Missing the Medium

The Web is the best investigative journalism medium ever created, but you wouldn’t know it to look at the work of Canadian online newspapers.

The Web offers journalists a buffet of media types from which to choose. As well, online journalists have the benefit of the strong virtual community and readers’ contributions (tips, leads, follow-up suggestions) that don’t exist as conveniently in any other media. And, the Web can be as timely as radio, if not faster.

But, for the most part, Canadian newspapers have squandered this remarkable global resource, choosing instead to mindlessly dump their print product onto the Web as if it were a landfill site.

No newspaper in Canada makes full use of the Web as its own medium, exploiting the remarkable synergies of content and community. Most don’t even come close.

Where are the Canadian online investigative works that seamlessly integrate hypertext, audio, video, animation, user feedback, polls, community building and original source documents?

Neither the Canadian Association of Journalists nor the National Newspaper Awards even have a category to celebrate online investigative reporting — ten years after the Web sprang to life.

They’re just being practical.

Web journalists at newspaper sites are, in my experience, both hardworking and hamstrung. They’re trying to do good work for traditional medium masters who remain, for the most part, grumpy about the Web and unwilling to invest seriously in it as a medium unto itself.

And, to their credit, the journalists and editors at online newspapers actually have serious news experience — unlike the “editors” in the news sections of major Web portals, who really just do HTML mark-up on the work of real reporters and editors.

But so far, online journalism has acquitted itself well only on breaking stories like Walkerton and Pierre Trudeau’s death and the World Trade Center attack. That’s just taking advantage of the timeliness of the Web, not its other attributes. It’s sort of like using the fact that television offers colour and ignoring the fact that it also features sound, motion and images.

CANOE [1], a Canadian news destination site that had great promise, is at great risk as a desperate Quebecor stupidly punches hole after hole in its hull. Quebecor’s current debt problems won’t make things any easier in the near future nor will an almost universal and sudden financial distaste for “convergence.” When an MBA smells trouble, the stuff that journalists do is the first over the side. From a serious content point of view, the site will soon be, I fear, up a creek, sans paddle.

And I have little hope that CanWest Global will do anything interesting online. It was saddled with canada.com [2], the least imaginative news Website in the country and summarily made it even worse. The Aspers will have enough trouble figuring out what to do with their money-sucking print products, especially the National Post, let alone do anything innovative with their online ones.

The CBC’s site [3] is great for breaking news but 120seconds [4], while a noble experiment, is hobbled by far too many Flash geegaws, a confusing interface that half works and not enough serious content.

It’s too bad, because innovative Web journalism has a place in other countries.

For example, the New York-based GuerrillaNews.com [5] produces short but powerful video documentaries on subjects like conflict diamonds in Sierra Leone and the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement in the U.S. drug trade.

And Salon [6], which is now charging users US$30 for its premium service, is doing a great job of cutting through the jingoistic doublespeak and flag-saluting that seem to have infected much of the mainstream media down there.

In Australia, journalist Stephen Mayne produces Crikey [7], an irreverent online publication that takes shots at that country’s politicians and leading companies.

These sites offer more innovation, attitude and Web media awareness than most Canadian media outlets have mustered in ten years.

The final thing missing from Canadian news sites is new voices. For the most part, the voices you’ll hear and read at online at major news sites are the same ones you’ll read in print. Freelance budgets for online news sites are notoriously tight (or zero) and, more often than not freelancers who write for print publications will see their content online with no additional fees paid. The slow congealing of The Globe and Mail, CTV and Sympatico-Lycos will make this situation worse, not better.

What does all this mean?

In Part One [8], I argued that the largest Canadian Websites were offloading their obligation for original Canadian content creation the way North American apparel companies offloaded the production of the actual goods they sell to cheap Third World contractors.

They’re more interested in throwing gobs of money at brand-building, convergence, eyeball aggregating and self-serving content deals. In the process, original Canadian Web content is all but forgotten.

Here I’m suggesting that Canadian news sites, for the most part, have squandered their opportunity to marry their strong storytelling skills with a remarkable medium. And, they too are failing to introduce new Canadian voices and innovative presentation ideas to the Web.

Shame on them all.

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