johnbowman.net

When the card and gift shop downstairs put out its Valentine’s display, I had a look at the Transformers valentines, the ones with awesome greetings like “You’re a hotshot,” “You sure know how to heat thing up,” and “Have a super-powered Valentine’s Day.”

I thought it would be funny to buy a box, give them to my cow-orkers and wait, Wiggum-like, for people to return the favour.

Then I found these Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Valentines. So much better.

(via)

The Toronto Star took notice of those bike courier vs. driver pics (previously blogged here), but the focus of the story wasn’t the altercation or even the photos, but the online argument over who did what to whom.

At the Blogstravaganza Friday night (lots of recaps out there) I mentioned that the blog report I did for the election site is now over, and I wanted to get this here blog going with daily posts.

Someone (I can’t remember who, sorry) suggested I just do the same thing here as I did at work. It’s a good idea, but there are a couple of problems with it, though.

One is that it takes a bit of time to go through all the political websites on all sides and find interesting stuff to write about every day. That was OK when I was getting paid for it, but I don’t know if I really have the spare time to do that every day.

The other problem is… well… see this is where it gets tricky. Revealing this could be a career-limiting move in my job. But, hey, as long as it’s just between you, me and the intarweb, I guess it’s OK.

Here goes.

I’m not really all that interested in politics.

Well, not every day anyway.

And I don’t think it’s really all that uncommon among journalists. I’ve often heard journalists say that a certain story is too “inside baseball” for a general audience, that doesn’t obsess about politics the way journalists do. (Incidentally, I’d always assumed that phrase was taken from the title of some show on ESPN until I read the Wikipedia entry on it.)

So whatever this blog turns into, it’s not going to be a strictly political blog. There’s too much other stuff going on.

I missed my goal of posting every day by one minute…

Some colleagues of mine were talking about this set of pictures depicting an altercation between a motorist and a cyclist in Toronto. The link has made its way to Boing Boing and Metafilter.

One co-worker was wondering why the photographer didn’t sell the pictures to a newspaper. Well, a newspaper wouldn’t just run pictures like these without a story, and a story about a road-rage fight in which no one is seriously hurt and there probably won’t be any charges laid doesn’t sound like something I’d read in a newspaper.

Still, you can’t look at this picture and say there’s no story here.

And the way the story evolved online was interesting. The pictures were posted apparently without any text at all, leaving readers to speculate what might have happened in the comments.

The original poster, several hours later, added some point-form details, and the debate over what happened continued. The next day, Leah, the bike courier in the pictures, posted her side of the story.

As things often do on the net, things got nasty (”He should be hung!” “She was asking for it!”). Personal attacks (mostly on Leah) and insulting photoshops followed.

Is it “citizen journalism,” as Cory suggests? It might have started out that way, but it ended up as one of those things I read on the web that just makes me feel like I need a shower.

Like that “Victory for Islam” nonsense at a Liberal riding nomination. Never happened, quickly retracted, but it showed me how ignorant, reactionary and flat-out racist some people could be.

I hear there’s going to be a monkey knife fight at a bar in Toronto tonight.

All the cool kids will be there. Now, the question is, do I go there as a journalist who has an article to write about the impact of blogs on the election, or do I go just to hang with some cool folks and have a pint or five?

I’m leaning toward the latter.

I’ve read (just today, actually) that bloggers blog because they like the sound of their own voice.

Me? I hate the sound of my own voice. I recorded two interviews (Realvideo links) for Newsworld during the election campaign and I still haven’t watched them.

In J-school, the profs liked my script reading. One said I sounded a little like Rex Murphy. I’m sure she meant it in a nice way. On live radio, though, when I volunteered at CKLN, my off-the-cuff delivery wasn’t so great.

But since blogs are a text medium, I guess “voice” is meant in the figurative sense: The distinctive style or manner of expression of an author.

Do I have a distinctive blogging voice? And do I like the sound of it? I guess we’ll find out.

I’ve decided that if I’m going to have any cred as a blogging “expert,” someone who appears on TV or radio and talks about these things, I should actually have a half-decent blog. With daily updates, not monthly ones.

On New Year’s Day, the editorial board of the Toronto Star published a list of tongue-in-cheek resolutions suggested to various public figures. Included in the list: “Bloggers: Yes, all of you, resolve to get out of your pyjamas and into some fresh air. The world can wait for your opinions. Like, indefinitely.”

As if in response, the blog Regret the Error, which reports on corrections, retractions and the like, ran an item on this Toronto Star editorial, which ran Dec. 31.

The Star editorial is suspicious similar to a Reuters item that ran 10 years ago.

Let it Bleed was among several blogs to post these side-by-side.