Geist on copyright

A useful post on the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) blog, useful that is for those of us unable to attend the Hart House Lecture in Toronto on Thursday night. Professor Michael Geist was talking about copyright. PWAC executive director John Degen (for whom copyright talk seems to be meat and drink these days) asked Geist why copyright should extend one day after the writer/

Quote, unquote

“It’s totally a tradition at this point. I don’t think the Junos are that out of touch with reality. Are they the best, most exciting, most ground-breaking or most innovative? Absolutely not. But they do represent a lot of the big-name performers representative of what the average Canadian music fan is interested in.”-- Aaron Brophy, editor of Canadian music magazine Chart, quoted in Metro

CMAJ editors speak, guardedly

For the first time, the fired editors of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) have spoken publicly, although they declined to speak in detail about why they were dismissed. At a public lecture at McMaster University on Thursday, as reported in the Globe and Mail, Dr. John Hoey and Anne Marie Todkill spoke about the level of controls publishers and editors and the editorial board should

Edmonton publisher says it's hypocritical not to hire locally

Ruth Kelly, the Edmonton publisher of Alberta Venture and other magazines has critized the local Edmonton Economic Development Corporation for hiring a U.S. firm to produce a promotional publication for the city. The EEDC hired Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based Journal Communications Inc. to produce the publication, which is intended to promote Edmonton as a good place to locate businesses."I find it

Levant appeals for help on legal fees

A complaint has been lodged at the Alberta Human Rights Commission against the Western Standard and Ezra Levant, its publisher, over its publishing of the so-called "Danish cartoons". Levant is contemptuous of the case and the complainant (a Calgary man called Imam Syed Soharwardy) but says in the magazine's blog and a fundraising letter to supporters that, even if they win, it will cost them

The big dogs muscle in with PMB results

Canadian titles have been shouldered aside for top spot in readership -- readers per copy (RPC), a measure of efficiency -- by two mammoth U.S. titles in the 2006 Print Measurement Bureau results released today. The topline readership report is available free online. The study is based on 25,165 interviews conducted over 24 months (October 2003 - September 2005).Top spot, with 23.7 readers per

Maclean's sub price to rise?

In a story that was otherwise light on information, Rick Westhead of the Toronto Star interviewed Ken Whyte, the Publisher and Editor of Maclean's and we found out that Whyte would like to increase subscriptions by 17% and charge $34.95.

Oil? Check. Money? Check. Magazines? Uh-huh

In case you missed it, there were a couple of magazine mentions in the celebratory piece by Anne Kingston in Maclean's, about boomtown Calgary .The story referred to a major fundraiser for the reopening of the Grand Theatre, the new home of Theatre Junction, a local performance company:"As with everything in Calgary these days, oil money runs through the project. The first to donate was Jackie

New finance chief at St. Joe's

Bill Belgue has been appointed Vice President, Finance and Information Technology for St. Joseph Media. With this appointment, President Donna Clark has essentially made over the company at least as far as its key management positions go. Belgue, a chartered accountant, worked for CSS Stelar PLS, a sports and entertainment marketing company, overseeing finance and information technology (the job

Quote, unquote

As has been noted before in this space, I hate stupid people and publications that pander to them. So I guess it saddens me when a venerable title like Business Week temporarily lets down its guard, weighing down an otherwise lean editorial mix with fluff about "culinary travel" and waterproof, genetically modified super-dungarees. Last I checked, there were one or two lifestyle magazines on the

Is this a bear market for celebrity titles?

If he's right, it's not very good news for the recently launched and incipient Canadian celebrity titles. Kurt Anderson has a provocative piece in New York magazine which posits that a decades-long, ever-upward arc of public interest in celebrities may have peaked and be in decline.

