Metro story sounds like op-ed
During my morning commute, I came across the following in the Metro under the headline "Posters point to passengers." (Emphasis mine)
It's all our fault. According to a new TTC advertising campaign, the causes of subway delays have nothing to do with a lack of investment or poor TTC planning or anything like that. Oh, no.Just to get my two cents out of the way, there's no way I'd mistake this for hard news and wouldn't think the paper was making a broad opinion claim. I do not, however, speak for anyone but myself. I think (and will find out for sure) that the Star has guidelines for marking op-ed as being clearly that. Regardless, they have not done that here.
A poster spotted on the subway yesterday said the top five reasons for subway delays are: blocking doors, holding doors, people getting hurt from not "minding the gap" between platforms and subway cars, pieces of litter that catch fire on the tracks (when's the last time you saw that?) and, finally, passenger illness.
It all makes sense; you shouldn't get sick on the subway because you're only going to slow people down. Instead, folks should be considerate and throw up – or have heart palpitations over the latest fare increase – once they're safely outside the station.
As for the people blocking or holding doors, it appears that has nothing to do with overcrowded trains. No, according to the TTC, it's all our fault.
There is no byline because it's in the Metro's news section, and it's sourced from Torstar News Services. It is not presented as a column and looks in no way different from any other news story on the page.
I found it on The Toronto Star's website here under the label Notebook (which I've never seen before) along with two other stories. At the bottom of the third story is what I presume to be the byline for all three -- "With files from Paul Moloney and Jim Byers."
Is this a reporters' blog for Star writers? Can anyone shed some light on this?
2 comments:
I believe that this City Hall 'notebook' is a new version of something that the Toronto Star City Hall Bureau had a few years ago called 'The Skinny'. The small stories in the skinny looked like op-ed but were actually based on behind the scenes gossip (verified by reporters). This new 'notebook; seems similar, although less gossip-based. In some ways, it may be a place to put interesting tidbits that are not full news stories.
It appears that this one got transferred over to Metro, probably because it is about transit and speaks directly to the readers of Metro.
Thanks for the post anonymous. I think you're right about the reasons for its inclusion. But I just wonder if this isn't something that should have been tacked onto the end of Ed Drass' In Transit column... not that he doesn't have enough to write about at the moment.
For my part, the fresh-out-of-j-school purist in me is screaming something about editorial clarity, though I realize that it's really not that important. It gave readers a good chuckle I'm sure.
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