Resurrecting The Champ Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews co-writer Michael Bortman and director Rod Lurie about Resurrecting The Champ

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Happy New Magazine Year

Happy New Year. Like me, most of you know, or feel, that the year actually starts in September, after Labour Day, a situation that is the residue of all those years in school. But you know the magazine business seems to work the same way. After September 4, you'll still get voice mail on your calls to people, but you'll at least know they're in their offices screening you, rather than on a dock

If 500 are good, can 5,000 be better? Inc. ups the list ante

Lists are so popular and lucrative for magazines, we suppose it had to happen. You know, of course, of the ROB 1000, the "Rich List" at Canadian Business and the top 20 this, 50 that which can be found in many consumer magazines. Now the business magazine Inc. has upped the ante, so to speak, by coming out with the Inc. 5000, according to MediaNews Daily. The secret is that the web has almost

U.S. fulfillment merger makes publishers nervous

There is concern among publishers about the impact of the merger of two of the big three fulfillment companies in the U.S., according to Folio: magazine. Kable Media Services Inc. bought Palm Coast Data for $93 million and the two companies are consolidating. About 75 employees were laid off, most of them at Kable, leading Folio: to notePalm Coast management will run the merged company, which

Our Green Home to go to 1.9 million Ontario doorsteps

The green bandwagon is beginning to groan a little as commercial interests clamber aboard. Metroland Media Group in cooperation with a consortium of public relations, advertising and polling companies intends to carpet-bomb Ontario with a new quarterly magazine-style newspaper advertising supplement called Our Green Home.It will be delivered to 1.86 million Ontario homes the week of September 24.

Guide to magazine fact checking published

If you want something done, you've gotta do it yourself, sometimes. So it is with Cynthia Brouse, the reigning doyenne of fact-checking in Canada, who has now published a dandy little textbook on the subject called After the Fact: A Guide to Fact Checking for Magazines and Other Media. The book is available online through this link. Price is $16.95 for a paperback, $13.95 for a download of the

Rona Maynard launches herself and her book into the web world

Rona Maynard, who was editor of Chatelaine for 10 years (until 2004), has launched a spiffy new website that looks to be intended not only to promote a forthcoming book but to become a site of choice for women interested in their own stories.The book, My Mother's Daughter, which is to be published September 8 by McClelland and Stewart, is a memoir of growing up as the daughter of the late

Quote, unquote: Playboy editorial director on why it doesn't suck

Today, magazines exist in a universe of expanded entertainment choices for men. Even in the magazine universe alone, the competition is intense — there are a lot of magazines out there! And now we’re competing with free and pirated material online. It’s a transitional period, and we’re certainly one company with the resources and product to ride it out.In response to a long list of questions from

The value of judgement and the human editor

Algorithms and search engines can roam far and wide with a speed that leaves ordinary people in their dust, but the one thing that technology doesn't have is human judgement. And there is an interesting item by Scott Karp* on the blog Publish 2.0 on current thinking about the role of trusted human editors in the dissemination of reliable stories and information.( Why am I reporting this on the

Editor out at Calgary Inc.

Christina Reynolds, the editor of the business magazine Calgary Inc. is no longer with the company. No reason was given for her departure.The magazine has a claimed readership of 120,000 and total distribution of 32,000, including 4,000 distributed through the Globe and Mail. Most of the circulation (87%) is controlled, with about 2,500 paid subscribers.

What the heck is going on at The New Republic? Bet the Aspers want to know

Despite its venerable history as a voice of American liberalism, times have not been good recently for Canadian-owned The New Republic. The Asper family must be asking itself what kind of a gimcrack, out-of-control mess they bought.Not only is TNR famous for having harboured plagiarists and fabulists like Stephen Glass and Ruth Shallit in the past, now it is is coping with the fallout from its "

Michael Geist slams Heritage, says its funding priorities are all wrong

An opinion piece in the Toronto Star by Michael Geist says that Canadian Heritage should shift its priorities. More funding should go into new media and emerging creator groups, he says, presumably at the expense of established programs. Geist is a well-known critic and commentator on copyright, digital and online issues. He is Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the

Deziel returns to Macleans.ca

Shanda Deziel has been wooed back to Maclean's to be managing editor of its website Macleans.ca. Deziel started at Maclean's as an intern and was a senior editor before leaving to work for America Online (AOL).

