Email her and tell her what you think of her silence.

Me, I gave her hell at the time.

Well ... speedo ... apparently she wasn't silence. Didn't you read Hansard?

But the big issue is what to do about the lock which CanWest media has on the distribution of our news.

How will Stuart ever be able to rail against Canwest/Global ever again once he reads this article points out how insignifigant our blogs really are.
But more important is this business of the UN trying to manage and tax the internet.
Now, thats much more scary than the influence of MSM. This is happening right now, we will have the Americans protect us from this disaster as usual.
If you need any further information on this, go to Drudge and see the posted atricle.

Where does the Tyee fit into the study?

I found Schneider's comments relating the lacklustre nature of the blogging to a national character that tends to demur in public space interesting. He might be onto something -

By comparison, US blogs are very kinetic, occasionally brassy and not infrequently quite looney.

I'm hardly an authority, but the few Brit blogs I've seen are no-holds-barred cauldrons of piss-&-vinegar. Not sure what that says about what lies beneath that famed English reserve.

Now I'm curious what Quebec blogs are like...

Quebec blogs are ofen smothered in gravy and cheese curds.

I thought BLOGs was the Bi, Lesbian Or Gay society?

I do have to disagree with 24's election coverage, with Sean Holman, and Public Eye online, they have done a very good job of covering this election. Also, many of Sean's Stories have lead into mainstream media.

What Vancouver blogosphere?

One blog to rule them all
One blog to find them
One blog to bring them all
And in the election bind them

Check Small Dead Animals (http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/) for very active political blogging. Public Eye is also good.

Perhaps Vancouver is just complacent about Vancouver politics? Can you blame'em really? Our last mayor promised to eliminate the open drug trade on the DTES - last time I was down there, I saw someone getting shot up IN THE NECK. This was on the street, not in an alley.

With promising history like this on our side, why would Vancouverites care?

Provincial and Federal elections are much sexier; I said so during the last municipal to a reporter - he liked it enough to print it.

Since we're plugging away here, I'll add my article from Beyond Robson.

whoa, how do you post html here?

Sean:

URLs auto convert, You don't post HTML - that's a security risk.

Your blog at Beyond Robson is pretty incoherent though, so I'm not sure posting it added much in the way of value.

Sean, interesting post. I didn't agree with it, but that doesn't lessen its value.

Prof. Schneider's suggestion that there's little municipal election blogging because of traditional Canadian deference to authority doesn't hold up to even a little scrutiny. There's plenty of frothing-at-the-mouth commentary online about provincial and federal politics. The issue isn't why Canadian bloggers don't comment on politics; it's why Vancouver bloggers don't comment on local politics.

Maybe part of what's really at play here is what happens in the broader population. Turnout in municipal elections is usually very low, and those elections rarely turn on an easily-grasped defining issue. 2002 was a wonderful anomaly, and if blogging had been anywhere near as prevalent then as it is today, I expect there would have been some very lively discussions around Larry Campbell and the four-pillar strategy.

All right, all right, all right!

Workin' on it.

http://pacificgazette.blogspot.com

mediadirt.blogspot.com

has apparently been censored, closed down. There are just a few clues that this was an imposed suicide.

Surely it wasn't their "CanWest Turd of the Year" contest? Not when Mr Floatie graces our pages?

Who has the authority? Who dunnit? What do you think?

I've seen a lot stronger than a "CanWest Turd of the Year" contest on Blogspot pages, so I really don't think that was it. But looking at the Google cache, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that at least one media figure they'd attacked was able to convince the nice folks at Blogger that some of the material on the site was legally actionable.

I waited before posting, hoping that others might might pick up on it.

There is a vast difference between blogs and message boards such as this, edited by The Tyee.

CanWest and much of the MSM are promoting the blogosphere where billions of messages (blogs) are posted without comment. Contrast that with Message boards or forums.

Don't let us nurture that confusion that serves the MSM.

So it would be useful to know what happened to The Dirt, skeptikool. And why. Any clues?

No, BC Mary - not a clue. I tried, too late, to log on.

It must be clear to many, by now, that the whole medium is under attack - much of the assault under the guise of protecting us from terrorism, fraud, porn etc. Privacy is illusory.

The Establishment can live with message boards where only the mealymouthed need apply and, unfortunately, there have been ISPs and System Operators that have been co-opted into supporting that. This was evident to the extreme at the outbreak of the second Allied attack on Iraq.

It was quite evident that some sytem operators were not only suggesting to posters the use of the "ignore" function but were using it themselves against particular posters. So you would end up with a board of contributors of like-opinion and gung ho, like the MSM, for the war.

No message board is immune from the head games.

Rob's got a point about the lowish turnout in local elections lending itself to less blog activity. That's doubtless part of the problem. I think, though, that there is something bigger at play -- there's not enough fuel that is useful to most bloggers.

Mark Schneider's right about the Sun and Courier providing reasonable coverage. The trouble for bloggers is that both outlets' web presence is less useful as blog fuel. Remember that most blogs are pure commentary and much of that commentary is informed by reports from the dreaded MSM*. There are only a half-dozen or so stories in section A or B of the Sun that are outside the subscriber wall, with most of the municipal election coverage on the other side. Bloggers who don't want to pony up for a subscription are out, and those who do have access to the subscriber section are reluctant to link to a story that their readers may not be able to access. I'd guess that the Courier's website has a lower profile -- and although there's no charge, only a selection of stories are posted.

