By David Topping

Photos by David Topping/Torontoist.

For the second year in a row, readers of the alt-weekly that we have never written anything critical about, not even once, have voted Torontoist Toronto’s Best Blog. Aw shucks, NOW readers, thanks. We accept.
This year, NOW‘s critics’ choice for best website—we were it last year!—are music junkies AUX.tv, who we’re quite fond of (and whose new TV channel we’ve profiled). So that’s cool, too. But see if you can spot the dig at an innocent bystander in NOW‘s description of its winner:

New sites in Toronto always seem to attempt what’s been done elsewhere. And whether they follow the media-watching Gawker model or the TMZ celebrity trail, they end up mondo failures. AUX.tv, though, does the opposite. Where other media are moving away from dedicated music programming, AUX goes toward it, filling a niche demand and nabbing a television show (Rogers channel 107) in the process.

You’d be forgiven for missing it, but that paragraph’s whole first half is almost certainly aimed squarely at the newly launched Mondoville, which could be described as “follow[ing] the media-watching Gawker model” and “the TMZ celebrity trail” and which is helmed by former Eye Weekly writer Marc Weisblott. (Get it? NOW thinks Mondoville is a “mondo” failure.) It is at this point in this article that we would like to remind you that last year NOW called us “petulant and snarky.” Thank goodness that the paper’s readers display such consistent good judgment and are also attractive and cool and probably very fun to hang out with.
You can see the rest of NOW and NOW‘s readers’ picks for the Best ________ in Toronto online or on newsstands now.