Being a print-based outlet is a tough slog these days, and I don’t want to heap undue criticism on any publication in particular (considering I also work for an online media outlet).

But…

The free afternoon glossy “t.o.night” has a simply terrible feature. The last few times I’ve picked it up from a faux newsie at Osgoode station to read on the subway ride home, I’ve noticed the most peculiar self-promotion sitting on the paper’s back page.

Instead of say, a scantily clad woman barely wearing American Apparel, “t.o.night” likes to show off an “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” type ad, where they show how a daily paper publishes a similar story that “t.o.night” ran the afternoon before.

Now, I won’t pretend to know any more about the print process than I do (like I said, online is my world), but first of all, I doubt that Metro is looking at t.o.night for story ideas, especially since I expect they’re likely halfway finished laying out the paper before the glossy even hits the streets. The other beef I have is that some of these simliar stories are all basically based on the same wire put out by news wire services like Reuters or Canadian Press. (And the free dailies are heavily bolstered by wires… that’s what keeps costs down, and why they are free).

It works like this: in the morning, the wires (think of them like a borg-like news entity) push out the latest news stories. Actually, they push them around the clock, with constant updates all the time.  So at say, 6:30am or 9:30am or 11:30am, whenever the latest story moves, any organization who subscribes to their feed will see the updates.

So your favourite online news outlet (like CTV.ca News), which updates the news all the time, will have the latest, updated news stories. So if a story moves at 11am, you’ll see it at 11am.

Then, six hours later, that same news will show up in “t.o.night.”

Then, the next morning, that same news will show up in “Metro” or “24 Hours.”

Sure, “t.o.night” will have the story on dead trees well before someone else will have it on dead trees, but that doesn’t make their reporting or presentation any better (if there’s any original reporting going on at all). If I were them, I’d look for more interesting features and commentary and build the paper with more of a voice… since Blog.TO is already giving them content, and Torontoist has had ties to other outlets, maybe Toronto Mike or the Martini Boys are willing to sell them some content.

Despite my problem with their practice, I’ll still probably read an issue of “t.o.night” when it’s handed to me. But once the TTC finally puts some cell phone service underground, I think I’ll stick with browsing the latest news on my iPhone instead.