Continued from Part 1.
2) Openfile opens, files
Forget print and television. You know what's not dying? The internet! A new news website opened in Halifax last year and it caused the biggest stir by a non-porn site in some time.
Openfile's approach to news can perhaps best be described as hippie-populist. It's very much about sharing, being innovative (stories are suggested by readers) and giving the people what they want. And twitter. It's edited by former Frankland cull victim Neal Ozano while recent King's grad Bethany Horne serves as news curator.
As a reporter, Openfile has been fun to watch. Halifax has an insular journalism community and several statements from Horne in particular have left other reporters in the city blinking with astonishment. She seemed to say stealing quotes and facts was ok. She chastised media for printing a mugshot of a guy, who happened to be wanted for shooting someone, because the photo was taken when the guy was 17. Even though the guy was now 18. And a judge approved the whole thing. And he was on the lam for shooting someone.
But easily taking the cake was when she claimed allNovaScotia.com is not news but merely information because people have to pay to read it. I'm not even going to touch this one other than to note a colleague's observation that by this standard Watergate wouldn't have qualified as journalism.
More notably, there have been some very public arguments when other reporters accused Openfile of getting facts wrong and relying too much on twitter and reporting from other outlets.
So yes, sales of popcorn have been skyrocketing since Openfile came to Halifax. But bizarre editorial stances and a few factual fuck-ups aside, Openfile has done some good work. They've put out interesting stories topped off by extensive coverage of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children.
Personally, I have my disagreements with the Openfile approach. I think beat reporting is journalism's best asset, while Openfile in many ways is the opposite model. But I've got to admit, they're filling some of that void between reporters and readers that often gets overlooked. A simple story idea like "who is the Utility and Review Board anyway?" is likely helpful to a lot of people but mostly wouldn't occur to reporters who deal with the board daily.
Openfile also pays well, which is great for the freelancers in town. The site still has that post-coital glow of startup financing (TD Bank is their founding sponsor) and I don't know if it will be viable after they've smoked the cigarette down to the butt. But as a proponent of more media I'd like to see them stick around and improve. Also, their website is pretty.
1) The Chronicle Herald vs. allNovaScotia.com: a war of words
This is easily the most personally awkward item for me as I owe both sides a debt of gratitude, but 2011 was the year the Chronicle Herald and allNovaScotia.com went to war.
It arguably started early on when allNS editor Kevin Cox retired and Herald business reporter Judy Myrden jumped over to replace him. A few months later I left allNS to take over the Herald's Ottawa bureau.
Sometime around mid-year the Herald management decided allNS had gotten too big and needed to be taken on. The paper surprisingly hired four new business reporters and started a free email newsletter called the Business Insider specifically designed to take on allNS. Meanwhile allNS hired more reporters of its own.
Then late in the year allNovaScotia cut off all Chronicle Herald employees from its site. I'm still not sure exactly what triggered that.
Also both companies had devils of a time trying to launch new websites and spent much of the year cursing the tech gods.
For readers, I believe this rivalry is one of the best things to happen to the Halifax media scene in ages. Since the Daily News shut down in February of 2008 there's been no big head-to-head showdown in the print market. Competition makes everyone better and sure enough, both sides are stepping up their game to provide better coverage.
(For a cautionary tale on monopolies and lack of competition see: Brunswick, New.)
In fact, take a look at the overall Halifax news scene between print/online - The Chronicle Herald, allNovaScotia.com, The Coast, Metro, Openfile, Frank, the Transcontinental weeklies, a few magazines - and broadcast - CTV, CBC radio/tv, Global, News 95.7.
Yes, it's far from perfect and as someone who watches the news closely I spend a lot of time griping. But I also see an impressively vibrant media scene that would be the envy of places like St. John's or (ugh) Moncton.
Look at the small cities all across Canada. Literally nowhere else do you see the mix of an independent daily newspaper, a well-staffed business news website, a weekly that takes on investigative projects, a Metro paper with strong local personalities and hell, rarest of all, a Frank Magazine.
Halifax is an interesting corner of the earth to report on (it helps that half of our politicians are insane or illiterate) and a great place to work. Here's to hoping we're not all laid off in 2012.
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1 comment:
I'd encourage readers not to take McLeod's inaccurate statements at face value and read the actual posts which he refers to:
I said thinking of ANS as information rather than as a member of the media (I use that word deliberately) helps to understand why it doesn't want reporters reading its news service. It's not the "paying for it" that makes the outlet not journalistic: it's the lengths the site takes to keep their information out of the public discourse.
I think people who aren't biased by having worked there can read what I wrote with more clarity and get the correct meaning: http://halifax.openfile.ca/blog/curator-blog/curated-news/2011/allnovascotia-shedding-subscribers
(that's also the same place where he thinks I say stealing facts and quotes is ok)
And: OpenFile never took an editorial stance on the police's release of a minor's mugshot. That's a personal beef of mine, and you can probably trace it back to how much time I've spent working for the rights of youth and kids to be respected, even juvenile delinquents. McLeod seems to have relied too heavily on Twitter in his reporting of this blog entry. But that's why blogs are fun, I think. There's so much value in the comments and the conversation.
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