Where have you gone, Frank Fontana?

Mason Wright and John_D over at This Magazine want to know why there isn't more investigative journalism going on in Canada.

Tonight's National had an interesting piece on what smacks of an awfully lazy coverup by the folks at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Seems the brain samples of two deeply sick, deeply suspicious cows were misplaced, lost, left in an envelope on a table during a bathroom trip at Restaurant Frank or simply made to disappear. Kelly Crowe has done a decent job on this story, and it makes you wonder if Mason's thinking about the media is begging the question, so to speak.

Could it be that there's lots of decent, inquisitive reporting going on in this country that the blogosphere can't bother to comment on? At This, Andrew Potter and Tu Than Ha point out that the Sponsorship Sadness began with a group of journalists - lacking subpoena power and giant commission budgets - who followed some leads and uncovered a shmozzle, as Shaky might put it.

Paul Wells may just be right: if the mainstream Canadian media (from the Globe/CTV to CanWest to CBC) got its head out of Paul Martin's butt, we might just be able to learn something about the state of our country that isn't connected to a crooked Quebec ad firm. In that sense, Mason is spot on: the news about the news is not really about news, but about who's going to call chicken and head us all back to the polls (against the general will, but points for being opportunistic).

So maybe the news isn't so lame - only the news about the news. In the meantime, when is somebody going to look into the mess that is the stretch of Sherbrooke Street in front of McGill University? Even more importantly, just how the hell are 514 and 438 going to get along?

Even more importantly: when is this gang going to make it back to Montreal?