Now THAT'S added value! Consumer Reports posts vehicle crash test results

Consumer Reports has posted videos of crash tests for more than 200 makes of cars, minivans, truck and SUVs, according to a story in MediaDaily News. CR teamed up with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and posted the results at www.ConsumerReports.org/crashtest. The tests include both front and side-impact collisions and the videos are searchable by make and model. As other vehicles are

Architectural Digest invades Toronto in September

Architectural Digest, the grandmummy of shelter, interior design and architecture magazines, is bringing its road show to Toronto September 24-30. Architecture Days had previously been held in only New York and San Francisco (and continues to be).The week of events are available only by advance ticket purchase, and include visits to various sites, including the CN Tower, behind the scenes in the

New online magazine Lyte.Arts is for art lovers and art makers

A small group of students from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) has launched a bi-monthly online magazine called Lyte.Arts, for "people who live for, love and make art." It's feature-rich and handsome and worth a visit to see what young artists think about what's important.Half the magazine is devoted to interviews and features about established illustrators and fine artists; the

Cottage Life columnist McGregor to deliver 2007 Bell Lecture

Roy McGregor, a regular columnist for Cottage Life magazine and the Globe and Mail, is to be the 2007 Bell Lecture at the Faculty of Public Affairs on October 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the Kailash Mital Theatre, Southam Hall, Carleton University. It will be entitled "As Canadian as possible … under the circumstances". The lecture will riff off his latest book, Canadians: A Portrait of a Country and Its

Ethan Hawke - The Hottest State Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews novelist, screenwriter, director and actor Ethan Hawke about The Hottest State

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Xtra magazine hosts new Toronto gay and lesbian literary festival, launched on Sunday

Xtra magazine is this Sunday hosting a new literary festival in Toronto focussing on gay and lesbian literature. It kicks off this Sunday, according to an item in Quillblog. Church Street between Alexander and Gloucester will be closed for the festival.Writing Outside the Margins features a day-long lineup of readings by various authors, including Nalo Hopkinson, Jim Bartley, and Q&Q contributor

Alberta's Venture Publishing brings unlimited launch to market

Albertans, and the rest of the country, will see the brand new business and lifestyle magazine aimed at the "millenials" (def: the children of baby boomers) when Venture Publishing of Edmonton launches unlimited.Content will be about work and life from the perspective of the 20 - 35 year old demographic, the kinds of young people who have flocked and are flocking to Alberta as the land of

Hmmm, Chocolat? Where have I seen this before?

Here's some comment from an American who, having happened across a copy of Chocolat,the magazine launched by Rogers Media last year, notes its remarkable similarity to Condé Nast's Domino.

U.S. publishers group promoting magazine recycling

The Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) is sponsoring a couple of public service ads that ask magazine readers to recycle. "Be a Hero. Recycle Your Magazines," says one and "Turn Over a New Leaf. Recycle Your Magazines!" The ads were created by Jennifer Kraemer-Smith, art director for Time for Kids. Nina Link, president of the MPA, said the ads are a "friendly reminder that every one of us

Disney to shutter Disney Adventures kids' magazine

The tricky and rather anemic kids' periodical sector is to lose one of its titles -- Disney Adventures is being discontinued, effective with its November issue, according to a story in MediaWeek. The digest-sized magazine for 6 to 14 year olds, had 1.2 million paid circulation. Most of its circulation was by subscription, but it was also a perennial on the checkout racks since its founding in

British free papers agree to recycle themselves

A British municipal government has forced distributors of two free newspapers to pay for and service recycling bins for their products.The deal comes after [Westminster] council threatened earlier this year to ban the two London free newspapers, Associated's London Lite and News International rival thelondonpaper, if they did not contribute to the cost of clearing up discarded papers each night,

