Steve Kupferman

The Star swiped a story from here! Kind of.

A few weeks ago I wrote a brief post on this blog about a tree in Trinity Bellwoods Park that had been laced up with yarn by street artists. You may remember it.

Later, at David Topping's urging, I did a little additional reporting and turned the yarn tree into a Torontoist post: The Story of the Trinity Bellwoods Yarn Tree, So Far.

Then, the Star did a little more reporting and published something about the tree in their Sunday Living section: Ailing tree victim of art attack?

And that is how a post on my personal blog, which very few people read, became a story in one of Canada's biggest and most respected daily newspapers.

This type of thing happens every day. Ah, sweet mysteries of the news cycle.

Last Week: The Edgewater Sign

A couple weeks ago, a reader named Jane Clark tipped Torontoist off to the sudden disappearance of the Edgewater Hotel sign, formerly of Parkdale.  The sign was huge and neon, and majestic in its own kitschy way.

It was difficult to find out what exactly had happened to prompt the removal, because the owners of 14 Roncesvalles Avenue, the building to which the sign was attached, wouldn't return my phone calls.  I had to gather information from the city instead, which was time-consuming.

After a little bit of digging, with help from Jane and others, I found a story:

Edgewater Hotel Sign Comes Down [Torontoist]

Last Week: The Ever-Unsatisfying Cop-Out

Last week I had the opportunity to write a nice, long post for Torontoist on Kensington Market's impending BIA designation.  (The link is at the end of this post.)

This is the third piece I've written about politics in the Market.  The first of the three was one of the first I wrote for Torontoist.  At the time, I was just developing a sense of how to approach newsier posts, and so my angle was not... ideal for the subject matter.  My plan was to interview lots of people in Bellevue Square Park, as a kind of impromptu Kensington ethnography.

Unfortunately, as soon I stepped into the park with the photographer, we got rained out, big time.  I went ahead with a badly truncated version of the post, which regular readers rightly perceived as a cop-out.  I got savaged in the comments--lesson learned.  The article's still up:

Kensington Market Brews Both Storms and Coffee [Torontoist]

Not long after that article went up, something legitimately newsworthy happened in the Market.  The storefront at 234 Augusta Avenue--which had been the center of some controversy, about a year prior, when real estate agent Phil Pick attempted, unsuccessfully, to install a Starbucks in the space--was suddenly listed with a new real estate agency, and a new agent.  I was tapped to write about it.

Determined to redeem myself, I made an effort to exercise due diligence in contacting sources.  That meant trying to get in touch with Pick.  This was somewhat problematic, because Torontoist had published some unflattering things about him in 2008's "Heroes and Villains" feature:

Heroes and Villains 2008: Phil Pick [Torontoist]

Pick did eventually respond to an interview request, and we had a chance to talk on the phone.  That's how this happened:

A New Lease on Life for 231 Augusta [Torontoist]

This latest Kensington piece was an order of magnitude bigger.  Where "A New Lease on Life" dealt with the fate of a single business in the Market, last week I had to contend, in my way, with the fate of ALL business in the Market.  Kensington's BIA designation had made it through its evaluation period unopposed, and I knew it was imperative that I interview widely enough to ferret out dissent, if any existed.

At the same time, I knew I was going to have to work to ensure that the final piece reflected the popularity of the BIA.  It's tempting to play up controversy wherever it exists, but the fact of the matter was that the designation had been popular in Kensington, by all accounts.  I wasn't going to let myself distort that.

I'm satisfied with the piece:

Kensington Market's Business, Soon to be Improved [Torontoist]

Last Week: The Greenest of Roofs

After learning that City Hall was going to be showing off their new green roof to media and VIPs, I spent a couple days emailing back and forth with the City's communications department, and ultimately succeeded in inviting myself to the preview event.

Photographer Michael Chrisman met me in Nathan Philips Square, and together we found our way up into council chambers, where we got to listen to Chris Pommer, one of the green roof's designing architects, talk concepts.  He said, among other things that: "The fundamental strategy is...to bring [the City Hall podium roof] back to the original vision of a place of infinite potential and of public gathering for all manner of events."

I had to ask around a little before it was clear to me what Pommer meant by "the original vision."  The green roof is on the podium area, above the first floor of City Hall, but below the towers.  Apparently, this area had been intended as a public space by the architect, but has been closed off to pedestrians since City Hall was completed in 1965.  That's what Pommer was alluding to.

The speechifying was full of handy little quotes, but I chose to leave most of it out of the Torontoist article, because when we actually got out onto the roof, which is still incomplete, I had a chance to talk to some roofers.  What they told me was pretty fascinating, and a story on the process of green roofing seemed to me like the type of thing that only Torontoist would be able to go for.  The result was this:

Green Roofing Ain't Easy (At City Hall) [Torontoist]

This assignment came with a nice little bonus.  Ordinarily, "how would the dailies or the weeklies have handled this?" is just a hypothetical question I ask myself after finishing a piece, but this time I have hard data:

This Meadow's On Top of City Hall [Post]

Emerald City Hall [NOW]

Kuitenbrouwer's piece for the Post is written like a column, because, well, Kuitenbrouwer is a columnist.  He seems to take pleasure in little aesthetic details like the names of different plants ("bergamont and campion and Russian sage"), but he doesn't stint on research, either.  This was published before I wrote my piece, and I read it--and I have to admit that I might have modeled my own article on this one a little more closely than I intended.  (Though not, of course, to the point of plagiarism.)

Terefenko's piece for NOW uses the green roof as a jumping-off point for a little mini-report on the city's new green roof bylaw.  The bylaw was passed in May.  I considered it old news and pushed it to the margins of my piece, much like Kuitenbrouwer did, but after reading Terefenko's take, I wish I'd given it more prominent treatment.  Not everyone follows new City bylaws as they're adopted, and this would have been a good opportunity to delve into some of the policy implications of the new green roof requirements--especially with so many interviews at my fingertips (city staff and green roof contractors were both at the preview).

I still think my piece was pretty good, for what it was.  But it could easily have been much more.  I'm going to keep this episode in mind for next time.