Parents, or childless, by choice

Children are a force of nature, but they are not inevitable in a marriage or a relationship, says child-free lifestyle advocate Jerry Steinberg in an interview with 2:The Magazine for Couples.(The interview in the magazine's summer issue was accompanied by a not-altogether-tongue-in-cheek sidebar about the 10 reasons why young couples might rather buy a kitten than have a child.)Steinberg runs

Canada Magazine Fund project support now available for medium-sized mags

The circulation ceiling for applications to the Canada Magazine Fund (CMF) for business development has been raised to allow more medium-sized titles to qualify for the project-based funding.The program had been called Support for Business Development for Small Magazine Publishers and the word "small" has been dropped. (The same publishers will still have the choice to go instead with the support

The online view from Up Here

Up Here magazine, published out of Yellowknife, has launched a new website that the magazine's editors hope will make it the portal for all things northern. Jessa Sinclair, the associate editor, calls the new site "snazzy" and we're inclined to agree.Along with a 20-year archive and other features, including contests and polls, the new site is carrying daily dispatches from staffer Michael Ganley

TVA Publications acquires pets magazine

A Quebec company that publishes French language pet magazine Animal and Animal Coast to Coast has been acquired by TVA Publications. The company, Animal Hebdo Inc.,was created by Johanne Rivetand France Philippon in 1998 and also publishes the website magazineanimal.com. Animal states that it has 72,000 readers and has a circulation of about 20,000, of which approximately 5,000 are paid

Beaver contest names Pierre Trudeau as "worst Canadian"

Sometimes a promotion backfires, and it certainly seems to have done so for The Beaver: Canada's National History Magazine. Their lighthearted contest (unabashadley undertaken as an audience- building and attention-getting device) to find a list of the top 10 "Worst Canadians", was apparently hijacked.How else to explain that a venture that expected to find utter scoundrels from throughout

Dine magazine perceives a "foodie" gap and aims to fill it

When is a magazine not? When it's a standalone annual restaurant guide. The Globe and Mail lobbed a quarter-page on Saturday to what it called a new "magazine" for Toronto from well-known "foodie", Sara Waxman.Thing is, Dine will come out once a year (I think that stretches the definition of 'periodical' to its breaking point) and has what might be called an, um, imprecise distribution.

Ryerson Review of Journalism wins five awards at international competition

The Ryerson Review of Journalism has won five awards at the 2007 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Student Magazine Contest. Faculty member Bill Reynolds was advisor on all the winning pieces. Consumer Magazine Article: Investigation and Analysis( out of 26 entries) Second Place: “A Wasteland No More,” by Amy Packwood Judge Paul Trachtman, freelance writer

Transcontinental English magazines to get new boss; Tremblay retains French portfolio

Transcontinental Media is splitting responsibility for its magazine publishing operations roughly along language lines. In the process, Francine Tremblay, until now the Senior Vice-President of Consumer Magazines responsible for all English and French consumer titles, will focus on the Quebec Consumer Group effective November 1. Her responsibilities for the stable of English magazines will pass

Maclean's cheeses off lawyers by calling them rats

The Canadian Bar Association is spitting mad about a Maclean's story headlined "Lawyers are rats", an interview by Kate Fillion with ex-lawyer and legal scholar Phillip Slayton called Lawyers Gone Bad: Money, Sex and Madness in Canada's Legal Profession. Slayton's book has the typical disclaimer saying that most lawyers are not vermin. But the CBA fired off a letter nonetheless, in which CBA

Magazine reading cuts across generations, regardless of other technologies, study says

Good news for those who believe in the power of magazines -- a study by Deloitte and Touche, reported in Advertising Age, says that both young and old enjoy reading magazines, despite the allure of new forms of media consumption. The consulting and advisory firm found that every generation -- from young Millennials (ages 13 to 24) to Generation X (25 to 41) to Baby Boomers (42 to 60) and older

Print magazine companies in U.S. taking to digital initiatives in a big way

Last year the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), representing most of the largest and many of the medium- and smaller-sized consumer magazine companies in the U.S., began to keep track of digital initiatives taken by magazines, hoping to demonstrate how adapatable magaiznes were to the use of new media.In the 2nd quarter ended June 30, they found 62 such ventures, up 13% from the same quarter

Weekly World News. Shock...horror...closing

The Weekly World News, one of the most outrageous of the supermarket tabloids -- known for headlines like: "Ka-Boob - Woman's Breast Implant Explodes"-- is being discontinued, and the name will carry on only as a website. It was published by American Media, which also publishes the National Enquirer. When the plug was pulled, WEN had only 80,000 sales a week (compared with the Enquirer's 800,000).

