I’ve a link to Antonia Zerbisias in my blogroll - the Toronto Star’s media columnist. The blog has been inactive since Christmas 2006, and I presumed it was because Zerb had experienced blog burnout from some of her inane commentators at her blog.
It turns out however, that she didnt pull the plug on it at all - it was the Toronto Star who did:
“The current management doesn’t see the economic value in it,” she explains, noting the paper’s bigwigs want to focus on the printed newspaper over the electronic one — a bizarro business strategy given Zerbisias is read by practically everyone who cares to stay informed about media issues in Canada. So, among other things, she’s keeping herself to a print column these days.
Zerb doesn’t make any bones about what she feels about that decision:
“It’s been awkward,” she says. “It’s kind of ludicrous that the media columnist for the biggest newspaper in Canada — in 2007 — doesn’t have a significant online presence.“
…which just goes to prove that dinosaurs still are alive - in the media world at least, and they reside in Toronto. You have the Globe and Mail with its ridiculous scheme of trying to charge people to read “premium content”, which actually diminishes its web presence I’d argue.. and now the Star whose corporate boardroom apparently wants to go back to pre-internet times.
(H/T to Saskboy for pointing me to the original article)
This is the worst news I have heard since Heather Mallick left the Globe.
Please tell us where we can send our vociferous objections.