Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - 12:36: Toronto Mike'd #185

Episode Date: July 26, 2016

Mike chats with Marc Weisblott of 12:36 about the current state of the media in Canada.

Welcome to episode 185 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week once again is 1236 newsletter author mark wiseblocks hey mike what's up what's up with you welcome back i think uh you're back because you enjoy the the beer so much great lakes brewery because you know it took me uh getting a beer sponsor before i could get you in here the first time and now this is your third appearance in, I don't know, maybe six weeks or so? No, no. But I had to check up on the Rogue Byway.

You have the last surviving byway location. How's that going? Right around the corner here. They have a sign claiming that they're going through some kind of closing sale. They've got big real estate agent signs above the front door. But the store is still intact, so we're watching for the rogue byway every time we come by for Toronto Mike. When they announce their final day,

I think that'll be a sad moment for the community as the new Toronto community gets together to say goodbye to the last remnant of Byway. Well, I'm only coming out to New Toronto here once a month, so you're going to have to keep digital on the place, Mike. Yeah, you know, it's funny.

I was thinking, you know, Mark's coming back because people love you, man. Do you know this? You're a favorite. Okay, well, at the same time, I'm trying to build up momentum for what I'm doing every day. Toronto's daily lunchtime tabloid, 1236, 1236.ca. And in going through the flow of Toronto news every single day, it gives me a lot to talk about and bring to you right here. Toronto News every single day.

It gives me a lot to talk about and bring to you right here. And my buddy Elvis, who is apparently my co-host, even though he never comes here, should he be worried? Should he be fearful you are taking his spot? Yeah, when was the last time Elvis was here? I don't know. He hasn't been dropping by like he used to. Yeah, he's a North Oshawa guy. That's not even Oshawa, because sometimes in my life,

I've had to go to the GM plant for something, like a tour to pick up a car. That, to me, is Oshawa guy. That's not even Oshawa, because sometimes in my life I've had to go to the GM plant for something, like a tour to pick up a car. That to me is Oshawa, where the GM plant is. Elvis is far away from there. It's a big northern drive from where you'd find the plant. Okay, well, I'm the one churning out the content every day in the email, on Twitter, Facebook, wherever. So there's very little you can spring on me that I won't have something to say about.

Okay, good, because I'm going to hit you with a whole bunch of stuff. Really quickly, the topic nobody's interested in except me. I realize some episodes have been quiet, and I brought in the big guns. I talked to Rob Johnston, who does ongoing history and new music for Alan Cross, and he gave me some tips.

But then I went right back to the source. I went to Andrew Stokely, who does the Blue Jay games. He was literally doing a game at the Dome last night. Me and him were conversing. Sorry, Blue Jays. Maybe if a swear word got caught, that's why. He had me change the gain of my mixer here. Like, I had always been doing everything in post, compression and all this stuff,

and it wasn't loud enough, but now I'm recording louder. Mark, do you see these green lines? I see the green lines. Every time I talk, the green goes up. How do we describe this for the folks at home? Right, so in your previous appearance, it might go up two or three lines, okay? Now, at least I see with myself,

I'm not going in the red because Stokely tells me red is bad. Don't go in the red. Because there's red. It's orange, actually. Hello, hello. So, if you go high like that, you get the orange. I'm in the green, but it's like four, five, six bars. I think the proof will be in the green, but it's like four, five, six bars.

I think the proof will be in the pudding, but I'm confident we're going to have a great, loud recording. I think like on Marc Maron's podcast, he catches a lot of flack because he does like a 12-minute monologue before he gets around to the guest. I don't know if you've heard this before. I have, yes. People talk about how they always have to skip over this thing. So if you make the audio update a regular feature at the beginning of the podcast, Mike, people will know.

They can skip a few minutes and get to the point. Right, but just don't miss the beer mention. That's next because the beer in front of you, the Great Lakes beer, and you've been enjoying it. I know you're not a big drinker, but you have sampled the, because this will be your third six-pack you're taking home. I think you've turned me into a big drinker since I started coming down here over the springtime. And these are terrific. I'm

just looking at all the different varieties, trying to figure out if I've had them before. This Canuck Pale Ale. I'm surprised how good it is. That one was a standout. Yeah, is that the one of the maple syrupy tinge to it? Or is that the other? There's two Canadian ones.

There's one that, yeah, it's got a bit of a maple syrup tinge to it that I quite like. The Pompous Ass. So Ed Keenan, I think he was my last guest? No, no, Avery Haynes was the last guest. Ed Keenan's wife is a big Pompous Ass fan, not a Pompous Ass.

And I actually biked over a six-pack of pompous ass for her. That's her go-to brew. I see we've got my bitter wife flavor. Hopefully you didn't spring this on Ed's wife, Rebecca. Well, no, or my wife. I have to be careful when I, hey, babe, you want a beer? And give her a bitter wife. You've got to be careful with that.

Hey, this is breaking news. This only happened last night. So last night, the Ward 2 election took place. They replaced Rob Ford. And you and I were joking on Twitter, would Mikey Ford get like 98% or 99%? I thought maybe 103%. That was my final prediction.

And he got, Mikey Ford got 69.6 percent, while Jeff Canning had a pretty solid second place, 20.4. Yeah, this Jeff Canning was actually running from the right side of Mikey. He was quoted just before the election of saying that if Ford Nation catch wind of the fact that Mikey might be a little bit on the progressive side, that they're going to throw him off the boat. That's a great point. I've often wondered that because when Mikey speaks about things like, I don't know, same-sex marriage and some of these social matters, he is quite progressive, much unlike his uncle and his uncles. Yeah, very progressive.

Now, how much of this even matters to the role of a city councillor remains to be seen, right? Most city councillors don't bring social issues into their dialogue. Rob Ford was very unique in that category. And it took a few years, I think, for the legend of Rob Ford to really sink in. Once in a while, he would say something ridiculous that would get media attention, but if you

look through the history of Rob Ford quotes in the little book of Rob Ford or wherever all of the outrageous things that he said were quoted, it took a few years for him to get rolling. He was elected in 2000, and I think it took until at least 2005 before we got to know Rob Ford as Rob Ford. Right. I remember the, you know, if a cyclist gets killed, my heart bleeds,

but at the end of the day, it's his fault. There's one of those, and of course, the infamous Orientals work hard. They sleep next to their desk. These are all somewhere on the great list of Rob Ford quotes before it all kind of exploded when he became mayor. Now, John Oakley takes a lot of the credit or blame for creating this character.

The fact that he gave him a few minutes of air time on the morning show every week, that would have started around 2003, 2004. So Mikey Ford, to do his job well, he doesn't really have to say very much. He just has to be a competent city councillor. I think all he had to do to dominate this election was, the only line he had to utter was that he'll return every phone call. I think once he said that, I think it was done. Nothing else mattered, but he will return every phone call. Yeah, and last night he said that he expects to be struck by lightning, courtesy of Uncle Rob,

if he doesn't follow through on the customer service excellence. You've got to be careful, but I'm sure he's smart enough. He's making six figures all of a sudden. Correct me if I'm wrong, but an uneducated 22-year-old gentleman. He's taken some courses. He has more formal education than Justin Bieber, who's about the same age. That's true.

We'll see how this goes. He's got the job for at least 22 years. And if people out there want to crowdfund, if you want to sponsor this podcast, if you like what you hear, please go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike.

You can click over the big orange buttons on torontomike.com. Go over, give what you can. And if you want to be a cheap bastard and just listen for free, then at least go to iTunes and leave a nice review. You know, five star this sucker. Just tell the truth. It's the greatest independent podcast in the history of audio. Fair enough?

It's okay. Are we going to review the last five guests you've had down here and you can tell me what you really thought of them? No. First of all, I will say that, well, Avery Haynes was fantastic. I don't know how it came across. Did you listen to the Avery Haynes episode? Oh, yeah.

