Five years ago we were in Ottawa at a conference. It was a low key trip in a busy time. The conference only allowed for one paper each, so The Yankee and I got to be tourists. We took a walking tour of Ottawa one day, and it was lovely. The sky was overcast and chilly. We got snow flurries and red poppies for Veteran’s Day. We met exceedingly nice people at every turn. We walked through incredibly moving memorials and beautiful gothic revival architecture. It was, I said on Twitter today, a wonderful place to visit as an American. Some things I wrote that day:
We toured Parliament. I gave security fits. It seems the metal detectors there are set to the highest sensitivity. Wrists make them beep. Not watches, but the bones in your body. The security officers were very patient and polite, almost apologetic. But, then, everyone we’ve met in Ottawa has been unfailingly nice.
When we finally made it in we sat through a few minutes of the House of Commons, including their regular question period. We made our way up to the Peace Tower and Memorial Chamber. The Memorial Chamber is a very solemn, quiet place. So much so that I didn’t even take any photographs there. Everywhere else, yes, and they’ll eventually make it into the November gallery when I get that section of the site back up to speed.
The picture above is from the gift shop in the parliament building. The kids working the cash register were not prepared for my line of questions about the Speaker’s Selection syrup. Peter Milliken has been the speaker for forever, they said (since 2001) and so this has likely been the syrup since he took office.
How did he decide on this particular syrup?
“I think it was a blind taste test,” one young lady offered.
But surely not. Milliken is from Ontario, but imagine if he’d chosen a syrup from British Columbia in a blind test. That’d be a bit embarrassing. No, he probably brought his favorite from home. Surely this producer is among his constituency.
Unfortunately I couldn’t bring some home with us. The humorless TSA would not allow it. Perhaps I can order some online.
We visited a fancy mall while looking for hats. Turns out this was the coldest day of the season so far. It was 30 degrees with the occasional flurry and we were out taking pictures all day. The guy working the desk at our hotel directed us to the mall, telling us “You can’t get more Canadian than Roots.” He told us to look for a toque.
This was the sort of mall that made you feel poor just by walking inside. “Authentic Canadian” must mean fooling the Americans. Before we found Roots we found Old Navy. Figuring they would be cheaper we steered that way. Right next to Old Navy was a store called Buck or Two.
Why not? We walked in, found hats right up front and bought two of them. Four bucks.
We found Roots, found the toques. Twenty-six dollars, each.
On our way out of the mall I noted my hat couldn’t get any more American: Made in China.
Take that, desk clerk! You will not be getting any kickbacks tonight!
Sure, we’re staying at the downtown Radisson, but we booked through an online discount site. We = Cheap.
We met some striking museum curators — a noun and modifier that could lend itself to a great band name or a magazine layout. These nice, freezing folks were trying to get better wages and less contract labor in their field. Museum curators are important; these are being replaced, the woman said, by non-experts at a lower wage.
Not Canadian, but what can we do? They urged us to drop this note of protest in the mail to our representatives. My guy wasn’t on the mailing list, what with him living in a different country, but I picked a good sturdy English name from a place I’d like to visit and dropped him a note in the local postal system.
We also saw the Notre Dame Basilica. It is across the street from the art museum — we didn’t go — with the giant spider on the corner. If they make a Night at the Museum III they should start with that. Creepy.We saw black squirrels, the famous canal from which all of Ottawa sprang, Quebec on the other side of the river and some very nice, funky shops.
And, sadly, today all of that was locked down after a shooting at Parliament. It seems the Sergeant-at-Arms put a stop to the chaos. More details will emerge, but at this point one victim, a reservist, and the shooter are dead. The soldier was killed at the national war memorial. The shooter somewhere inside Parliament itself.
A writer wrote that this wasn’t supposed to happen in Canada. We can all sympathize; this sort of thing shouldn’t happen anywhere. Parliament member John Williamson wrote “Parliament Hill is never going to be the same.”
Sad to think of that.
Things to read … because there’s always something to think of.
One more note from Canada, these are the running announcements from the Ottawa police.
We see people starting to talk about this subject. I’ve mentioned it and linked to some essays here. Today is a good reminder that it is a conversation worth having. There are plenty of great points here. User Generated Content: time to consider the ethical conundrums as well as the opportunities:
Steve Herrmann says verification is the main challenge when dealing with user-generated content.
“The biggest challenge of all is establishing something is true and retaining peoples’ trust at a time when information is moving so fast it can be very, very hard to check.”
He says that although the speed of the news cycle makes verification difficult, newsrooms need to make sure it’s correct before publishing or broadcasting.
“Or at least if you’re not quite sure, you need to be very clear [about that]”
However, Claire Wardle says the phrase ‘we cannot independently verify this’ is doing a disservice to the audience.
“Until we sort that out, we’ll have content being run too quickly with these caveats, and this isn’t transparent,” she says, indicating that there needs to be more transparency when dealing with UGC.
It is booming. Inside Bloomberg Media’s digital video business:
Bloomberg.com’s desktop site racked up over 5.3 million unique video viewers in September, more than triple the amount it ran a year earlier, according to comScore. Making that more impressive, overall unique visitors to Bloomberg.com declined slightly during that period, from 8.7 million to 8.2 million. That’s important, considering Bloomberg fetches $75 CPMs for its video ads, according to Marcum.
“The world leaders in business are tremendously appealing to advertisers, and we have them,” he said.
These are ambitious numbers, and even if they are close to accurate … Worldwide Subscription Video-On-Demand To Grow Nearly 30% In Revenue In 2014:
Information research company Gartner expects consumer spending on SVOD services to grow 28.1% in 2014 and 18.2% in 2015. Gartner says spending on SVOD services in North America is on pace to improve 28.5% in 2014 and 18.6% in Western Europe. Emerging territories will see a 53% growth rate in 2014.
What Journalists Worry About in the Middle of the Night: I find items 10, 9 and then, ultimately, 2 particularly worrisome.
Thursday update: A cartoon from Halifax’s Chronicle Herald by Bruce MacKinnon, with proceeds from the reprints going to the family of the fallen soldier:
