Milk Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews screenwriter Dustin Lance Black about Milk

Copyright Unlikely Films, Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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Christopher McQuarrie - Valkyrie Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews co-writer Christopher McQuarrie about Valkyrie

Copyright Unlikely Films, Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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Revolutionary Road Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews screenwriter Justin Haythe about Revolutionary Road

Copyright Unlikely Films, Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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Seven Pounds Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews screenwriter Grant Nieporte about Seven Pounds

Copyright Unlikely Films, Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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The year in Canadian magazines

Canadian Magazines is taking a brief holiday from posting, as it does this time of year. We'll be back on January 2. In the meantime, and as a wrapup of the year just past (towards the end, there, 2008 was getting a bit grisly, wasn't it?) we present our annual, completely arbitrary, listing of some of those posts (just click on the heading for the link to the whole story -- remember search our

MAD cover makes Time's top ten

Mad Magazine's magnificent Alfred E. Obama cover made it into the number ten slot on the Time list of 1o Best Covers of the Year. Rolling Stone's Obama cover, a much more conventional treatment, made it to number three. The New Yorker got the top spot for its Obama cover (by Bob Staake), which, as Arthur Hochstein writes, derives its strength from the editorial self-awareness that gives The New

Transcon custom pubs teams up with Samsung for "mini mag" insert

Transcontinental Custom Communications has teamed with Samsung Electronics Canada to create a "mini mag" insert into the holiday editions of Canadian Living and Coupe de Pouce. The List/ La Liste, as it is called, will have a combined circulation of 410,000 and features various wireless, consumer electronic and home appliances, according to a story in Media in Canada.The custom pub is being

Mags Canada urges budget support for PAP, CMF and government magazine advertising

Magazines Canada has recommended in a pre-budget consultation paper to the federal finance minister that his new budget and its expected economic stimulus package shouldMaintain current levels of federal investment in the support of Canada’s periodical policy including the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) and the Canada Magazines Fund (CMF); andIncrease federal government advertising in

Annals of fact-checking

It emerges that Cosmopolitan magazine in Britain has had to make a grovelling apology to movie star Scarlett Johansson for quotes included in a long interview featured on its cover as "Scarlett: Why I had to get married". It turns out, says a story published by the Guardian, that the contentious quotes about Johansson's husband Ryan Reynolds were inserted by the editors using copy they bought,

Looking for places for stimulus investment, Mr. Flaherty? How about the arts?

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to stand up to your hips in the swirling waters of an economic crisis and and suggest the federal government ante up for the arts, but that's precisely what the Canadian Conference of the Arts has done. The CCA has sent a pre-budget submission to Flaherty and the opposition parties in which it says the arts and culture sector is precisely the kind of place to

Will Toronto's Pages still be selling magazines two months from now?

One of Toronto's best indie newsstands, Pages Books & Magazines, looks likely to go out of business within two months, as the increasingly forlorn hopes of its supporters that it will find another, affordable location, fades. According to a post in BlogTO, owner Marc Glassman has spent almost two years searching all over the city for a place to land and finds that landlords simply want too much.

Cultural Human Resources Council offers help with paying magazine interns

The Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC) in partnership with Canadian Heritage and Human Resources Development Canada is offering youth internship programs whereby it covers up to half the cost of paying an intern to work in, say, literary and cultural magazines. The deadline for application is February 1. Through Career Focus (Human Resources Development Canada), employers must contribute

Canadian Living magazine launches mobile app

Canadian Living,one of Canada's largest and most successful magazines for women, has launched a smartphone application, dowloadable on any Blackberry or iPhone. According to a story in Media in Canada, Canadian Living Mobile will automatically deliver and store content to a user's handheld device. (The magazine has 4.3 million readers of its print edition, according to PMB and its website,

Quote, unquote: What magazines haven't learned

I’ve long believed that magazines should have great potential online because they already have communities of shared interest. And though magazines still - today - have franchises and value in print, it would be foolish, even suicidal to ignore other media already overtaken by the internet tidal wave. Music drowned. TV learned from that and started streaming online. Newspapers are going down for

News of death of mygazines.com pirate site turns out to have been exaggerated

It would seem that, far from being crushed by the response of big magazine publishers, the pirate digital file-sharing company mygazines.com was simply lying doggo while it figured out how to come back to life. A posting by Dylan Stableford on Folio: says that he got a message from Pierre Bisaillon saying that he is the new director of corporate and business development at mygazines.As many of

Newspaper editors organization may drop "paper" from its name

The American Society of Newspaper Editors is asking members whether it should change its name to the American Society of News Editors, dropping the word "paper" from their name. According to a story from the Associated Press, an April membership vote is scheduled in Chicago by which editors of news web sites also would be permitted to join, as would leaders of journalism programs."The proposals

Andrew Stanton: Wall-E Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews co-writer/director Andrew Stanton about Wall-E

Copyright Unlikely Films, Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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Beleagured Sun Media cutting 10% of workforce

The Sun Media chain is cutting 10% of its workforce -- about 600 jobs-- in western Canada, Ontario and Quebec, according to a Canadian Press report. Which can only mean that the already anemic Sun newspapers will be even less interesting than they are now.

Upbeat message delivered by Canadian magazine industry

There was an upbeat message for the public, and the magazine industry, in a story carried today in the Toronto Star, headed Magazine industry optimistic in face of storm.Interviewed were Marco Ursi, the editor of the soon-to-be-online-only Masthead magazine and Mark Jamison, the president of Magazines Canada, the major trade association. Several points that you may have read here previously,

U.S. magazine launches in 2008 were booming...maybe not

[This post has been updated] Though much of the activity predated the financial meltdown, it is still heartening to see that publishers in the U.S. launched 335 new magazines in 2008, according to a story in MediaDaily News, based on data from MediaFinder.com. Biggest growth was in health (31 titles), regional (25 titles) and cooking and epicurean (17 titles).[Update: But, according to a story in

Regrets, they've had a few, 2008 edition

Craig Silverman of Montreal the proprietor of the Regret the Error website (also a Globe and Mail columnist) has published his year-end round up of sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic, oftentimes amazing corrections published by various publications worldwide. He has also published this -- from columnist Dave Barry -- as "correction of the year":In yesterday's column about badminton, I

Detroit papers to curtail home delivery

The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News are expected to be the first major metropolitan daily newspapers in the United States to cease home delivery of the paper's print edition. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, the paper is expected to announce next week that the paper will only be delilvered on Thursday, Friday and Sunday, with a slimmed down newsstand edition available on

Muchmor Media revamps one site, launches another

Muchmor Media, the publishers of the digital magazine Muchmor Canada, the digtal magazine, is starting 0ff the new year by unveiling a redesigned site and launching a new business-to-business digital title called The MBN magazine.The company was started in 2001 and its first product was Muchmor Canada, a general interest site about life, health and wellness, Canadian business, interesting places

Popular Torontoist website closing

Torontoist, the popular website/blog that is part of the U.S.-based Gothamist network, is closing up shop effective with year's end. David Topping, the editor, apparently precipitated the decision by announcing his resignation.At the end of this month, I will be stepping down as Torontoist's Editor-in-Chief. I've loved everything about this job since I started it, and my decision to leave was not

Quote, unquote: Why Ken Whyte will miss Time Canada

It's miserable news. I hate to see magazines closing and newspapers pulling back—this is my industry and I hate to see it in any way diminished. Time Canada had some terrific people on both the editorial and publishing sides and over the last couple of years we've lost all of them. It's a shame. I just hope that the US edition finds its feet and turns things around. I'm a great admirer of the

Transcontinental Inc. annual results reflect difficult last quarter

Transcontinental Inc. lost $132 million in net income in the last quarter of 2008,from $38.6 million in the same period a year ago to a loss of $94.2 million. The decline in net income for fiscal 2008 was $112 million, from $120.6 million in 2007 to $7.9 million in 2008, largely due to a write-off connected with restructuring of the company's direct mail business in the United States. This year's

Magazines Ontario asks province for $20 million investment in industry

Magazines Ontario is asking the Ontario government for a new $20 million annual contribution for a government/industry partnership to stimulate investment in the sector. The document also asks for the development of a refundable tax credit for Ontario magazines.The pre-budget submission refers to a recently published independent study conducted for the Ontario Media Development Corporation which

Smaller advertiser leading the way in advertising cutbacks

Smaller advertisers are more acutely sensitive to shifts in the economy and these so-called "long tail" advertisers, who accounted for much of the expansion of U.S. advertising markets in the past couple of years, are now cutting back more than their bigger brethren. According to data provided by TNS Media Intelligence, reported by MediaDaily News, the bottom third of the market has been cutting

Will Rogers's magazine content cross over onto Rogers's 24-hr Toronto news channel?

