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Eye, we love you, but you're bringing us down.
In August, Kate Carraway wrote a feature article comparing Toronto's media scene to New York's. She bemoaned the lack of "gossip" and "glamour" and Gawker from the city's "junior creative class," faulting Toronto for being "smart" but "gutless" and not "balls-out" enough and "the social world of Toronto media" for being "insidious[ly] boring" and—quoting Jessica Roy, a NYU student who Gawker incidentally all but ate alive—for not being an "elite, nefarious world where people trade intellect like currency." She also called out Torontoist (along with BlogTO and Spacing) for being too "safe," for our "all-consuming earnestness" and because we apparently don't "address this other stuff, this gore, that we need to talk about to be real and relevant." As one of our own staffers put it when we passed the article around the (e-mail) water cooler: "The gore? Do we need a viscera column?"
Though Carraway would later claim that her article was "tight," it really wasn't: it was confusing and confused and, ultimately, wrong. Toronto is not New York—won't ever be and shouldn't try to be—and to look out at Toronto media and fault it not for its shit ethics or shit priorities or shit writing or shit business decisions but because its youngest members aren't the subject of enough gossip seems the wrong fight to pick.
Still, she'd get a bit of gore. Gawker responded to Carraway's article by acting all Gawker-y. We responded with dismissiveness. NOW, in the person of web editor (and Torontoist co-founder) Josh Errett, responded by saying that what Carraway described was impossible, because everyone in Toronto is too sensitive, as Torontoist's birth proved. Brett Lamb responded to Errett by saying maybe Errett was too sensitive.
And now Carraway is back, and she's pissed that people misunderstood her wholly muddy original article. To wit: "When I argued for a more significant gossip culture in Toronto’s media scene," she says, and "for more social investment in our publications and jobs" (??), "it was because those things act in service to promote and incite more provocative and better journalism: Gawker et al for content’s sake, not for an endlessly brutal, tail-swallowing clusterfuck." We're pretty sure she's confusing an effect for a cause, but honestly? We barely know what Carraway is talking about anymore, and we're not entirely sure that she does, either. (Why else would she hand over her article for one full paragraph to a rambling and unsurprisingly self-indulgent Leah McLaren?) At least everyone in the conversation so far seems to agree on one thing: Toronto media can certainly do better. We just happen to think it won't get that way by nefariousness—or circle-jerks.
Logo by Gawker, Photoshop by David Topping.
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we're still willing to do the circle-jerks though.
Does this mean no more mocking Rosie Dimanno from torontoist?
There's an audience for this that Shinan Govani reaches but the Post isn't widely read. Plus shineboy is too nice.
Frank is sadly gone, bring on Gawker if no one else fills the void.
I think Torontoist declared a moratorium on Dimanno mocking last year.
I really wish it would be lifted, though. Her recent bizarre and extremely salacious review of the David Frost trial is ripe for mockery.
Isn't bickering back and forth between an earnest blog and a couple of local arts weeklies somewhat of a circle jerk?
I hope this doesn't turn out to be "untranscendible", to borrow a disturbing neologism from another of today's posts...
I'm lost. Why doesn't Carraway start her own blog, if this is such a 'great' idea?
I don't see how gossip opposes a conservative mind set. Isn't tattling and idle talk and shitting all over people for idiotic reasons simply a tactic for maintaining the status quo? Wouldn't it be much more progressive (especially these days, what with the 'irony' trend) to support, encourage and actually care about things?
"it was because those things act in service to promote and incite a brutal, tail-swallowing clusterfuck."
Fixed.
Carraway: Move to New York. You know you want to. You won't be happy until you do.
You could call it viscerist
@David Newland: "Isn't bickering back and forth between an earnest blog and a couple of local arts weeklies somewhat of a circle jerk?" Yes, it is. That's why I didn't really want to participate earlier, and why I didn't enjoy writing this article.
I'm torn. I've never received as much hate mail from people claiming that celebrity gossip didn't belong on Torontoist as when I interviewed Perez Hilton about his TIFF visit, yet it was one of our most widely-read articles (and spawned some of his rip-off merch).
As occasionally interesting as I tend to find celebrity gossip, I don't care, however, which domestic celeb from The Guard was spotted shopping in Yorkville. We also don't have the celebrity PR/paparazzi industry to support it—and most of those pap photo opportunities in trashy celebrity mags are manufactured by PR flacks.
You know, I think I understand where she's coming from with this--I mean, it all falls under the umbrella of job creation--and health care, and New York, you know, Americans are our neighbours, and New Yorkers are across the way, you can see right from our--well, me and other hard-working Torontonians, we're sick to the stomach that we don't, but in the end, ahem, gossip works both ways and, er, the great Leah McLaren.
Is Jaime having a seizure?
Marc - Widely read by who? Have you broken down the IPs and referrers to see where they were from?
That's what I wondered...looking at the comments in the Perez articles, a number of them appear to be from the type of people who post on his site (lots of "U," atrocious spelling/grammar). I'd be surprised if they're actually Torontoist regulars and not just fans Googling his name.
Carraway is right. Canadians are not very worldly, but they are not aware of this because, well, see the above. Not sophisticated enough to be 'personalities', we look down our nose at such as being 'American.' But this all just contributes to the overwhelming sense in Canada that stuff happens elsewhere, the real stuff, the fun.
So contrary to what this poster says, the writer is not confused; rather it is the mark of a genuine belief in the culture you live in to be bitchy in public about your competitors and so-called friends.
I think if you focus too much on the word 'gossip', you miss the point. She's writing about gossip specifically, but she's using that to describe some vague sense of drama that's missing from our culture. I agree that her original article is "tight".
Manufactured drama of the none-of-your-business-and-irrelevant-anyway variety. I do not see the draw, or why its absence is bad.
And if it's such a fucking awesome thing that everyone loves, as few of you seem to think, why don't you start your own Canadian gossip blogs? Then in a few weeks you can see nobody cares that Sarah Polley put on some weight or Dallas Green was seen at Yorkdale Indigo scanning the music magazines for references to himself, and then switch to American and British celebrities.
Kottke designed the Gawker logotype.
joe clark is a good non-gossip example of what carraway is talking about. he's a critic and a crank and an agitator and cares passionately about things most of us never notice and it may seem to him like he's shouting at a wall ... but people do listen and he makes things better
if you get hung up on the word gossip, you miss her larger point.
We're long overdue for a DiManno mocking.
I agree that some are hung up on the word gossip, we need the status quo shaken up a bit.
And everyone loves his ranting about typefaces, right?