She had me squirming a bit because I realized that I had to be, I tried to be sensitive, of course. I'm a progressive guy. And then I erroneously thought she was gay. I sort of got her story and Sue Ann Levy's stories mixed up in my head, I think. And I kind of asked her about, you know, she was married to a man and had three kids. And then now she's married to a woman. And I erroneously thought she was married to a man and had three kids, and then now she's married to a woman, and I erroneously thought she was gay,

and then it turns out her sexuality is defined as fluid, and I realize I really am out of my... I really don't know what I'm talking about. She is almost certainly the only journalist in history to be condemned by the Gay and Lesbian Journalist Association, thanks to her little faux pas back in 2000, to end up being married to a woman. I don't think anyone could claim

that they've gone through both those experiences. No, and it was great chatting with her, though, because she's sharp as a tack, and she had a great voice. Sometimes I just get lost in that voice. Sounded great and uh hopefully it was loud enough for everybody so that was avery but i had to tell you something about a past guest so when jim van horn came in here it was right after you and uh ed conroy mr retro ontario uh that we sat down and talked about the 1050 chum requiem forum. And we didn't record this, but Jim showed me an email from an executive at Chum

who basically sent a mass email to people like Jim raving about that episode. He did say something, but not all the facts were quite right, but he was so pleased to see people talking about it and giving it sort of the props it deserves. And I thought you might like to hear that this was shared amongst people like Jim Van Horn. Well, we were at least as accurate as the average Wikipedia page

when it came to going over all the history here. And as far as your voice is concerned, Mike, I mean, you've now got Mikey Ford to be the standard pair, somebody to make you and me feel better about our public speaking skills? Because if Mikey can do it, then what's our problem? Yeah, you know, I often used to joke, oh, I got to get my trachea scraped or something, you know. Who is it?

Jeff Woods who said he started smoking at like eight years old or something to get his voice. But I always think of Patty and Selma from The Simpsons. Like they were smoking as kids and that's what happened. But you're right. Mikey Ford makes me feel sort of like, who's got a deep voice? I feel like Barry White.

Well, he could take voice lessons, some sort of elocution training. The kid is going to be making a decent salary, and politicians typically go through some kind of training. We'll see what Uncle Doug has planned for him. Right, right. Okay, so speaking of Jim Van Horn, the Edge 102 morning show

debuted their third person in the booth, Rick the Temp. Rick Campanella, have you been listening? I tried a little bit. They were actually on vacation this week. I checked in this morning thinking it might be something to talk about when I came in. In fact, your buddy Kid Craig was filling in. But the way they format commercial radio now is so tight, right? You have to listen for a while before you

can figure out what's going on, who's actually hosting the morning show. They've recalibrated how music connects to the commercials, to the talking segments. I don't know how much you've picked up on all this. It all relates to the PPM, People Meter rating system. So how long did you listen before you realized Rick the Temp wasn't actually working? 15 minutes, maybe? And they were running these liners about Fred and Mel and Rick. They've only done this show, what, two or three weeks? I'm not sure I fully understand the point of the whole exercise

of having Rick in the booth along with them. That radio station and its morning show has been the topic of so much discussion on your website and podcast over the years. It sounds like they want to do something now that's very controlled, packaged. These just happen to be the people that were hanging around that are being put through the paces of doing it. I'm not sure at what point it becomes appealing enough to get a wider audience. Is it simply because Rick is a brand name in this market

and they needed maybe some bigger name for advertisers? Is that the strategy behind the reputation? It might be. He just happened to be hanging around. Chorus bought Global Television. They're all consolidated now. There have been a few rounds of layoffs, more probably coming.

And it's all about maximizing efficiencies based on who's at the radio station, who they have to work with. The drawing power of 102.1 The Edge at this point, I'm not sure how that format, that station, that music gets an audience beyond what's already there. And they've been, I believe they've been, you know, given a good chunk of their, you know, audience over to 88.1, right?

The 88.1 made some inroads the last time I saw sort of like a book. I've listened a little more in the morning, 88.1 with Raina and Matt. Raina, friend of the show. Well, the morning deal that they started with there, it sounded like it was maybe

a little more, how would you explain it? Townie, I think would be the term. Like wide-eyed tourists exploring Liberty Village, Trinity Bellwoods Park. It wasn't really plugged in to the reality of what was happening. It sounded like a broadcast from a morning show from Barry, who were coming down to the big city and excited about everything that they were seeing. Like a white squirrel?

Green acres, yeah. You know, gee whiz. So right now the lineup they've got on there is a little more in tune with what's happening. And it sounds more spontaneous that the segments don't have that same scripted feel that they do on the Edge morning show, where they throw out a discussion topic like, what was the first porn that you ever watched? They put that up on their website. Just a little embarrassing as far as imagining that this is some kind of new frontier of radio programming. Let's have a 72-second discussion about watching pornography as children. And I guess we're going to see a lot more. I guess they'd call it synergies. That's the corporate word.

But you'll see a lot more crossover between the chorus radio stations and global, I'm assuming. I know that Jeff MacArthur, right, he's got got the 640 show and he pops up on that the show that let liza go my mom's very upset about this liza fromer she she liked that guy i can't remember dave gary i think his name was and i think he went back to vancouver or something and then leslie roberts was around there and and he lost a job well they've now got jenn now got Jennifer Valentine working on The Bachelorette After Show. Can you believe that this is what entertainment is today? That we discuss things like The Bachelorette After Show? And that's on the W Network, right?

Yeah, that's part of the whole chorus empire now. So I think we'll be seeing Jen Valentine somewhere on Global and all of her fans who are really passionate about her. And just like the vehement vulgarity that was leveled at breakfast television for getting rid of her.

No, Mark, they put out that press release about how they eliminated the position, the live-eye position, and that they offered Jennifer another job and she didn't want that job. Therefore, you know, they decided to part ways. And you read it, I read it

when that day they announced it. On April Fool's Day, right? Which made it even more confusing. I was sure it was an April Fool's Day joke when I first read it. And then it's like, I don't think it's a joke. But very soon thereafter, and you know, just like when Ann Romer shows up on CP24,

people write me emails or comments and I get these things. So I know in real time, the live eye never disappeared. They had, I think Paige Chen was doing it for a while. I think she might still be doing it. But essentially, they lied. They didn't eliminate the live eye and then, oh, we had to let Jennifer go. They just put somebody else in the live eye. Yeah, they said they were moving to more of a

breaking news orientation on breakfast television that they weren't going to do the reporter remote from the flower show or whatever was happening. But what else are these breakfast television shows for exactly? Why would you screw with the only thing you've got? This is the reason why people were tuning in. Hogwash, Mark. That's hogwash.

All right. We have to move rapidly here because we have a lot of things we've got to touch here. You have noticed and I've noticed and I've seen in your tweets that the I hate rubber boots guy is being spotted and people like, you know, post pictures of him. So I want to ask you now, I wrote, you saw this tweet, I think you retweeted it, but I sat here, James Duthie from TSN hockey sat there and he told a great story about how, when he was on the radio, somebody would call in and ask him if he's wearing his rubber boots. And I won't even do the imitation because Duthie it great, but it's like, you're wearing your rubber boots or something like that. So

I wonder aloud if the I hate rubber boots guy is the same guy who used to call James Duffy. Well, there was a Reddit thread a few weeks ago, I think summertime peak of sightings of the I hate rubber boots guy. He walks around with a t-shirt

that says I hate rubber boots while he He walks around with a t-shirt that says I hate rubber boots while he's wearing rubber boots. That's the entire shtick right there. There's a Flickr page that he started to document the prank. It's hard to tell exactly what the point is of the entire exercise. And unfortunately, usually when these stories bubble up in the Toronto media about eccentric characters on the street, we end up finding out something sleazy about them, that they have some history of unseemly behavior. There's always that risk, right? Zanta. Zanta. You don't want to glorify the wrong street characters because it may come back to haunt you.