The approval by the CRTC of Rogers Broadcasting Ltd.'s application for a license to operate a 24-hour news and information channel to serve Greater Toronto raises the question about whether we'll see any transfer of Rogers consumer and trade content onto the small screen. According to a report on J-source, "programming would consist of a mix of local news, traffic, weather, business, sports and

New UK service "curates" independent magazines, for a price

A just-launched site based in the UK now plans to offer direct delivery of independent English-language magazines from around the world using a mix-and-match or "curated" model. Subscribers to Stack can choose six, eight or 12 issues delivered to them each year and the service selects the best issues of particular magazines on its list, which at the moment contains only 7 relatively little-known

Magazine world view

Another in our occasional series of links to magazine-related stories from outside of Canada.No bounce for Esquire in its Anniversary Year (New York Observer)Age certificate for men's magazines dismissed (UK Press Gazette) OK will lower newsstand price (Wall Street Journal)New York Times looks to sell headquarters (Guardian)Reed Business Information disposal is postponed (UK Press Gazette)

Time Canada folding

Time Canada, which for decades has symbolized the carpetbagger tendencies of U.S. magazine publishers in the Canadian market, is to be shut down, according to a report in the Financial Post.A web post said a spokesperson for the company that publishes Time Canada confirmed the rumour Wednesday."Due to the challenging economic climate and recent Time Inc. restructuring, Time is eliminating its

Cheery yellow "colour of the year" evokes hope and reassurance

Pantone, the colour standards company, has picked mimosa, a bright yellow, as its "colour of the year" for 2009, which it describes as "a warm, engaging yellow"."In a time of economic uncertainty and political change, optimism is paramount and no other color expresses hope and reassurance more than yellow."The color yellow exemplifies the warmth and nurturing quality of the sun, properties we as

Publishers of Sharp magazine win contract to produce Audi customer mag

Contempo Media, the publishers of Sharp magazine, have won the contract to publish a twice-annual customer magazine for Audi Canada, starting this spring. The circulation will be to 20,000 Audi owners at their home addresses and also through Audi outlets and events. Contempo was launched in February by former partners in Driven magazine and, in addition to Sharp, publishes Time & Style, a

Google rolls out online magazine searching

Google, the dominant search engine, having reached an agreement to put books online, is now negotiating to do the same with magazines. According to a story in paidContent.org, Google is partnering with publishers such as Hearst, Johnson Publishing, Emmis Publishing and New York Media to put magazine archives and current issues online.Already there are more than a million articles available from

Newsweek said to be slashing its readership guarantee

Word from a variety of sources is that Newsweek, the number two U.S. newsmagazine, is considering slashing its rate base by 1.6 million, to make the guaranteed delivery target 1 million readers. A story from Folio: saysExecutives at Newsweek began discussing a rate base rollback as early as this summer, according to a pair of sources familiar with these discussions.“A million [rate base] was the

Pulitzer Prize recognizes this new-fangled Internet thing

The Pulitzer Prize, one of the world's most valued journalism awards, has finally recognized the internet; news organizations will now be able to submit text-only online content in all 14 journalism categories. This means that newspapers can submit online-only work, says a story in paidContent.org. And text-based sources that publish only online are now also eligible, according to a release from

Three questions and three answers from Derek Finkle of the Canadian Writers Group

We've asked three questions of founder Derek Finkle and see what his responses are. Herewith:Q: There seems to be quite a bit of hostility among commenters, at least on this blog (albeit anonymously) to the very idea of negotiating higher freelance fees. Is that something you're finding as you develop this idea? A: No, not really. I can’t think of a single editor or publisher I’ve spoken to in

Christie Heffner steps down as Playboy chair and will leave as CEO

Christie Heffner is stepping down as chair of Playboy Enterprises today and as CEO at the end of January, and planning to leave the board altogether when a replacement CEO is found, according to a posting on PaidContent.org. It's the end of two decades wrestling the financial difficulties of her father Hugh's iconic magazine and soft porn empire, founded in 1953.Playboy has had significant

Looming deadlines, new requirements, for National Magazine Awards

Three things worth noting about this year's National Magazine Awards:Small magazines with a circulation under 20,000 and revenues under $250,000 may be eligible for financial assistance from the National Magazine Awards Foundation; however the deadline to apply for it is this Friday, December 12.There’s a new category this year – Best Single Issue – which will reward the overall quality and

Maisonneuve's MediaScout daily media briefing is to be closed down

MediaScout, the feisty, entertaining and informative daily commentary on Canada's top new media, published by Maisonneuve magazine in Montreal, is being closed down effective Friday, December 19. A note to subscribers today follows:Dear reader, For the last four-and-a-half years, MediaScout has delighted and informed Canadians each weekday morning as we attempted to make sense - and some fun - of

Human rights complainant has change of heart; target Levant doesn't buy it

The protagonist in the protracted campaign by former Western Standard magazine publisher Ezra Levant against the Alberta (and other) human rights commissions has apparently reversed his field.According to a story from the CanWest news service, Imam Syed Soharwardy is opening a Freedom of Speech Centre in Calgary to openly discuss cultural issues of the day.Soharwardy says he has had a change of

Swedish mag editors get nipped and tucked to add depth to their reporting

Commitment to a magazine's mission is one thing. Going under the knife, perhaps another. We have come across a report about the staff of a Swedish magazine for gay men who underwent cosmetic surgery in order to know about what they were sometimes recommending to their readers.Dorian magazine describes itself as a commercial lifestyle magazine for gay men. According to the report carried in The

Magazines Canada sees significant web traffic growth

Magazines Canada’s reports that its industry website, magazinescanada.ca recorded a 66% increase in page views in the three months September to November. November had 196,000 views. This compares with September's 118,065.While the industry is usually a little quieter in September (said a release), these increases are significant. Even with the May 2008 peak of 159,000 just prior to the industry’s

Picture this -- better photography can provide insight

While magazines sometimes contribute to debate, it is not often that much attention is paid to magazines in our legislatures. The editor of the quarterly Nova Scotia Policy Review, Rachel Brighton tells us that her September issue got used as evidence in the Nova Scotia legislature because it reported that the government has actually cut back social assistance, even while over all provincial

Magazine world view

Our occasional link to magazine-related stories from outside 0f Canada.Radio Times lands festive feast of ads as Wallace and Gromit star on the cover (Guardian)Editor jailed for defying Castro is journalist of the year (Press Gazette)Dow Jones to launch Japanese site; and advertisers are returning, Thomson says (PaidContent.org)John Wiley & Sons Announces Global Publishing Deal With Meredith Corp

Most magazine subscribers intend to stand pat in difficult times

More than three out of four magazine subscribers (77%) say they expect to make no change in their subscriptions in the year ahead, despite economic uncertainty, according to a poll carried out by Forrester Research, reported by MediaDaily News. 18% said they might cut back; 4% said they expected to subscribe more.

Quote, unquote: Cue the violins; Cathie Black's outlook

"It's tough. It's terrible. I think we've all stopped lying to each other."-- Hearst Magazines president Cathie Black on her perception of the state of the magazine business. She did say, however, that she was optimistic about the future of print now that all those pesky, expensive employees are gone.

Top 25 immigrants award launched

Canadian Immigrant magazine, in collaboration with RBC, is introducing a national people's choice awards program recognizing the "top 25 Canadian Immigrants" of 2009."Canada is a nation built by immigrants, many of whom have distinguished themselves by working to make our country a better place," said Canadian Immigrant publisher Nick Noorani. "In fact, one in five people living in Canada were

Precedent magazine named to American Bar Association "top 100 websites" list

The American Bar Association has placed one-year-old Canadian startup Precedent magazine on its top 100 websites list, albeit under the heading "Quirky". Presumably this is because the magazine writes about fashion, wine and other topics not found in most other legal sites.

