Post uses Foursquare to cover TIFF

As the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off, the National Post is partnering with location-based recommendation service Foursquare to add content and context to its festival coverage.

The Post‘s senior producer for digital media, Chris Boutet, says the goal of the Foursquare partnership is to “build an insider’s guide to the Toronto Film Festival.”

In an article on Post blog The Ampersand, Boutet writes:

“As part of our growing partnership with Foursquare, readers can follow us at foursquare.com/nationalpost and “check-in” at various locations during TIFF to uncover exclusive tips and recommendations  from the Post’s Shinan Govani, Amoryn Engel and the rest of our festival team on the best places to eat, drink, shop, glimpse a celebrity and more. There will be new tips added throughout the festival, so there will always be something new to discover, wherever you may go.”

The Post has experimented with Foursquare in the past, and will continue to use it to provide location-based breaking news, restaurant reviews and recomendations.

An article by Megan Garber on Nieman Journalism Lab points out that the challenge for news organizations using Foursquare is to complement their coverage, not replace it. Garber writes:

“It’s a balance the Post is trying to strike by leveraging the journalistic powers of the paper — the expertise of its reporters, etc. — and applying it to the physical event that is the festival. “We have a really strong arts team,” Boutet notes — one that includes name-brand journos like Shinan Govani and Amoryn Engel. “They know where all the best parties are, they know where everybody’s going to be” (not to mention, of course, “the best places to eat, to drink, to see celebrities, to shop, to see movies”). The idea with the Post’s TIFF venue is to highlight locations that aren’t widely known. “There’s the stuff everyone writes about and everyone knows about,” Boutet says — red-carpet, celebrity-strewn events — “but what should you really be doing if you’re going to spend time at TIFF?” And Post journalists, due to their interests and their day jobs, “are the authorities on the subject.””