I quit BlogTO today. Now I’m going to make a highly unprofessional move. I’m going to tell you why. (I intend to hold to the promise I made when I started blogging for them — you’ll always get unprofessionalism here at The Grumpy Owl.) But don’t get your hopes up. I don’t have any dirt. Even if I did, they probably have more on me than I do on them. And I don’t even have any hard feelings. Not really.

I stopped reviewing books a while ago and was going to start covering events. But BlogTO kept pissing me off. Their coverage of certain events could be called . . . Well, totally irresponsible comes to mind.

The worst example of this happened ages ago, when Jeffree Star leapt off the stage at Pride to punch a woman in the face. BlogTO defended him without even attempting to get the other side of the story. When they finally did that much, they recanted their defense. Covering Jeffree Star had brought a lot of traffic to the site. I’m not saying that’s why they backed him up, I’m just saying I think that’s why they backed him up.

Because, really what other reason could there be to back up a guy who punched a woman in the face? Calling it “the most ‘punk’ thing [she'd] seen in years” as MuchMusic videographer Barb Milner did, is just plain fucking stupid. How about those squeegee kids who apparently stabbed that guy to death. Pretty punk rock, eh Barb? Pretty fuckin’ hardcore.

But that’s beside the point. What does Much Music know about punk or anything else? We’re talking about BlogTO.

This sort of thing became, to my eye, fairly typical. Their food and event coverage is fine but when they report on something serious, they seem to seriously fuck it up. So they should just stop doing it and be a happy, faux-indie cultural source for the cool kids. Know your limits.

Anyway, today I read this article about the arrests made in the recent swarmings. [The story has since been changed so decency did prevail.]

Here’s the two things that pissed me off:

1. The presumption of guilt. They didn’t even wait for the police press conference before claiming that the police had the right men. That is just fucked up. I should not have to explain the importance of innocent until proven guilty to adults. Not as a principle of law or as a standard in journalism or even as a principle of honest thought. Some things just go without saying.

Aside from the title of the post, which we’ll get to, it ended with this line: “OK, it doesn’t guarantee 100% safety for all peoplekind in Christie Pits after dark, but it’s nice to see these muggers taken off the streets for the time being.”

2. The title of the article read, before it was changed: “The Pit is Now Safe: 14 Swarmers Arrested.” Once again, before the police press conference. So, even if these are the guilty parties, there might be more still out there. Who knows? Without evidence, BlogTO asserted a whole bunch of shit. It’s not even like they have sources giving them the straight inside dope. Someone read an article in a paper and reported on it.

Now I’ll stand up for someone’s right to report on other stories or to assert shit on their blog. That’s what blogs are for. That’s what I do here. But, for all their indie posturing, BlogTO is a media organization. As such, it has a greater responsibility. It should have standards.

And the bullshit just got thicker. They changed the story and pretended that it was an error. The author of the post said: “My presumption was merely that the immediate issue of these swarmings, which prompted the police warning, has been temporarily “resolved,” or at least direct action has been taken.”

I don’t know what those quotations around “resolved” represent. I also have no idea what he is saying. It’s just fucking gibberish. I’m not saying they’re guilty, I’m saying that arresting them has temporarily “resolved” the issue. Does that make sense?

I hate certain types of bullshit. This is exactly that type of bullshit. Words mean something. They communicate. He said what he said. It was not a typo. He was like: “Wooh-hoo, they got em!” That’s all that post was.

But, anyway, it finally threw me over the edge. I wrote an email of resignation shortly after my last comment. I believe I used the term “demagoguery”. If I had of been really pissed off it would have been “the lowest form of demagoguery”. Maybe it should have been.

The editors at BlogTO are decent people but they don’t know how to edit. That post never should have seen the light of day. Never. If it was a problem with punctuation, which I doubt, an editor should understand that punctuation can totally alter meaning and that, in this case, it did.

Their changes look tacked on. It seems like an attempt to alter the meaning by adding a question mark and throwing in the word “alleged”. Before they did that, the sentiment was bad but the writing was fine. Now the writing is bad and the sentiment is confused.

They need to realize that their site generates over 125,000 unique visitors a month. That sort of traffic doesn’t come alone. It brings an unwelcome guest: Duty to the public.

If BlogTO is big enough to profit off advertising, they’re big enough to have some standards and to take some responsibility. That’s the price you pay. Too bad no one ever wants to pay it. I just hope they realize that it’s time to grow up and take some steps in the right direction.

They may sell indie but they should still act decent. If they’re bothered by FOX News, they should be bothered by their own behavior. It just isn’t right. Their readers – at least some of them – deserve better than what they’re getting. In the meantime, I won’t be working for them.

Or probably ever again. Heh.