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How Toronto’s Papers Covered Hillary Clinton and…Pokémon
In Front Page Challenge, Torontoist analyzes the best and worst of Toronto’s major dailies.
Photo by Christopher Hylarides from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
It’s hard to imagine now, but once there was a time when Toronto’s daily newspapers didn’t provide front-page coverage of Pokémon. But this column is now documenting a third straight week of Pokémon-related reportage, even on this historic week where a woman is about to be nominated by a major American political party as its presidential candidate. Is keeping the focus on Pokémon Fever in these momentous times still enough to take one of Toronto’s papers to Front Page Challenge glory?
The Globe and Mail
The Globe‘s top story of the day is news of the British Columbia government’s plans to address skyrocketing residential real estate prices (along with some number-crunching graphics). Foreign investors have purchased $1 billion worth of Vancouver-area property in June and July of this year alone, leading the province to announce a new 15 per cent tax on such sales in the region. The hope is that placing this tax on foreign speculators will make the housing market more affordable for the Canadian middle class. In other developments, the Globe has discovered that the Ontario Liberals, despite their recent vows to rein in their use of provincial ministries as political fundraising operations, are still using cabinet staff to sell further access to companies the province already does business with. The Globe‘s coverage of day one of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia focuses on Bernie Sanders’s attempts to forge party unity as several of the opening night speakers had to endure the slings and arrows that accompanied every positive mention of Hillary Clinton.
National Post
Like the Globe, the National Post sees the Democratic Convention glass as half-empty, presenting a group of Bernie Or Bust fans as the image accompanying the article “Diehard Sanders allies boo call to back Clinton.” The piece describes yesterday’s heavy rains falling in the City of Brotherly Love as a metaphor for the dark clouds over the convention—clouds that threaten to rain on Clinton’s parade. John Ivison’s column, “Right turn on social issues,” documents internal strife roiling within Canada’s Conservative Party. You see, the non-hint-taking social conservative wing of the party felt that former prime minister Stephen Harper did not do enough to criminalize abortion, declare God didn’t make Adam and Steve, and hire operators to work the Barbaric Cultural Practices tip line, and are determined to have a say in the selection of the next Conservative leader. Elsewhere on the front page, Colby Cosh continues to rail against his chosen profession in his commentary piece “Go ahead and hate the media, we don’t do ourselves any favours,” and at the bottom of A1, the Post covers Saturday’s BB gun attack in Newmarket on a group of people in the street catching Pokémon.
Toronto Star
Bizarrely, the Toronto Star aggregates the latest Pokémon headlines on top of the page and yet does not mention the alarming news of the pellet gun attack as covered by the Post. The paper’s coverage of the Democratic Convention is much more positive, as one would expect from a liberal newspaper; it describes the party’s attempts to build bridges between the Clinton and Sanders camps as promising, with First Lady Michelle Obama’s galvanizing speech in particular hailed as marking a “turnabout” from the discord on display as the convention opened. In a Star exclusive, Toronto police Superintendent Mark Fenton, found guilty of misconduct for ordering the kettling of hundreds of people during the G20, plans to appeal the conviction. And the paper also features a story on the mayor of Whitchurch-Stouffville, who has invited the entire town (population 37,000) to attend his upcoming wedding (cash bar, one presumes). Last night’s election of Michael Ford to replace his late uncle as councillor for Ward 2 (and thus keep Ford Nation’s presence alive at City Hall) only gets a tiny mention at the very bottom of the page.
Metro Toronto
Metro, generally a big booster of Toronto’s neighbourhoods, takes the east-end enclaves of Leslieville and the Beach to task this morning for their NIMBYism. It has recently included such flashpoints as the noise of music festivals and “mysterious humming sounds,” but may have crossed the line of the city’s general goodwill with their latest grievance, after a recreational program for children was forced to relocate due to complaints of toddlers being too noisy while playing in a local park. Metro‘s other main story of the day concerns Toronto’s “rogue coyote population,” after the recent police shooting and wounding of a sick coyote (the animal had been caring for young pups and abandoned them in the aftermath; it’s suspected that the coyote has died since). It’s also worth noting that Metro is the only paper providing continuing front-page coverage of the death of Abdirahman Abdi in Ottawa, who died of injuries suffered in an alteration with Ottawa police—an incident caught on video by witnesses.
Toronto Sun
The Sun‘s front page this morning is a companion piece to last week’s championship cover, working with similar themes—sort of the Zooropa to last week’s Achtung, Baby!, with the unexpected image of the corpse of Pikachu sprawled on the ground. No, he didn’t fall off the CN Tower from last week’s cover, King-Kong style. Instead, he was mortally wounded in Saturday’s rooftop pellet gun attack on Pokémon Go players. “If Pikachu bleeds, it leads,” as the old media saying goes, and that has never been more true than today. The Sun pays proper tribute to the election of Michael (née Mikey) Ford to City Council by giving the 22-year-old former school trustee (and future mayor of Toronto) pride of place on the front page. Joe Warmington describes this victory as a win from beyond the grave for the late Rob Ford, who will have his term finished by his young nephew, by quoting former councillor (and future Canadian Prime Minister) Doug Ford thusly: “Rob is like one of those rock stars who die young but actually don’t disappear but only get bigger with time.” The Conservative-leaning Sun, which last Tuesday put coverage of day one of the Republican Convention on the front page, does not perform a similar kindness for the Democrats.
This week’s winner: with a Ford back in Etobicoke’s Ward 2 contrasted by the corpse of Pikachu, it seems the Sun has reclaimed its mojo and with two wins in a row, takes over sole possession of first place in this column’s weekly standings.
| Newspaper | Number of Wins |
|---|---|
| Toronto Sun | 11 |
| Metro | 10 |
| Toronto Star | 9 |
| National Post | 5 |
| Globe and Mail | 4 |
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