Montreal’s status as Lisée fief remains unclear
François Cardinal points out that the status of Montreal isn’t clear in the eyes of the PQ government. A region, a metropolis, a metropolitan area, are these all the same thing? J‑F Lisée is our new insect overlord, whatever it is.
Regular reader Jack pointed out this link to Lysiane Gagnon’s column on Lisée and his recent history with identity politics. This doesn’t just make him a doubtful envoy to Quebec’s anglos, but to polyglot Montreal too. Patrick Lagacé echoes similar thoughts.
Journalism sidenote: Gagnon references a weekend Le Devoir column by Jean Dorion, longtime nationalist guru, in which he distances himself from the impending charte de laïcité and its implications. Does she link to the column? No. In the Gazette blog section Don Macpherson summarizes the Dorion column, but does he link to it? No.
This is petty journalistic territoriality. You are on the web (especially if you’re writing a soi-disant blog). BE of the web. Link to the item you are referencing even if it’s on the site of a competitor. Otherwise you leave the reader hanging. (I had seen the Dorion column and looked at it, but it took me five solid minutes of searching today to find it again – and by now, believe me, I know how to find newspaper items. But newspapers typically make it trickier to find anything more than a day or two old.)
Kevin 13:01 on 2012/09/25 Permalink
‘Sfunny, because Macpherson linked to that Devoir article on the Twitter, so you know he’s not reading the print copy.
Kate 13:23 on 2012/09/25 Permalink
Yeah. I don’t know whether the media have a policy against freely crosslinking to sites they may consider competition or whether it’s just something journalists refrain from doing reflexively. Either way they may want to rethink the effect on the reader’s experience. (Although this is still not as bad as the increasingly common media trend to hit you in the face with a javascript popup nagging you to sign up for a mailing list or the like, before you can even start to read an article you’ve followed a link to. Luckily most of our local media have not yet jumped on this bandwagon. Talk about acting as a deterrent to readers.)
Martin 13:34 on 2012/09/25 Permalink
Lysiane Gagnon writes first for the paper edition, then Cyberpresse just copy her article as is on its web site. Maybe she should review each of her column for possible added links before letting it be posted, but she don’t and nobody else does for her. It’s not petty on her part, it’s just lazy.
Poutine Pundit 14:58 on 2012/09/25 Permalink
The original article is great. It is better than Macpherson’s snooty summary. I subscribe to Le Devoir and, despite what Macpherson says, it has published a fair number of articles critical of Marois’ ill-advised “charte de la laicité.”
Jack 16:09 on 2012/09/25 Permalink
@ Poutine Pundit your dead right that Saturday Le Devoir blew me away, Jean Dorion’s piece was truly extra ordinary and reflected a lot of what was being written here during the election campaign ( maybe he’s a closet reader). Right next to it was a piece by Pierre Nepveu a well known Quebecois poet and the biographer of Gaston Miron. His piece was a real eye opener , written from the perspective of Franco literary lion living in ………NDG.
http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/quebec/359767/au-dela-du-francais-menace
Charles Lanteigne 16:32 on 2012/09/25 Permalink
Exactly right.
Most websites are held back by their poor search functionality. Their search “engines” are worthless, handing you completely irrelevent documents from a decade ago and make it almost impossible to find something from last week.
I typically just fall back on Google to do a “site:” search instead, and have better results.
Kevin 07:11 on 2012/09/26 Permalink
I’ve worked for some media companies that did have policies against cross-linking.
I suspect that with the Macpherson piece, it comes down to whoever takes the article and puts it up on the website. If the writer provides them with the link they’ll insert it — but if they don’t, they don’t.
(And you can compare to Henry Aubin, who frequently puts in links, even in his print pieces)
Kevin 06:53 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
@Kate
Someone’s been reading your fine print
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Macpherson+Quebec+government+improvisation+continues/7302637/story.html
Kate 10:33 on 2012/09/27 Permalink
Ha ha. I should teach at J school.