Shameless plug V

With full disclosure (I teach both courses) here is a shameless plug for two Ryerson University magazine-related courses which are quickly coming up:The Business of Magazine Publishing -- a 14-week course (2½ hours every Monday night, starting September 10th) that is a mile wide and an inch deep, covering all the aspects of Canadian magazine publishing from editorial to production, contract

Tyler Brûlé goes his contrarian way

[this story has been updated]“We’re not in the business of trying to build a galaxy of bloggers and churn out copy all day.” -- Monocle editor (and Wallpaper founder) Tyler Brûlé, quoted in the New York Observer.Brûlé, the Winnipeg-born wunderkind, says he thinks the big guys are getting it all wrong. While they're cutting back, trimming pages and replacing original journalism with user-generated

Spacing blog to rise again, covering the Ontario vote

Having had major success in generating interest in the last municipal election in Toronto, Spacing magazine is debuting its special election blog Spacing Votes to cover the forthcoming Ontario provincial election. The blog goes live again on August 30. The emphasis will be, as it should be, on such urban issues as public space, funding and transit, and it's got a formidable lineup of contributors

Transcon buys 4th largest printer for $130 million

[This post has been updated.]Transcontinental Inc., Canada's largest printer, has fattened up its printing business with the $130 million acquisition of the PLM Group, Canada's fourth largest. With the purchase, Transcon also beefs up its sales force and its position in the direct marketing industry.With the purchase, it picks up 470 employees in four facilities with reported revenues of $126

Mega-Vogue's growth linked to shopping site

The September issue of Vogue has always seemed as though it should come with its own set of wheels; this September's issue is its biggest ever, with 727 advertising pages, proclaiming itself "extra, extra large".The growth in pages, according to a story in the New York Times, seems to have been achieved by closely linking print advertising with ShopVogue.TV, a potent form of "added value" which

MediaScout & Maisonneuve: a mystery

Today in the email, another edition of MediaScout, the news digest prepared daily by Maisonneuve magazine in Montreal, containing another brilliant precis (by Daniel Casey) of the so-called news of the day. The topic is the Montebello Summit as covered (or not covered, or covered up) in what MediaScout calls the Big Seven (Globe & Mail, National Post, La Presse, Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star, CBC

Geist steps out in a new outfit

Geist magazine, which has until now had a fairly simple, comely homespun garment for its website, has invested in a spiffy and sophisticated new look and turbocharged functionality. It has been accomplished without losing the eclectic charm of its contents.After a year of brainstorming, debating, tweaking and tinkering, the all-new geist.com has leapt into the cyberworld. Hats off to Dave Egan

Writer, editor, teacher and profilic freelancer Bob Collins has died

It's a very sad day when you hear that one of Canada's great editors, writing teachers, freelance writers and authors, Bob Collins, has died. But it was a great privilege to have known him and been the object of his gentle and pleasant ways.[UPDATE: See funeral details at the end of this post*.]When I first met Bob he had one of the best magazine writing jobs in Canada, to my mind, as "at large"

Azure asks an important question

Azure, the magazine about art, architecture, design and interiors, tackles a touchy subject that should set the chattering classes abuzz: a cover story in its September issue by John Bentley Mays, asks pointedly about the Daniel Liebskind-designed Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition to the venerable Royal Ontario Museum.Easy to hate, impossible to simply like, does the Crystal show the future or

LIT 13 LAUNCH PARTY: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7TH, 6-10 PM!

LIT 13 LAUNCH PARTY AND CELEBRATION!

Friday, September 7th from 6-10 PM
Wollman Hall @ The New School
66 West 12th Street, NYC, 10011

Featuring readings by...

CAROLINE CONWAY
ADAM GOLASKI
CACONRAD
TERESE SVOBODA

And a special talk/reading with ROBERT POLITO
on LIT 13 feature DETOUR: A Symposium on Edgar Ulmer’s 1945 PRC Film Noir

There will be dancing!
There will be eating and drinking!
There will be cheers for LIT’s new editors, Peter Bogart Johnson and Nicole Steinberg, and tears of sadness shed for our departing prose editor, Danielle Winterton!
It’s going to be an emotional evening.