Perfect female cover models make men feel insecure

A University of Missouri study shows that men find impossibly perfect, airbrushed women on the covers of men's magazines to be emasculating, intimidating and hard to live up to, says a story in Folio:While female readers may respond to photos of skinny, flawless models with negative feelings about their own bodies, the study’s lead researcher, Jennifer Aubrey, said, “Men make inferences that in

"Right sizing" costs jobs across-the-board at Rogers Publishing

[This post has been updated]Rogers Publishing CEO Brian Segal said in a memo to the entire staff of the division today that layoffs job eliminations made this morning were an effort to respond to a decaying advertising market and to allow the company to reallocate resources to new ventures, apparently most of them on the web. Across all of Rogers Media (including publishing, radio, television,

It's not easy being green, as print Guide shut down by National Geographic

National Geographic has shut down the Green Guide, a publication it acquired only in 2007, according to a story in Folio: The guide, which had a circulation of 100,000 mostly in the U.S. was relaunched as a consumer quarterly "written for general consumers, not for enviromaniacs,” but it is being "discontinued", although an associated web site, which has been around since 2002, will remain as

Shameless plug

Ryerson University in Toronto offers a range of magazine courses, a couple of which* I teach ; available singly or as part of a magazine publishing certificate. Here are a few of them that start in the new year. (Early registration is particularly important since this is hard on the heels of the Christmas break.)14-week courses (start week of January 12)The Business of Magazine Publishing (

Magazine world view

Another of our occasional looks at magazine-related stories from outside of Canada.Australian Men’s Magazine Ralph Loses 130,000 Inflatable Breasts (Folio:)Jamie Oliver to launch own magazine (Guardian)Clash crowned Scottish magazine of the year (UK Press Gazette)Magazine Shutdowns, Magazine Layoffs, And The Looming Pullback In Automobile Advertising (Fine on Media, Business Week)Rupert Murdoch's

Masthead web site to stay in business

Mastheadonline, the website, has survived a near-death experience and will be carrying on in the new year under the same management (North Island Publishing) and with the same full-time editor (Marco Ursi), it has been announced. The print version of the magazine, Masthead, will be ending with the issue that is currently under production (Jan/Feb 09).“I’m like totally thrilled,” Ursi said. “I

Ted Rogers dies at 75

Ted Rogers, the head of Canada's largest magazine publisher, held within a much larger media, cable and wireless company, has died at the age of 75. He had suffered for many years from a heart condition.Starting in 1960, while he was still an articling law student, he borrowed enough money to buy CHFI-FM in Toronto, at a time when it was the only FM station in Canada. He then used a certain

Assorted goodies.

Hi folks,

We are busy bees here at LIT, gearing up for production on LIT 15, which will (hopefully) be out in late winter/early spring. All current submissions will be considered for LIT 16, in case you were curious.

A few announcements:

LIT is pleased to announce its 2009 Pushcart Prize nominees, all of whom were published in issue 14, Spring 2008:

Poetry:
"Letter of Explanation to My Dead Arctic Explorer" by Paige Ackerson-Kiely
"Hat Dance Comma Mexican" by Heather Christle
"To Bed in a Broke Boat" by CJ Evans

Prose:
"Bunkerisms" by Caren Beilin
"Brzezinski's Gambit" by Jamey Gallagher
"The Firebird" by Irina Reyn

We wish our nominees the best of luck! We're so proud to have published your work and wish we could have more than six nominations. Darn it all.

*****

LIT will be in attendance at the 21st Annual Indie & Small Press Fair on December 6 & 7! Admission is FREE!

The fair, as always, is hosted by the New York Center for Independent Publishing and will take place at the General Society at 20 West 44th Street in NYC. Come for the one-of-a-kind events and stay to buy books and copies of lit mags for your stocking stuffers (and maybe a few for yourself).

And don't forget to visit the LIT table! We'll be in the grand company of other lit mags including Guernica, H.O.W., and more! And we'll be offering special discounts on copies of LIT, as well as subscriptions! Huzzah.

The fair takes place on Saturday, December 6th from 10 AM to 6 PM, and Sunday, December 7th from 11 AM to 5 PM. See their website for details: http://www.nycip.org/bookfair/

Beaver's timing couldn't be much better with column on GGs powers

The saying is that, whenever the genie comes out of the bottle, always ask for perfect timing.In light of the current turmoil in Ottawa, The Beaver history magazine seems to have experienced just such fortuitous timing in its December/January issue just distributed, publishing a column by regular contributor Christopher Moore called "That King-Byng thing", about an earlier crisis in 1926 and the

Little magazines we like: the redesign of Spacing

It's always fun to see a magazine blossoming, particularly when it's a publication that operates on a relative shoestring. Spacing, which is a little magazine we really like, has undergone a redesign that brings a lot of new features and functionality to its pages.For one thing, it has instituted an editorial page, that allows the editors to discuss topics that don't necessarily fit within their

Canadian Writers Group has signed almost 200 to its list; Vancouver meeting planned

The Canadian Writers Group, the agency that former Toro editor Derek Finkle is launching to represent, among others, freelance magazine writers now has almost 200 signed up. Finkle says he is holding meetings in Vancouver in December to brief and recruit western writers.Both meetings will be on December 11 at Simon Fraser University in Room 1415, 515 West Hastings Street. The first meeting will

What makes Vice successful? -- for one thing, staying "in character"

Journalist and blogger Ryan Bigge has posted an article about Vice magazine he wrote for Masthead, but which was never published. It details the things he learned about Vice's success while researching his Master's degree thesis. Among them, the fact that the magazine always stays "in character" no matter whether it's run in Montreal or (now) New York, whether it's publishing or running a record

Atlantic Journalism Awards deadline January 30

The deadline for the Atlantic Journalism Awards is Friday, January 30, 2009, and the winners will be announced at a gala dinner May 2, 2009 at the Delta Beauséjour Hotel in Moncton NB. (This follows a day of professional development workshops). Entries must be by journalists in Atlantic Canada and must have been published in magazines or newspapers or broadcast in the region's radio or television

Head of Canada Council magazine and books office, Melanie Rutledge, leaving post

Melanie Rutledge, who has held the position since September 2003, is leaving December 19 as head of writing and publishing for the Canada Council for the Arts. She will be joining the lobbying company Everson Public Affairs in the new year.For many small literary and cultural magazines, Canada Council support is important, not only in terms of annual operating funding and project support but also

Rogers wireless subscribers offered free 3-month subs to Rogers magazines

The power of cross-promotion is well demonstrated by a current offering to Rogers wireless subscribers (i.e. people with Rogers cellphone plans) who are being offered a "customer appreciation gift" -- a free, three-month subscription to one of several Rogers publications, including Chatelaine, LouLou and Canadian Business. It will be interesting to know what kind of retention offer those

Maclean's department of the crashingly obvious...

Maclean's issue on newsstands December 4, names Barack Obama as the magazine's "Newsmaker of the Year".

Time Inc. consolidation means it will now largely serve Europe from New York

Time Inc. says it will continue to have a European editorial presence, based in London, but for all practical purposes, the company's consolidation means than the magazine will be produced in New York. (Michael Elliott, the editor of Time International, has been based in New York since 2006.) This follows the announcement of 600 redundancies, according to a report in PaidContent.org, based in

Zoomer magazine reports $402k loss on $1.7 million in revenue

ZoomerMedia Limited has announced that for the quarter ended September 30, 2008, the Company had revenue (including its magazine) of $2,539,172 and expenses of $3,214,022 with a net loss after tax of $674,850. These results are coincident with the launch of Zoomer magazine; the company says they are in line with the company's 2009 business plan.Data released for the publishing side indicate the

Canadian Architect magazine critical of choice, display of Venice Biennale exhibit

A commentary in Canadian Architect magazine is sharply critical of Canada's contribution this year to the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Writer Rodney LaTourelle is critical of the way the Canadian pavillion installation was displayed and the way in which this particular entry was chosen.(Called 41° to 66°: Architecture in Canada--Region, Culture, Tectonics, curated by Marco Polo and John

Thanksgiving march kicks off 100th year of Good Housekeeping seal of approval

If ever there was a magazine that nailed branding, it was Good Housekeeping, with its eponymous Seal of Approval, a term that has entered common parlance. Well, that little exercise in brand building and limited product guarantees for readers is about to turn 100 years old.To commemorate the milestone, says a company release, Good Housekeeping has redesigned the seal and will be showing it

250 exhibitors at Montreal mag, book and zine fair this weekend

There are 250 publishers, comic artists, magazine and small press exhibitors in both French and English at Expozine, Montreal’s annual small press, comic and zine fair, this Saturday and Sunday, 29th and 30th, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.Over the past 7 years it has become one of North America's largest book and magazine fairs; the admission-free event is held at 5035 St-Dominique (Église Saint-Enfant

Chronicling The End, a superb piece of long-form magazine journalism

(photo illustration by Ji Lee)If you ever want to know what good magazines can do to make sense of the world, I can recommend to you the article The End by Michael Lewis in Portfolio. It's long form magazine journalism at its best and explains what went wrong in the financial markets by exploring who knew it was going to go wrong and how they profited by it. Lewis, who wrote the excellent book

Magazines Ontario receives funding to create "digital newsstand" for its members

The Magazines Ontario division of Magazines Canada has received a grant from the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s (OMDC) Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund to help fund the creation of a digital newsstand.The program, called Digital Discovery, will allow member magazines – with a particular emphasis on those from Ontario – to create digital editions of their titles, with

