An announcement by The Globe and Mail that some of its financial coverage would be restricted to subscribers next year drew a curious reaction from commenters — many of whom are certain that it will represent the start of a slope that they won't pay to climb.

The backlash might be viewed as validation for the company — which now fends for itself after being unclenched from Bell Media — considering the emergent competition that led the Globe to previously unlock all its content in March 2008.

Back then, the trial paralleled an effort by The New York Times to offset the cost of reporting news online by charging for access to opinionators. But the market value of a sermonizing columnist was in free-fall before social media kicked in.

After all, if merely spouting off was a sufficient business model, then it would allow the wealth to be spread to those who leave feedback. Yet many newspaper old-timers would still rather not acknowledge their respondents. More typical in the web journalism field is a feeling of contempt toward those "conversation" joiners.

During this week's Metaviews teleseminar I was informed about the existence of The National Post's GeoPollster, a foursquare style political Alternate Reality Game whose main goal is to increase voter turnout and interest in Canadian politics. I was immediately interested.

This is because for the most part the political parties, civil society groups and mainstream journalists in Canada seem uninterested, or unable, to use new media effectively. Sure each party uses Twitter and Facebook, but they do so badly. Earlier today Luke described how Micheal Ignatieff's Twitter kept pumping out status updates during this week's debate – effectively undermining the personal nature of social media. Iggy's Twitter was effectively a simulacrum of the real Iggy.

So if the political parties can barely understand how to use Twitter effectively, what hope is there for them to use videogames well? Not much.

This is to their detriment however, because videogames are ideally suited to political tasks. This is because they can engage in procedural rhetoric – something I have discussed at length before. Procedural rhetoric uses what computers do best – run procedures – to engage in arguments about how the world works. It helps that politics is all about ideology, which videogames happen to be excellent at expressing.

Ian Bogost in his book Persuasive Games says that “Political videogames use procedural rhetorics to expose how political structures operate, or how they fail to operate, or how they could or should operate.”

At five years old, YouTube serves two billion videos daily and is a dominant player in the global media industry. Taking a step back, it's interesting to consider how YouTube got here and what the relationship between Google and YouTube has produced.

I love to be inspired by change, even the potential for change, and this is why the fall is tied with spring for my favourite season. Watching the world around me decay, knowing it will rise again, reminds me how important it is for the old to make way for the new.

This is why I rarely lament the decline of the journalism business, or any content-related industry, for that matter. Everywhere I look I see phoenixes ready to rise from the ashes.

For example, two of my favourite media outlets, both creations of internet culture, and also relatively new, are stumbling towards rather successful business models for online journalism. I say "stumbling" only because neither are waiting for permission or the perfect formula. They're embracing the embedded ethos of the online environment which is to "just do it."