How much to charge? A calculator for freelancers

Here's a nifty little calculator to decide how much a freelancer should be charging. It would be equally useful for a designer or a writer. It was developed by Freelance Switch, a website for freelancers of all kinds.Of course it is predicated on the belief that people will pay what you ask. But still...

A tidal wave of swag fattens up U.S. beauty title Allure

After a tryout last summer, beauty magazine Allure has turned its August issue into virtually a smorgasbord of free products for readers.According to a story in Advertising Age, it's now called the "Free Stuff Issue" and nearly every product mentioned editorially is available either as samples bound into the issue or from the magazine's website. In all, there are 91 products -- from blow dryers

PWACers invited to take a break from writing, to shop

The Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) has gone into merchandising, using a U.S.-based online service called CafeExpress to create T-shirts, children's clothes and fridge magnets branded with the PWAC logo. The PWAC store is up and running and if you want a mug or a button, this would be the place. The only drawback is that the PWAC logo being used is somewhat lame and incredibly

Descant wants bloggers in residence

Descant, one of Canada's oldest and most respected literary quarterlies, is looking for freelance "writers in residence" to contribute to their blog.As an accompaniment to our main site, the Descant blog is a thoughtful literary environment that keeps its readers in the know about national calls for submissions, launches, readings, and all things literary. Rather than limiting itself to an event

Bell TV becomes Show come September as Spafax takes over

Toronto-based custom publisher Spafax -- perhaps best known as the publishers of enRoute magazine for Air Canada -- are rebranding Bell TV Magazine to be Show Magazine in September. This according to a story in Media in Canada. The controlled listings guide is delivered to 800,000 Bell ExpressVu satellite dish customers (there will also be a French language version called Extra.)Spafax is a

Quote, unquote: magazine wholesalers are committing suicide

What type of logic is this that bites the hand that feeds you? It does not take a researcher or a Ph.D. (although I claim to be one and do have a Ph.D.) to see the flow in the wholesalers logic. They are digging their own grave and they are digging it deep. When you hear people say that the wholesalers are in trouble, check and see if the trouble is from their own making. Wholesalers are not

Local food movement spawns franchised newsletter in Golden Horseshoe

Edible Communities seems to be a combination of a movement and a franchise operation. Its members publish 22 city- or region-based quarterly publications (they refer to them as "newsletters") -- mostly in the U.S. -- celebrating local food and food sources.Starting in September, a Toronto version is being launched and it seems likely that if it is successful, other Canadian cities will see

Wholesalers cutting draws for low-priced newsstand titles

Wholesalers in Canada and the U.S. are cutting back draws for the proliferating number of low-priced magazines, according to a story in MediaWeek. The goal is to increase sell-through and therefore profitability on the titles, which tend to be found at grocery store checkouts and are priced at less than US$2.50. The News Group and Source Interlink Cos. have made significant cuts since May 1,

Canada Council gets permanent $30 million increase

In a surprise announcement, Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda today announced that the one time funding made available to the Canada Council for the Arts in 2006 will now be made permanent. This means that the annual allocation to the Council will grow by $30 million to $181 million a year.At the news conference in Toronto and a press release, Minister Oda spoke about the very strong outcomes

Independent U.S. mags hit hard by postal changes

The Nation magazine, a venerable U.S. leftwing weekly, has raised the alarm with its readers about a postage increase of more than 18% that took effect this week. That represents a postal bill of US$500,000 for the magazine, which has a circulation of 18,600 186,500 (a few hundred of which are in Canada). The magazine has launched a fundraising drive to pay the added costs. So far, its readers