The third factor I can think of is that expounding on local elections is of a naturally limited appeal. For bloggers looking for traffic, commenting on national or international affairs is much more liekly to draw traffic as it has a larger population to target. As for access to stories on which to comment, that's again a factor -- someone blogging about federal politics has free access to stories from the Globe, Star, CTV, CBC, Canoe/Sun Media and a few stories from the Post, plus commentary to poke around. Those who concentrate on the U.S. (even if it is, to use Norman Spector's term, political escapism) have an even broader range of sources (of variable quality, but many will be (to the blogger) "ideologically correct") from which to choose.

Add it up and you can see why local elections aren't bigtime blog fodder.

* Someone wanna take that trigrammaton out back and shoot it? Please?

Achtung!! From "Up In Ontario" ...

November 16, 2005
Mediadirt Disappears

A few weeks ago someone pointed me through a link to the Mediadirt blog, a site dedicated to reporting gossip, slander and rumour in the Canadian media. It was a great read; the inside dirt on Canada's media conglomerates, posted by a writer named Dirty Don who obviously worked inside the CanWest wasteland.

One of the most recent posts was about Lisa LaFlamme, pissed drunk at an awards ceremony. Another was a slag of lifestyle columnist Rebecca Eckler. Commenters, who obviously were also from inside the mediaplex, often straightened out some of the rumoured details of stories so that a kind of collaborative, vetted version came out. They had a running award for who would be the CanWest Turd of the Year, with some excellent candidates vying for top spot. All in all it was a delightful bit of gossipy insider schadenfreud that laid bare the despair of Canadian media workers.

Now the site has disappeared. It was hosted on Blogspot at mediadirt.blogspot.com, which now bounces to a big 404 Page Not Found error. Where, oh where, have you gone, Dirty Dan? Have you been silenced by those you taunted?

Not even the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has a copy of the site indexed. So in effect, Mediadirt has ceased to exist. Seems a bit chilling, no?

But wait! The Google index does have a copy of Mediadirt for you to see. Get it while you can.
Posted by James Sherrett at November 16, 2005 11:26 AM

Comments

Yeah, it was a fun read. They were threatened with legal action, though and shut it down.
Posted by: Sarah at November 17, 2005 10:55 AM

Dirt was freakingly funny, if shortlived. I guess they sussed him out, eh?
.te.d is tblog.ca
Posted by: teddy at November 17, 2005 11:22 AM

Too bad, though I can't say I'm surprised. Imagine! Thinking you could say what you wanted on the intermaweb.
Posted by: James at November 17, 2005 06:42 PM

Darnit, I missed all the fun. I'm off to read the cached copy.
Posted by: Carrie at November 18, 2005 01:47 PM

They're back! Here's the new URL ...

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=19126678&postID=113242044763159821

ACTUALLY, this is what you are looking for: http://mediadirt.blogspot.com/

What a pity that some of the dissappeared juicy bits were not copied and pasted. A sample follows:

THE WEASELS RISE FROM THEIR HOLES

Yes, we are back -- well, some of us are. Others have opted out after quite an interesting and stomach-churning week of cyber-warfare.

We thank all of you -- well, maybe not ALL of you -- who were in constant touch, urging our safe return. We also thank our legal counsel and the host of this blog, who assured us the flaming, threats and what they referred to as severe "sock puppetry harassment" -- a new one for us -- was even something they could notify authorities about on this side of the border, and so we needn't soil our boxers any longer.

That said, however, we will in fact not be able to print much of the very delicious, scandalous and at times quite heartbreaking dirt so many of you have kindly sent us over the past month and particularly the past week. So regretfully, this blog cannot be all that we once hoped it would be -- but we will endeavour to make it as funny and silly and snide as possible and to knock down the many egos in the Canadian media as we see fit.

And if any of you missed us in our past incarnation, some highlights:

1. Peter Mansbridge's column in Maclean's magazine sucks balls.
2. Gordon Fisher, aka Monty Burns, is the overwhelming winner of our first-ever CanWest Turd of the Year Contest.
3. Rebecca Eckler is about to become a publishing giantess, and it annoys us.
4. Jacob Richler is no Mordecai.
5. Lisa LaFlamme got right plastered hosting a Seymour Hersh dinner a while back in Toronto, and we admire her for it.
6. A lot of partying goes on at CTV.
7. There are a lot of sad, drunken National Post employees.
8. A lot of people in B.C. consider Gordon Campbell to be a shameless CanWest poster boy, and it annoys the shit out of them that his brother writes a column for the Vancouver Sun.
9. Antonia Zerbisias says we are petulant anonymous chicken-shit weasels. And we resent that! We are not petulant!
10. Belinda Stronach has some kinda jugs.

posted by Dirty Don @ 8:48 AM 10 comments

Thanks, skepticool: The Dirt re-surfaced about an hour after I had found it on that other URL. Nice to see them back, eh?