October 11, 2006
Spacing, The Globe, Others Fight For Your Election Media Hearts
These 45 seats might be empty now but come November 13 we'll get to help decide who should fill them. Yes, the municipal elections are upon us. So where should those addicted to municipal politics go for their online fix?
Spacing Votes is the go-to choice. Matt Blackett and the team that brings you your favourite horizontally-inclined magazine has gathered a gaggle of bloggers, students and journalists to cover the election. They link to traditional media sources, have John Lorinc writing insightful columns and report on election related events. The site has been up for a few weeks now and has found its stride.
SV's main competitor is the Globe and Mail's Campaign Bubble blog. The blog marks the return of Marc Weisblott, whom we all remember from his TorStar funded blog Paved.ca. We got to admit we miss Weisblott and think he'll do a good job poking fun at the ridiculousness of this election and Stephen LeDrew. We just have to ask, why the late start?
The Sun has City Hall writer Rob Granatstein writing screeds on his personal blog. We're just glad that they Sun didn't sick Sue Ann Levy on us. That woman sends shivers down our spines.
Notoriously absent from this field is the Toronto Star. While the Star has a formidable team working on covering the election (Royson James, Christopher Hume, et al) we think they're missing out on the first municipal election where blogs truly can make a contribution to the heady swirl of democracy.
[ed. note] A keen eyed commenter noticed we left out Ed Keenan's blog for Eye Weekly. We think Ed's a great writer on municipal issues and hope that some of this rubs off on his blog. Ed like many other journalists just seem to be warming up. By later this month we suspect many more of us will be sick of the election.
Photo by Hylaride from the Torontoist Flickr Group.
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The Toronto Star doesn't make your list or get a link in your list because they've chosen to appear and report more traditionally and not jump on the rickety "blog" bandwagon?
Yep. The Star doesn't get a link. I trust people can find the Star's website on their own. I've always been pretty happy with the Star's traditional municipal coverage but I don't think blogging is rickety. There are lots of stories during an election and there's no way the Star could print or run all of them.
That's where a blog would come in. A story about a controversy or personality conflict in one ward might not warrant a print story but it would easily make great fodder for a blog post. The Star, better than the Sun, the Globe or Spacing has the resources to do this. The fact that they choose not too is an oversight.
I, for one, welcome the return of Marc Weisblott. I've missed him since Paved.ca stopped being updated, so I'm glad he's covering the election.
I'm sure the Toronto Star is just preparing its vlog, to out-trend the competition.
The Star does publish a daily "Election Notebook" in the paper that includes a handful of brief stories about controversies or personality conflicts in particular races across the GTA that might not warrant entire articles. One of today's stories, for instance, is about what appears to be an illegal campaign ad for Giorgio Mammoliti displayed in the window of a Catholic school in his ward, and another is about how the decrease in eligible voters is affecting spending limits. As near as I can tell, the silly Star doesn't post any of these online.
I'm actually surprised you left out the blog Ed Keenan maintains for Eye Weekly: http://www.eye.net/election2006/