Sunshine Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews director Danny Boyle about Sunshine

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Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't: Guardian Monthly folded

Guardian News & Media has told its subscribers that its venture into a monthly magazine is being discontinued. The magazine was launched in fall 2006 and was to have been complementary to the Guardian's stable of other publications -- the daily Guardian, weekly Observer, Guardian Weekly and its various websites. However, publisher Will Ricketts said in the letter to subscribers:The company is

What have you done for us lately? Portfolio editor under the gun

A column by Keith J. Kelly in the New York Post is making much of the fact that the second issue of Condé Nast's Portfolio business magazine has many fewer ads than its first; the story makes it clear (and illustrates it with the graphic above) that most magazines have a first flush of enthusiasm and then settle back to something more realistic. In Portfolio's case, the ads are still a pretty

Walrus magazine internships unpaid while Walrus Foundation seeks new sponsorship

Several people have asked whether it was true that internships at The Walrus magazine are no longer paid. The answer is yes, they are no longer paid...at least for now.(At one time, the 10, six-month internships (8 editorial, 2 art) were among the most generous in the Canadian industry, paying about $2,000 a month, unlike many magazines which pay a pittance or nothing at all). The entire

What we forget when we forget about magazine awards

As the recent leaf storm of magazine awards fades completely but not quite from memory, I can still (barely) recall observing aloud the day before the so-called gala evening of the National Magazine Awards that cultural magazines can barely afford to participate in these events in a meaningful way—a meaningful way being to enter as many contenders in as many categories as possible—as Maclean’s

You may already be a winner...

A Quebec man has been awarded $100,000 in damages because he didn't understand the fine print on a direct mail subscription offer from the U.S. edition of Time magazine and thought he'd won $1.2 million. According to a story in the Globe and Mail, Madam Justice Carol Cohen of Quebec Superior Court said in a ruling Mondaythat the direct-mail campaign was misleading and may have violated the

Media Bistro, once a "mixer", now sold for US$23 million

For those of you who use and enjoy Media Bistro, the news, jobs and training website from the U.S., it may be interesting to know that what started 10 years ago as a series of cocktail party "mixers" and became a media job board has today been sold to Jupitermedia Corporation for $23 million. Laurel Touby, the CEO, becomes senior vice-president of the new, merged entity.Ms Touby told the New York

Time for a change? Breaking the gridlock in the design of the New Yorker

Many of you are New Yorker readers, regularly or casually, and may feel that it is an unmoving rock in a sea of constant graphical change. But it is not without its critics and, recently, a two-part article was published in the online journal Voice: the AIGA Journal of Design from the American Institute of Graphic Arts website (we read about it in the the blog Emdashes) in which critic and

Nipped and tucked and cover-worthy

Probably shouldn't do this, because it encourages them. But you may be amused at seeing what photo editors and Photshop can do to a celebrity who, at 39, looked pretty darned good in the first place. Redbook magazine has Faith Hill as their cover subject and did some, er, tweaking. Gawker, the Manhattan media blog, posted a "before and after" version (the pic at right is 'after') from Jezebel.com

Quote, unquote: the same, but different

In his house in Jamaica, Ian Fleming used to write 1,000 words in the morning, then go snorkeling, have a cocktail, lunch on the terrace, more diving, another 1,000 words in late afternoon, then more martinis and glamorous women. In my house in London, I followed this routine exactly, apart from the cocktails, the lunch and the snorkeling.-- Sebastian Faulks, contracted by the Ian Fleming estate

First half data shows U.S. business titles generally down in pages & $

First half data from the Publishers Information Bureau in the U.S. shows that business magazines (consumer magazines, not trade) had a generally rough time of it, except for The Economist and Inc. Magazine Pages % Dollars % The Economist 13.3 30.4 Forbes (3.4) 8.8 Inc. 3.9 7.4

Today's Parent produces single-sponsor kid's cookbook suppment

Today's Parent magazine is producing and polybagging a single-sponsor kids' recipe book with its current issue. It's called The Best of Cooking with Kids and it is paid for by Knorr Lipton's Sidekicks. According to a story in Media in Canada, the paid supplement is designed to coincide with the launch and national sampling program for a new instant rice product.One might wonder what a pouched

Should anonymous comments be allowed?