Reader bios:

Caroline Conway edits the online journal RealPoetik. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in New York Quarterly, ology, luzmag, and the Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets. The first line of “Song for the Inanimate” is taken from Samuel Beckett’s novel Malloy.

But at any rate. Adam Golaski was in our Brit Lit class. We both considered him to be one of the most pretentious people we'd run across at Emerson College so we used to share Golaski stories. In Brit Lit he was one of those fucking stereotypical tossers who wore the fucking corduroy or tweed jacket with the professor elbows and would read aloud whenever the professor wanted someone to read a selection of whatever poetry we were studying with the book held up in one hand and about 3 feet away from him as though The Norton Anthology of English Literature were Yorick's fucking skull itself. He says, “Google my name for some more pretentious bullshit.”

CAConrad's childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He escaped to Philadelphia the first chance he got where he lives and writes today with the PhillySound poets (http://PhillySound.blogspot.com). Soft Skull Press published his book Deviant Propulsion in 2006. His book The Frank Poems is forthcoming in 2008 from CHAX Press. A small selection of The Frank Poems was translated into German in 2007 by Berlin poet Holger, and is now available as a bilingual edition chapbook from YPOLITA Press (http://theFRANKpoems.blogspot.com). He is the author of several other chapbooks, including (end-begin w/chants), a collaboration with Frank Sherlock.

Terese Svoboda has published nine books of prose and poetry, including Tin God (University of Nebraska Press, 2006). Her tenth, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, a memoir, won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, and will be published in February 2008. Next spring she will teach fiction as the McGhee Professor at Davidson College and she will teach poetry at the Pan African Literary Forum in Ghana in July.

Robert Polito is completing a nonfiction book, Detours: Seven Noir Lives.


LIT 13: available NEXT MONTH! Featuring poetry and prose by...

Kristin Abraham * Jennifer Frost Banks * Bridgette Bates * Aaron Belz * Jessica Bozek * Stephanie Brown * Mairéad Byrne * CAConrad * Caroline Conway * Wende Crow * James Cummins * Erinne Dobson * Noah Falck * Edwin Frank * Mary Gaitskill * Drew Gardner * Adam Golaski * Paul Hoover * Caitlin Horrocks * MC Hyland * Brian Kloppenberg * Joshua Land * Debra Liese * Dora Malech * Destanie McAllister * Jennifer Merrifield * Eugenio Montejo * Frank Montesonti * Carley Moore * Kirk Nesset * Matthew Pennock * David Pollock * Jessica Reed * Andrew Sage * Maureen Seaton * Kristine Snodgrass * Jason Stumpf * Terese Svoboda * Jackson Taylor * Urban Waite * Rob Walsh * Amanda Rachelle Warren * Derek White

Art by...

Brett Baker * Jeffre Dene

Plus a SPECIAL FEATURE on DETOUR, Edgar Ulmer’s 1945 PRC Film Noir
Curated by ROBERT POLITO and featuring critical writing, reactions, and interviews by...

A.J. Albany * John Ashbery * Arianné Ulmer Cipes * Kent Jones * Guy Maddin * Greil Marcus * Geoffrey O’Brien * Robert Polito

Secure your copy by SUBSCRIBING to LIT! Send a check or money order made out to LIT to the address below:

LIT
The New School
Writing Program, Room 514
66 West 12th Street
New York, NY 10011

Single Issue: $8

1-year subscription (2 issues): $14
Save 13% off the cover price!

2-year subscription (4 issues): $25
Save 22% off the cover price!

