BlogTO’s and Torontoist’s ideal reader. Image taken from The Hipster Handbook.
While I agree with Torontoist writer Patrick Metzger’s statement that Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty’s refusal to “share any of the billions of dollars that the province sucks out of Toronto each year” is wrong, I think he’s out to lunch with his statement about the 2.8% rise in consumer spending:
The Canadian dollar rose to a 30-year high against the U.S. greenback yesterday, fueled by a 2.8% month over month rise in consumer spending. The numbers show that even with peak oil and climate change catastrophe just around the corner, we’re still willing to get out there and buy more unnecessary crap. Go, Canada.
Accordion Guy regular reader Chris Taylor called Metzger out on that statement:
Maybe they were out buying Energy Star stuff to replace their old, inefficient junk. Not that anyone has ever done that before.
And Metzger fired back with the stock sarcasm of someone who doesn’t work for a living:
It’s possible that the numbers reflect conscientious citizens buying solar powered cars, storm windows, and shopping bags made from organic hemp. However, the data shows it’s mostly SUVs, gas and Gucci handbags.
Ah yes, the old “money and progress are bad” canard. I’ll counter with this comic:
Comic from Reason. Click to see it on its original page.
Back in the winter, I caught up with local tech community builder Will Pate for lunch. He was in the process of moving to Toronto and we were talking about the local blog scene.
One thing that came up in that conversation was that although the BlogTO and Torontoist served their demographic very well, their demographic was only a slice of the larger pie that is Toronto.
What is that demographic, you might ask? They’re mostly white, under 30, and only attend events that take place in an area bounded by…
(Here’s an idea: take the events listed in BlogTO and Torontoist for the past year and plot them on a map. I’m willing to bet that they’re concentrated in the zone I describe above.)
Another hipster, courtesy of The Hipster Handbook.
They can reply “Yeah, that’s me” to seven or more of the following statements:
(If these look familiar, it’s because I took ’em from 11 Clues You are a Hipster from The Hipster Handbook).
Now don’t get me wrong: I’ve got nothin’ against twenty-somethings who like hanging out in charming local dives, listening to indie rock and buying things at thrift shops. If you’re a reader of this blog, there’s a good chance that you are (or were) one of them yourself.
I just think that there’s room for other “What’s going on?” blogs. Even Will Pate, who’s part of the BlogTO/Torontoist demographic says “Dude, there’s got to be more” (not a direct quote, but that’s exactly the way he’d say it).
We need blogs that cover events in areas outside the hipster core, whether they’re in the near-burbs like Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough, or out in the 905 area code. Blogs for people who work in offices, drop their kids off at hockey practice and have Costco memberships. Blogs for people who don’t look as if they were descended from the Family Compact. Blogs for people who both buy fair trade coffee and Harry Rosen shirts. Blogs for people who work the night shift.
Who knows, if this tech evangelism/computer programming thing blows over, I might start one of them myself.
And in case you needed proof, here’s the press release from the office of New…
The saying is doubly true for anyone who works under Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: “No…
This recent article in the New York Times [it’s a gift link, you’ll be able…
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Joey, as always, you make a great point, and you do it without being crass or betraying the message. I'm slow-blogging a response to this one. :)
@Karen: Thanks, Karen! I'm looking forward to reading your response.
I'm also cooking up a reply to this, but I've got to go through our demographic info (we did a readership survey in January) first.
@David Topping: Looking forward to it, David!
Joey - do we need "more" or do we need better quality on what is currently out there?
Regarding so-called "green consumption," please see:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/07/24/eco-junk/
It was published just yesterday. In short? We can't shop our way out of this problem.
You know, it's a good thing that the hipster zone is bordered by the lake on the south or we would have a lot of drownings!
Hey, I have a CostCo membership. I do not have checkered tablecloth, and my hair absolutely does not look best unwashed, eeeew. You can go check out my blog!
According to the readership survey that we conducted in January,
35% of our readers are over 30 (and some of our staff is, my co-Editor and the author you've quoted, Patrick Metzger, included). People's incomes (admittedly, something people tend to lie about on anonymous surveys) are spread pretty evenly among all possible ranges. A lot of our readers are well-educated young people, but, well, I think that that is the nature of people who tend to read blogs. I wouldn't be surprised if the demographics of most online blogs were similar to ours; in fact, I think we're doing quite well on the "diversity" front. I don't know the race of the people who are reading us, as I didn't think to ask that on the survey. I can tell you that the majority (65%) of our readers identify as living in "Downtown Toronto," but we didn't (as we should have) get more specific than that; the other 35% identify as living in areas like Scarborough, Mississauga, North York, or elsewhere in Ontario.
As for our geography, we -- the Torontoist staff -- cover what we know. It's more interesting that way; I'm not qualified to write about what's going on in Scarborough, and it'd show if I wrote an article. Event listings, mind you, are a portion of what we do; they're not the only thing (or, in my eyes, the biggest thing). You need to bear in mind that the staff is composed of individuals, and there are no collective agreements on anything (be it the environment, culture, whatever). I wrote a letter trying to clear up the collective-individual thing recently (http://www.torontoist.com/archives/2007/05/a_letter_from_t.php) in light of people complaining that we were hypocrites when we condoned advertising one week and celebrated it the next.
I'm also kind of disappointed that you didn't contact anyone from Torontoist before writing this article. If you'd done that, I could have provided you with our actual demographics, based on the aforementioned readership survey, so you wouldn't have to guess.
In terms of our staff being "mostly white": we hire people for a number of reasons, race not being one of them (most of the time, it's kinda hard to tell when you're just e-mailing back and forth). We hire the best people who apply to contribute, and that's about it. That said, we did just hire a batch of new contributors who aren't on our staff page yet, some of whom aren't white! Crazy, I know!
As for myself, I dislike the "hipster" moniker because, well, I'm not one. As for your hipster checklist, I fall into categories 1 and 5. I do own American Apparel shirts, though, so I'm not sure if that slides me into more dangerous territory.
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them as best as I can here...I just think that it's unfair to say "this is who is reading Torontoist" based on pure speculation.
David Topping
Co-Editor, Torontoist
As they used to say on old TV talk shows, "Keep those cards and letters coming!" I'll post replies here in the comments, but they're going to have to wait until after work.