The Angry, Vicious Comment Boards Attack Me Once Again

Addendums to my Globe Travel Piece

This is my first travel piece. I learned a bunch of things, including the fact that certain things are out of your control. And so I wanted to make two addendums to my article. The first is that one of the big draws about getting married in New York was the fact that getting there via Porter is so pleasant. In my original draft I wrote:

The woman had my sympathy, since there were only two clerks processing licences that day – my fiancée and I spent less time on our Porter flight from Toronto to Newark, N.J., than we did at City Hall.

The second thing was that my original sidebar recommended two hotels:

Where to Stay
The Loews Regency Hotel (540 Park Avenue) is two blocks from Central Park and nearby to hair salons and florists. The Ritz-Carlton in Battery Park (Two West Street) is minutes from the new bureau and has a wedding concierge on staff.

Adjust yourselves accordingly.

I Love The Tofu Tagger

Uses vegetable based spray paint, no doubt.

(Flickr link).

Gee Whiz

As Tim Falconer pointed out, Mr. Gee is not an inspired choice to cover City Hall.

How right he is.

So, Tell Me Ryan, Why Do You Hate Toronto?

Jarvis St. is a major north-south thoroughfare, with five lanes accommodating an estimated 28,000 cars daily. The route is made especially efficient by a reversible centre lane that changes to accommodate morning and evening rush hours.

This would no longer be the case under an ill-thought-out $6 million "streetscape improvement" plan to be considered by Toronto City Council as it meets today and tomorrow. Proponents of the redesign want to do away with the centre lane on Jarvis, which would leave only two lanes running in either direction. Sidewalks would be widened, trees would be planted, and there would be a bike lane.

There is a very real risk that these largely cosmetic changes would add to gridlock in the downtown core. The city's own traffic analysis indicates that travel time along Jarvis St., between Bloor and Queen Sts., would increase from eight minutes to 10 minutes. While admitting that's a large jump, on a percentage basis, staff concluded that the actual addition of just two minutes of travel time is "relatively minor."

I'm really quite comfortable with the Globe being against everything, but The Toronto Star? Really?

This makes me frustrated and angry, and it's an anger and frustration that's 10 years in the making. I want to say more, but it's not worth it -- my complaints will sound petty and stupid. I think I'll try and move to New York instead.

(link).

The Biggest Ideas * The Smartest Men

Keep forgetting to blog this: about a month ago, ideaCity announced its first 21 speakers. Four are women.

You might ask yourself why I keep writing about gender imbalance in relation to idea and essay based journalism. The short answer is that a few years ago, I was an associate producer for CBC's Go. Every week, once we were close to finalizing the line-up, there would be a conference call. Brent Bambury would ask a simple question: how many women do we have on the show this week?

Invariably there would be few or none. The two main producers were male, I was (still am) male. Only Elizabeth, the other associate producer, was female. And without trying, each week we managed to reproduce invisible gender bias. It really stuck with me.

So when the Walrus relaunched with almost no female bylines, I thought back to my Go experience. Fixing the problem can be as simple as saying "how many women do we have in the magazine this month?" This is not a quota system, or some other form of affirmative action that enrages the right. It's a simple act of reminder and repetition, but it produces results.

When I Screw Up, I Regret The Error