Alberta magazine bundles designed for sub shopping

Magazine subs are a tried-and-true Christmas gift. The Alberta Magazine Publishers Association has found a way to "bundle" those mag-a-gifts by category and throw in a nifty premium to sweeten the deal. Subscribe for any two magazines from a bundle, get 15% off; any three and get 25% off. AMPA will send a gift card and a custom made fridge magnet (see above) in time for December 25. And they'll

Key staff carry on with Ontario Out of Doors under OFAH ownership

The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters has announced that, when it takes over Ontario Out of Doors magazine from Rogers Media, effective December 19, three of the magazine's current staff will still be running it, according to a release from the company.John Kerr becomes editor-in-chief, moving up from executive editor. He has been writing for OOD since 1976.Ray Blades continues as

Martha Stewart and Ann Moore (Time Inc.) honoured by U.S. mag industry

Apparently, being a convicted felon is no impediment to being given a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Magazine Editors. It was announced today that Martha Stewart, the founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is being inducted into the ASME Hall of Fame, according to a story in Advertising Age."With the launch of Martha Stewart Living in 1991, Stewart created an

CBC accuses Quebeocor Inc. of using FOI to attack its VP

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation claims that Quebecor Inc. is using freedom of information requests -- 150 so far this year -- to undertake a campaign of personal harrassment against Sylvain Lafrance, CBC's vice-president of French services, according to a story published by Canadian Press.Tim Casgrain [chair of the CBC board of directors], in a letter to Heritage Minister James Moore, says

Briarpatch cuts back to 6 issues; wonders what's happening to CMF and PAP?

Briarpatch magazine of Regina, in anticipation of a jump in postal costs has shifted to 6 slightly larger and slightly pricier issues a year from 8, starting in January. It plans to hold the price of a subscription where it is.Dave Mitchell, the editor, sent a note wondering what is happening in government funding programs:There's been an eerie silence of late regarding the future of the

ON Nature magazine unveils new look

ON Nature, the quarterly magazine of Ontario Nature (Federation of Ontario Naturalists)has an updated look unveiling with its current issue. The redesign was carried out by Levi Nicholson, who has been art directing the magazine since the spring of 2007. (Nicholson works now for Zaxis Communications). The new look is above right; the former look (Winter '07) is below.Victoria Foote, the editor of

Quote, unquote: Have U.S. magazine publishers lost their faith?

Retrenching during an economic contraction is one thing. But starving and killing off your brands one by one -- and refusing to invest adequately in the transition from print to web -- suggests that you're simply abdicating. You've lost faith in what you do. You've lost faith in publishing.-- Advertising Age columnist Simon Dumenco, asking, in a hard-hitting column, whether big U.S. magazine

Reader's Digest Association creating multimedia platform aimed at Christians

Reader's Digest Association is entering into a joint venture to produce "an inspirational multimedia platform" aimed at a Christian audience, including a magazine, DVDs and a "Facebook for Christians", according to a story carried by Folio:. RDA called it the "most important and far reaching ventures ever" for the company.The new venture will roll out beginning in February, in partnership with Dr

Economist publisher & Hong Kong design guru to headline MagNet

The MagNet magazine conference in June (2 - 5 in Toronto) will be headlined by a presentation by Paul Rossi, the publisher of the Economist magazine, it has been announced. A release from Magazines Canada says other highlight presenters will be Tommy Li, the international design guru from Hong Kong and three top Canadian independent publishers: Marion Lavigne, publisher and founder of

Hugh McCullum "risked all for a just cause"

If an obituary can be inspiring, the Globe and Mail's tribute to Hugh McCullum in today's paper certainly is. McCullum, who died in October of pancreatic cancer, was well-known as the crusading editor of The United Church Observer magazine and, before that the Canadian Churchman (Anglican Church). He was the first layperson to edit both and, notes the article, "was credited with infusing the

Slumdog Millionaire Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews screenwriter Simon Beaufoy about Slumdog Millionaire

Copyright Unlikely Films, Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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Might American editors bow to ad pressure and loosen ad:edit guidelines?

The American Society of Magazine Editors is revising its ad:edit guidelines and according to a story published by MediaDaily News, it appears that straitened circumstances (i.e. total ad pages down 8.5% at over 200 weekly and monthly titles tracked by MIN Online) in the magazine business may cause ASME to consider loosening its restrictions on integration of advertising into magazine covers and

Zinio launches a digital magazine sharing program that it calls "a game changer"

Zinio, the digital publishing company, has released a new service that it considers "a game changer" -- a program that allows web users free access to search content in 1,000 different magazines served by Zinio and share the pages with social networking sites.The system is called Zinio INSIDE and it enables readers to send digital replicas of magazine pages to friends and family via email, post

Worn magazine issue launches with a "slow dance" party

Worn, the unorthodox and eclectic twice-a-year fashion magazine, has launched a new website today, on the eve of its 7th issue (seen at right), which is being mailed to subscribers December 1. The magazine moved from Montreal to Toronto this summer."Editor-in-pants" and publisher Serah-Marie McMahon says the magazine has imported from Montreal more than its attitude, but also its successful

Bill Kaluski, a great friend of the industry, to retire from CDS Global December 15.

The staff at CDS Global Inc. (formerly Indas), Canada's largest fulfillment house, has been told that Bill Kaluski, the president and chief executive officer, is retiring December 15. No word yet on who will replace him.Kaluski, whose influence has been felt as a major booster for the magazine industry in general and various professional development and industry events such as the National

CPM disparity means trading digital pennies for print dollars

An interesting column in Folio: about the paradoxical spectacle of some magazine companies, while saying that digital is a large part of their future,cutting digital staffs with almost the same alacrity as traditional print publication staff. Matt Kinsman writes:The problem for consumer publishers are the financials. While publishers have long spoken of online revenue being smaller but more

Style at Home seasonal entertaining videos build traffic

Style at Home magazine is enjoying major success with a website series of "how to" videos on holiday decorating and entertaining, according to a report in Media in Canada. Styleathome.com got 224,000 unique visitors and 1.4 million page views in October. The step-by-step instructional videos feature advice from industry experts, and can be found at www.styleathome.com/videos.

Canadian Business Press buys the Magazine University name

Canadian Business Press (CBP), the service and lobbying group for many of Canada's trade publications has purchased the rights to the name Magazines University from North Island Publishing along with an associated web property. The deal means that CBP will continue running the annual Mags U event (and, possibly some sort of trade show) that had previously been co-produced with North Island's

B2B publishing comes to a fork in the road

Business-to-business media companies have two, possible, future paths to profitable revenue growth,according to a study released at the American Business Media top management meeting in Chicago.The paths, which will seem self-evident to anyone who is on top of their game in the b2b sector, are essentially serving marketers or serving readers. Of the two, serving readers (end users) with content,

Transcon RBW plant staffs up to handle rush of Rogers' magazine printing

The RBW division of Transcontinental is in the process of staffing up to handle the workload from its new contract to print 70 magazines for Rogers Media, including Maclean's and Chatelaine. The new hires, 30 entry-level employees, are in addition to 100 full-time employees recently hired. The Owen Sound plant's workforce is now well over 700, according to a radio report.Brian Reid, the RBW

Transcon bought a portion of Redwood it didn't already own, story says

[This post has been updated] Redwood Custom Communications' parent company in Britain may license the Redwood brand to go into competition with Transcontinental Custom Communications which bought the Redwood North American operations this week.According to a story in Brand Republic, Transcontinental had been (somewhat quietly) a 50% owner in Toronto-based Redwood CC and the sale was essentially

Do comments add to or detract from the conversation?