This blog moderates comments -- that is, every comment is read to decide whether to post it. Very rarely a comment is blocked because it is gratuitously offensive or wildly off topic. Mostly, we take the view that readers of this blog are grownups and can take it as well as dish it out.We allow commenters to choose to remain anonymous; to keep from jeopardizing their jobs, for instance. That

Doubtful data can do real damage to trade publishers

There's an awful lot of self-serving spin going on about the internet's displacement of traditional media. The so-called facts that come from these efforts gain currency often based on a press release from someone or some company with a fairly large axe to grind. As a result, the data gains a life of its own without the reader being aware of (or being made aware of) its source. And the drumbeat

Transformers Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews co-writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman about Transformers

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New magazine hopes to provide "colour and dash" to Canadian politics

A new online magazine named after Canada's first prime minister has been launched. Sir John magazine, named after Sir John A. Macdonald says that it aims to bring "colour and dash to Canadian political coverage".The new title blends fashion and photography with detailed commentary on national and international political developments."I hope to make the subject of politics more appealing to

Sara Angel out as editor at Chatelaine

Sara Angel is no longer the editor of Chatelaine magazine.It took Chatelaine 9 months to find a new editor and Angel lasted barely 13 months at the helm of Rogers Media's largest and most successful consumer magazine. She had been named editor May 25 last year (2006).A brief announcement today by publisher Kerry Mitchell, said that, effective immediately, Angel was "no longer working with us as

U.S. mag ad pages down in first half, but apparent dollars up

Some commentators are puzzling over the fact that the first half U.S. Publishers Information Bureau data about magazine ad pages and dollars shows pages down but dollars up. Total magazine advertising pages declined 0.5% through the first six months of 2007, but total advertising revenues climbed 6.1% for the same period. Of course this dollar data is based on published rate card prices and is

Note to freelance writers: read the fine print, contracts are changing

Although she's not very specific about who is doing what to whom, Vancouver agent and coach Julie Ferguson is raising an alarm about demands by publishers that freelancers carry all the legal liabilities for a published article. In a blog item, she says: The issue is not the usual rights grab, which is often in contracts, but the clause(s) that deals with indemnification (liability). Suddenly the

Comics publishers squeeze Canadian newsstand buyers

Are Canadian comics buyers suckers? Apparently at least some comic book publishers think so, according to a story in The Comic Wire, a website for fans and collectors. Marvel Comics has hiked prices on some titles, says the site.The price hike seems to be isolated to a few specific titles like “Ultimate Fantastic Four” and “New Avengers.” To find out if a Marvel title you are reading is in this

Quebecor withdraws bond issue it planned to use to buy Osprey

One of the ways that Quebecor was going to pay for its purchase of Osprey Media Income Fund was to sell a junk bond issue. But the company has cancelled plans to float a $750 million issue in the face of what's described as "a jittery junk bond market", according to a Reuters story. Quebecor's timing could hardly have been worse, having announced its plans only a day before there was a sharp

The Summer Fiction Question

When the summer fiction issue of the New Yorker hit the newsstand a short time ago did you feel a familiar twinge when again you did not buy a copy precisely because it was the summer fiction issue, and then did you fail to suppress the querulous flood, the peevish trickle of nagging familiar questions that one never speaks aloud in bookstores or libraries, or in the halls of the CBC?What is it

Electronics trade book switches to consumer mode

A magazine previously aimed at dealers and the electronics and technology trade is morphing itself into a monthly consumer supplement to the Sunday Toronto Star, according to a story carried in mastheadonline (sub req'd). CE Biz is moving from 10,000 national trade circulation to 300,000 consumer and in the process changing the focus of its editorial to serve consumers mostly in the Golden

Victoria paper to be used to deliver glossy homes magazine

Island Home & Style, a glossy shelter magazine, has made a deal to be distributed to 33,000 subscribers of the Victoria Times-Colonist newspaper. The two-year-old quarterly will be increasing its frequency to 5 times a year, according to a story in Media in Canada. The extra issue will be renovation-themed.Until now, the controlled circulation title which has been delivered as a standalone to