Ontario gives $631,861 to its magazines

Mastheadonline has reported (sub. req'd) funding details for The Ontario Media Development Corporation 2005 program for magazines, whose applications closed September 30, 2005. A total of $631,861 was distributed.Alternatives Inc. - Alternative Journal magazine -$25,000 C.E. BIZ Corp. - C.E.Biz magazine - $25,000 Canadian Art Foundation - Canadian Art magazine

Cargo to fold: it seemed like a good idea at the time

The shopping magazine for men, Cargo, is to cease publication with its May issue. Charles H. Townsend, the President and CEO of Condé Nast Publications said on Monday: "This was a difficult decision. Although initial readership and advertising response were encouraging, we now believe the market will not support our business expectations."Cargo was launched in March of 2004 on a wave of

They walked off the shelves

The right subject, the right image, the right strategy and you can sell an awful lot of magazines. Mastheadonline (sub requ'd) reports that the October 2005 issue of Canadian House & Home, featuring the home of Wayne and Janet Gretzky, sold a record 97,000 copies on the newsstand. Of course, technically, it's not a Canadian home, but for fans of inside peeks at the lifestyles of the rich and

Cover nip and tuck

What's real, what's faked, what's retouched? We've never seen it demonstrated so well as with this Swedish campaign that shows the "enhancement" of a cover model. Thanks to this blog for adding Canadian Magazines to its list and thereby introducing us to this demo.

Mochila syndication may include ads

So far, there's no indication a Canadian magazine group has signed up with the fledgling syndication service Mochila, but it seems likely that one will, sooner rather than later. It has an irresistible allure: the service is free; magazines (and newspapers and other media) can buy content a la carte; or they can accept advertising attached to the content, get the content for free and share in the

It's about Time

The March 27 U.S. edition of Time magazine may be historic because a momentous thing has happened: Time has admitted that global warning exists. It's hard to assess the impact that the Time capitulation on global warming may have, but it's likely big. This is the granddaddy of "mainstream media", one which has given acres of space to the on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand kind of reporting that

Bonnie on the spot

Every week, the New York Times magazine's Deborah Solomon takes a picture and asks some probing questions of the great and the good. This week, she asked Bonnie Fuller, who is editorial director of American Media, publishers of Star and the like. (Fuller has written a book celebrating having it all, called "The Joys of Much Too Much.") Fuller should know, having cut quite a swath through the U.S.

Arms and the mag

If you want to look into a fairly specialized corner of the magazine business in Canada, you need look no farther than Canadian Defence Review, published by Synergistic Publications of Markham, Ontario (I daresay one of the few Canadian magazines with a "branch office" in Switzerland).For a special introductory rate of $29, you can get six issues to read about military hardware and software and

Non-profit route suggested for medical journal

An interesting article in the Globe and Mail on Saturday by Paul Webster suggested that there is a movement afoot to get away from having Canada's leading medical journal run by by an association with a vested and, in the case of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), a commercial interest. "The time has come, many researchers say, to rethink how to disseminate Canadian medical

Quote, unquote

"So we're looking at a steady decline over a long period, and many of the geniuses who run our business believe they have a solution. Our product isn't selling as well as it used to, so they think we need to cut the number of reporters, cut the space devoted to the news and cut the amount of money used to gather the news, and this will solve the problem. For some reason, they assume people will

Will the honour staunch the bleeding?

The very story that apparently precipitated the firing of the two top editors at the Canadian Medical Association Journal has resulted in the publication receiving a nomination for the ultra prestigious Michener Award for Meritorious Public Service. The investigative piece was about Canadian pharmacies requiring private and personal information before selling woman the Plan B contraceptive pill.

