It's not a surprise if it was advertised months ago

At about the time I was preparing to move to Ottawa (February 18th, to be precise) my father sent me a job ad for a job at elections Canada.  The basic ad included in the paper made it sound as though I might be at least semi-qualified for the position.  Of course, when I read the full job description on the Elections Canada site I was pretty sure I was nowhere near qualified to become the Commissioner of Elections Canada.

Now, about three months after the job was posted, the successful candidate has been announced (and because I've signed up for Elections Canada's news updates I received an email hours ago).

Just recently the Ottawa Citizen's story on the appointment was released.  I was quite surprised by one of their early paragraphs.

But in a surprise announcement Thursday, Elections Canada said Corbett had retired and been replaced by Yves Côté, the former associate deputy minister of Justice.

 At least to me it seemed hardly surprising that such an announcement was made given the months that have passed since the post was advertised.  Maybe they were using the word 'surprise' to refer to the successful candidate?

Despite the fact that I don't think that the early part of the story makes it clear that their 'surprise' relates to the appointee rather than the existence of an announcement, they do go on to paint a rather uninspiring picture of successful applicant.  In their profile a picture is painted of an individual disinclined to challenge the powers that be.

Anyway, whatever the case may be as far as the Citizen's use of the word 'surprise' may be this new Commissioner is going to have his hands full with the sizeable investigations currently underway by his office.

A Few Quick Notes 581

-At first I was thinking today wouldn't be particularly hot or unpleasant, it seems I may have been a little off.  It's just past noon and it already feels like it's in the low 30s.  Gross.

-It seems that the Ottawa Fringe Festival is taking place in our neighbourhood.  Despite my best efforts I haven't yet been able to convince Jeannette to attend any of the shows with me.  Hopefully sometime between now and the end of the festival I'll manage to talk her into seeing at least of of the shows.

-As another week as passed I thought I would post a few more photos of our container garden progress.

Not surprisingly, the largest portion of our container garden is where we've seen the most growth.  The largest tomato plant keeps pumping out flowers (and immature tomatoes), as do our four pepper plants.  And our runner beans ran right up a line I set up for them.  Maybe most amazingly, our mini-pumpkin plants keep adding new leaves and buds (though only male buds so far) to their pot.  Almost every morning when we head our for the first inspection/watering of the day we find new and exciting developments.

Or, if you were looking for the angle I've posted for the past few weeks.

And if you needed more evidence in support of my claim about the presence of immature tomatoes.

The bathroom wheat continues to grow, but I think the less-than-harsh environment that is our bathroom didn't condition the wheat for some of the wind that we had earlier this week.  To try to overcome the weakness of the plants and fix the damage that was done I installed this new rigging system.  Hopefully this will encourage the growth patterns we are looking for.

We've also had some success with some of the plants I haven't spent as much time documenting.

For instance, a few days I noticed that one of our bean plants had a juvenile bean.  I would guess that we now have at least a dozen or so beans in various stages of not-quite-ready-to-pickness.

And after a slow start our lettuce has finally started to come into its own.  Maybe if we'd used a reasonably sized pot we'd have even more success (but I'm still hopeful that even with this small pot we'll have enough lettuce for a few salads).

And finally, maybe our most exciting garden development is that we finally had our first harvest.  When we went out to check on the plants this morning we noticed that two of our strawberries were ripe.  While even if you combine them these guys won't be much of a meal, it's nice to know that purchasing those plants wasn't all for nought.

-One of the things I've really like about our subscription to the Ottawa Citizen is that it means we're regularly supplied with new crossword puzzles.  Not that either of us is particularly adept at crossword puzzle solving, having the opportunity to spend a few minutes each morning on such a puzzle can be quite pleasurable.

Oh, and maybe the best thing is that on Saturday and Sunday two such puzzles are included.  They seem to know that when we have more breakfast time on our hands we will want more puzzles.

If that's all the re-writting you're going to do why don't you just re-post the press release?

A few minutes ago I noticed an Ottawa Citizen article about an Russell Peters' upcoming appearance in Ottawa.

Not surprisingly, it was noted that the quotes attributed to Peters' came from the press release.  The rest of the 'article' doesn't appear to be so upfront about its origins.

I was a little bit surprised to see that the 'article' mentioned that

The tour will feature ... video cameras and screens for an up-close and intimate show that will capture his signature audience improv in an arena setting.

Did a newspaper article really just include a passage about a modern stadium show having video cameras and screens?  Is the author assuming that the audience hasn't seen such a show in 20 years?

And what about that part about "his signature audience improve," is that the kind of phrasing that would normally appear in a newspaper article about an upcoming show?

Anyway, a few of the passages in the article caught my attention.  They just didn't read like an article - they read like a news release.  In the end I thought I should try to find the news release mentioned in the article and compare it to the Citizen's article.  Turns out they are pretty similar.

Here's a pretty good example of the copy-paste journalism employed in this instance.

As the article puts it:

Peters has given away more than $1 million over the past several years to various charities, from the Brampton Civic Hospital to Heart House Hospice, Gilda’s Club, the MS Society and a scholarship at his former high school (The Russell Peters North Peel Scholarship) to send a deserving student to college. The scholarship is now in its third year.

