener Award (out of three times as a finalist), and when I left journalism, I had more Atlantic Journalism Awards than the province of Prince Edward Island. No offense, though. I'd never heard of you, either. And for the record, I did not call Kady O'Malley anything. My criticism was directed to the Ottawa press pack generally, and neither attempted nor purported to assess any individual reporter's...
Blogger and tech journalist Jeff Jedras has a good analysis of the moral panic that swept through the Parliamentary Press Gallery last Friday (and previously touched on here). The leading lights of Canadian journalism had had the news cycle snatched from their grasp not once but twice the day before, and not by the customary culprits in the PMO but by a pair of tweeters, one obscure (the PEI man who kicked off the wildly popular #tellviceverything meme) the other anonymous (@vikileaks30). After floundering unhappily for 24 hours in the turbulent wake of these citizen journalists, the gallery regrouped Friday for an...
Earlier today I criticized several Nova Scotia media outlets — The Chronicle-Herald, The CBC, AllNovaScotia.com — for ignoring The Coast's breathtaking scoop about Mayor Peter Kelly's mishandled duties as executor of a friend's estate. The omission makes them look small. That's nothing compared to the Parliamentary Press Gallery's competition to out @vikileaks30, the anonymous tweeter who exposed details of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews' messy divorce. It's increasingly clear that many of the same reporters who are now hellbent to expose @vikileaks30 knew Toews had fathered a child after cheating on his wife for years, but helped him keep that secret. They will...
[See update/correction below] The Coast, a Halifax weekly paper, has produced a devastating account of Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly's mishandling of the estate of a family friend who had named him as executor and sole trustee of her modest fortune. In a prodigious piece of reporting, News Editor Tim Bousquet lays out the complex story in relentless detail, layering fact upon devastating fact through 5,000 words, illustrated with cancelled cheques and sketchy legal and financial filings. It's too complicated to summarize here, but please read it yourself, especially if you are a resident or voter in HRM. Bousquet's work sometimes suffers from his habit...
The Cape Breton Post has a thoughtful followup to my post about Victoria Standard publisher Jim Morrow's refusal to name the members of a police advisory council in Victoria County for fear they might face retribution in the district north of Cape Smokey. Morrow portrayed the area as rife with retributive justice and public fear, and asserted that new houses cannot be insured there because of widespread arson. The Post noted that accounts of the social fabric in Northern Cape Breton often conflict: Delilah Delores Dixon and Peter Sheldon MacKinnon, who were recently ordered out of their Bay St. Lawrence Road home...
A fleeting moment on CBC radio this morning pointed to a disintegration of the social fabric in rural Nova Scotia that ought to be more clearly on our collective radar. Jim Morrow, proprietor of Victoria County's only newspaper and CBC Cape Breton's volunteer “party line” correspondent at municipal council, declined to name the public members of the newly created Victoria County Police Advisory Board. Justice Minister Ross Landry created the board to serve as liaison between the RCMP and the County Council. Host Steve Sutherland asked who was on it. Morrow: I don't know if I should really say that, because some of the...