Alcohol ads give magazines a headache

Whenever we think Canada is incredibly uptight, we need only look south of the border where magazine publishers are scratching their heads trying to figure out how -- or whether -- to strip school library copies of their liquor advertising. It was reported in a recent story in Advertising Age. As of July 1, the Distilled Spirits Council is tightening its ad standards, particularly for five major

Quote, unquote

So during times of celebrity onslaught, as Sir Paul McCartney and Lady Heather tour the ice floes, and Brigitte makes her wintery pilgrimage, the Canadian media has done an exceedingly solid job of balancing the farce with the facts.-- Ceri Au, in the MediaScout column of Maisonneuve magazine

Mobile (yawn) magazines? Maybe later

Media Industry Newsletter (MIN), a small but mighty publication, well respected for its intelligence gathering abilities, asked U.S. magazine publishers about their plans for mobile versions of their titles. Their attitude? Lukewarm at best. Despite the hype, says MIN, publishers' expectations and plans to go mobile remain modest. The few magazine brands that already see demand for mobile

Fit to be tried

Gripped Inc. has launched a new bimonthly magazine for triathletes and those who wish they were. It's called Triathlon Magazine Canada."With so many successful national and international Canadian triathletes, we felt it was the right time for a Canadian magazine that would recognize and reflect the popularity of the triathlon movement in Canada,” said Editor Kevin Mackinnon, himself a well-known

PayPal to offer text payment system

PayPal, the secure online payment system, a division of online auctioneer EBay is going to offer a text message payment system that will, in effect, turn your cellphone into an electronic wallet. PayPal Mobile is going to be rolled out in the next couple of weeks in the U.S., Canada and Britain very soon (bloggers and others noticed the beta test on the PayPal website). What does this mean to

The webbish are coming! the webbish are coming!

Alan Rusbridger, the Editor of the Guardian in Britain, made a speech to the Royal Society of the Arts in which he told a simple truth: that the web is better at a lot of things than newspapers are. Naturally, his speech was widely and completely blogged. You can read a summary of it here. Essentially, Rusbridger says that papers which pretend the internet doesn't exist (and which ones would

CM Mag: Rogues, Auto-renewals, Single-copy management

CM (Circulation Management) magazine has some interesting newsey bits online at the moment, worthy of note to circulators (and the rest of youse):1) Rogue sellers: Magazines whose subscriber lists have been obtained by third parties through nefarious channels, and whose renewals are being solicited and cleared through subscription agencies. (I've also noticed a "Subscriber Alert" ad that

Transcon jumps into free classifieds

Transcontinental Media wasn't kidding when it said that its future was digital; it has announced the launch of a new, French language, classified listings portal for Quebec that will allow free postings of up to 1,000 words of text, plus photos, live bidding, auctioning, e-mail alerts and reporting and instant PDF conversion for posting to bulletin boards. It will go live next month. No word on

Betting on da liddle guy

The two men definitely share a political toughness in common, but in a bare-knuckle fight my money would still be on Mr. Chrétien. Somehow, it is hard to imagine Mr. Harper wearing terminator sunglasses and throttling wooly-hatted demonstrators who get in his way.-- Embassy magazine columnist Sean Durkan, compares the former, and current, prime ministers.

Awards on the other side of the pond

166 magazines from 38 publishing companies made the shortlist for the Periodical Publishers Association awards in Great Britain. You can go here to read about it and see the whole shortlist.

Latest ABC data shows only Globe makes headway

The latest Audit Bureau of Circulations data on Toronto-based newspapers has come out and shows that only the Globe and Mail has any joy at all. This is particularly of interest to all the magazine publishers who rely on the Globe's distribution to get their controlled titles to market. Average % circulation gains (losses) 2005 M – F Sat Sun

Who owns our creativity?

Magazine people in Toronto will be interested in this year's Hart House lecture, which will be held on Thursday, March 30 at 7:30 p.m. The speaker this year is Michael Geist, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and e-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. Tickets are free, but the lecture usually sells out. They are available through the U of T box office or online.

