Mediabeat letter 002

GOING INSIDE INSIDE THE CBC would have been an unsavory task at the best of times, as the concept of an “official blog of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation” was the by-product of mid-decade expectations that no longer exist, if they did to begin with. How many extra layers of communication could a content provider need? As many as there are unemployed content providers, maybe? Five years ago, it was presumed that the best way for media to deal with external criticism was to hire their own blogging ombud: most significantly CBS News, battered from “Rathergate,” launched Public Eye in September 2005 — closed 28 months later due to “lack of a sustainable business model.” Well, the CBC has no such concerns … er, right? Tod Maffin, a radio freelancer who rallied CBC employees to upload rogue web content in their locked-out late-summer of 2005, managed to sell management on the idea of being their transparency overlord a few months later — and The Man was not going to tell him what to write! (That is, except when tips on ad-blocking were involved!) But why would Maffin bite the hands he was so desperate to have feed him? Just over two years of generally benign rewrites of CBC news releases turned out to be enough, and he backed away from Inside the CBC for a confusing set of reasons. The site was resurrected in the hands of an associate of The Hour, Paul McGrath, who has no apparent idea about anything — yet someone pays him to semi-consciously feed the “official” blog with tangential bits of, what? For today’s most desired dirt, a list of CBC staffers who will lose their jobs, look no further than the personal blog of Tod Maffin. The homepage of Inside the CBC, by contrast, offers a copy-and-paste of a Canadian Media Guild e-mail (oh so insidery!), a regurgitated bit about Jimmy Kimmel’s presentation at the ABC upfronts (oh so CBC!) and a picture — proudly swiped from the Facebook account of someone else with the surname McGrath — of Being Erica starlet Erin Karpluk signing autographs in the CBC atrium (wait, is that a third nipple?).

ATTENTION ATTENDEES OF BOOKCAMPTORONTO: This may not come as a big surprise, but somebody is hoping to sell you nothing, under the guise of selling you something. And why shouldn’t they? The traditional trade show it spawned to replace, BookExpo Canada, was a big-money event — killed because publishers complained they weren’t getting any returns on their investment in this climate. So, instead, a free conversational event with a free lunch — but, as the official Wiki points out, no projectors or microphones at the dreary University of Toronto iSchool — becomes the perfect place to ponder an industry where no one knows the future. The sessions look interesting enough, and even if the chances of anyone saying anything original are remote, it doesn’t cost $479. Still, hearing Montreal-based co-organizer Hugh McGuire discuss the frustration of putting BookCamp together via a podcast called Media Hacks, gives the whole undertaking the taint of social media experts using this event to pounce on a few bewildered businesses. “Publishers by and large,” he says, “have really ceded the online space to people who aren’t them.” Moreover, both McGuire and co-organizer Mitch Joel were bemused at how the publishing industry types didn’t understand the nuances of an “un-conference” where the participants were expected to hash out the panel discussions ahead of time. This level of volunteer input would be expected because it’s free, right? Yet they fail to process that the hot air of Web 2.0 meetups may not actually translate amongst the earnestly literate types trying to stick up for print. The message sent is that actual outsider insight — the wisdom that has propelled a billion existential tweets — has a premium attached, just take my business card, I’ll call you. Good intentions notwithstanding, these guys know that nothing sells like the smell of fear: e-book piracy being the latest threat. What we’re seeing is a more humble feel-good version of the get-rich-quick scheme because, hey, who doesn’t want to get paid these days? After all, preying upon the creative passions that led someone to want to work in an industry as introverted as publishing will expend far less snake oil than some no-money-down real estate scam.

THE TROUBLE WITH REFUTING GAWKER at this stage is that anyone driven to complain is operating on a second-hand sense that the site has always been the agenda-spewing work of some ominiscient MQanhattan media meanies, when publisher Nick Denton has actually spent the past 18 months trying to reinvent his brainchild as a populist round-the-clock national opinionated pop culture news service. Today, the characters behind the keyboard are pretty much unknown to readers old and new — a tactical response to all of that oversharing exhibitionism, which drove Gawker’s original iteration off a cliff. Snark for its own sake had one last rusty moment this week with a 5:31 a.m. post, “Meet Michaelle Jean, the Sarah Palin of Canada,” hazily posted by overnight temp “The Cajun Boy.” Whatever he read wrong about the seal heart-eating Governor-General, though, was good enough for Canada’s national newsmagazine senior writer Anne Kingston to fill her quota of online indignation, acting all huffy over a bad joke headline on the ever-reaching Macleans.ca. Which brought to mind a better Gawker headline of late, “Canada Mistakes Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld for Person of Influence,” following the fleeting March flap where the 3 a.m. host of Red Eye snickered at the news of the Canadian military seeking a rest in Afghanistan — pretty scandalous stuff if you didn’t know it was a determinedly dopey show hosted by a former editor of Maxim. Looks like they punked the media north of the border again, though: Damian “Pink Eyes” Abraham, the bald, bleeding, boisterous frontman of Fucked Up appeared on CBC Radio One’s show Q — and because, thanks to Billy Bob Thornton, we all know Jian Ghomeshi never interviews anyone without “context,” the appearance hinged on the fact that Abraham not only appeared as a guest on Red Eye twice this year, he has an open invitation to appear again. Then, needing some filler for the Canadian Press, the radio chat gets spun into “Pink Eyes takes wisdom to Fox News” — which is basically old news, but hey! Such ephemeral details get blown out of proportion because CBC, CP, Maclean’s, etc. staffers can’t grasp being part of anything better, even as they feign superiority. But these American tails will never be too long to wag their dogs.

NO “GREAT MOVIES” FOR FUTURE CITYTV means Canadian filmmakers are fuming over a lost opportunity to get paid to showcase their wares, despite promises to the contrary, putting owner Rogers in a worse light than the CTV “Save Local” schtick their cable guys oppose.

EXCLAIM! Q&A WITH BUCK 65 is technically about music, but also explains an intriguing personality in a broader context, even though he claims to think of his soon-expanding CBC Radio 2 afternoon drive gig as “something I do on the side.”

REX REED TRASHES BRUCE McDONALD flick Pontypool: “Like most Canadian movies … it has no tension, meter or structure, and is utterly pointless. Worse, as the vandalism, looting, mass panic and chewing of human livers spreads across Canada, the movie never shows anything it describes.”

PORN AND PRE-SCHOOL REQUIRES CAPTIONING as the CRTC denied an application by Videotron to avoid fulfilling their responsibilities surrounding all video-on-demand programming — literacy cited as reason for the kidstuff; the “adult” rationale is a little less explicit.

THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM SUMMIT at Centennial College today has generated some Twitter chat, but what’s left to say? (”[S]mug, smarmy, and offering very little new insights” — @jessehirsh) Here, we’d rather do than talk, so add this feed and/or exclusive tweets at @mediabeat.