The Globe has at least two articles today on the new Ontario mandatory child booster seat law, to be introduced on September 1. They’re here, here and here (this, from August 2). The main story page online has, of course, Google AdSense ads that key on child seat keywords, so one can read the story and at the same time read ads to find child car seats.
But what I found oddest about the coverage, and perhaps I’ve missed this coverage elsewhere in the paper, is that nowhere does the Globe cover the recent and very public controversy over whether child seats reduce fatalities for children older than 2, compared to ordinary child seat belts. The controversy has been spurred by the research of Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics, and has been blogged into oblivion by the masses since first being published in the NYT on July 10 (there is a brief bit on this in the book).
The New Media allows me to grab the full context of a story like this, immediately and without much effort. More to the point, I can link to dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands of discussions on the topic in the blogosphere. The Old Media, in the form of the Globe, gives me the facts, but deprives me of context. It does, however, try to sell me child booster seats.