A Walrus hire

In what looked like a kind of reverse brain drain, a respected art editor from The Brooklyn Rail, was nabbed by The Walrus. The Rail announced that Daniel Baird "whose sparkling insights and tireless commitment helped put the Rail on the map in the art world, has moved on to become the Arts and Literature editor of The Walrus, an excellent Canadian magazine of ideas based in Toronto." Actually,

Let me tell you the secret of my success, young fella

At the recent 2nd anniversary bash for the Western Standard magazine, hosted by Lord and Lady Black of Crossharbour at their Toronto pile, there was a close encounter between Dose publisher Noah Godfrey and the former owner of Saturday Night and the National Post, Conrad Black. (Many scribblers and starboard-side wannabes gaped at the opulent surroundings, which are but remnants of Lord Black's

The shutout blues

Occasionally, resentment bubbles to the surface about Canada's National Magazine Awards and who wins, who loses, who gets nominated, who doesn't. Apparently the same resentment and puzzlement is felt in the U.S. about the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) National Magazine Awards. For example, a short item in WWD.com, asking why Hachette Filippachi magazines such as Elle and Premiere

Waiting for readership

NOTE: This post has been updated.In less than 10 days (March 30) the 2006 topline results and the underlying detail only available to subscribers) will be released by the Print Measurement Bureau (PMB). One thing's sure: not everybody will be happy. In the rolling, two-year study of 24,000 respondents across the country,some magazines lose ground and others gain in total readership.It has been a

Follow the money at the CMA...

Well, well, well...remember the previous item about money and the Canadian Medical Association? It has been reported by Mastheadonline that the CMA has added a couple of key managers from St. Joseph Media in order to launch a consumer medical title later this year. The man at the eye of the storm at the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), Graham Morris, President of CMA Media, has hired

The money elephant in the corner

The Globe and Mail today somehow managed to write a very long editorial about affairs at the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) without ever once mentioning money. And, as has been said before here, this whole brouhaha pivots around the decision earlier this year by the Canadian Medical Association to privatize its prestigious medical journal. That's why Graham Morris was hired as

Quote, unquote

"It's easy to give the magazine away or to give an ad away. But it's not business. You have to bite the bullet and accept that maybe somebody won't buy your magazine for what it's worth. The second and more insidious consideration is the erosion of journalistic value. The content, the work, the ink between the ads is meaningful. When we don’t project that as meaningful, when we're not passionate

Small world, design dept.

Likely it is simple coincidence, but The Wayward Reporter blog points out a curious similarity between the March 13 issue of Maclean's and the cover of John Duffy's recent book about politics, Fights of Our Lives. Here are the two covers.

Magazine in...er...on a bottle

There is nothing that cannot be done differently, or sometimes better and here is an idea that a young woman came up with at Modern Media Concepts in Melbourne, Australia that now delivers 150,000 copies of a purse-sized, 32-page, full-colour mini-magazine attached to a bottle of water. It's turned out to be such a nifty idea that iLove magazine is well on its way to being one of Australia's

Transcontinental's challenges

An analysis is the Montreal Gazette says that Transcontinental Inc. founder and chairman Remi Marcoux has his work cut out for him in maintaining his legacy: "It's been a pretty good run," said the article. "But of late, Transcontinental has been taken hostage by the rising Canadian dollar and faces new challenges from the digitization of content."

Majority of CMAJ editorial board quits

Fourteen of the 19 members of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) editorial board have resigned. See online story at the Globe and Mail and earlier posts in this blog. Here is the story tonight from the perspective of the Toronto Star.

Front Page

The March issue of controlled monthly The Jewish magazine has a cover story on Steve Page of the Barenaked Ladies and a thumbnail on the cover of its special section inside on kids' camps, fronted by a joyful tumble of young campers.Now maybe it's just us, but we'd have played up the attractive young people rather than the somewhat dour, intimidating, unsmiling (isn't he an entertainer?) Page,

E-paper, read all about it

The current edition of Backbone magazine contains an interesting article on e-paper.