So no one knows what's going on with the I hate rubber boots guy. There might be a bit of trepidation when it comes to making him a wider media celebrity. Zanta is a great example because the Zanta thing is kind of fun and interesting until you know the story of Zanta. And then it's very sad. I will point out, I see Zanta all the time. He must live nearby. I think Evans in rural York. There's numerous Zanta spottings at Evans

in rural York, so I'm guessing he might actually be living there. But the other one who's been spotted and you've been tweeting about is the Masked Bride. What's the deal with the masked bride? Well, the giveaway on that one took a relatively short period of time.

She was writing these notes, wearing a wedding dress and a mask around the city. The notes alluded to some sort of domestic violence. They were written partly in French. She would sit in Starbucks, other public places, write these notes, and leave them behind. Last week, she turned up in Winnipeg, and the police picked her up on the street. There was a shooting incident the night before. Not a shooting incident, something suspicious, I shouldn't say. can't remember, involving a young girl who was wearing a mask in Winnipeg.

So the police picked up the masked bride, took her in for questioning, and she asked to be taken to the CBC, where she would explain herself to reporters without speaking, without revealing her name. to reporters without speaking, without revealing her name. She wrote down an explanation that this was, in fact, performance art that she was doing to represent those women who aren't heard when they find themselves in these situations. Have you ever considered, Mark, becoming like the 1236 guy or something? Maybe you get a funny hat or something and become one of these Toronto Street characters?

Oh, I don't know. I'm trying to be the lens through which other people find out what's going on. This isn't about me. I'm dedicated to finding the information that other people don't know about, spinning it whichever way I want, making sense of it all. You know, in this time, I realize there's been a recurring theme this year more than ever. How much of what we consider social media news is really just older people from the

pre-digital generation trying to figure their way around all these platforms, stumbling and bumbling and making mistakes and tweeting the wrong thing and not knowing how to use Snapchat. Right. So many stories come out of this older generation struggling to adapt and having no clue whatsoever about how this is supposed to work. And is that a good segue? Perhaps I could mention Damien Cox, friend of the show. He's going to come on again in September.

I'm trying to get him on with David Schultz, but let's one step at a time here. So I picture Damien Cox coming down here and like breaking that wooden chair over your head, like a full-on wrestling ring experience. I got to say this. You're right. Sometimes you wonder, is Damien in on the joke? Does he have a good sense of humor?

Because he seems awfully serious. But every time I deal with him, and he's yet to block me, by the way, and I don't think I give him a free pass every time or anything like that, but there seems to be some unusual mutual respect going on between Damien and I. Like, I think he'd come down here and we'd have a chat about everything. And I think he'd answer all of my annoying questions,

especially the question I would ask him about, like, what was that DM error were you about the selfie that right after, you know, we all speculated what it might be, he went, what's it called when you're private? It's private account. He moved his account to private. be. He went, what's it called when you're private? It's private account? He moved his account to private? Yeah, he locked his account. It can only be visible now to his existing followers.

And he's got tens of thousands of them. So he's not particularly private. But as a result of covering Damien Cox and his selfie tweet, selfie tweet, he blocked me and I never had any interaction with him ever. Yeah. I'm blocked from a locked account. I mean, whatever you have to do to make that happen. I, I figured out the formula, but, uh, it's, it's all, uh, based on the fact that he publicly tweeted this one message that looked like it was supposed to be a direct message, a Twitter DM. What's the wording exactly?

I should have it memorized by now. Okay, if you'd rather not, that's cool. I wish I had copied this down, but something about... Just a selfie... Will do? Just a selfie for now? Just a selfie for now is good something like that have i got that right yeah without looking now here's what i think first of all it sounds like obviously we're all

going to jump to a conclusion here because it sounds a bit bad but if it was if it was a misunderstanding why doesn't he just tell us what it was like like we'd all be like collectively like okay we'll give him the benefit of the doubt. That makes sense. But instead I think he just decided to lash out by blocking everybody and going private. And that's why my first question when he sits down here is going to be, what the hell happened there? That might be your most listened to podcast ever based on the months of momentum we're building up here.

Who was it Jay Leno had? Who's the guy from Four Weddings and a Funeral? Hugh Grant. Right. The famous, like, what the hell were you thinking? That'll be my what the hell were you thinking moment. That's going to turn the ratings around, and whoever you're competing with,

Jesse Brown will fall into second place for Toronto Media Podcasts. Toronto Mike, straight to the top. Thank you. Yeah, I finally passed Taggart and Torrens. That'd be great. Okay, so Kirsten Stewart is leaving Twitter. Can you tell us about this? Christine Stewart. Another media mystery to go along with the Damien Cox tweet. I don't know if Christine Stewart is considered a household name in anybody's household outside of people that are really into CBC gossip.

She was in charge of programming for seven years. And in 2013, she decided she was going to quit that job, which was a really powerful position as far as Canadian television was concerned, and start up the office of Twitter Canada. So a high-profile hire, as far as those things were concerned. She ended up taking on a role that brought her to Silicon Valley, working across America. And a lot of the buzz about what she was up to was related to integrating Twitter into television, that that was seen as her strength, that she knew how you could take Twitter, make that part of primetime programming, that every show would have a Twitter component. People would tweet about it. Advertisers could be sold on the idea that people

were participating in what they were watching through the second screen. And here we are, three years later, Twitter has not set Wall Street on fire. Its stock price has been sinking. So there's a lot of speculation that her departure is related to that turmoil. But that's not confirmed. And the best she could do was issue a statement where she talked about how every three, three and a half years, she hears a knock, knock, knock in her head and decides that she ought to find a new job. Christine. Christine. I've got that right now.

Do you even care about her or are you mentioning this just because I've been covering it? Because you pointed out what I found interesting was that when she left Twitter, she lost her blue checkmark. But then I heard from Steve Latterante, who now works at CBC News, but prior to that was running the media side for Twitter Canada. He pointed out that she never had one. That also seemed a little bit strange. He told me she never had one.

You have to wonder why he would even care so much about what we were blurting out online. But I guess, I mean, she wrote a book with advice, sort of like Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook wrote Lean In. Christine Stewart had one called Our Turn. So I think she's revered as a new media guru for having taken on this role with Twitter, having left the CBC behind for this whole Silicon Valley thing. So a fair number of people will be curious about what her next move might be. While we're talking tech giants, I'm still an avid Flickr user.

I used Flickr before Yahoo bought Flickr, and I still use Flickr. It's like the only web thing I pay real money for, I think, and I love Flickr. I'm worried because Verizon has bought Yahoo, which includes Tumblr and Flickr, and I hope they don't mess with it. But do you have any insights on Yahoo being bought by Verizon? I did work as a journalist for Yahoo Canada for about a year. It was a terrific experience. It gave me the chance to understand what it was like to contribute to

one of these platforms, which millions of people were still looking at. A couple months ago on here, I talked about how Yahoo was derided as a crap homepage for the Midwest. Remember that? That was a Vanity Fair article. And they still have a lot of eyeballs that look to this thing. I mean, we're talking about tens of millions of readers who look at Yahoo across America. And I think that translates to Canada as well. The audience is there. These are generally older internet users. These are not people who are into Facebook or Twitter or even understand why you would ever look at these things. Because Yahoo was one of the first on the frontier, it became a recognizable brand about 20 years ago, so it still must be worth something to Verizon, even if it's like 10% of what Microsoft was willing to pay for it back in 2008. Right, and Verizon has experience with these older web brands

because Verizon bought AOL, right? So this is kind of a similar blueprint, I think. Yeah, Verizon is technically the owner of America Online. You've got mail. Huffington Post Canada would the owner of America Online. You've got mail. Huffington Post Canada would be one of their properties. How often, Mike, do you end up looking at a link from Huffington Post or Yahoo? I mean, do these things even exist in your web browsing world? Once in a while, I'll read, like, Chris Zelkovich writes for Yahoo,

and I'll read what he has to say. And Don Landry, who's been on the show, he writes there, and I'll go see what he has to say. But it's very, very rare. Greg Wyshynski, who does the podcast with Jeff Merrick, right? Right. He's seen as one of the big Yahoo traffic getters in the U.S. Puck Daddy, yeah. And I personally, it's not a daily stop for me, but once in a while, Merrick will tweet a link to something and I'll click over.

