Examiner.com invades 5 Canadian cities

Hyper-local publishing company Examiner.com is set to launch its service in five Canadian cities.

According to the organization, Examiner will now provide localized content to those living in Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver. The company will also offer national content for all those not living in the five cities.

Examiner is growing up quickly since its launch in April 2008. Examiner now provides localized content in 162 U.S. cities, according to a company spokesperson. It plans to add 40 more markets in the coming months. With the expansion to Canada now under way, the spokesperson told me in a phone conversation on Wednesday that the company plans to bring its service to the U.K. and Australia by the first quarter of 2010.

Examiner's foray into the Canadian market follows its strategy in the U.S. market, the spokesperson said. When it launched in the U.S., only five cities were covered. Today, local "examiners" are posting more than 15,000 stories per week.

Examiner is currently looking for Canadians who are "passionate about their interests and areas of expertise" to join one of the markets' local sites. When Examiner chooses a writer, they provide training on how to write articles. All writers are paid based on performance and other metrics.

[shayhurs]

Rip off artists...

Examiner.com makes its bloggers submit to a criminal background check to prove they aren't sex offenders. When they approached me in May 2008 to write for them in Chicago, they told me in writing there were no exceptions and that "even the CEO's wife" had to submit to a background check.

I find that the most intrusive, unnecessary, and frankly insulting requirement to be a barely paid local blogger that I have ever heard, and I've been blogging for years. From About.com in the late 90s through Huffington Post Chicago to my current relationships with the Chicago Tribune's ChicagoNow, I've never been asked to prove I wasn't a rapist.

What kind of an employee-distrustful, litigation-fearing, abject conservative lunatic is at the helm of Examiner.com anyway? Especially considering the fact that the only bloggers they ask to write for them are bloggers like me with strong and longstanding local followings and deep connections with local online community?

I told them where they could stick their criminal background check. When I began blogging for ChicagoNow in spring 2009, I ran into their former employee who had the job of telling me about the background check in a Tribune Tower hallway. We both just rolled our eyes.

Do you think after my experience I have ever once covered the Examiner or mentioned them--in positive terms anyway--on my Chicago blogs? Um, no. Next...

[Kev_Orng]

That's nice. But I'm afraid I'd rather buy my Canadian news from Canadians.

I'm not so sticky about international news or tech news or world affairs, but I think it's important that any country provide and support its own news coverage. If I stop reading the Globe or CBC or The National Post, what will happen next? I'll have to rely on frikkin CNN and "The Examiner" for Canadian election coverage.

Forget that. News sources should have more than just a monetary investment in a country.

Besides, I've seen how American news sources covered SARS, and their treatment of the Canadian health care system. What a joke!