And as it appears in the original press release:

Peters has given away more than a million dollars over the past several years to various charities, from the Brampton Civic Hospital, to Heart House Hospice, Gilda's Club, the MS Society and a scholarship at his old high-school, TheRussell Peters North Peel Scholarship to send a deserving student to college.  The scholarship is now in its third year.

Similarities like these can be found throughout the article.  Paragraph after paragraph has been basically lifted from the press release.

There are a few aspects of this practice that I don't understand.  First of all, isn't this basically copyright infringement?  If it isn't, does it mean that I could I re-write the Harry Potter books as the Larry Sotter books and sell them for $5 less and make billions? Or maybe just remove all of the Oxford comas?

Secondly, isn't there something of a moral issue here.  The newspaper is presenting the content as though it is a piece of journalism.  I'm sure media studies types have a better way of framing the issue, but to represent something as journalistic output that is really nothing more than a modified press release seems, at the bare minimum, a little misleading.

Thirdly, isn't this just hugely inefficient?  If the paper thinks that the press release content is valuable, but not valuable for independent reporting, why not just re-post the original press release as a press release of interest?  Why spend the time and money to hire someone to make a few minor stylistic changes that can't possibly be significant enough to eliminate any copyright-related issues?  In an era when newsroom cuts are rampant, this seems a particularly strange practice and an area ripe for modernization and reform.

Marathon day in Ottawa

Today was the second day of Ottawa's annual "Race Weekend." Consequently, the marathon and half marathon were run today.  As Jeannette was participating in the half marathon I ended up observing a few more of the festivities than I likely otherwise would have.

Almost as soon as we arrived on the scene it was clear that this was a bigger event than I had imagined it would be (despite the fact that Jeannette had already told me that about 11 000 would be running the half marathon with her).

Even though there were thousands of runners assembling for the race when we arrived it was pretty easy to find Jeannette's starting position.  Once she decided to head into her corral I made my way to the other side of the starting line so that I could watch the race begin, which was scheduled for 9:00 AM (the marathon had started at 7:00).

My plan was to hang around the finish line until I saw Jeannette pass by.  Unfortunately, the density of the runners prevented me from seeing her as she passed.  Eventually it became clear that her corral had been emptied and that I had somehow missed her.

I then made my way over to the finish line with hopes that I might see the winners of the marathon.  While making my way to the finish line, a task that proved more complicated than I originally anticipated, I saw a few runners on the other side of the canal as they were nearing the end of the race.  While I don't know if these were the first and second place finishers (though I think they were), I do know that they must have been near the front of the pack (and that they certainly arrived with a few minutes of the first place finisher's 2:09 time if they weren't the winners).

I finally made it to the finish line at about 2:23 after the beginning of the marathon.  Fortunately I was still early enough to see a few of the international marathoners come in.

Actually, the first guy I saw finish turned out to be a guy from New Zealand.

As this guy ran past me it look as though he had run through some mud, which seemed strange considering how dry it was.  A second or two later, while the guy was still in sight, I finally realized the source of the 'mud' running down this guy's leg.  I'm now pretty confident that I won't ever be trying to run a marathon.

A few minutes later I learned that I had, in fact, managed to make it in time to see the first female.  My memory is that she finished around the 2:30 mark (and seemed to be going strong).

Just before the three hour mark, maybe at about 2:53, I spotted MP Ryan Leef (the runner in white in the photo below).  A recent Ottawa Citizen story on the MP alerted me to the fact that he would be racing today.  Fortunately he came through at a time when there were few enough racers finishing that individuals were still easy to spot even if you weren't too familiar with their appearance.

At the 3:10 mark I noticed the 3:10 'pace bunny' finishing.  Much to my surprise, this individual managed to finish within about 50 seconds of their target time.  This seems particularly impressive given the delays that one can experience at the beginning of a race.

At about this time the first of the half marathon competitors finished.  My guess is that the first half marathoner finished at about the 1:11 mark, or 3:11 on the marathon clock (you may recall that the two races started two hours apart).

At about the 3:16 mark a runner being guided towards the finish line by a member of the medical team crossed just as they made it to the finish line.  It was really quite impressive to see them lose all control of their body, but only once they had finished.  Though this wasn't the only medical emergency of the day, I'm glad to report it was one of only two that I saw (the other was a woman being similarly guided towards the finish line but I didn't see if she collapsed or not).

But then Batman came by and cheered everyone up.

About four minutes later I saw a guy running without shoes.  As far as I could tell his feet seemed to be in fine shape, though I guess without a closer inspection might be hard to tell.

At the 1:43 mark of the half marathon I finally saw someone I recognized, our friend Duncan, though just as he was passing me.  It turns out that our friend Kate finished just before Duncan and some how made it past without me spotting her.

Just after the two hour mark for the half marathon I spotted Jeannette.

She ended up finishing less than a minute after her targeted time.  When you consider the quantity of congestion she had to deal with at the end of the race I think it's pretty fair that she met her goal (even if she doesn't see it that way).

Almost like magic Jeannette and I found each other easily after the race (I was worried that the thousands of racers and spectators might prove to be a barrier to meeting).  After walking around the festivities for a while, and hitting up the four free cans of beer tent, we grabbed a few coffees and made our way back home.