But my gateway to all things Yahoo seems to be Twitter. So if somebody I like, I follow on Twitter, links to something there, I'll probably click over and give it a once over. But what this is really about for Verizon is the opportunity to track browsing habits, right, especially on smartphones. And the whole idea here is that if they own the platforms, if they have ownership in the outlets that are delivering this news, information, entertainment, if you want to call Huffington Post entertainment, then they'll be able to collect and capture all the data, and they'll know who's reading. And, you know, nothing people love more than having

so much surveillance on everything they look at online. Now, let's talk about Snapchat, which, by the way, I installed on my phone because my, well, she turns 12 next week, but she's a big Snapchat user, and we Snapchat, and she's the only person I actually Snapchat with, which probably will surprise nobody. But let's talk about one of the Snapchat accounts you've been following. Maybe to help you fall asleep would be John Tory's Snapchat. Yeah, they gave this Ryerson student a gig to be summer social media associate in the mayor's office. media associate in the mayor's office. And for the first few weeks there, I think he was understandably nervous and hesitant, not really bringing a lot of personality to it.

In the past week or so, it has improved considerably. Now, maybe it's because it was so lame beforehand, but now I'm actually checking the Toronto mayor's office Snapchat with some enthusiasm rather than something to take screenshots of and snark at. And a piece on the Toronto Life website that outlined the scant number of Canadian politicians using Snapchat regularly. Like there's only five of them. John Tory was way down on the list, got the worst grade of all as this student was trying to figure it out for him. But hey, it's early days. We're only halfway through the summer. The Toronto mayor's office Snapchat might spring to life yet. But like any media outlet, what are you checking it for, right?

I mean, it's to see something unexpected and unpredictable and surprising, creative. Okay, but... Something from left field, and I don't know if the John Tory brand is really capable of delivering that. No, I don't think so. But if anything interesting were to happen there, wouldn't John Tory just tweet that?

Like, if I'm just following John Tory on Twitter, I'm not going to miss anything interesting? I don't know. I mean, these different platforms are there to be played around with, right? Politicians aren't really trying to monetize anything. What an age we live in. Except maybe their own re-election abilities next time around. I'd have higher hopes for a Mikey Ford Snapchat at this point.

But a few other politicians that are on there, Rona Ambrose, interim conservative leader, she's documenting a lot on Snapchat. It's not the easiest thing to figure out, as I'm sure you experienced as a newbie. They deliberately set up the interface so that only an 11-year-old would know what was going on there? It's tough for my aged brain to wrap around it. At first I told her this is terrible.

She'll send me something and there'll be a message there and a cute picture of my daughter. It's got a clock ticking down like, let's say, seven seconds in the corner and I'll kind of drink it in for six, seven seconds, and then it's gone, and then I'm not sure where it's gone to. I find it very fleeting.

Well, there's a class action lawsuit now being leveled at Snapchat because they have a discover section where there are articles from different media brands, and those include Cosmopolitan Magazine, Vice, a few others that would be producing articles that are not suitable for your 11-year-old daughter to be looking at. So they're actually being sued over the idea that they've been putting across material

that is inappropriate for young children. So I think they're going to have to sort this whole thing out. At the same time, Snapchat bought a Toronto company, Bitstrips, and they got the Bitmojis, where you can create your own image in the form of an emoji. And tongues were wagging over that one, partly because Jesse Brown, local journalist from the Canada Land podcast, he is listed as the co-creator and co-founder of Bitstrips. The deal was announced as a $100 million payoff, although the figure was never confirmed. The assumption is that there is somebody in the

journalism media podcast ranks in Toronto who's a lot wealthier than he was a few weeks ago. So this guy who's taking some of that Patreon money that could come towards Toronto Mic'd is essentially, at least on paper, a multimillionaire. I mean, listen, do you think a multimillionaire has a responsibility to bankroll other people for unprofitable ventures? That is the question here. Do you think that the benevolence is necessary? That there's something unethical about someone who's sitting on

tens of millions of dollars? No, no, no. Just spending it on vanity activities and not thinking that the public should have any investment in it all? No, my tongue is firmly

in my cheek on that one. Okay, well, it's fun to rag on him anyway. But it is interesting that Jesse Brown, an independent journalist who has a great podcast and does great work, and he makes a lot more on Patreon than I do, and deservedly so. It is interesting to think that,

I don't know the number, like you said, they don't disclose it, but if he's coming into $15 million because of this Bitstrip acquisition by Snapchat, it's just good, interesting data to ponder on podcasts and on Twitter. outlets for being more motivated by money than ethics. Because if you're a journalist and you don't have a whole lot of money, your inclination is to follow the dollar wherever it is. So, you know, to go after the employees of major media companies for, let's say, giving a speech to the Royal Bank, like Amanda Lang did at the same time that she was covering the Royal Bank on CBC television. So a lot of these arguments and nitpicking and gotcha journalism is really all about money, and that's the motivator that leads people to do things

that might be a little bit sleazy. So we're just going to stand by and wait for Jesse Brown to do something ridiculous so that we can all laugh at him. That's right. Speaking of ridiculous things, not that it's ridiculous, but I've never been to a nude beach in all my life. I've never been to a nude beach. Have you ever been to a nude beach?

No, it's not something that interests me at all. I'm not really qualified to talk about the experience, but we have been covering and watching the battle on Hanlon's Point over the last couple of weeks. Correct me if I'm wrong, but essentially the problem is that the nudists at Hanlon's Point don't want people there in clothing. Is that right? But the law, if you will, is that you can be in clothing or not. It's optional. Yeah, the Hanlon's Point clothing optional beach, which became legal in 1999, they did a three-year pilot project. 1999, they did a three-year pilot project.

Nothing went wrong, so they made it completely permanently legal in 2002. So it's only that old, even though going back in history, it gained some renown as a gay cruising beach, gay men that would hang out there with or without clothes. But here we have Hanlon's Point established as a genuine, certified, life-guarded clothing optional beach in the city of Toronto. How this evolved into a news story was a Reddit post where a woman mentioned that she encountered these signs that didn't look that official. The way she described them,

you'd think that somebody was trying to pull some sort of perverted prank. They were kind of things made with Microsoft software that you would see on the wall of a community center telling people... Was the Comic Sans font? Yeah, they didn't get around to the Comic Sans, but similarly terrible fonts were being used there. And she talked about how she

felt harassed by this intimidation that was going on as she was just trying to explore the clothing optional beach for the first time. You would think as these narratives go that people would side with the woman who was complaining about it, right? I mean, essentially you're being ordered to disrobe in public against your will. This is usually something that doesn't come off very well. But I think these nudists, especially the older men who I don't know what else they're doing with their time. So I think they had a lot of energy to put into their counter campaign and explain to all the different reporters. And nobody loves more on the nightly TV news than going to a nude beach and doing all those shots of people, right? The clever shots where you can't quite see the stuff

under the bikini, but yeah, like creatively shot, yeah. Yeah, that's like manna from heaven for a TV cameraman, right? Like that Austin Powers scene, right? Where there's a great scene. Yeah, on the Toronto Life website, in fact, this week, there's one of those streeter things, nudist on the street interviews with different people that were at Hanlon's last weekend asking them how they felt about this enforcement. So the old school nudists managed to turn the tide and get a lot of sympathy for the fact that their space was being violated.