Flare unveils new look with September issue

Fashion magazine Flare is unveiling a redesign when its September issue arrives on newsstands across Canada on Monday. With the redesign, which has been planned for two years, there is a new logo, new fonts and coverline treatment.There are several new departments and the print magazine has a "web" feel to many of the inside pages, integrating it with its popular website flare.com, which was

Traditional British newsstand leaders slumping

Doubtless a sunny summer Friday is not the time to print gloomy news about magazines, but perhaps there is light at the end of the Canadian tunnel in this story from the Independent in Britain. It points out that most categories of magazines took a significant hit with the publication this week of the Audit Bureau of Circulation figures. In Britain, some 90% of magazines sell on newsstands or

Cosmo TV coming to Canada

Cosmopolitan TV is coming to Canada as Corus Entertainment cuts a deal with Hearst Corporation to mount a 24-hour television version of the world's top-selling magazine for young women starting in 2008. This according to a story in Media in Canada. The joint venture is not the first: there are already Cosmo TV shows in 20 other countries, including Spain, Mexico and Argentina. The Canadian

Superbad Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews co-writer/actor Seth Rogen and co-writer Evan Goldberg about Superbad

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Redwood appears to have lost major Kraft custom publishing account

[This item has been updated]It appears that Redwood Custom Communications of Toronto, the largest custom publisher in the country, has lost one of its biggest clients. All or perhaps part of the account to produce custom magazines for Kraft Foods (What's Cooking in Canada, Food & Family in the U.S.) has been scooped by the giant U.S. publisher Meredith Corporation (Better Homes & Gardens etc.).

U.S. colleges find magazine rankings too useful to give up easily

You may recall the kerfuffle a while ago when a number of Canadian universities decided to boycott the Maclean's university rankings as being unfair and misleading. The Maclean's rankings were modelled on similar U.S. News and World Report university rankings. Some U.S. colleges wanted to boycott those, too. But, according to a story in Folio:, it's uphill work. More than 60 universities signed

Beaver and Kayak team up with software company to launch history game

A new Canadian history video game has been launched by Bitcasters, a Toronto company, in strategic partnership with Canada's National History Society (pubishers of The Beaver magazine and Kayak, the history magazine for kids) and the Historica Foundation.The History Canada Game, according to a story in the Georgia Straight, grew out of a conversation 10 years ago between Nathon Gunn, CEO of

The first lawyer shall be last and the last lawyer first?

The counter-attack against Maclean's and its recent "Lawyers are rats" cover proceeds apace. Erstwhile Liberal political operative and National Post blogger and columnist Warren Kinsella wades in with a column called "The rats fight back".As pretty much every lawyer will recall, at the end of July, Maclean's magazine made a bad decision to promote a bad book by a certain Philip Slayton about a

Magazines Canada asks feds to support PAP and rein in Canada Post

Magazines Canada has asked the federal government to make Canada Post Corporation meeting its cultural responsibilities before authorizing substantial changes to its mandate and role or in its pricing structure. In its annual pre-budget submission to the Standing Committee on Finance, the national magazine association said that the publications assistance program (PAP -- postal subsidy) is

Transcon joint venture goes after blue chip custom publications

Transcontinental Media, Canada's largest consumer publisher and the largest printer in Canada, has gone into partnership with a British firm to launch a custom publishing agency called Transcontinental Custom Communications, operating in Canada and the U.S.This means that Transcon is going head-to-head with Redwood Custom Communications, the Toronto-based offshoot of Redwood in the U.K., the

Ziff Davis teetering on the brink of breakup

It's a sad spectacle, the potential dismantling of a magazine publishing company. So it is with Ziff-Davis Media, the company that was founded in 1927 but is best known today for being a major player in the field of computer and internet related publishing. It is publisher of PC Magazine and eWeek as well as being big in broadcasting.Today, it announced that it wouldn't make a scheduled debt

Big media companies: "We buy online properties. Now what?"

Big media companies, particularly in the U.S., are good at snapping up new media opportunities; unfortunately, they don't know what to do with them when they get them, says a story in CNet. It cites a number of examples:Hearst Publications purchased social-shopping site KaboodleThe New York Times "absorbed" the Freakonomics blogBookmarking start-up Clipmarks is rumored to be in the midst of a

British city to be research laboratory as "Magazine Town"

Researchers in Britain, working with the Periodical Publishing Association(PPA), have selected a mid-sized city in England as a "Magazine Town". Guildford, Surrey (the high street show below at right) will be a ‘magazine laboratory’ and the project will be launched as part of Britain's Magazine Week, 17-23 September. The purpose is to investigate, in depth, the consumer buying and reading habits

