Openfile.ca interview with me about the history of the Rant Line and the recent controversy.
New Rant Line shuts down following complaint from former Montreal Mirror editor
On Tuesday, OpenFile Montreal wrote about the resurrection of the Montreal Mirror’s Rant Line in web form, complete with a new phone number Montrealers could call to complain, kvetch and commiserate as they’d done for years in the pages of the alt weekly.
John Brese, the man behind the new site, said people were lamenting the loss of the Rant Line and he wanted to bring it back to life. It was an initiative Brese took on his own as he’s unaffiliated with the Montreal Mirror.
But now, the man who created the original Rant Line in 1994, former Mirror editor Alastair Sutherland, has expressed his displeasure with the new site and in response Brese has shut it down.
Sutherland, who is on vacation on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, spoke to OpenFile via email.
“I created the Rant Line in 1994 as a freelancer and pitched it to the Mirror. At that time, I also registered it as a business,” Sutherland said. “Since then, for just about every week for 18 years, I listened to the rants, selected them and ‘edited’ them. Sub-editor Roger Argent was invaluable in his assistance. Doing it is not as easy as it looks, and we worked hard to make it as good and fun as it could be.”
In the 18 years that it ran, Sutherland said many people tried to imitate the Rant Line, but the Mirror solidified his Rant Line’s superiority. [AL SOUTH NOTE: Actually, what I said here, was “Lots of people have tried to imitate it, and I don’t care-they don’t have the science.” The interview, btw, was conducted via Facebook messages]. Sutherland took offence when he saw Brese had copied his idea.
“When I saw that this new one was copying EXACTLY what was in the Mirror (and putting what seem to be fake ads beside it), then going on the radio to hype it, that struck me as opportunistic to say the least,” Sutherland said. “Perhaps he had good intentions, I dunno, but it’s an extreme and unoriginal copycat.”
The former editor said that when he found out the Mirror was folding, he was caught by surprise and the fact he was about to leave for vacation made it impossible to change the Rant Line into a different form right away. But Sutherland, who also goes by the name Al South, said that is the plan: