Today on the Scroll: A self-loathing meta-media navel-gaze provides a final year-end surrogate for actually talking to people and going out to things — like the daily reportage returning to this space in January. (Not to mention that redesign.) What has changed in the past 10 years of the online content business? The packaging, certainly — the mid-to-late-‘90s EYE WEEKLY homepage boasted of a pioneering role in dragging print stories into cyberspace — although the sort of typing commissioned locally for screen-reading still leaves plenty to be desired. A new approach to a professional platform-leaping publication — with the personalities to match — can theoretically still come out of this town. Web writing, however, might have some distance left to go before regarded as an actual long-term career. Lately, the biggest driver of journalism chatter online has been its chronic failings. Could there be any satisfaction in being the last publication standing to report on cutbacks at other publications? Fortuitously, one of the first to announce its closure this fall was Canadian magazine trade magazine Masthead — thereafter salvaged as an online entity, ensuring a reputable source for information about the closing of non-entities like the Canadian edition of TIME. More telling was publisher Michael Bate giving up on two decades of facilitating backstabbers through Frank, after a couple years of reverse-publishing its material from an online daily into the smudgy print edition. Bate explained that he didn’t want to find himself reduced to running a “glorified blog.”Whether or not the promise of profit is involved, the concept of waiting day and night for something sufficiently scurrilous to emerge from the darkest swamps of the internet — then repackaging it for a less-engaged audience — seems a more unappealing pursuit with each passing year. The Cult of the Amateur author Andrew Keen is being actively vindicated: fewer outlets willing to pay people for their creative training means even fewer people are in the mood to give it away. A federal election might be seen as the perfect recession-proof opportunity to exploit raging partisans — but creating a bigger stage for “gotcha” revelations to get unearthed through Google is serving to dilute the quality of public office candidates. Social networking tools, meanwhile, have encouraged a level of participation that avoids exposure to search-engine elements. Who needs to seek out affirmation from a hostile abyss when you can trade quips, pics and links with people you have deliberately friended? And, if push comes to shove, they can always unfollow you.Which means bigger media must get back to the business of being arrogantly assertive about itself — a challenge when the offline product relied on for revenue is being economically clobbered. However, the Web 2.0 evangelists had a turn, and did nothing to improve the quality of information, except help promote tools designed to filter out their own lame ideas. Toronto-based blogging network b5media, profiled here just as the downturn struck, is an example of a company trying to build a media business via basic informational tidbits. But the appeal of public ridicule and name-calling that leads to a wish for a Toronto equivalent to Gawker fails to take into account that it really comes down to having enough of the right newsworthy keywords. What chance does actual online journalism have, then, if few are faithfully reading specific sites? Torontoist, back from the near-dead this week after an intriguing blast of publicity surrounding its New Year’s takedown announcement, will apparently continue to characterize everything that went wrong with the medium. While its editor-in-chief, David Topping, went to laudable lengths to make an American-owned franchise concept feel like a professional homegrown effort — also, the first in a generation to be consistently “hiring” “staff” to contribute “articles” — ambition alone couldn’t turn it into a real business. But the condescending delusion apparently persists in boardrooms that there is a “blogger community” out there, forever enthralled by the opportunity just to show off their “citizen journalism,” although those mythical talents are concurrently regarded as less valuable because no one deigns to honour them with a salary.Depressingly, those broadsheets keep getting flimsier and flimsier — the Toronto Star’s short-lived 2005 experiment to transform their entire Sunday edition into a semi-magazine for semi-smart people seems rather quaint now, only because that kind of conversational journalism goes to waste on a weekend, when those pieces are less likely to swirl around the planet.Going forward, The Globe and Mail announced plans for an enhanced virtual Books hub, launching in January, that needn’t necessarily be terrible. The presumption, however, is that their targeted older audience remains primarily devoted to devouring words bound between two covers. But there should have been better counterparts and competitors to the effort being attempted in this corner: Toronto Life gave up on two promising news commentary weblogs within a matter of weeks — the result of hasty budget cutbacks. NOW launched a daily online offering, which focused on fluff lifestyle items and observational leftovers, rather than the hysterical lefty tirades and cutting social criticism the publication is known for. (Plus, their site must be the first of its kind to have never acknowledged the existence of its rival.) Finally, after a year of filing stories for Scrolling Eye, worth revealing is the most frequently asked question from those approached for interviews or intelligence: “Are you also going to run this in the paper?” Despite the fact that online can trump print when it comes to accuracy, archiving, detail, distribution and feedback — and despite the fact that the internet has officially eclipsed newspapers as a news source — even the most jaded media figures still crave the validation that comes with the potential of lining somebody’s birdcage. AND MORE! Kate Carraway’s bigger-picture 2008 media round-up.
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Toronto pop culture, updated weekdays. scroll@eyeweekly.com