The Politics of Vancouver Blogs
As Vancouver gears up for November’s municipal elections, the city’s top players and pundits take the fight online.
The offices of the Vancouver Observer are on the 15th floor of a condo tower with a view of False Creek. This three-bedroom apartment also doubles as the home of Linda Solomon and her two young sons. In an open-concept living area where the work space is strewn with toys and an Xbox, Solomon, a journalist-turned-entrepreneur originally from Tennessee, presides over an informal editorial meeting of her online magazine with a half-dozen staffers and interns in their 20s.
The room waits for feedback from Solomon, whose investigative reporting on insurance companies for the Tennessean newspaper earned her a Pulitzer Prize nomination. In a throaty drawl, she offers suggestions to intern Zi-Ann Lum on a story about multiculturalism among Vancouver high-school students.
For the 54-year-old Solomon, who fled Manhattan for Vancouver (making a pit stop on Cortes Island) after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Observer (vancouverobserver.com) is both a get-rich-gradually scheme to leverage the shift in advertising money from print and broadcast to online media, and a platform for emerging voices that haven’t broken through in traditional media. Founded in 2006, the online magazine covers a mix of politics and culture in a manner reminiscent of Salon. The winner of a Canadian Online Publishing Award in 2010, it has brought extra attention to civic issues such as the proposed downtown Vancouver “mega casino,” bike lanes and housing affordability.
“Rather than saying it has a progressive bent,” insists Solomon about the Observer, “I’d say it reflects the mainstream of urban Vancouver.” Referring to a Google Analytics report, Solomon notes that the Observer had 107,000 page views in February 2011, and a doubling in the number of visitors to the site over the past year. Along with websites such as City Caucus (citycaucus.com) and Frances Bula’s State of Vancouver (francesbula.com), the Observer is creating online communities for Vancouverites to get their news on civic affairs and to debate contentious issues.
Much in the way that Solomon’s apartment merges workplace and home, however, the world of online journalism highlights the narrowing separation between politics and the media in a city where Mayor Gregor Robertson posts on Twitter regularly and a province in which a radio host, Christy Clark, left her job to become premier. Websites and blogs from writers with clear political allegiances, which once only commented on news from traditional outlets, are now breaking news and supplying stories for reporters. Consequently, they are inspiring accusations of biases and low standards from city hall, even as its staffers scan these sites for updates. With substantial followings, some of these sites aim to become viable businesses or income streams for their authors; others are simply banking on the notoriety and name recognition that a prominent web address can bring. As a civic election looms in November, the Internet has become the newest battleground for capturing votes.
On the opposite side of the political spectrum from the Observer is City Caucus, a source of news and gossip on Vancouver City Hall. For Daniel Fontaine and Mike Klassen, the site’s co-founders, informal editorial meetings are generally conducted on the fly. After finishing his “boot camp” workout in the morning, Klassen, 49, will chat on the phone from his car about potential stories for the day with Fontaine, who commutes by SkyTrain from his home in New Westminster to his day job in communications near UBC. Both juggle writing for the site with other commitments; when I spoke with Klassen in the spring his time was split between City Caucus and his new media communications firm, Thinking Cap Inc.
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