British city government fed up with paying the cleanup cost of free newspapers

Are you listening, Metro, Now and eye? For those who have wondered how the the public cost of litter and cleanup factored into the business case for freebie newspapers, comes word from the MediaGuardian that Westminster Council in London is cracking down on freebies. After looking, in vain, for voluntary compliance, the council has mandated that the publishers of London Lite and the London Paper

Jane magazine RIP

A magazine that a lot of people liked a few years back was Jane. Well, Jane is no more and word is that the staff are clearing out their desks today at Condé Nast in New York and the magazine's current issue, 90% complete, won't be circulated. This, according to a report in Gawker, the New York media blog.The magazine was at its most popular when its eponymous editor was Jane Pratt, (who also

Toronto Life's Conrad Black trial blog still going strong

I have to admit that I was sceptical about Toronto Life's decision to do a daily blog about the Conrad Black trial in Chicago. Not only about whether they'd be able to sustain it, but whether there would be good content and good traffic. Apparently all were forthcoming. The blog is now in Day 72.With the trial over and the jury out and due back imminently, we might wonder what chief poster

Gay magazine dispenses with "plain brown wrapper"

Changing times are indicated with the decision by the publishers of the U.S. national gay magazine Advocate to stop routinely disguising the identity of the magazine as it goes through the mail, according to a story in the New York Times. The magazine, published by PlanetOut, has until now been sent with a second cover inside a polybag, so the letter carrier and others won't know the subject

Three Canadian B2B titles cited in international competition

Three Canadian titles were among the top 25 business-to-business titles worldwide honoured at the Tabbie Awards, given for English language trade publishing and announced in Cleveland. The top placers for best single issue were: Far North Oil and Gas, published in Yellowknife by Outpost Publishing, The Medical Post, published in Toronto by Rogers Media and Wood Design & Building, published in

Why is data about the magazine industry so hard to come by?

To return to an occasional obsession: where are we going to get reliable data about Canadian magazine publishing? The one source we had, a bit quirky but at least thorough and compulsory, was the Statistics Canada biennial census of the industry.As you may know, Statscan has (for cost reasons) dropped that system in favour of a "lite" version that reflects the data that is gathered for other

Magazines we like: Small Farm Canada

The farm press generally has shrunk to a shadow of what it was even 40 years ago, reflective of the decline of the number of farms and the number of people who live off the land. Where, a generation ago, the majority of people lived on farms or made a living that was somehow connected to agriculture, now the majority of people are urban and live in three large agglomerations: greater Toronto,

Investing in editorial and charging for it seems to be paying off for Monocle

Tyler Brûlé, the expat Canadian who launched Wallpaper* and now Monocle, has gone against conventional publishing wisdom more than once. With Monocle, which focusses on world lifestyle and finance, he charges more for a subscription to the magazine than for the same number of single copies. And it seems to be working, with five issues of the magazine already published and a sixth due out in

Joshua Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews co-writer/director George Ratliff, Actors Sam Rockwell and Jacob Kogan, Executive Producer Temple Fennell and producer Jonathan Dorfman about Joshua

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A wee giggle for circulators only

Received in the mail today, from Canada Post: A promo piece extolling the virtues of some small business service package.The truly fun bit is the BRC:-- It's some sort of folded double-postcard thing (I don't think that's allowed, but I could be wrong)-- It has a perf-line that tears off a portion of the BRM indicia, thereby making it unacceptable per the BRM specs (see illustations of piece

Quebecor forced to up its bid to win Osprey Media Income Fund

The unitholders of the Osprey Media Income Fund will probably put Torstar and Black Press on their Christmas card list this year. Quebecor Inc. was trying to buy Osprey for $7.45 a unit when Black came along and offered $8.25. (See previous posts. No fair, said Quebecor, we had a lock on this. Not so, said the courts. Oops, said Quebecor and upped its bid to $8.45, which will probably do the

