Instead of constant navel-gazing (as evidenced by the two recent lead articles on this site) why doesn't the Tyee just provide rwaders with insightful BC-based stories which is what we're all missing these days. Your coverage of the STV and the budget were very good. But there is a preponderance of Tyee "think pieces" about the media, terminator seeds, et al plus foolish stuff like Popeye smokin' dope. What citizens need is good local information which we often do not get from CanWest or the Black papers. Don't tell us why we're not getting it. Give it to us instead.

Sorry... "readers", not "rwaders", although rwaders might be appropriate.

Good follow-up Shannon.

What puzzles me is this(naive to me) expectation that some of these new newspapers will be great successes because "hey, we've identified our demographics".

Good for you, I'd say. You know you want to flog ads at the younger reader so you hire young writers and other crews to put together a graphicly appealing, but sorta weak on real content paper.

The problem from my perspective, and I must admit I'm a relatively old-geezer far beyond your dream reader age, is you admit hoping to snag an illusive market who are referred to as smart, living busy lifestyles and not into reading the old standards.

If these really are "smart" young people why in hell would they bother reading such pap. I mean, you could probably get better brain stimulation by reading the back of the corn flakes box.

Are "smart" young movers really more interested in skin cleaners and hair jell. I ask is this where
the "quite clever and quite savvy" leaders of the future are at? Scary!

In my opinion, people who are so focused on nice smelling or shiny hair etc., are not likely to spend much time in deep-think because they are already lost to the wonders of consumerland.

No, I haven't read any of these freebies as they aren't yet in print, but based on the inane comments in their introductory bios, some of these writers must live in a dream world.

I think the audience will end up being whoever happens to sit down in front of one. I use the word audience lightly because they probably wouldn't cross the street for one of these papers, but might grab one quickly on a trip to the crapper.

The big question is if you are chasing smart young people, why can't you just concentrate on a real good quality newspaper that all smart people will read?

But then it never was about quality or news, was it.>

I see the Big Unions are chomping at the bit trying to destroy one more bastion of capitalist supremacy. I'd like to see that unkown Carol James spin her way out of this one.

A free newspaper from Torstar. It will be good having a newspaper published by people who like Canada.

I can hardly wait until we get them in Calgary. All we have is Canwest and Sun newspapers.

Until Canadians learn to pay for what they receive, there is no hope. The fixed circulation giveaway is a content-killing concept because it guarantees the publisher to be beholden to the advertisers before the readers. Perhaps its a holdover of being a British colony where all the "culture" was provided from overseas and there was rarely the question of generating it ourselves and placing value in it.

So we must learn to pay or have no hope? The statement is either stunningly arrogant or else it just fails to notice that you are not a god, do not dictate culture.

I mean culture in a different way than your "culture", you see. Culture is a child of language, language is arbitrary in its assumptions. So arbitrary that whole cultures can come to believe things that, if viewed from a larger perspective, are obviously unconnected from any other reality. Pure invention.

The key word in your first sentence is 'pay'. What currency do you reccommend? How will this currency be distributed? You clearly mean money, and you seem to imply a much larger issue than some free shopper's papers.

I point out to you that whole indigenous cultures, even after subjugation by that colonial culture you mention, found little use for money, little to recommend it, until starvation was the only alternative left them. This idea of paying is abstract and esoteric. Money itself is a mere symbolic representative of the real values our culture holds.

Do try not to give it such dire weight. I mean, it has it's uses, obviously but it also has power. It has the power you give it, and as that power approaches the absolute value you imply, it leaves less and less room for real life.

Buddy Dag, you had me rolling on the floor with that diatribe.

"Big Unions", "chomping at the bit" "one more bastien of capitalist supremacy" all in less than 40 words.

Hey, want to know about another attack on the supremacy of free enterprise? How about the city of Vanvouver's new safe injection site?

First it was the police acting like a bunch of Socialists harrassing the drug dealers in pursuit of their Capitalist, if temporary Utopia.

As you certainly will attest, Socialists always lose and so now, instead of police standing in the way of progress, the Pinkos have smashed the dreams of scores of little capitalist by opening those Socialistic free injection sites.

Shame, shame.

I mean how's a good Capitalist to survive these days if they can't have unfettred access to people who really need things.

Thanks for speaking up for all those dealers buddy.

Mel, I sure understand where you're coming from. FFWD Weekly would accomplish more by raising its per word pay scale and dropping that hard, hard work they put in to give it such a tooth-grinding edge. Pretty slim pickings. It's not like the papers print news.

Allan, obviously the target market for tabs is party culture, which burns itself out pretty quickly. The kids who ARE smart subscribe to journals and high-editorial content magazines. They don't have time to waste.

The Barker writes: "The kids who ARE smart subscribe to journals and high-editorial content magazines. They don't have time to waste." Exactly. It was always thus.

To "Dear..." I say this: I meant that if you are not willing to at least pay less than a large coffee (a couple of bucks a week, say) for real quality and content in a publication then you don't respect it and you don't deserve it.

Yes, I get it.

If it means that much to you, you can have my share.

Thanks. Don't forget the GST! ;-)

Now to some serious stuff,crime. What say that all the citizens of BC have the chance to vote for the Soliciter General, the top cop. That way hopefully conflict of interest will be at a minimum and we can get a crimefighter/administrator that can handle the growing foreign gang problems. One ballot for the Sol Gen and one ballot for your MLA..