There were all these gawkers of all generations that were coming to the clothing optional beach with a complete disregard of the fact that it was primarily about being naked. that it was primarily about being naked. And I think they won this one, at least in the amount of publicity they've got, scaring away those who might have been coming to the beach with no intention of removing their swimwear. I've said it before, I'll say it again, what an age we live in. This is great.

By the way, speaking of old men, little aside here is that just the other day I was, so I bike a lot and I went off my bike and I took a look at my right hand. I know this is a podcast, but I'm showing you. And I looked at my right arm and a great number of the hairs on my right arm have gone white, like completely white. It's almost like this happened overnight. I know you're not a doctor. Should I be concerned? Like it's just all of a sudden the pigmentation and a whole bunch of,

I know you can't see from over there. Didn't you just have Avery Haynes in here where you were going over that white streak in her hair? I think I'm here on the wrong week, Mike. Sorry about that. That, by the way, so as soon as she leaves, I Google that, okay? I don't have that. I know that she thinks I might have that because I have the patch of white. I don't about that. That, by the way, so as soon as she leaves, I Google that, okay? I don't have that. I know that she thinks I might have that because I have the patch of white.

I don't have that. There's like, you look, I got to say, you look strange when you have that. There's a whole bunch of stuff when I'm reading about this on, you know, not just Wikipedia but elsewhere. I do not have that disorder. I think you've got to get some doctors down here on the podcast. Too many sportscasters and news people and radio DJs. Does City TV have a doctor on staff anymore?

Do they ever have a doctor on staff? I've got to find a doctor. Maybe CBC's got one. I'm going to get a doctor. There's a veterinarian, the guy from Animal House Calls. Do you have any new Ann Romer news since we last talked? Because I have a great appetite for this. You know, I think part of the problem with our attempt to figure out what's going on with Anne Romer is the fact that she's completely unflappable, right?

She is well aware that you had all this stuff at the Toronto Mike website and on Twitter. She knows that people are talking about her, that they're confused by the fact that she returned after retirement. You've got to figure that she does after all this time, that this is all very calculated, that she's just going with the flow here, that every time she shows up on CP24, not as many as there was during the first couple nights when she returned,

but I'm always searching because I don't have a TV at home with the channel. Every time Anne Romer is on doing a shift, two or three tweets wondering what's going on? Am I seeing a ghost? I thought she retired. Is this a rerun? Yeah. Is this one of those rewind segments? Have you noticed people are now letting you and I

know via Twitter? Have you noticed this trend lately? Somebody will be like, at 1236 at Toronto Mike, another Ann sighting. We're documenting this. Okay, but complicating things further is the fact that you've got this story on your website, which is still completely unverified.

But undenounced. Even if your source was reliable, as you say, I've not heard any confirmation, right? I've got to be careful in how I disseminate this information. Everything's alleged.

I could end up in court if I claim that this Ann Romer return story is accurate. I haven't received any cease and desist. I haven't heard a single note. I haven't got a note. And these PR people are kind of friendly with me. Although, let me think. Okay, that's the bell side. Okay.

Because Roger's PR has been all over me lately. I have a direct connect there on a whole bunch of stuff I would try not to talk about. But the bell thing, they would contact me too, I think, to let me know, hey, this is erroneous. Ask you to take it down. Remove this. It's erroneous. Some sort of refutation. Yeah, something. I don't know.. It's unfounded. It's something.

I don't know. But here's what I think will be interesting. Now, maybe she's just filling in on weekends for the summer or something, and she'll just disappear after that. But if she sticks around, when she retires the next time, it'll be fascinating. Like, will anyone come to the third retirement party? Well, I know in all of your coverage of Ann Romer, you have qualified over and over again that you're talking about her with the utmost respect.

Love her. Why not have the next Anne Romer retirement party in the Toronto Mike basement? I have a beer sponsor. We will be fully stocked Great Lakes beer. Absolutely. And I have a connection with Palma Pasta, a popular pasta place in Oakville and Mississauga

that I can guarantee they'll cater it. Yeah, I can do that. Okay, so maybe we'll be back here in August for the Ann Romer Toronto Mike Podcast Retirement Party. Let's do it. Let's do it. So yeah, my tangent was telling you about the white hairs in my arm.

But hey, I'm sure this happens. I guess now that I'm like, I just turned 42, I'm sure it'll just start sprouting all over the place. Like, I'll just start turning white. That's what I think is going to happen. Okay. This should really be between you and your doctor, Mike. You're right. You're right.

The Seinfeld pop-up stuff, I actually successfully ignored all of it because I know a lot of people in my Facebook feed jumped on it, they're going, but I actually never believed it was real. I never believed it was real. Yeah, I debunked it from the start, even though there were other people claiming

that the organizer had his hand in other events that he successfully executed, so why would he make this up? It checked out as okay. pop-up diner posted in February on Facebook with the hope of launching this thing on July 15th, which itself was suspicious. There was no official location listed at the time. It was just a young party planner claiming that he was going to execute this thing as an homage to Seinfeld. And he would have different dishes and decor all set up in tribute to the show with no consideration for the fact that if he came anywhere close to making this a reality, Jerry's lawyers would have been right on his case and shut the whole thing down. Yeah, forget me and my cease and desist about Ann Romer. Sony would be, like, if it even smells like some,

if you're going to have some kind of a Seinfeld pop-up, Sony's lawyers are down your throat. I think it's Sony that owns that show. And yet, he managed to get covered as a genuine event. I even heard him being interviewed on CBC Metro Morning. He talked about his plans. There was going to be a $20 entrance charge to this thing, which itself sounded incredibly suspicious.

Like what he was promising, there was no way you could do this for any less than $100, maybe $200, $300 admission for this kind of replica complete with food and drinks, whatever he was imagining. Junior mints, I guess, like all the foods that are part of the show, like the Junior Mint episode I'm thinking about or peach schnapps, all the Seinfeld stuff.

Yeah, completely out of the realm of reality. So he kept this invitation on Facebook, and toward the end of June, advertised that tickets were going on sale for $20 for this launch party for July 15th. Yeah. He set up a page on Eventbrite, announced the minute that you would be able to buy tickets, and no one got through. minute that you would be able to buy tickets, and no one got through. There was no proof that anyone had successfully paid cash money to get into this Seinfeld pop-up. Naturally, the reporters started sniffing around, wondering what was up here. How did he announce this thing months in advance, claim that tickets were being put on sale, and then suddenly they weren't available, and you couldn't find one person anywhere on the internet who actually procured what he was selling. When he came clean, he had like two or

three different versions of the story about what went down here. Like there was a Globe article, Star article that contradicted one another. I can't remember what it was that he was trying to say. He had hoped to make it happen. He figured a sponsor would come forward, and then nobody did. But then he also said he handed it off to some other people, and he wasn't going to say who these other people were because he didn't know them, and he wasn't going to disclose who was in charge of it now. And then on top of all of that, he admitted that he bought all the tickets himself through Eventbrite so that it would look like a sellout. I think I've got this all correct from memory. So I think really just a cautionary tale, right?

