Globe & Mail

Fridge poetry

Canadian Newspaper Tweets Turned Into Poems

Poetweet, the new online tool that automatically takes tweets from a profile and spits them out into a poem, has taken the world by storm over the past couple of days. Even TIME got in on the action.

While it’s fun to see how your timeline reads as poetry (seriously, go try it!), some of the more interesting outputs are those from major newspapers. They offer a rough and dirty collage of what’s making headlines, turning them into rather beautiful prose. Without further ado, here’s a look at what Canadian newspapers are tweeting.

You can click on the picture to go to the actual page, where you can scroll over each line and see the full tweet.

Globe & Mail

What better place to start than our paper of record?

The Globe & Mail seamlessly jumps from the XL pipeline to Melissa McCarthy’s role in the upcoming Ghostbusters movie and even covers some sports.

Globe and Mail Twitter

Poetweet takes Twitter timelines and turns them into poems. Here, the Globe & Mail is turned into “Fiscal issues,” a rondel poem.

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Toronto reddit mayor election graph

Readers Still Turn to Legacy Media for Credible News Online

Published in J-Source – November 28, 2014.

With more than 50,000 subscribers on one of the world’s biggest websites, the Toronto subreddit is an important space for breaking news and thoughtful debate about the city. During the recent mayoral election, four candidates took to the website to hold informal impromptu Q&As, including Olivia Chow, the only front-running candidate to participate.

The site’s importance in shaping opinions and broadening discussion cannot be understated. But in an online community of that size, who drives the conversation? With the election in full swing, I undertook a study to determine which news sources had the best penetration into the local subreddit.

Click here to continue reading on J-Source.

Inanimate objects on Twitter is a new way to spread awareness.

Fence on Twitter Raises Awareness of Looming Globe & Mail Lockout

An ongoing labour dispute between Globe & Mail management and staff took a drastic turn this week when a chain-link fence was erected outside of the newspaper’s offices in Toronto.

The fence went up on the same day that a strike vote was held, and over 92% of Unifor (the union representing the Globe‘s staff) rejected the company’s contract offer.

A key issue in the labour dispute stems from the fact that management will require editorial staff to produce custom content, that is content paid for by advertisers. The issue of custom content in Canadian newspapers is not new and has been covered well by Jonathan Sas over at The Tyee. As he succinctly describes the process,

A business agrees to buy pricey ads with the assurance those ads will be accompanied by stories that fit desired themes but which seem to have sprung straight from the publication’s newsroom. Indeed, custom content often runs under the bylines of staff reporters and without any disclaimer. Naturally, though, it’s understood those stories aren’t going to be muckraking extravaganzas targeting the ad buyer or their industry. “Custom” is inevitably a euphemism for “soft.”

Other issues leading to the dispute include reduced salaries to sales staff and lower job security, according to iPolitics. On Monday, many stories ran without a byline, as reporters carried out a “byline strike,” the second to hit a major Canadian daily in the last three months. Roy Greenslade writes that reporters seem prepared to launch an alternate publication, or at least take their writing to personal websites, in the case of a lockout.

As we’ve seen recently with an unfinished pedestrian bridge in Ottawa and a disgraced mayor’s luxury SUV, people are finding that one of the best ways to help spread awareness of an issue (while inserting your own opinions on the issue) is through a parody Twitter account.

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