CCC hits a bullseye with the comment about getting what you pay for. (Now that there will be more than just CanWest here in this backwater perhaps it'll raise the game - Moriarty seems to be trying at the Province.) Established media all over the world are downsizing, and some of that is because of the impact of the internet.

For example, financial papers are losing subscribers. Not surprising since people can get the latest stock quotes off the net instead of waiting for yesterday's quotes in the paper. But they can't get the indepth reporting, analysis or opinion pieces for free. Why would anyone write this sort of journalism for free? - unless of course they were selling something, in which case it's not journalism. So obviously, if paid-circ papers want to keep their subscribers they have to offer readers something they can't get for free elsewhere, just as the Province and Sun will have to do when Metro launches. That would be feisty and scintillating columnists, not milquetoast platitudes. That's not rocket science.

And readers sure won't be interested in the prattlings of the juvenile journos at the Dose, even if it's free.

Gee super, and I thought domestic gangs were a problem.

Do you mean those foreign gangs that take (heist) jobs away from our locally trained domestic crooks?

BTW, isn't 'super' kind of a foreign name too?

You know super, I've been thinking of denouncing some of my ancestors because I just realized they too somehow got into Canada without anyone noticing they were foreigners.

Let's just close the borders and turn off all the lights and maybe they won't notice us.

Hi Kurt, I was interested in your comments about the evolution of Metro in London -- sounds like you were a witness. Would you mind e-mailing me directly to talk about it? Thanks, S.

Did you see and read (sic) this morning's first Metro? As underwhelming as the CanWest twins. A lead story headlined 'St. Paddy's Day blowout,' over a photo of three worse-for-wear Granville Street Paddys hoisting green beer for the writer-photographer -- who ain't much of either, by the way. Suddenly The Province has gravitas, relatively speaking.

They've found a solution to the litter problem they threaten to create: just leave them in the little green box so the Metro driver can pick them up in the morning.

Thanks Shannon for a great and topical series. I encourage the Tyee to commission more like it on other topics.

I had a look at the first Metro today and it's bad. But I'm a boy with a brain who is slightly older than their target demographic, so it's not surprising that I found it to be 16 pages of very amateurish design, assembly, reproduction, writing and editing. I read it more out of curiosity than anything else and likely won't pick it up again.

Just by virtue of there being 300,000 more dailies on the street means that the big three (Province, Sun, Globe) will be affected. But I suspect all players in the market (weekly, monthly, trade) will hear the sound of advertising dollars being sucked out the door.

The only ones who won't really be affected in the Vancouver market is the ethnic press, which, in the Chinese community, is very robust anyways. There are three Chinese paid circulation dailies and already numerous free weeklies and dailies and everybody seems to be surviving in a community of about 400,000 people. When I was working in Hong Kong back in the day (when it was still governed by Britain), there were 50 daily papers (two English language) of varying size and focus serving a city of 7 million people.

In Vancouver we've been basically served by state-run (the state being CanWest) publications for the past 25 years so anything new, even if its crap, is good from a competitve perspective.

Jeez, cheap shots abound.

Staff's preocupation with mediocre TV...

Chantal Eustace seemed to be hip enough to write for Tyee or maybe that just means that there isn't a TV "means test" for Tyee journalists but there is for Dosees?
http://www.thetyee.ca/About+Us/Chantal+Eustace.htm

Why do you assume "hipness" is a criterion for working at the Tyee? Looks more like they value good writing and reporting more than anything else.

Haven't you noticed? The only people in media who worry about the hip factor are the ones who can't do journalism.

My point is that if Ms. Eustace is capable enough to write for Tyee then it seems a little odd that she should be denigrated for taking a job at Metro.

Actually she took a job at Dose (you really must try reading more carefully) and no one was denigrating her, personally. I believe the story pointed out the contrast between what Dose's PR people say about the product and what the Dose staff is actually producing.

Actually she took a job at Dose (you really must try reading more carefully) and no one was denigrating her, personally. I believe the story pointed out the contrast between what Dose's PR people say about the product and what the Dose staff is actually producing.

I picked up Metro today. What's the problem? Its compact, lightweight and well laid out. The only reason anyone would critcize it is because its hard for some people to accept that the majority of people are lazy, passive and incurious and that they need to read something too. Its a tough lesson to learn but once you embrace the fact, making money becomes much easier. Its like a free donut giveaway!

Have we even seen what Dose is producing yet? Seems like those bios on the website have little to do with real content. So you really are being fairly judgemental and yes, denigrating about a product you haven't even seen.

Or wait... were you talking about metro? This is getting so confusing. We all know people who read the Tyee are going to be condescending about anything CanWest.

Actually, she took a job at Dose. (You might want to try reading more carefully.) The story didn't denigrate her personally. It pointed out the discrepancy between what Dose's PR people say about the product and what Dose's writers produce.

Have seen Metro and the content is thin. Living in Vancouver it's hard to appreciate what a good newspaper is because there are no good newspapers. Whenever I read a story in the New York Times or the Guardian I'm reminded of that.

Have seen Metro and the content is thin. Living in Vancouver it's hard to appreciate what a good newspaper is because there are no good newspapers here. Whenever I read a story in the New York Times or the Guardian I'm reminded of that.

Actually, she took a job at Dose not Metro.(You might want to try reading more carefully.) And no one was denigrated personally. The article merely pointed out the discrepancy between what the PR people say about the product and what the writers are producing.

Way to post the same comment... over and over and over again. If you want to argue, you might want to try some original thought.

Computer glitch. And judgmental doesn't have that extra "e."