Some Roles of Journalists May Decrease as Experts Enter the Online Scene

With experts making their debut on the World Wide Web, journalists may see some of their editorial roles disappearing.

As American writer and teacher, Clay Shirky, emphasizes in his article 'Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable', in the realm of the online world, “making something available to the public – has stopped being a problem,” allowing opinions to run rampant on the web as some experts have started to use the medium of blogging.

Andrew Steele, senior consultant at StrategyCorp., an elite public affairs firm in Toronto, is a blogger for The Globe and Mail on Canadian politics and says his expertise may be taking away from the analytical role of journalists.

Armed with university degrees specializing in the studies of the goings-on in the hallways of Parliament and Queen’s Park, he says that he becomes a threat to journalists with vast experience.

“Things have completely changed now that I am of equal weight to editorial writers,” says Steele.

As blogging is a side-job for Steele, he says he has never and will never get paid for what he does for The Globe and Mail and with his blog attracting a whopping 50,000 readers, it is easy to see why he is an invaluable asset to the national newspaper’s website.

“What journalists do is going out into the field and doing the actual news gathering,” says Steele. “Now I am the one they get to analyze the information. I am a capital "E" expert in politics.”

Photo Caption: Andrew Steele, senior consultant at StrategyCorp. and political blogger for The Globe and Mail. (photo from The Globe and Mail)

Digging Deeper: The Effects of New Technological Demands for Print Journalists

Jim Rankin of the Toronto Star says that the development of the internet has changed the role of the print reporter in today’s world.

Not only will journalists have to hone their reporting skills, but new technological features of the World Wide Web have increased the responsibilities of newspaper reporters.

Rankin told a Ryerson University journalism class Monday “when you go out to report, it’s not just gathering quotes. You want to capture visuals because you don’t know if you’re going to need it down the line.”

Rankin was one of the key players who helped design the Crime & Punishment website of the Toronto Star, an interactive site built on hours of hard work and a number of Freedom of Information Requests on behalf of Rankin.

Now when Rankin goes out to find a story, a pen and a notebook are not enough. Capturing video, pictures and collecting raw data has helped to add interactive elements to the site which allow readers to see correlations between all of the information provided and also helps to provide more context for them.

Maps of the Greater Toronto Area display the "unlucky horseshoe" as Rankin called it, known as the areas of the GTA where crime is most rampant and costly.

“The Star has gone beyond the information and has gone to cause and effect, several levels down in terms of reporting.”

Photo Caption: A graph from the Toronto Star Crime & Punishment shows the most expensive areas of crime in the GTA. Photo taken from Toronto Star Crime & Punishment website.

100 Mile Diet in Jeopardy for Toronto Participants

If you’re “fishing” for a good catch tonight, don’t go looking off of the shores of Toronto in polluted Lake Ontario. Toronto restaurants and markets are gaining recognition for their catches, but because of this, the possibility a successful 100 Mile Diet has gone down the drain.

In 2008, blogTO selected a top list of fish restaurants and markets in the downtown core for those looking for seafood. While the restaurants and markets may be raving about their selections, there are no signs of local seafood on the site.

The 100-mile diet is a recent movement which has encouraged locally grown and produced food in order to reduce the carbon footprint caused by shipping food around the globe and encourages a healthy and organic diet.

While shipping and freezing is a more favourable financial option, it often comes at the price of taste, but the solution could lie just two hours north of the GTA in Georgian Bay, a prime location for fishing and a solution for those 100 Mile dieters.

A popular website for those on the waters north of the GTA, fishinggeorgianbay.com says that fish in the bay range from bass, pike, lake trout and salmon.

Photo Caption: A tourist holds several catches after fishing in Norther Ontario, a common hobby that has continued for decades. Fishing in the Upper Great Lakes. Photo taken from Government of Canada Archives.