We've had these like every summer. People will put up a Facebook event that's completely fictional. Last year, it was an orgy at Trinity Melwood's Park, if you remember that one. I do, I do. So the next time this happens, maybe the media will be a little more skeptical,

but don't count on it because it seems to happen every single year. They have a lot of content to fill, so yeah, they're going to jump on all that. By the way, speaking of content filling and things that piss people off, I haven't talked to anyone on this show yet about the Lone Wolf tenor,

so I'm a little bit ashamed to say, maybe I'm not ashamed to say, but I actually was watching that All-Star Game, so I saw this live, okay? And I'm kind of multit say, but I actually was watching that All-Star Game, so I saw this live. I'm kind of multitasking because it's the anthem. I heard that the lyrics were different, but I didn't catch what they were. I think I just sent a tweet out like, what did this guy change the words to? Someone told me it was an All Lives Matter reference, and then it blows up on Twitter. What were your thoughts on Lone Wolf Tenor?

and then it blows up on Twitter. But what were your thoughts on Lone Wolf Tenor? Well, I mean, he deserves some credit here for outraging the maximum number of people in the population of Canada with one gesture, right? If you didn't find it offensive that he was undermining Black Lives Matter, it was the fact that he changed the lyrics to the anthem there right on the field

in San Diego. On top of it all, his attempt to spin the fact that the band immediately evicted him, right? Very quickly. Until further notice before that All-Star game was over. They put out a statement saying, we disavow, he will not be performing with us in the future. But then on top of it all, he puts out an audio statement, then a heartbreaking video about how he had nothing to gain from this, how he's lost everything. He was involved in a tour with Pavlo, the guitarist, right? And he had to quit the fall tour because it was causing too much trauma for everyone else that was booked for this thing.

Venues were canceling him, and he had to bail out. Eventually, you figure public sentiment is going to turn, and everyone is just going to feel sorry for this guy yes no what do you think because uh i think initially it in my my my feeling on the all lives matter is it's a code for white lives matter and it and to me it's it's some it's a statement that is made by ignorant people who don't understand the black lives matter movement and i find it i find it offensive so the whole all, just even having that, he had like a card that wrote All Lives Matter. Even that alone offended me, okay?

I'm not saying put this guy into jail and throw away the key, but I'm offended by the fact he's doing this on the national stage. Okay, okay, but here's the thing. Just like I was talking before about people fumbling around trying to figure out social media.

There's a lot of language, a lot of cues, a lot of dialect that it's assumed that everyone in the population understands. Okay, this is where I'm going. This is where I'm going. So that's my initial thought on that. But then as I read some of his other stuff, be it like flat earther stuff and some of this new age nonsense, holistic this, that, as I read into his thoughts on things, it becomes apparent to me that he didn't realize what all lives matter. Like he didn't realize the weight of his words

he was using and he was naive to that. So basically now you're just offended that he decided that to put that in the national anthem, and that was the place to do it. Yeah. So shouldn't we be empathetic towards somebody who doesn't pick up on all those social signals? Right. So yeah. So he's paid enough. Because he really was ignorant to this, I think he's been punished enough. It came to light. I learned recently that in 1999, when The Great One, Wayne Gretzky, played his last game at Madison Square Gardens, I hope I get the right guy because I can't remember if it's Corey Hart or Brian Adams, but I believe it was Brian Adams, okay, who sang the national anthems and changed both the Star

Spangled Banner and O Canada. He changed the lyrics to reference the Great One. And everybody, nobody complained, nobody was offended, and it goes down as one of those kind of cool little things on Wayne Gretzky's Last Night. So changing the anthem alone, we have precedent that we won't be enraged by that. I think it really came down to the fact he put this all lives matter message in there. And once we realized that it was his ignorance and he was stupid. Yeah.

Let's, uh, let's move on and let the guy, uh, let the guy sing. Well, complicating things further was a fact that they had just voted in the house of commons to change a lyric to,

Oh Canada. Right. Right. Just like a few weeks before it's's waiting for a passage in the Senate. Although, to me, that's completely different. I see the point there, that you're going to change it anyway, but to me, completely different, because I'm actually looking for more edits to the National Anthem, because I'd like to get rid of the God part. Well, I mean, Colby Koch of the National Post wrote one of his many great columns about the Long Wolf Tenor

debacle. And it was him asking rhetorically, how is it that the flag of a nation is considered something that you can appropriate? You can turn it into art. You can use it as a source of ridicule. You can sew it on the back of your backpack when you go camping around Europe. But the anthem of a country, something that we primarily only hear these days before sporting events, is seen as something so sacred, right, that it's not for appropriation or parody or ridicule. And he didn't have any answer. Like, how did this happen? It's probably because it was political grandstanding. I think like that aforementioned example where the lyric to O Canada was changed to the great one. I can't remember how it was, but something he incorporated the great one into the national anthem. And honestly, I don't never, and it's going back to 99, pre-Twitter. I'm sure somebody would complain today.

But it came and went, and I think it was what he put in the National Anthem. It was the All Lives Matter thing that did it. Just like a powder keg all wrapped up there in this one guy, the lone wolf tenor. Let's see what happens. I think he's got a lot of supporters out there because whenever he posts a message on Facebook, everybody thinks he got a raw deal. Even this guy, Pavlo, whose tour Remy had to quit,

he said, yeah, let's get past this. And the only reason that he's not touring with me is because these promoters and small town cities playing, local city councilors, they still haven't got over this thing. Maybe one day they will. And we will hear the Lone Wolf tenor sing once again because we never really heard of the Tenors before this, did we? I had heard, but I actually thought there was a Tenors and that this was some Canadian franchise of the Tenors called the Canadian Tenors. This is how ignorant I was, okay? And then I think it was my brother Steve who says,

well, there's only one Tenors. They used to be the Canadian Tenors. Now they're just the Tenors, but there's only the one. And it was news to me that this is the Tenors, because I had heard about it through some Simon Cowell, American Idol connection or something like five, ten years ago. I can't remember. When Doo-Doo the Clown had his scrap there with the guy downtown back in December, right? There was a guy walking down the street, smacking people.

Ended up jumping on Doo-Doo the Clown's windshield while he was saving these women from being smacked by this guy. The tenors brought Doo-Doo the Clown on stage to perform a song with them. So I thought that was very touching. It shows that they're in touch with the clown population. All clowns matter. The world loves the clown.

Rosie D'Amano. There's a segue for you. Rosie D'Amano. So, okay, so, let me go back. And I actually intentionally didn't bring this up with my buddy Edward Keenan. I was going to ask him about it and I pulled it last

second because I didn't think it was fair to him. But there was a tragedy in the Toronto Star Newsroom a few months ago with a journalist named Ravina. Could you pronounce her last name for me? Ravina Alouac. Okay.

So Ravina, sadly, took her own life, but I understand she left a note basically saying, don't write about this. And this Frank, was it Frank? Magazine that kind of spilled the details and shared it.

And then Joe Warmington, amongst others, were basically suggesting via Twitter that the Toronto Star was trying to cover up this detail because, and I know I'm missing great details here, but she allegedly had an affair with her boss at the Toronto Star who had been sleeping with somebody else

at the Toronto Star. There's a whole sordid mess here. Yeah, and I think I even just mispronounced her name. I think it was Ravina Oluk? I've only ever seen it in print. This is the thing. She wasn't that well-known as far as journalists were concerned. It's safe to say that most people outside of the Toronto Star newsroom only heard about it when news of this tragic death started to leak out.

And Frank was the first place I saw it anyways, Frank Magazine. There were some tributes on Twitter from her colleagues at the Star. One of the reasons this became a sensitive issue was because she left a note behind saying that she did not want to be remembered. So they were trying to respect her wish by not writing about, no obituary, for example. Because I remember being,

wondering why there was no, like, I understand the privacy involved. Maybe you don't want to write the detail that she took her own life. But regardless of a reporter for a newspaper passes away, be it of natural causes or whatnot, that that would warrant

some kind of a obituary to tell readers that, you know, she's no longer with us. That's what happened. And that never did appear for the longest time. But throughout this ordeal with Joe Warmington going at the Toronto Star, there were infamous tweets now from Rosie

D'Amato. I'm going to misquote this, but she was going to kill him. Rip your fucking guts out or something. Your throat out. I think she would start with the throat and work her way down to the guts after that.