Josée Verner named Minister of Canadian Heritage

The new Minister of Canadian Heritage is Josée Verner, formerly Minister of International Co-operation and Minister for La Francophonie and Official Languages. Prime Minister Stephen Harper shuffled his cabinet today. Verner replaces Bev Oda in the portfolio. Heritage is important to the magazine industry since under it contains crucial magazine support programs such as the publications

Half of time online spent reading content, study says

A study over four years by Neilsen/NetRatings found that most of people's time online is spent on reading news and entertainment content, according to a Reuters story. This is both good news for traditional magazines of this ilk, given that most of them have, or are now developing, robust online offerings. The study found thatviewing content accounts for 47 percent of time spent online in 2007,

When pretty good is good enough

Further to the crumbling of pay walls at various key news sites, and particularly the decision of the New York Times to discontinue Times Select (see our earlier post). Scott Karp on his Publishing 2.0 website makes a very good point about economics of information being the main driver.The new economics of media make charging for content nearly impossible because there is always someone else

BCAMP up in the air

For the last six months, the BC Association of Magazine Publishers has been stumbling along under veils of secrecy thrown over a putative “labour dispute” that has been boiling away since February, an odd state of affairs for a staff consisting of two people working in one room. No mention of the dispute was made at the BCAMP Annual General Meeting in June, and the only committee that made no

Marco Ursi is new editor of Masthead magazine

Masthead magazine, Canada's only trade magazine about magazines, has selected Marco Ursi to be its new editor. He replaces Bill Shields, who resigned a few months ago.Ursi takes up his post today, having last week completed a summer intership at Maclean's magazine. Ursi is a graduate of Ryerson, and was editor of the spring, 2006 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism. He is also a blogger (

Isabelle Marcoux of Transcontinental gives a careful interview

At Transcontinental, we try to do as little of that [media interviews] as possible. I think it is a family tradition. We're humble people. We release our results when we have to - we are transparent - but we're less inclined to talk about ourselves.It is not Transcontinental Vice-Chair Isabelle Marcoux's fault that in the Q & A by Gordon Pitts with her in the Globe and Mail we learn practically

Freelance freedom

(click here to see this larger) Ever had this happen to you as a freelance illustrator? Or writer? (From the blog Freelance Switch), by freelance artist N. C. Winters.

Accumulation blues: what to do with back issues of magazines

What, pray tell, do you do with all those magazines that build up around your house (presuming that you are, like me, omnivorous and promiscuous in acquiring them)? At a certain point, the tottering pile beside the bed, beside the chair in the living room, the jammed shelf or rack, needs to be dealt with.And it's not as if you're no longer interested, but that even with the best will in the world

Walrus pitch: We don't have many ads, so advertise with us

The saying goes "If you got a lemon, make lemonade". The Walrus Magazine, under the leadership of Publisher Shelley Ambrose, seems to be doing just that.TURNING A NEGATIVE INTO A POSITIVE“It’s time to advertise in The Walrus!” says the freestanding insert which dropped out of Marketing magazine this week. The insert promotes The Walrus's many awards, particularly the National Magazine Awards and

Here be dragons! Comic arts festival reassures skittish U.S. visitors

The 3rd annual Toronto Comic Arts Festival is expecting to draw many people from the U.S. and has have left nothing to chance. The "frequently asked questions" section of their website includes information on how border controls work, about Canadian money and reassurances that they won't need mukluks: "Last year in August, Toronto was approximately 90 degrees with no snow on the ground. Most of

Magazines Canada DM campaign sells 10,000 new subs

The 2007 cooperative direct marketing campaign of Magazines Canada got its participating members about 10,000 subscriptions, according to a recently released report. This was the second time that the organization went to market on behalf of participating member magazines; the first time was 2003. The campaign happened between January and March though subs continued to come in thereafter.The

Comic-Con 2007 Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith hosts a panel at the 2007 Comic-Con with guest speakers: Stan Lee, Don Payne, Mark Fergus, Kevin Feige and Mark Verheiden.

