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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.