Where editor fired

It has been reported by Mastheadonline that Kisha Ferguson has been fired as Editor of St. Joseph Media's Where Toronto magazine, after about 18 months on the job; she is replaced by Toronto freelancer Anne Gibson. Ferguson, it may be remembered, was one of two founders of Outpost magazine (with Chris Frey) but left to pursue other opportunities. Ferguson got her job at Where after the firing of

Atlantic nominated for 8 Ellies in 7 categories

Only 25 magazines based outside of New York made the cut in this year's U.S. National Magazine Awards. Nominations for the 115 finalists were released this morning, with The Atlantic leading the field with 8 nominations in 7 categories. For full details of the nominees, go here.First-time finalists include online players McSweeney's, CNET.com, Conde Nast Publications' Men.style.com, as well as

It looks fabulous, but doesn't it taste terrible?

Food stylists need to be very good cooks to do their jobs, apparently, even though what they do to simulate appetizing food in magazine photography is startling and sometimes disgusting. In an article by Vangie Baba-Reyes in the Philippine Daily Inquirer* noted American food stylist Delores Custer (recently in Manila for a day-long food-styling workshop) revealed some of the tricks food stylists

Debriefing military magazine editor

There's a long, and interesting, Q & A in Ontario Business Edge with Scott Taylor, the Editor of Esprit de Corps, the magazine about the military. Taylor is the go-to guy for candid assessments of the publicity-shy Canadian military and he is brutally frank about the "peacetime rust" and bureaucracy that makes the Ottawa military establishment creaky and inefficient. It's also interesting to read

New England Journal of Medicine looks north

The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has published a detailed article about the uproar at the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The article, called Politics and Independence: The Collapse of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and which will be published in the print version of the journal on March 30 will doubtless crank up the heat on the CMA's board and its

Art and craft of the magazine story

Looks like a fine series of events being hosted by the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) Toronto chapter. The first on Wednesday evening, March 22 at the Northern District Library, 40 Orchardview Blvd. (west off Yonge, just north of Eglinton); 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm. It's called Fine features: Crafting that great magazine story and the panelists include: Cynthia Brouse, who in

Insider leaves magazine with woeful prediction

John Alexander Black, the outgoing publisher and founder of Lexpert magazine, assiduous profiler and celebrator of big Bay Street law firms, is profiled himself today in the Globe and Mail saying some not very encouraging things about his trade, including predicting that one of those megafirms is probably going to collapse.

Ask a journalist?

Paul Wells, the marquee columnist of Maclean's, briefly weighs in today on his blog on the issue of removing restrictions on foreign ownership of media. Seems he thinks it's a good idea and he is quite pleased that so many of his journalist colleagues think the same. We should all remember, however, that most journalists wouldn't know a balance sheet from a bagel.

Transcon revenues up, profit down slightly

Transcontinental Inc., Canada's largest consumer magazine publisher (though its magazine business is dwarfed by its printing interests) has released its latest quarterly results. Its results for the three months ended January 31 (see chart at left for the tracking of its stock price) were a profit of $27.9 million (31 cents a diluted share), compared with $29.1 million (33 cents diluted) a year

Arnaud Maggs wins Governor General's Award

Arnaud Maggs, known to the magazine world as a fine photographer, is being honoured with a Governor General's Award for Visual and Media Arts for his second career. Maggs was a Toronto photographer well known for the most striking magazine fashion shoots and portraiture in the 1970s who then reinvented himself with even more striking artworks, based on photography, but which explored systems and

St. Joseph gives $10 million in ads to the arts

In commemoration of its 50th anniversary, St. Joseph Communications announced today that it is giving, over the next five years, $10 million in advertising space in its consumer magazines and websites to some of Canada’s leading arts and cultural organizations.“As Canada’s largest privately owned communications company, we believe the arts are an essential form of communication,” says Tony

More changes at St. Joseph

Barely four months after becoming being named Vice-President, Corporate Sales, Blair Graham has resigned from St. Joseph Media. He had been there five years, joining as Executive Vice President of WHERE Canada and Publisher of WHERE Toronto. The memo from President Donna Clark announcing his departure said somewhat enigmatically that "Blair has decided to make a lifestyle change" and will now be

New launches worldwide

The International Federation of the Periodical Press (FIPP) has just published a compilation of some of the more interesting magazine launches around the world. These include Shock, Amy, Golf Punk, Future, Time Out (Bucharest), Guts, Future, Autocar and the Chinese edition of Rolling Stone.