The Star newsroom was trying to respect her wishes. There was at least one Facebook post from a photographer colleague. Some other stuff on Twitter, but it was very much beneath the surface. It was really hard to piece together why they weren't saying much about this.

Consequently, the union representing the newsroom employees at the Toronto Star called for an independent investigation to look into the circumstances surrounding her death. And the reason that this was an issue at all was the fact that she was romantically involved with one editor at the Toronto Star. They broke off that relationship, and he subsequently became involved with another editor at the Toronto Star. So you had this triangle that was happening here, and all very tragic for the people involved. Because of this call for an investigation, they could no longer keep quiet about it, and it became fair game for a news story. Although, in the process, her wishes were respected, and they never ran an obituary explaining her life and times. In fact, the National Post, Sean Craig of the Post,

wrote a heartfelt piece explaining her history. Nothing like that ever made it to the star, though. How she moved from India to Canada about 10 years earlier and took on this challenge of moving to a different country and doing great as a journalist here. In Warmington, I believe he said he was going to park his butt in the Starbucks. So I have one Yonge Street where the Toronto Star building is. There's a Starbucks. I know this building well because my wife works in that building.

And there's a Starbucks down there, and he was going to be there, and if anyone wanted to come by and share their stories with him, because he was going to write the piece for the Toronto Star. Sorry, sorry. He was going to write the piece that would be funny, for the Toronto Sun that the Star was not publishing. And this was a threat. And this is where the famous exchange between Warmington and Damano happened.

And subsequently, and I believe completely unrelated to this episode, Damano was recently, correct me, she was arrested for assault? She was charged with assault. Another thing we've got to be careful how we talk about here, because there's been stuff in Frank Magazine, on its website, stuff on Twitter involving a family member, specifically the ex-wife of Rosie DeManno's brother, but none of it has been proven in court.

And there was a court date today, and they put off the hearing until the end of August. What do you think of Frank Magazine as a source? I mean, sometimes they're a parody. Like, they're... I find it interesting, because that story with Ravina, they'll get a lot of stuff

correct and break some news here and there, but they're still a satire. How would you think of them as a news source? Well, Frank Magazine describes itself as the satirical press, which is a bit of a running joke in that it's a way of protecting it against potential lawsuits, even though they've gone through a few rounds of those with Mike Duffy

and others, that if you say that the stories are satirical, that you're protected on some level. Like Mad Magazine, right? Maybe you're really not. But Michael Bate of Frank Magazine has been doing this remedial media beat. That's the name of the column, remedial media, on and off for something like 27, 28 years. So I would say his sources are pretty impeccable after all this time, and that if you see something in there, there's got to be at least a little bit of truth to it.

But usually there's a lot. Why won't Frank tackle the Ann Romer story? Maybe you could contact the gentleman there and get him on. Where would you even start, honestly? I think the best Ann Romer coverage is happening right on this podcast. That's right. So we spoke of Rosie DiManno. Let's talk quickly here about Sue Ann Levy.

You're a fan of Sue Ann Levy? Yeah, I think Sue Ann is great. Although now she's been in overdrive on Twitter. The issue at the Pride Parade involving Black Lives Matter and their list of demands, that was a big story for Sue Ann, who subsequently spent pretty much an entire week arguing on Twitter with anyone who disagreed with her position on Black Lives Matter and their role in the parade. Part of it was the fact that Sue Ann herself was marching with this LGB Tory group.

They took the T in the acronym, made it stand for Tory. And Sue Ann has certainly been on a tear. This is the summer of Sue Ann leading up to the release publication of her memoir later in August. So she's got a book to sell, and she's taking an unorthodox approach to marketing, which is yelling at everyone on Twitter who dares to disagree with her. Yeah, I actually asked her on Twitter if she would come on this show,

and she said yes, but there was no follow-up. She doesn't follow me, so I couldn't DM her, so I guess I'm going to have to dig up her Sun Media, or I guess it would be Post Media now, dig up her email address

and write her a good old-fashioned email. But she did claim she would do this show. I don't know if you can get her to put the Twitter away for an hour or two and come down here. That might be your biggest challenge of all, getting her to talk about herself is a breeze. How long has she been at The Sun? I won't hold you to the exact number,

but you got an approximate, like a long time, right? Yeah, since the late 80s. She goes back to the first era of Paul Godfrey being in charge at The Sun. Oh, the little paper that could. Is that, or did she go back there? I remember one day, I think it was mid-80s, I did a science project on newspapers,

and I wrote to the newspapers, I guess to get their investor information, and I got this really color, it was Donato's to get their investor information. And I got this, like, really color... It was Donato's Bird was all over it. It was a colorful portfolio thing. And it said, the little paper that could or the little paper that grew. Maybe it was the little paper that grew,

whatever their slogan was back then. And I always remember that Donato's Bird and that slogan on the portfolio. Well, Sue Ann tried to get into politics. She ran provincially against Eric Hoskins, MPP, right, in the St. Paul's Riding, Midtown Toronto, in 2009. She ran for the Conservatives at the time. Obviously, she had this reputation for all her years writing about socialist silly hole. That was one of her favorite terms over the years. And she was not successful and just went right back

to the newspapering just in time for the Rob Ford era, where she managed to be his biggest champion. So I'm sure that's provided material for her book, along with everything else that's ever happened in her life. This is the summer of Sue Ann, and soon enough we'll be able to read all about it. I think the biggest risk here is we'll have already known everything she has to tell us, because she's been on Twitter all the time.

Right, right. Speaking of newspapers, and we did just talk about the Toronto Star, but what are your thoughts on Bruce Arthur as a tweeter? Well, you're the one who's deeper into this whole sports Twitter thing, but one of the criticisms leveled at Bruce Arthur, see, I'm sort of trying to remove this beyond myself.

This isn't me talking. This is me channeling the... The people have spoken. The Vox Populi and how they feel about Bruce Arthur. Is there anything that can happen in the world without Bruce Arthur having to express his opinion about it? Anything at all? No, that's a good point. I, cause I follow Bruce and you're right. He, uh, he, he does comment on everything. And I think it was the Toronto sports media blog that recently talked about like sort of

bad tweets, if you will, in the sports media world. And, uh, they, they pointed out that, you know, something bad is, I guess Bruce has this thing, he'll just say, fuck them or fuck you to somebody who does something bad. Whether it be, you know, Donald Trump said something or whatever. And, you know, Bruce Arthur's trademark tweet would be like, F you or something like that. Well, he got some validation for his personal branding when he got recruited by the star, right? Two years ago, the Toronto Star hired him away from the National Post to be their marquee sports columnist. He was replacing Cahal Kelly, who got swept away by the Globe and Mail. And who never tweets.

There you go. That's the best strategy of all. Never, never tweet. So Bruce Arthur, I think, has shown that by being on Twitter all the time that you could make yourself valuable to the newspaper industry. I don't know if everything he has to say even translates into readership for his columns. What do you think? How do you feel about him as a columnist? Yeah, I think he's good.

Like, I think he's good. i think he's good i think would it be better if he got off the twitter like some others i'm not i know some people this has been the big topic on the aforementioned toronto sports media uh that jonah runs there is that should the sports guys you follow on twitter just stick to sports because uh damian cox for example you know he's got opinions on what republican convention or whatever, and Bruce Arthur, and should they just stick to sports? And I say, no, man. If you don't like it, unfollow. You know what I mean?

If only there was a feature on Twitter that allowed you to only follow the people whose opinions you were interested in reading. Right. I don't know. in reading. I don't know. I think that newspaper columnists more than ever and will continue to be forced to figure out what their place is in the entire mass media ecosystem. Everybody has to constantly be on call. I got swept up in the whole Joe Warmington world, when this Ravina stuff was going on. People were tweeting me about things that Joe was saying, and Joe was retweeting me, I guess, because I took an active interest in it. And at least for a moment, I could understand why Warmington is so manic about the Twitter. Because if your phone is buzzing all the time with people that have things to say to you, right, the compulsion is going to be to respond, to not ignore them, to do whatever you can.