An interesting post on a blog we follow occasionally, on the subject of online comments (a subject that has come up more than once here as we have wrestled with whether, or not, to allow anonymous comments). The post on the site Lost Remote, by Don Day, a digital media producer in Boise, Idaho, questions whether comments add any real value to discussion. It refers to a Time.com piece from last

Transcon buys Redwood Custom Communications

[This post has been updated] Montreal-based Transcontinental Inc. has acquired Canada's largest custom publisher, Toronto-based Redwood Custom Communications.François Olivier, president and cIhief executive officer at Transcontinental, says his company's main goal is to aid customers in reaching and retaining their target audiences, and that Redwood is at the frontier between traditional

Magazine world view

Our occasional links to stories of interest from outside of Canada.Paper industry magazines merge (Folio:)Sweden rewards failing newspapers (Guardian -- Roy Greenslade)OK magazine struggling in United States (UK Press Gazette)Play Out: NYT shuts sports mag (MediaDaily News)

Love letters contest to celebrate Walrus 5th anniversary

In celebration of its 5th anniversary, The Walrus magazine in association with Vintage Canada is holding a contest that invites all comers to write a love letter.The contest coincides with the paperback publication of Four Letter Word, a collection of fictional love letters edited by Joshua Knelman (the former fiction editor of The Walrus) and Rosalind Porter.The book has already been published

Last manuscript standing wins in Broken Pencil writing contest

There seem to be many variations on writing contests, but one laden with irony is the Broken Pencil Indie Writers Deathmatch, a readers-choice contest in which one story emerges triumphant in what the magazine about 'zines says is "culture's bloodiest fiction contest". Plus, of course, it helps to build both the exchequer and readership as entries are $20 and include a one-year sub to Broken

Readership not the problem at Wish and Gardening Life; just not enough advertisers

About 20 people will lose their jobs at St. Joseph Media with the imminent closure of Wish and Gardening Life, according to an interview with Doug Knight, president, interviewed by Masthead magazine. Knight said that the closure was the "prudent" course in the face of an expected protracted advertising slump. The emphasis has to be on big and established titles lke Toronto Life and Fashion. "

Quote, unquote: our real business

"In this coming century, the form of delivery may change, but the potential audience for our content will multiply many times over. Our real business isn't printing on dead trees. It's giving our readers great journalism and great judgment."-- Rupert Murdoch, quoted in the Guardian from an Australian radio address.

Not such a mystery; just produce an interesting magazine

The Globe and Mail today publishes a story about the fifth anniversary of Vancouver Review magazine but, yet again, manages to damn the entire magazine sector with faint praise. Vancouver novelist Timothy Taylor starts his story thus:One of the great mysteries of our day is how anyone survives in the magazine business. Then goes on to catalogue how visionary partners, editor Gudrun Will and

Canadian firms win big at custom publishing awards

Custom publishing has a different vocabulary to reflect its goals. Hence its awards reflect those goals, with categories that other magazine awards wouldn't use (e.g. best achievement of corporate objectives; proof of return on investment). Still, in this major, growing, marketing industry, Canadian publishing expertise is making major waves.Last week, the Custom Publishing Council's "Pearl

Gardening Life: "there will never be another magazine started to take its place"

Marjorie Harris, the editor-at-large of Gardening Life, the demise of which as abruptly announced last week, reflects in her blog on what the magazine (which started as Toronto Life Gardens) meant to her and what she will miss:So after eleven years as the central part of my life this wonderful magazine is gone like a puff of smoke. There will be one more issue. I guess it’ll be a collector’s item

Quote, unquote: telling the truth about not telling the truth

And so we’ve reached an uncomfortable situation, it seems to me, where the government is committed to keeping information from Canadians, but not to explaining the need for it to do so. Witness the Prime Minister’s “no ransom,” “no political prisoners,” “no dangerous criminals” line when, as Norman Spector observed somewhere on this website, he could far more easily have said national security

Raging Grannies protest "pro-military" journalism award

A protest is being mounted against a journalism award by a group which feels it encourages pro-military propoganda, according to a post on the J-source website. The Ross Munro award is given by the Conference of Defence Associations in Ottawa, an Ottawa lobby group. It comes with $2,500 in prize money. This year, the award will go to Alec Castonguay from Le Devoir and L’actualité. The protest is

Mark your calendar: coast-to-coast professional development

Web Weekend Toronto is Saturday, November 29 and November 30, 2008 (Saturday & Sunday) at Centennial College, The Centre for Creative Communications, 951 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto. It's an intensive, hands-on marketing program created specifically for magazine professionals. Fees are $495 for Magazines Canada members, $595 for non-members, including all coffee breaks, lectures,

Three Canadian mags win big at 28th annual IRMA awards

We're late catching up to the Canadian winners last month in the 28th International Regional Magazines Association (IRMA) awards. IRMA has 43 member magazines, largely regional and tourism-oriented. The 2008 president of the association is Jim Gourlay, the publisher of Saltscapes magazine of Halifax. The Canadian winners were:British Columbia magazineGold, travel featureSilver, culture

Wish and Gardening Life closed by St. Joseph

I realize that this only contributes to the pall that I am struggling against in the post below, but I regret to report that two of St. Joseph Media's magazines, Wish and Gardening Life, are being suspended. A memo to staff from President Douglas Knight, reported in Mastheadonline, says, in part:The global financial crisis has triggered such a dramatic decline in advertising markets that prudent

Take a deep breath, cinch up your belt, get back to work

I have been noticing an increase in the figurative rending of garments over recent bad news for the magazine industry. In some perverse way, magazine people (and other media people) can't resist an "if it bleeds, it leads" approach and the internet allows instant forwarding of increasingly hysterical reports about vaporizing ad budgets and the end of life as we know it.This real appetite for

It's not you, it's me...

This requires no comment, a posting by Ian Alexander in a Folio: column:Dear Advertorial,I don’t know how to say this nicely but ... it’s just not working.I’ve tried for years to include you in my circle. I’ve never made you play the uncomfortable host, I’ve sat you in between features and ads and even given you your own tagline: “Special Advertising Section.”But no matter what I do, you always

Transcon restructuring creates new marketing communications sector

Transcontinental Inc. has announced a restructuring of its operations that further emphasizes the importance to the company of business other than its core printing and publishing (including being Canada's largest consumer magazine publisher). The result has been various appointments and departures. Custom publishing and other custom communications, printing of marketing products (flyers etc.),

U.S.magazine prescription drug ads down 20% so far in 2008

Canadian magazine publishers lamenting the unfairness of the fact that their U.S. competitors can carry direct to consumer advertising while they cannot, it may be interesting to know that all is not joy in that sector.U.S. pharmaceutical advertising in magazines is down almost 20% for the first 8 months of 2008, according to a recent report by TNS Media Intelligence. Prescription drug

How good editorial leads to good audience and to good advertising

Editors, the good ones at least, always have their antennae up, sweeping the world for trends and opportunities to serve readers. That critical relationship between readers and advertisers are discussed in another of Magazines Canada's magblast videos, The Power of the Editorial Surround, featuring Lisa Tant, the editor-in-chief of Flare magazine and Kim Pittaway, a magazine writer and consultant.

Maclean's editor Whyte on book tour to resuscitate Hearst's reputation

Ken Whyte, the editor and publisher of Maclean's magazine, is making an extensive tour across Canada, being interviewed at each stop about his new biography called The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (Random House Canada).The book attempts to resuscitate the reputation of Hearst who has pretty much been pigeonholed as a robber baron publisher both by his own, often

Time magazine says Montreal's public bike system rocks

Time magazine has pronounced that Montreal's public bike system is among the 50 best inventions of 2008. It was number 19 on the list.When lots of people use a communal resource — like, say, a cheap public bicycle-rental program — they tend to abuse it. So when the city of Montreal built its Public Bike System, nicknamed Bixi, the designers packed in all the technology they could find, in a

Magazine world view

Another in our occasional series of links to stories outside of Canada...Average age, household income of (U.S.) magazine readers on rise (Folio:)Advertising industry may not recover until 2010 (Bloomberg)Magazine deals are "difficult", not "impossible) Folio:Reed Elsvier warns RBI sale "cannot be certain" (UK Press Gazette)Ad pages drop, holiday season looks grim (MediaPost)Magazine advertisers

Palin story one among many hoaxes by fake institute

Though it has little to do with Canadian magazines, this story is too delicious to pass up. A report in the New York Times says that the much reported, much blogged story about Republican campaign officials saying Sarah Palin didn't know Africa was a continent...is a hoax. You can read the story and send our sceptic-o-meters out for a tune-up.

Well, that's one strategy...