Writing contest season is here again

One of the consistent strategies used to plump up circulation at literary and cultural magazines in this country is the writing contest. It's an annual, tried-and-true, almost ritualistic enterprise for small circulation literaries from all across the country, usually in the spring. They even advertise each other's contests in "swap" ads. (In fact, there's even a rather hit-and-miss website that

Christopher Loudon to be editor of Hello!

Christopher Loudon, Vice-President and Editor-in-Chief of Inside Entertainment magazine (Kontent Publishing) is joining Rogers Consumer Publishing to be the first editor of the forthcoming Canadian edition of the celebrity title Hello!. (This was previewed here February 15.)Earlier this month, Shelley Middlebrook was appointed Publisher of Hello!. The Canadian edition of the British version of

U.S. mag ad pages up

Year to date magazine ad pages in the U.S. are up 3% from the same period in 2005, according to a story in MediaDigest. You can also see the data at the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) website.

A photojournalist's legacy

The photographic and written legacy of one of Canada's leading journalists has been donated to the National Library and Archives of Canada. Jock Carroll was a contributor to magazines that are long gone, like Colliers and Weekend, and magazines which are still with us, like Maclean's and Sports Illustrated. Following his wishes, his family have made a major donation of more than 21,000

Sixty-nine bucks

Statistics Canada has published a study of cultural industries in Ontario, compiled from a number of its other studies, and it is a very useful, and sometimes sobering, document. The 123-page report can be downloaded as a pdf here. The report was written by by David Coish of the Culture, Tourism and the Centre for Education Statistics Division in Ottawa.Among other things, it reminds us of things

Fortune and fruity frogs

One of, if not THE, granddaddies of American magazines, Fortune, has hired maverick branding experts Strawberry Frog to give the magazine's image a tuneup, according to a story in Media Daily News. The magazine, which is almost a force of gravity at Time Inc., says it has hired a consultant, that's all, for a "special project".

Six percent of what?

OK, you circulators out there, what are y'all going to do about a 6% GST?How many magazines use tax-inclusive subscription prices, and (of those who do) how many of you are going to reduce prices from (say) $19.97 to $19.78 so the customer gets their measly 1%? How many will find they can postpone a subscription price increase by an additional few weeks or months because that 1% of extra

Get with the program, dahling

The New York Observer has a fun and interesting story by Gabriel Sherman about the merging of the somewhat rough-and-ready Fairchild Publications (Women's Wear Daily etc.) by the sleek and glossy Condé Nast Publishing (Vogue, etc.). It's an interesting case study in a clash of cultures that happens quite often with mergers of magazine publishing operations. (Certainly it happened when Telemedia

Feeding the beast

There is no contradiction for trade and association magazines providing sound and useful journalism, and they often do, though it can be little known outside of their constituency. Here's a case in point from a little 2,000-circulation quarterly magazine called Wavelength, published by Andrew John Publishing of Dundas. Wavelength is the official publication of APCO Canada, the Association of

Journal board defies association board

With the 16 person editorial board vigorously rejecting the course of action chosen by the Canadian Medical Association concerning its well-respected, but imperilled, Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), there seems to be only two possible trajectories for this story: either the editorial board resigns; or the CMA backs down. No odds on what will happen.For another perspective, see

Good eats

Each month, Leger Marketing does a poll that to be published on the back page of Toronto Life magazine; for the April issue, they asked about food preferences of people in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). When picking a restaurant, respondents preferred (natch) Italian and Chinese most of all.Craig Worden, Associate Vice President of Public Affairs for Leger said most people have incorporated

Missed our own anniversary

The first item posted on this blog was February 27, 2005. So, we're about a week late noting our first anniversary. Since that first item -- which called for consideration of a merger of magazine organizations to create one big and effective lobby -- there have been more than 400 postings. When it first started, people asked two questions: Why? and What is there to say? I think the variety of

CJFE a bunch of wimps, says Levant

Western Standard Publisher Ezra Levant is contemptuous of and frustrated by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression for not wading into the "cartoon controversy" (notice that this story now has its own shorthand tag). Levant posted on the magazine's blog an item that said the CJFE was "a branch plant of the censors". Apparently, for Levant, this is typical, cowardly leftist behaviour.