Revenue sharing magazine Digital Journal gives up on print

Digital Journal, the Toronto-based web magazine which had until now published both a quarterly print edition and a daily website, has decided to quit print. "Our online readership just dwarfed the print magazine and we had to respond to that," editor-in-chief Chris Hogg told CITY-TV in an interview he and senior editor David Silverberg gave on July 5. All evidence of the print magazine has

Introducing The Dwights

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews screenwriter Keith Thompson and Actors Khan Chittenden and Katie Wall about Introducing the Dwights

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CMAJ says it is "open access", too. No so fast, says its upstart, online rival

The Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) would clearly, really like to put its past problems behind it by using its editorial page to congratulate its upstart rival online journal Open Medicine on its launch.You may recall that the CMAJ went through a serious crisis last year when the publisher of the journal fired its editor and the second-in-command quit as a result. The crisis came as a

Transcon keeps on buying community papers

Quietly, steadily, Transcontinental Media is buying up small newspapers across the country and now has amassed 168 titles. Transcon is the 4th largest media group in Canada. In addition to being one of Canada's largest printers and distributors and a growing new media player as well as the largest producer of consumer magazines, it seems intent on building a formidable community newspaper empire

Reader's Digest Canada not selling back cover ads, for now

Reader's Digest in Canada is not, at the moment, considering selling ads on its back cover, according to Larry Thomas, the publisher. That's not to say it won't emulate its U.S. counterpart and do it sometime: "...The possibility is under consideration by the senior Canadian management team, and we are exploring what's best."What RDC won't be doing, according to an item in Media in Canada, is

Talk about inconvenient -- younger Gore nicked

The stories all centre, for some reason, on the fact that he was driving a hybrid car -- wouldn't it have been a better story if Al Gore's son, Al Gore III, had been caught with some drugs in the back seat of a great, honking, gas guzzling Detroit job? However, the 24-year-old son of the former Vice President was stopped for speeding in his Toyota Prius, a sheriff's official said. I guess this is

B to B ad pages in U.S. continue slow slide

The total year-to-date erosion of advertising in U.S. business-to-business magazines has been about 2.5%, according to a report from American Business Media. Pages dropped 2.8% in April from April a year ago. While reported revenue drops have been smaller, that is based on the assumption that magazines are staying on rate card. Accentuating the positive, Gordon T. Hughes II, president and CEO of

Tobacco ads in Canadian magazines? Don't hold your breath

Resurgent print ads for tobacco could be coming, but don't expect too much or very soon. According to a story by James Adams in the Globe and Mail, a lot of people in the ad game say there won't be a deluge of print ads as the result of last week's Supreme Court decision upholding the 1997 Tobacco Act. In fact, the limited rights to advertise that the tobacco companies have were contained in the

Life after a job

Until his career became a casualty of a publishing merger, Martin Slofstra was the editorial director of the IT Group at Transcontinental Media, which published a number of information technology magazines including Computing Canada, Computer Dealer News, Communications and Networking, Direction Informatique, Technology in Government, ITBusiness.ca, a daily news web site, and EDGE magazine, which

BC Business to launch new business portal

BC Business magazine (July issue shown, left), published by Canada Wide Media Limited is launching a new online business portal called bcbusinessonline. It goes live July 4.Like its counterparts Canadian Business and Profit, BC Business will be using the new site to deliver added value material to its subscribers and non-subscribers alike. It extends the reach of the monthly, which has a print

Pick your favourite unsung rebellion

This Magazine's July/August issue is on the stands and in mailboxes soon with a story about "underrated" rebellions -- pivotal events in Canadian history that don't get the notice they deserve. Readers can a) read the articles online and b) vote for one of the four events profiled: Oka (1990), the Abortion Caravan (1970), the Ford strike (1945) and the Fraser Canyon War (1858).

Canadian Business Press cuts membership deal with its American counterpart

The Canadian Business Press, representing about 42 publishing companies and about 170 trade magazines, has cut a deal with its American counterpart, American Business Media, to give members non-voting access to all the resources of the U.S. association. The arrangement became effective June 5.ABM has about 300 members companies, representing about 5,000 print and online publications. CBP members