'Wannabe killers' and 'exhausted Macs'

It has been around for a few years, but maybe you have not tripped over it yet. MediaScout, part of Montreal's Maisonneuve magazine's web operation, bills itself as ''Canada's definitive morning news briefing.'' It's modeled on Slate.com's Today's Papers and Guardian.co.uk's The Wrap and follows Canada's big seven national newsrooms: The Globe and Mail, National Post, La Presse, Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star, CBC TV's The National/cbc.ca and CTV News/ctv.ca.

MediaScout's mission? ''By comparing the day's top stories and analyzing the different angles taken by each organization, MediaScout can feed you the best analysis, keep you aware of biases and generally give you a bird's-eye view of the day's news cycle.''

Here's a taste of MediaScout's critiques from the last couple of days:

Thursday: Crime stats
''Since Big Seven sources don't provide much sociological analysis of these various statistics, MediaScout is left wondering, for instance, whether the decline in murder rate connotes a less violent population, or considering the rise in attempted murders, merely a less effective set of wannabe killers.''

Wednesday: Census day
''Upon yesterday's release of new Statscan census data on the age structure of Canada's population, the question was not whether or not to transform the numbers into a flock of maps and tables, but just how big those maps and tables should be. If today's papers are any indication, the country's graphic designers are sleeping late and letting their exhausted Macs cool down today, after burning the midnight oil to turn out colourful and positively enormous charts showing where our demographics are headed.''