It's sort of an endless massage, right? Your phone vibrating in your pocket constantly, forcing you into this state of arousal, ecstasy, confusion. I'm not sure what that is. So at least for a couple hours, I sort of understood where Warmington was coming from. He has just the most absurd retweets. But the bottom line here with all these personalities is they have to prove that they're worth something in the media marketplace. And with all this turmoil at the Toronto Star, right, they've lost a publisher, CEO for Tor Star is stepping down. In fact, on Wednesday, we're going to find out how they're

doing financially. There'll probably be something in there about StarTouch, whether anybody's downloading this iPad app, how the money that they poured into this thing is maybe going to turn out to have been a complete waste, big burning pile of cash that they set on fire at One Young Street. Wait and see how it all plays out tomorrow. So I think for all these media personalities, the scramble is never-ending, where you have to prove yourself, show that your opinions are worth something and better than all the other people out there, because everybody has a voice. Everybody is a platform. Everybody can

scream about what they think is wrong with the world. You don't have to be Bruce Arthur. is wrong with the world. You don't have to be Bruce Arthur. Is the official at Canada Twitter account, does it have a voice worth listening to? Well, they were ahead of the curve on the Pokemon trend

because I think their most popular tweet ever was asking some question about Pokemon. Which Pokemon character do you think is the most Canadian? And they seem to have hit on something there. One of the... The joke was, of course, they were late on that because that was like a 2000 reference and they just got lucky that it came back on them. That's what

happened. As if anyone can remember. But people have filed these access to information requests about government Twitter, how many hands are involved in shaping all these social media messages that you see from government. It'll be like 23 people had an opinion about a tweet, the kind of thing that we just randomly put out there while we're walking down the street. It involves all this planning and scheduling, cultivation and strategy and meetings and vetting. Tell us how many people touch an at 1236 tweet before it's sent? How many different people are involved in the creation of an at 1236 tweet?

Mercifully. Well, I work with a great team at St. Joseph Media who contribute editing and packaging, analytics, everything that it's going to take to make this thing work, I have free will when it comes to the 1236 Twitter. Any errors you see on there are entirely my own. And I realize as things become a little bit more popular every day that I have some responsibility here not to get anything wrong. I have no energy to get into Twitter fights about what I have to say about things. I mean, it's one thing to make a factual error.

It's something else to be told that your wording is wrong, that your thoughts are incorrect. It's just not something I have the energy for, whereas others are building their entire brand based on that. Getting into fights and

trying to police the world through the lens of Twitter. These people seem to have a lot of time on their hands because I love Twitter. I tweet a lot, I think. I'll tweet kind of whatever. I don't care. Like yourself, I have free will too.

The team at Toronto Mic'd, I don't have to run it by anybody. Nobody else touches it. I can tweet on my own. I can do this. Okay, but I'm more obsessed with information, right? I mean, I think that I do an adequate job. But retweets are not endorsements, right?

That's one of those things. So when you compose a tweet, you must stick in the words like allegedly and all that kind of nonsense. I do my best. But the retweets is a different animal, right? It's easier to get it right the first time, isn't it? I think the people that use it as a platform

for their own ego, they're not, I don't think they tend to be the same ones that are very good at telling you things that you don't already know. Am I right about this, Mike? Yeah. I'm trying to use Twitter to do journalism, to reveal things that are hidden,

mostly in plain sight, things that we find on the internet, maybe on the streets of Toronto, occasionally things that other people tip me off to. Hopefully they don't want credit because they're telling me something that's so juicy that they don't want their name attached to it. That's my game. And this whole other thing of trying to right all the wrongs in the world and using Twitter as your machine through which you think this is going to happen.

Well, I thank all these people for the entertainment, but I think we know like any number of generations that came before them online, they're just wasting their time. And the burnout that I've seen from people that were in blogging, first time I was here we talked about the old generation of bloggers, commenters on newspaper websites. I think it sinks in after a while that no one is really listening to what you have to say, that you're better off using that energy to just make a couple of friends. Yes, I'm with you. I'm with you. You know, I'm going to leave a bunch of stuff on the table for your next visit,

which, heck, it could be in a couple of weeks. Who knows at this rate? Because you're a fan favorite, if I may say. And you basically are, like you said, you're watching the landscape. You're sort of like the air traffic controller and all these things. I'm curious about your absorbing them. And you can come here and spill it into the microphone.

And I could go forever hearing about this stuff. Maybe we finish because we talked about Twitter here. And I've had an issue with the at norm account forever. We talked about Twitter here, and I've had an issue with the AtNorm account forever. Do you want to maybe share your thoughts on where the AtNorm account has come? Well, we're now at the first anniversary. It was one year ago this week, last week. It was late July last year, right, when OVO Fest was coming up with Drake. Right.

last year, right? When OvoFest was coming up with Drake, and Norm decided that he was going to insert himself into a rap battle. And it came down to telling Meek Mill, who I'd never heard of before this, and I kind of follow these things, that he was no longer welcome in Toronto for insinuating that Drake worked with ghostwriters. And that was the tipping point for this Norm Kelly Twitter account. Since then, over the past 12 months, it's turned into a complete train wreck. And I think the low point, the nadir of everything that Norm was doing, the nadir of everything that Norm was doing. It came one night when he was fighting with some 18-year-old in the suburbs of Spokane, Washington or something, because the kid disagreed with Norm Kelly making a joke about donuts or muffins or bagels. I thought, is this what Norm has been reduced to? And is this even Norm doing it?

This is what I'm saying. You're talking almost as if Norm Kelly is sending these tweets. We both know Norm Kelly is not sending the tweets. But they've become so increasingly terrible that the argument that Norm is responsible for the tweets. But they've become so increasingly terrible that the argument that Norm is responsible for the tweets has become stronger.

The worse it gets, the more you believe it's actually Norm Kelly doing this stuff. Oh, man. By the way, Meek Mill, you saw the new Rocky movie? Did you see the one from late 2015, the Rocky Balboa movie? No, I saw Rocky III in the theater.

Does that count? Eye of the Tiger? Survivor. Clubber Lang? That's right. No, it's good. Mr. T. And there's also that scene of Hulk Hogan in there, too.

You get the Hulk Hogan and the Clubber Lang in number three, right? So Meek Mill was on screen with Stallone? He's all over the soundtrack because he's a Philadelphia boy. And, of course, Rocky lives in Philadelphia. So he was all over the soundtrack. A lot of Meek Mill on that Rocky soundtrack. Okay, we've still got Drake, huh? We still have Drake.

And Drake, by the way, we didn't talk about this, but he's dominating the Billboard 200. His album's back to number one? Yeah, this is like the thriller, the dark side of the moon, the Sgt. Pepper of streaming albums. Stream after stream after stream. That's it. He's not selling downloads, but big on the streaming,

and it's kept him on top of the Billboard chart. Another topic for another day. In Drake we trust. And that brings us to the end of our 185th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. I do my own tweets. Mark, he writes the tweets at 1236, allegedly.

Allegedly. And 1236.ca for Toronto's daily lunchtime tabloid. Oh, and subscribe, because everyone, the movers and shakers in this city are all subscribed. I talk to these journalists. They're all subscribed to your news. I hope so. So we'll come back next month,

and we'll talk about everything that happens between now and then. We will. And oh, by the way, Great Lakes Brewery, you can follow them on Twitter, at GreatLakesBeer. See you all next week. And I don't know what the future can hold or do for me and you.

But I'm a much better man for having known you. Oh, you know that's true because everything is coming up. Rosie and Greg. Yeah, the wind is blowing.