"Dailies swim around with an anvil under each arm. One anvil is objectivity and the other is 'family newspaper.' Alt-weeklies have the luxury of publishing writing by adults, to adults, and for adults."...."I mean, daily newspapers all need to put "fuck" in a headline above the fold one day -- it'll solve all their problems. That's my prescription. And then in one fell swoop they'll get rid of

Quote, unquote: Raising rates or walking away from writers

“Magazines will have a choice: Either they raise the fee for that particular job or they walk away from the writer. And believe me, there’s going to be a lot of that going on. Some writers are clearly worth more than they are getting and some writers are not. The writers who are not are not going to get any more.”-- The Walrus editor John Macfarlane (retired editor of Toronto Life), commenting to

Magazines Canada hires ad agency to pitch to ad agencies and advertisers

Magazines Canada has hired the ad firm Zulu Alpha Kilo to help promote magazines to agencies and advertisers, according to a story in Marketing magazine. “The Canadian magazine industry is doing very well serving its readers and advertisers,” said Gary Garland, Magazines Canada executive director, advertising services. “But in this [economic] climate, we determined we needed a strong new

Style at Home was prepared to accept use of edit page for coffee-maker ad

A product placement gimmick in the current issue of Transcontinental Media's Style at Home magazine could have been in other mainstream consumer magazines had they been more willing to tailor their editorial to make it work, according to the advertiser who pulled the idea off.The ad uses a stitched-in acetate overlay that, when the page is turned, places a Tassimo coffee maker on the counter of

Fulford says when people talk about death of print, they don't mean magazines

A friend attended the Sarah Fulford lecture last night at Ryerson University in Toronto and sends this dispatch:It was a respectful crowd of mainly students that heard Toronto Life editor Sarah Fulford speak at the School of Journalism's Dean's Lecture Series at Ryerson last night. Apparently, the protest movement that mobilized around her magazine's current cover feature about the murder of 16-

Canadian Lawyer magazine says "look south"

Canadian Lawyer magazine (CLB Media) has published a cover theme about South America called Exploring the New World. The opportunities there (and the pitfalls) are illustrated by reporting on the experience of the firm Macleod Dixon.From the two legal professionals...at its inauguration a decade ago, Macleod Dixon’s office in Caracas now boasts 46 lawyers. In addition to being the first, and

Association pubs told that robust web-only can be the way to go

Readers of association publications want "more and more of less and less", the Society of National Association Publications conference in Chicago was told. Rebecca Rolfes, executive vice president of new business development at Imagination Publishing, told association publishers that several elements are changing their roles as publishers. This, according to a story carried in Folio:. She said

Shame on you, say the critics; I'm proud I did it, says Toronto Life editor

Marco Ursi, the editor of Masthead, has done a commendable follow-up on the controversy over the Toronto Life cover story (see previous post). He reports that the article was criticized at a news conference Tuesday morning on a number of specific points, from the wording of the sub-head and the conflation of Aqsa Parvez's killing with earlier media stories about sharia law and the arrest of the

Digital editions said to be no substitute for a good magazine website

Kat Tancock over at Magazines Online blog weighs the pros and cons of digital editions of magazines, about which she could be said to be lukewarm. She sums up that a reproduction of the magazine pages is no substitute for a well-designed and well-executed magazine website.

Toronto Life cover story on "honour killing" comes in for criticism

[This post has been updated*]The cover story in the December issue of Toronto Life about the so-called "honour killing" of Aqsa Parvez, has provoked a furious reaction from a group of people who denounce it as a misrepresentation. Using a Facebook page, they have called on people who agree with them to flood editor Sarah Fulford, her voicemail and her inbox with denunciations of the story.A

Oh, is that how they do it?

A little while ago, we told you about Grazia, a fashion magazine in Britain which was setting up a "pod" in a shopping mall to produce one of its issues so that passerby could see the process. Now MagCulture has posted a picture of the setup, which it calls more of a "post hurricane bungalow"

Indian matchmaking and matrimony mag to launch in Canada

A major India-based internet portal about matrimony is launching a print vehicle in the United States and Canada called BharatMatrimony Times. The magazine is apparently aimed at the large number of first and second-generation sub-continent immigrants who are interested in finding an Indian bride or groom. The website offers a premium personalized matchmaking service. (The portal is owned by

Bullish forecast for 2008 Canadian online revenue

The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IABC) says that it expects online advertising to grow by 25% in 2008, according to a release. This despite the economic slump. It says that revenue is expected to be $1.5 billion, up from $1.2 billion actuals of 2007."The 2008 revenue figure should be expected to be pretty safe," says Paula Gignac, President of IAB Canada, "as that budget was fully

The market and the internet don't care if your publication makes money

Are magazines and newspapers entitled to make money because they provide a particularly valuable public service? The question of "entitlement" is central to a posting by Publishing 2.0 blogger Scott Karp who echoes writer Seth Goodin's view that the market doesn't care if a particular media makes money or not.Media companies can only think about their own properties, their own content. They can’t

Sifton out at Sun Media as Peladeau consolidates control

It depends upon perception, but the announcement at the end of last week that Quebecor Inc. is integrating Sun Media and its national web portal Canoe under the leadership of Pierre Karl Peladeau, president and CEO of Quebecor meant that Michael Sifton was out.Sifton sold his Osprey Media group to Sun Media and became its president and CEO a year ago September. Osprey brought a stable of smaller

Role Models Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews co-writer and director David Wain and co-writer and actor Ken Marino about Role Models

Copyright Unlikely Films, Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved.


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OMDC study urges government to increase magazine funding, create tax credit

The Ontario Media Development Corporation has published A Strategic Study of the Magazine Industry in Ontario. It was put up on the OMDC website today. It was prepared by TCI Management Consultants.The report recommends the creation of a new, refundable tax credit for magazines "the only creative sector that does not currently benefit from this form of support." It says that significant

Canadian Magazines poll watch

Recent results from the little polls we run down there on the right: When Canada Post starts charging by distance to deliver subs, what should publishers do?Absorb the difference (38%)Increase subs across the board (31%)Start charging by distance (31%)How should we regard magazine internships? (multiple answers OK)An extension of education (21%)Exploitation (20%)On-the-job training (19%)A great

Is Time Inc. going to be for sale?

Apologies for making you more jittery about the magazine business than you already are, there is a suggestion in the Wall Street Journal (via UK Press Gazette) that the publishing arm of Time Warner may soon be up for sale.The question is whether, in the present economic situation, there are any would-be buyers. Time and Fortune are big-name titles and the Wall Street Journal suggests that as "

Study on state of the Ontario magazine industry due for release

On Friday, the Ontario Media Development Corporation will be releasing a study of the current state of the Ontario magazine industry. This is important not only because Ontario is home to slightly more than half of Canada's magazines, but also because there has been precious little good data available. The results of the strategy study will be distributed on November 7 to various stakeholders and

Thirty years on, is "feminist pornography" still a contradiction in terms?

Many magazines are offering podcasting, audio or video or both. It's an excellent way to augment the print content of the magazine, to present information in a different, but still accessible way. Sometimes the content is original and sometimes keyed off a current article.But how many magazines dig back into their history to compare and contrast today's articles with those of years past. That's

Spafax folds Bell ExpressVu's satellite TV magazines

Spafax Inc. is folding its custom television magazines Show and its French language counterpart Extra. A note from Jennifer Warren, editor-in-chief of the two magazines which were produced on behalf of Bell ExpressVu (posted on My Hogtown) says it was "due to a corporate change in direction for Bell's marketing communications".Spafax, the custom publisher best known for publishing enRoute, the

New York City looking for ways to come to the aid of its media companies

New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has launched an initiative to come to the aid of the metropolis's ailing media industries, according to a story in the New York Observer.The media industry is one of the largest in the city, accounting for more than 160,000 jobs and $15 billion in wages, and occupying more than 14 percent of Manhattan’s office space. [The Economic Development Corporation] EDC

Town Media's 26 magazines switch to forest-friendly paper

Town Media, the publishers of Hamilton magazine and Vines (among others) this month will begin using only forest-friendly paper for printing 2.6 million copies annually of 26 magazines, making it the largest magazine publisher in Canada to use paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council of Canada (FSC).The company, based in Burlington, Ontario is the magazine publishing division of Osprey

ABC announces changes to rules affecting Canadian b-to-b magazines

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), meeting in New York, has announce rule changes, including several that will apply to business-to-business magazines in Canada.According to a report in Media in Canada, publishers will be using a new multimedia report that will include website traffic, e-newsletter activity and pass-along receivership data. Business publications will also no longer be

Felix Dennis honoured by British Society of Magazine Editors

Felix Dennis, the founder of Dennis Publishing and its iconic titles Maxim magazine and Stuff and The Week, has been honoured by the British Society of Magazine Editors, according to a story in the UK Press Gazette. The prestigious Mark Boxer Award goes to an individual who, in the opinion of the BSME committee, has made an outstanding editorial contribution to magazines in this country.Dennis

Thomas McCarthy - The Visitor Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews writer-director Thomas McCarthy about The Visitor

Copyright Unlikely Films, Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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New Yorker magazine launches full digital edition, free to print subscribers

While much of any given week's New Yorker magazine content has been available online for some time, print subscribers can now enjoy free access to a complete, digital edition first thing each Monday morning as the magazine comes off the press and considerably ahead* of when most people receive sub copies or are able to buy singles. According to a story in paidContent.org, the magazine's "soft

Folio: features magazine covers of the presidential campaign

As you wait for or reflect on the U.S. election results, you might want to entertain yourself with a slide show put together by Folio: of 115 magazine covers (mostly from the U.S.; none from Canada) that featured the presidential campaign in one way or another. Folio: cleverly included 4 "fake" covers which are so well done that you might mistake them for something that was actually published. (

US News reported to be cutting back to a monthly

Piece by piece, the smallest of the U.S. newsmagazines, U.S. News and World Report, has been getting out of the news business and relying more and more on its annual rankings and other popular consumer guides. According to a story in the Washington Post, USNWR, which announced in June that it was going to cut back to bimonthly starting in 2009, has now decided to make that monthly.The decision to

Auditing guidebook published by advertising associations

A new publication, Media Auditing: A Guidebook on Best Practices for the Canadian Market, has been published to help advertisers, agencies and auditors understand key media auditing issues. The best practices and guidelines were written by media management consultant David Chung in consultation with the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA), Canadian Media Directors' Council (CMDC), Institute

Howcum magazines aren't demanding a slice for Google's use of their content?