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After Oda, who?

Various commentators seem to have written off Bev Oda as Heritage Minister, suggesting it is a probability that she'll get demoted to National Revenue or something. Heritage is not only the source of recent welcome permanent funding to the Canada Council, it is also the home to the Canada Magazine Fund and the Publications Assistance Program (both under review and both of which are very important

Once again into the fray about freelancer's pay

Globe columnist Russell Smith spends a good deal of his time fussing about double-breasted suits and whether or not to take off your hat, but for some reason he's on a magazine toot recently. A column a week ago was about The Idler magazine which is fondly remembered by many, but which foundered because it was so precious it simply couldn't find a large enough audience.This week (sorry, it's

Is the so-called "pay wall" doomed?

It's good news, if you're a reader, but maybe bad news if you're a publisher who had hoped for an additional stream of revenue. The "pay wall" at the New York Times that restricted access to some content -- principally the paper's marquee columnists -- may soon fall.[UPDATE: A story in Advertising Age reports that other pillars of paid online news are falling or have fallen: The Economist and CNN

Jim Ireland retires

James Ireland and Associates has been, for 25 years, the incubator of consistently good design and of consistently good designers. Many of those associates honed their talents in his shop and went on to run their own shows. Always, there was a strong "Ireland" look to whatever publication he touched: particularly clean, unfussy typography and illustration and a constant emphasis on readability.

Hard times turns lad mag into Stuff-ing for Maxim

Like many trends, the trajectory growth of "lads" mags aimed at the young male audience has been steep going up and appears to be steep coming down. A rumour has been reported in Mediaweek that Stuff magazine is essentially to disappear, absorbed as a special section entitled Stuff for Men into its stablemate Maxim (October to be Stuff's last issue). The closure would bring the troubles in the

Small but provocative, little magazines sparked debate about architecture

Nice piece in the Sunday Toronto Star by Toronto freelancer Ryan Bigge about little architecture and design magazines. The article is focussed on a show at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. It's called Clip/Stamp/Fold 2: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X — 197X and runs until Sept. 9. It's a travelling exhibition that originated at Princeton University; its also on

The Ten Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews co-writer/director David Wain and co-writer/star Ken Marino about The Ten

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Doc's Afghan diary takes us up close and bloody in Afghanistan

[This item has been updated; see below*]It's worth wondering why the article in the current (July/August) issue of Mother Jones [thanks to This Magazine for tipping us on this] wasn't published in a Canadian publication*. It's written by a Canadian doctor, Kevin Patterson, a diary of time working among Canadian, other NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan and it is rivettingly well-done. Of

Bar association tried to muscle us, says Maclean's editor

Maclean's editor in chief Ken Whyte has come out swinging against the law community's criticism of last week's "Lawyers are rats" cover. He says in a press release that the Canadian Bar Association tried to pressure Maclean's's parent companies, Rogers Communications and Rogers Publishing, to force an apology. Likely to stoke, rather than bank, the fires is the following comment:That the CBA

XXL editor hip hops across the ad:editorial divide

It must be that a) Canadian editors don't do this or b) Canadian advertisers don't want them to, but we rarely if ever see a tempest such as the one kicked up by XXL magazine in the States, where editor Elliott Wilson appears in a back cover ad for Rocawear, clasping a copy of XXL to his chest.Various commentators, including American Society of Magazine Editors executive director Marlene Kahan,

Reader's Digest Canada president adds Latin America

The president and CEO of Reader's Digest Canada, Andrea C. Martin, has been given additional responsibility for Latin America, with managing directors from Mexico, Brasil and Argentina reporting to her. The announcement was made by Mary Berner,President and Chief Executive Officer of The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.

New research shows high "net" reach for magazines and their websites

New research in the U.S. shows that there is relatively little cannibalization between printed magazines and their web sites, and that much of their audience is "net," or unduplicated reach.The findings come out of a new collaboration of magazine audience researcher Mediamark Research Inc. and online audience researcher Nielsen//NetRatings, according to a story in MediaDaily News.The research,