05.22.2012 05:33 PM

Stupid MSM guy tries to analyze blogs, fails

And it wasn’t even written by Paul Wells!

5 Comments

  1. Shawn says:

    This columnist here was so off the mark; there are plenty of great Canadian blogs out there, not just talking about politics, and he fails to mention any of them. It’s like he went to Macleans and the CBC websites, and wrote down what he generally saw there. Even Googling “canadian blogs” gives off a lot of results. It’s sincerely too bad and a shame he didn’t look around, because then maybe more eyes could be opened to some of the great ones out there (just talking in the realm of politics, this one here is excellent, same with CalgaryGrit, or our answer to FiveThirtyEight, which is of course the addictive ThreeHundredEight).

  2. Jymn says:

    The Twitter exchange between MSM guys on Twitter about the article even more hilarious. And sad. Not. A. Clue.

  3. JamesHalifax says:

    There are quite a few Canadian blogs of high quality out there. Look at the traffic from Small Dead Animals (warren is linked from there), or Blazing Cat fur. Look at this blog by W. (Kinsella…not Bush).

    Of course, most of the well-written Canadian blogs are Conservative, so maybe that’s why this dude doesn’t see the potential. Another point to consider is population. The Canadian Market is only 34Million as opposed to over 300Million, so advertisers assume their potential isn’t as great given most Canadian blogs talk about Canada.

    That being said……Warren wrote the name Paul Wells….and my only response to that writer is:

    TIMMAY!!..timytimah!!..TIM..ay…Tim..TIMTIMTIMITIMAY!!!!…..

  4. Robert Jago says:

    I don’t entirely disagree with him. I think its true that without more readers, it’s hard for blogs to get good stories. If you’re writing a blog in this country and you want to create any kind of original content you have to do some hard labour. I used to have a blog and of maybe a dozen stories I got in the press, only one came to me from a source. Here if there’s a leak, it goes to the MSM, in the States it will often go to a blog. Of course something he hasnt considered is that the Canadian MSM itself could just be far more accessible than the American MSM. So if you’re a potential ‘deepthroat’ in Canada (oh grow up) you don’t need to take a circuitous route through a blog to get your story noticed – you can go straight to some hack at mother corp.

  5. Robert Jago says:

    He shouldn’t look just a blog audiences to understand why they aren’t more of a force in Canada. He should look at the accessibility of the Canadian MSM. If you want to get in touch with a mainstream reporter in this country, and you actually have a story, it’s easy to get their attention. Back when I was blogging regularly I probably had a dozen stories make it into the MSM with very little effort. In the US, if you want to be heard, it may be that the MSM is hard to reach, and so the only way to get a story out there is to use alternate channels like blogs. So they get more leaks and sources, and thus become better reads, build audiences etc… In Canada it may just be that blogs aren’t as necessary as they are in the states.

    Also a pet peeve. Canada is not a market of 34 million people. It’s 3 or more markets of at most about 20 million. I don’t read many French language blogs, I don’t read any Canadian Chinese language blogs and probably vice versa. English Canada isn’t much bigger than Australia. And if you’re a blogger, that’s your total potential market.

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