With book publishers successfully taking on Google over digitization of their content, how come magazines and newspapers aren't following suit? asks The Century Foundation in a posting. Since the $125 million settlement implicitly acknowledges that information is not free.This leads to an obvious, critical question: Why aren’t newspapers and news magazines demanding payment for use of their

Design City show focusses on colour, layout and selling design

Design City is a "show within a show", sponsored by Design Edge Canada magazine and part of Print World 2008, Canada's largest trade show for short-run printing. The show runs November 22 - 24 at the Direct Energy Centre in Toronto. There are three paid seminars and three workshops that are included in paid admission, all pitched at designers, art directors, design managers, production managers

DogSport magazine sold to U.S. manufacturer

A Guelph couple who lovingly created DogSport magazine for dogs who compete in agility and physically challenging athletics, have reluctantly sold their creation to a U.S. manufacturer of a dog agility products. Andrew and Anne Douglas officially handed over to NTI Global, based in Amsterdam, NY on October 17, according to a story in Masthead.The bimonthly magazine found it difficult to provide

Alberta Oil website relaunched with global focus

The online arm of Alberta Oil, albertaoilmagazine.com has been relaunched. The print edition was overhauled and relaunched last month after the magazine and website were purchased by Edmonton's Venture Publishing in June. The magazine and website provide news and analysis of Canada's energy sector. The website, which is has been expanded to cover the issues and trends facing the global energy

Magazine world view

German publisher G + J braces for major ad slowdown(Reuters)British Society of Magazine Editors Awards top covers of 2008 (Guardian)Victoria Beckham fails in bid to get summary privacy ruling against Grazia (Press Gazette)Harvard backs out of Google book scanning after reading settlement fine print (paidContent)

Tearing down the crepe; Canadian magazines can fight back with facts

One of CBC Radio's biggest audiences is Metro Morning, the drive-time show hosted by Andy Barrie in Toronto. What people hear there is often the fodder for watercooler chat later in the day. So it was with some dismay that I heard the interview Barrie conducted this morning with Marco Ursi, the editor of Masthead magazine about the state of the industry.Ursi did a good job of answering questions

Magazines Canada ramps up: when the going gets tough, the tough get going

In response to the storm of depressing magazine news these days, it's encouraging that Magazines Canada is taking several very worthwhile initiatives.Two new national association partners have joined the MagNet superconference, held each June (this year June 2 - 5) in Toronto. The Canadian Authors Association (CAA) will hold its annual conference at MagNet 2009, while the Editors' Association of

National Post dumps home delivery in two more provinces

The National Post, which cut out home delivery in the Atlantic provinces a year ago, has now dropped home delivery in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. In its place, they are offering a reduced price on receiving a digital edition of the paper. So, while this doesn't mean the paper is not "national" in its coverage, it certainly means so in availability."We were losing money distributing the paper for

Throw out your 5-year plans, says Time Inc. CEO, it's 1931

Time Inc.’s decision to reorganize and cut 600 jobs had nothing to do with digital competition and was 100% to do with the economic mess, according to CEO Ann Moore. According to a report in Folio: She used her ABC Circulation Conference keynote address in New York City as an opportunity to explain that drastic action was based on drastic circumstances (that she and her management team did not

Magazines need to play to their strengths and nurture their audiences

While I take some of the responsibility for liberally spreading gloom with my posts and links about closures, cutbacks and depressing data in the magazine industry, it is doing no one any favours by glossing over such bad news. However it might be worth taking a pause and looking at the fundamentals that give magazines an edge when it comes to coping with the bad news and competing in a bloody

Men's Vogue shrinks back to supplement; Portfolio drops two issues and 20% of staff

Up and down in a few years, Men's Vogue is being cut back to be a twice-a-year supplement to parent magazine Vogue. And Portfolio magazine, launched just last year is being cut back to 10 times a year from monthly.In what is a sign of expected hard times to come at Conde Nast, the men's fashion spinoff that had grown to a standalone 10 times a year is shrinking back to appear in the spring and

James Moore of B.C. named Heritage minister

With today's federal cabinet shuffle, there is a new minister in charge of the Department of Canadian Heritage. Josée Verner is now to be Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister for La Francophonie.Replacing her is James Moore of Port Moody B.C., a radio broadcaster who became an MP in the 2000 election after working for a time as a

Azure lures 2-year subs with a handmade Italian collectible

Azure, the Toronto-based bimonthly design, architecture and interiors magazine, has taken subscription premium offers to a whole other level. People who sign up for a 2-year subscription get one of 2,000 rubber silicone fish especially designed for the magazine by Italian designer Gaetano Pesce (whose name means 'fish'). It's made of plastic resin and polyester fibre and each one is individually

Essay collection by former Weekend staff writer recalls life in Canada's corners

Back in what seems more and more a "golden age" for Canadian magazines, Weekend Magazine sent writer Ernest Hillen across Canada writing "portraits" of Canadian lives in various corners of the country. It's hard to imagine a magazine today doing such a thing.Now Oxford University Press Canada has gathered Hillen's essays together in a delightful collection called A Weekend Memoir. It will appeal

Quote, unquote: how much room in the internet lifeboat?

The print magazine business is dying and dying faster than many analysts thought it would. Its only life boat is the internet. A life boat only holds so many people. -- Douglas A. McIntyre, an editor at 247wallst.com (in Blogging Stocks; copied in several other analyst-written financial newsletters).

Quote, unquote: the best defense is a good offense

If you were running the New York Times, what would you do?Shut off the print edition right now. You’ve got to play offense. You’ve got to do what Intel did in ’85 when it was getting killed by the Japanese in memory chips, which was its dominant business. And it famously killed the business—shut it off and focused on its much smaller business, microprocessors, because that was going to be the

The essential paradox; paper is still how publishing is paid for

David Carr in the New York Times distills an essential paradox of the business:For readers, the drastic diminishment of print raises an obvious question: if more people are reading newspapers and magazines, why should we care whether they are printed on paper? The answer is that paper is not just how news is delivered; it is how it is paid for. More than 90 percent of the newspaper industry’s

Finkle says Canadian freelance industry just the right size to make agency feasible

Eye Weekly in Toronto has published a longish interview with Derek Finkle about his nascent Canadian Writers Group agency. He says the current system of compensating writers, which is paying them as they were paid 15 or more years ago doesn't make sense and that, while writing is "a valuable skill, a special skill", writers are often too timid to bring up issues of underpayment because they don't

Design Edge magazine has most prescient cover of the year

The prize for the most prescient magazine cover of the year, I think, must go to Design Edge Canada. Its September-October issue asks an apt question, for which the correct answer is, now, completely obvious.

Unruly commenters sent to go sit in the corner...

Maclean's columnist Paul Wells has apparently had it with unruly commenters and has temporarily suspended comments on his Inkless Wells blog.I’m closing Inkless to comments for at least the next several days. I had been urging readers to show better manners, and while most didn’t need any encouragement in that direction, a few can’t control themselves. This policy applies only to my blog and it

Christian Science Monitor abandons print

Two months ago, we carried an item about how the Christian Science Monitor had reinvented itself, giving priority to its website, though continuing to publish and sell a print edition of 55,000. Well, the other shoe has dropped as the Monitor has announced that it is abandoning its print edition. In light of that, managing publisher Jonathan Wells's comment in August takes on new meaning: "We had

U.S. big mags suffering "tremendous advertising attrition"

Spoiler Alert! If you're already sawing at your wrists over the economy, approach the following item with caution![This post has been updated] Magazines are likely to follow newspapers down a very slippery slope with a nasty bump at the bottom, according to the financial newsletter 24/7 Wall Street.As the year wears on there is growing evidence that the magazine industry will not escape the fate

Frank magazine folds, saying "it is time to move on"

Frank, the obstreperous, occasionally scurrilous, Canadian magazine of satire and gossip, which has survived several changes of hands and near-death experiences, has apparently run out of runway. The following notice has gone out to subscribers from publisher Michael Bate: To our regret, we have decided to stop publishing Frank Magazine. Effective immediately, both the online efrank.ca and the