Copyright merger in the works

Interesting developments from the copyright front, in the form of a posting on the This Magazine blog by John Degen, the Executive Director of the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC). Here is part of his news:Access Copyright, at their annual general meeting last week, announced a groundbreaking partnership agreement with Creative Commons Canada. The two copyright licensing agencies

Circling the wagons at the CMA

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has been rocked back by the public and professional reaction to recent events at its Canadian Medical Association Journal (see our earlier stories here and here) and there has been considerable circling of wagons in the last day or so.For one thing, the CMA has drafted a retired Supreme Court judge, the Right Honourable Antonio Lamer, to chair the magazine's

IPA's John Anner moves on to next challenge

Canadian magazine publishers and editors have had the benefit of advice from John Anner, the Executive Director of the Independent Press Association (IPA), based in San Francisco.They will therefore be sorry to hear that Anner is leaving the IPA to work for the East Meets West Foundation, which does community building and development work in Vietnam.Some Canadian titles like This Magazine, and

Sally steps up

Sally Armstrong, the former editor of Homemaker's magazine, one of the founding editors of Canadian Living magazine had a new kind of challenge the other night, being brought in to pinch-hit for Vicki Gabereau in the Unique Lives speaking series, sponsored by the Toronto Star. True to form, she took the podium at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto and had lots to talk about, including the causes she

When it works, apparently, repeat it

The New York Observer recently poked some gentle fun at Conde Nast's Cookie magazine (we reported on it first here). We only mention this because the magazine is out there on Canadian newsstands.

Transcon names group publisher

Transcontinental Media has reached into the world of custom publishing and advertising to appoint a new group publisher for its two highest profile consumer magazines, Canadian Living and Homemaker's. The new Group Publisher effective March 16 is Lynn Chambers who, until now was Publisher of Belle, an advertorial fashion/home/beauty title produced for the Bay and Living Spree, a more "

Women rule

Mediaweek has published its Hot List and this year, as in previous years, it is dominated by magazines serving, and largely run by, women:"In a year when celebrity ruled the newsstand, and business, general interest and newsweekly titles struggled to retain ad pages, it became clear that in order to be considered hot, a healthy dose of estrogen couldn’t hurt." The Editor of the Year is Martha

A great magazine guy

The magazine industry has a relatively short attention span and a spotty institutional memory; fixated as it is on the next issue and the next big thing and sometimes forgetting those who made a difference and got us where we are today. That was driven home by the obituary in today's Globe and Mail of Joseph Wallace, an entrepreneur and sales guy who helped to build the Canadian trade magazine

Pot crusader says he feels "blessed"

Marc Emery, the leader of the BC Marijuana Party, founder of Cannabis Culture magazine and a man in peril of an extradition hearing later this year and possibly spending a lot of time in a U.S. jail for selling marijuana seeds, is fairly buoyant nonetheless. He said in an interview on CTV's Canada A.M. today that he is "blessed" by his international fame and "flattered" by the attention paid by

Morris dancing at the CMA

The Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) is now without any full-time staff at all, after the interim replacement editor Stephen Choi (for the Editor and another senior editor who were fired) and another editor resigned last week. (See the earlier posting for background).Apparently the recent resignees were no more successful in getting undertakings about editorial integrity or

Winnipeg is Enright's kind of town

Robert Enright, the well-respected contributing editor (and founder) of Border Crossings magazine from Winnipeg, was asked to give his view of a recent Globe and Mail article that was, to put it mildly, critical of his city. For those who may have missed it, among other things, he said:"[Winnipeg is] a city that cuts two ways; you love it most of the time and you're infuriated by it some of the

PWAC celebrates the big three-oh

The Professional Writers of Canada (PWAC) is celebrating its 30th anniversary, if you can believe it, with its annual national conference being held in Ottawa May 11 - 14. You can find out more about it here.

