CanWest executive takes exception to characterization of Canada.com

A high-ranking executive from the new CanWest Global Communications Corp’s Canada.com portal has taken Canadian NEW MEDIA to task for an editorial he says unfairly maligns the newly re-launched web site. In a recent op-ed column, CNM bemoaned the perceived lack of local content on the site, which has been re-packaged in the wake of CanWest’s purchase of 100 per cent of Hollinger Inc’s share of the National Post and Southam Inc papers such as the Vancouver Sun and Ottawa Citizen. Gary Maavara, senior VP of CanWest Interactive, says that while the new site has some navigation issues to solve, the portal still boasts a greater variety of news and information than in previous incarnations, and that a perception that the re-launch has resulted in less available content is false. "We are definitely going to have a lot more content than has been the case and, if you go across the country, you’ll see that there is a dramatic increase in the amount of content. Everybody who’s gone into the site is assuming that we’re trying to do less. But, in fact, we’ve actually done more. We have 10 offices across the country – 10 working Internet newsrooms across the country – which didn’t exist before. We’re dramatically trying to improve the site. Everybody’s assumed that somehow this is all about a cut or a deletion or a restriction, and it isn’t," Maavara told CNM by phone. He points to a greater availability of arts and entertainment information as one example of how CanWest is trying to improve local content, saying the company will do a better job of posting city-specific information than sites such as Southam’s former Ottawa.com and others were able to do. He concedes that some areas, such as city business reporting, have become more difficult to navigate, but it isn’t the company’s intention to remove local reporting. "I’m hoping to (improve) the business side, even on a local basis. We are going to improve the site. The inadequacies of the site are not part of some strategy to dilute what people are getting across the country, by any stretch." Improvements to site navigation and bolstered local content are the next stage following Canada.com’s re-launch Sept. 4. That event, notes Maavara, garnered poor reviews in the wake of technical difficulties caused by a hardware failure. Observers across the country noted that they were unable to access the site on the day of its launch. "Every day we’re trying to do better. The first step in our moving forward was to improve our technical plant, which we did. That’s what this re-launch was all about; it was more a technology issue than content," he notes. "We’ve certainly had complaints," he adds. "When you change anything you get complaints. We have some navigation issues that we’ve got to solve, and we’re working on solving them. At the end of the day, the intent is to make these sites more local and more compelling than anything else that’s available." He says indications are that the launch has been successful, pointing to a doubling of traffic in September tover the previous month, though he concedes that month was an extraordinary one for news. The company has also overcome the hardware problems that initially crashed the site and denied access to users at peak times even before the public launch. "We are going to improve it so that people see them as being the best local sites, and there isn’t some corporate conspiracy to homogenize everything. There never has been."

CanWest executive takes exception to characterization of Canada.com

News | 10/03/2001 4:00 am EDT

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