Hmmmm.....

The British Press Awards (principally for newspapers) have decided to have a single sponsor (Vodafone) for the whole event rather than sponsors for each prize; apparently they concluded that having individual category sponsors increased the number of categories and watered-down and trivialized the honour. Hmmm.

Tracking the up and comers

Trot Magazine, published by Standardbred Canada is making every effort to identify and celebrate the younger achievers in their audience. A regular column in the monthly is called "Generation Next" and features 16 and unders who are doing great things in racing and things related to it, everything from driving to breeding. Trot has a circulation of about 13,000 and it is the official magazine of

Wassamatter?

Michael Atkins, the President of Northern Ontario Business, bares all about his youthful first experience in running an awards program when he became a partner and principal in Controlled Media Communications and Scoregolf (where he is still a shareholder). It seems it is always a bad idea to have the organizer and the head table more lubricated than the audience. As Humphrey Bogart said: "The

CBC ad exec to be publisher of Hello! Canada

Rogers Publishing Ltd. has appointed a senior ad executive from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to be publisher of its Hello! franchise. The celebrity/gossip magazine is due to launch this August. The new publisher is Shelley Middlebrook, most recently Senior Manager, National Sales, English Television for the CBC. Previous to that she was Executive Vice-President at Brunico Communications

No, no, says St. Joe. Fashion belongs to us

Courtesy of The Star's Antonia Zerbisias's prolific blog, we learn that gossip-monger Shinan Govani of the National Post has broken the story that St. Joseph Media (publishers of Toronto Life, Fashion magazine, Fashion 18 and Wish) are attempting to stop the Star from publishing its fashion line extension Fashion Extra (due out imminently), reported here on January 24.The relevant part of the

Dark clouds on the PAP horizon

A review of the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) at Canadian Heritage raises the possibility that later this spring, the postal subsidy could be removed from "request" circulation publications -- largely trade magazines -- and from more than 200 consumer magazine titles who fall below a certain threshold because of their small circulation size. The possible changes are the result of

Designlines issue launch

The spring issue of Azure's digest spinoff magazine Designlines will be launched on Thursday March 9, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Kiosk, 99 Jarvis Street, Toronto. Designlines features designers and design outlets with its bi-annual Toronto and annual Montreal editions. It claims 30,000 readers. The new editor of Designlines is Catherine Osborne, former managing editor for a time of The

Whatever happened to...Kevin Doyle?

A former Editor of Maclean's magazine, Kevin Doyle, is now the Executive Director of Public Affairs and Communications at the University of Windsor. This follows stints as Editor at the C.D. Howe Institute and Canadian editor of Bloomberg News.Doyle succeeded Peter C. Newman and took a decidedly "newsy" and internationalist approach to Maclean's, opening bureaus in Moscow and London that were

Weekly Scoop launch cost $3.2 million

Describing 2005 as "a challenging year with mixed financial results", Torstar Corporation's CEO Rob Prichard also revealed that the launch of the Weekly Scoop cost about $3.2 million. The celebrity title's first issue was last October.

Atmosphere up in the atmosphere

Charter airline Air Transat is launching a new, quarterly inflight magazine called Atmosphere. Read more about it here.UPDATE: Media in Canada (published by Strategy magazine) reports the interesting detail that this title will be contract published by a company in Miami called Business Class Media.

From the online front

Even though online advertising is booming, an analysis presented to the World Association of Newspapers shows that the revenue per reader for a newspaper website is far less than the equivalent figure earned by a print edition. According to a column in the Guardian, between 20 and 100 additional online users are needed to replace a print user.