Few magazines have committed to the web, says Ad Age editor

There is a major gap between what magazine publishers say about their websites and the reality of those websites, according to Jonah Bloom, editor of Advertising Age. In a column (unfortunately behind a pay wall), he said:Major magazines’ corollary websites still account for only a tiny percentage of all web activity. Very few magazines — the exceptions being ESPN, National Geographic, Real

If Obama were a magazine, he'd be People, says survey

If he were a magazine, Barack Obama would be People, while John McCain would be Business Week, according to a survey conducted in the U.S. by Landor Associates and Penn, Schoen & Berland associating the presidential and vice-presidential candidates with various brands and fictional characters. Even weirder, Obama and Sarah Palin have many characteristics in common: coffee (Starbucks); magazine (

National Post discontinues Toronto "magazine" section

[This post has been updated]While it falls somewhere outside my definition of a "magazine", being really a newspaper tabloid section, it nevertheless is an unhappy indicator when the floundering National Post discontinues its Toronto magazine section. Yesterday's issue was the last and whatever is salvaged from the section will now be subsumed in the main, broadsheet pages of the weekend

Annals of design: Marchbank archive worth a look

(This has nothing to do with Canada, except for those who like excellent magazine design.) Pearce Marchbank, a well-known London designer, has put up a new website showing his work in various media, including some stunning magazines. He did everything from Architectural Design to Oz and much in between. (In fact, when the three editors of Oz were jailed for obscenity in 1971 after a landmark

U of T nursing faculty launches twice-annual magazine Pulse

The University of Toronto's Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing has a new magazine called Pulse which has been distributed across Canada in the last couple of weeks. The editor is Lucianna Ciccocioppo (who is the communications and media relations coordinator at the school) and the art director is Levi Nicholson of Zaxis Publishing Inc. (who is also undertaking the redesign of This Magazine)

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Sarah Fulford to tell editor hopefuls how she landed her dream job

Ed2010 Toronto is presenting Toronto Life editor Sarah Fulford. next month as part of its semi-regular speakers' series.The newly minted editor of award-winning city magazine Toronto Life – who at 34 is the youngest editor to hold one of the top media jobs in the country – will share her advice on how to land your dream job. Sarah's brief talk will be followed by a Q&A period. Shy? Send Ed your

Must have been its ninth life...Radar folding

Radar magazine, which has had more than one revival, is folding for good, according to a report in the New York Observer. Or, at least, its print magazine is folding. The website is sold to AMI to be redesigned under the editorship of David Pecker, the editor-in-chief of the National Enquirer. (You can't make this stuff up.)According to the Observer:Started by Maer Roshan in 2003, the magazine

Major awards to be made to journalists researching, writing about health issues

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research is encouraging journalists in Canada to engage in research and creation of projects that promote health research. Five $20,000 awards and five $10,000 awards are to be made and the program is open to all working journalists in Canada and Canadian journalists working abroad, in all mediums.Projects are expected to include a period of investigation to

Former Esquire cover guru decries electronic cover "gimmick"

Recently, Esquire magazine published a battery driven "electronic" cover that caused some buzz, but only a few ripples in the business. Now, legendary Esquire art director George Lois (1962-72) has waded in with a video interview with Ad Age, decrying the "silly gimmick".

U.K. magazine launch aims at getting those young people involved

A young publisher in Britain is launching a magazine to try and engage young people in politics. According to a story in Press Gazette, University of Bristol lecturer Laura-Jane Foley, a former editor of Cambridge University's Varsity magazine has started Politick, a quarterly publication aimed at getting young people interested in politics.“I wanted to find some way of tapping into that

Charlie Kaufman - Synecdoche, NY Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews writer-director Charlie Kaufman about Synecdoche, NY

Copyright Unlikely Films, Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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Masthead closure has major implications for the Canadian magazine industry

The word today that Canada's magazine about magazines, Masthead, is closing after 21 years (see post below) is lamentable news. The magazine, which started out in print and was an early adopter of the web, has striven over those years to find a viable business model, from print subs, to pay-wall website, to free web access, but apparently without success. [Disclosure: I have for some time been a

Newsflash: Masthead and MastheadOnline to fold

Unfortunately, it appears that the issue of Masthead currently in production is to be its last.

Next month? Scratch and sniff pop-ups

Half the ads and many of the photos in the Sports Illustrated Kids November issue are in 3-D, demonstrating that gimmicks sometimes work. According to an article in Mediaweek, the number of ad pages for the issue increased 26%. Yet whether the stunt delivers a longterm benefit for SI Kids remains to be seen. In general, kids' magazines have fought a tough battle for ad pages as packaged foods,

Twitter as a new tool for engaging with magazine audiences

The U.S. quarterly Make — claims it is the first magazine to offer customer support via the social web messaging platform Twitter. It allows its tech-savvy readers to send the magazine instant messages, or “tweets” as they are called in Twitter-speak and get an all-but-instant reply. However, we are aware of some other magazines with their own Twitter account. For instance, Canada's venerable

Strange but true! Reader's Digest finds pointed differences between Canadians and Americans

Canadians and Americans have pointed differences on some key issues, according to a global poll published in the November issue of Reader's Digest."The results were revealing, though not altogether surprising," said Peter Stockland, Editor-in-Chief of Reader's Digest Canada. "We have long suspected Canadians and Americans are different - our poll found those differences to be pointed on a number

First, Zoomer magazine; now a show for the Zoomer consumer

On the heels of the launch of Zoomer magazine for the over-45s, Zoomer Media is launching a Toronto-based consumer lifestyle show that it hopes will be the template for going national next year. According to a story in Media in Canada, the Zoomer Show is said to be expecting 10,000 attendance over two days at the Direct Energy Centre at Toronto's Exhibition Place, Nov. 1-2. Admission will be

British magazine distribution could do with some competition, report says

British magazine publishers and retailers may soon see greater competition in distribution of titles, after a ruling by the Office of Fair Trading (OTF). According to a story in the Guardian, it means thatNewspaper distribution will continue to be protected by an opt-out from competition law under guidance handed down today by the Office of Fair Trading.However, the regulator said magazine

New freelance agency formally announced; more than 80 writers already signed up

The Canadian Writers Group (CWG), the fledgling agency for freelancers, including freelance magazine writers, has announced not only details of its service but also a stunning list of people who have signed on for it. As many of you will know, former Toro editor Derek Finkle has launched the new agency with the intention of negotiating better rates for writers. Until now, only informal,

Roundtable created to recommend how Ontario can fix flaws in blue box program

Citing continuing "glaring flaws" in the Ontario blue box recycling program, Magazines Canada has announced the creation of a roundtable to make recommendations to the province to change it . Ontario’s Minister of the Environment, John Gerretsen released a discussion paper on the Waste Diversion Act on October 21 for public consultation. The proposed roundtable will reach beyond magazine

Wannabe a magawards judge? Here's your chance

The National Magazine Awards Foundation is accepting nominations from the Canadian magazine industry for jury members for the 32nd annual National Magazine Awards. Individuals interested in judging should send names and a brief description of relevant expertise to NMAF Communication Manager Richard Johnson at staff[at]magazine-awards.com by October 31. The NMAF’s judging guidelines are available

OMDC planning document notes challenges magazines share with other media

Magazine publishers in Ontario would do well to look over a recently published document from the Ontario Media Development Corporation. The OMDC has always been weighted a bit heavily towards its origins as the Ontario Film Development Corporation, but it is good to see that their planning document "towards a strategic plan" gives due attention to magazine publishing and other media as well.

Making fashion mag where fashion shopping is done

The British fashion weekly Grazia, published by Bauer Media, is trying audacious move that is apparently intended to engage with readers -- it is moving offices for a week and producing the next weekly issue in a west London shopping centre.According to a story in UK Press Gazette, computers, telephones, fashion cupboards and a photographic studio will all be shifted to a perspex pod in the

subTerrain turns 20

subTerrain, the literary magazine of “strong words for a polite nation,” celebrated its twentieth year in print last week at Cafe Montmartre on Main Street in Vancouver. Brian Kaufmann, the never-aging publisher of both subTerrain and the equally venerable Anvil Press, had a seat at the table selling copies of Number 50 as well as some handsome T-shirts which (I discover as I write) are

CDS global teams up with Magazines Canada on national co-op DM promotion campaign

CDS Global, the fulfillment giant, has entered into a multi-year partnership with Magazines Canada in support of the association's highly successful cooperative direct marketing campaign. According to a release, CDS will provide subscription fulfillment for the entire campaign, which represents up to 200 English- and French-language titles in the Buy 2, Get 1 Free promotion.What's noteworthy is

Magazine world view

Financial Times posters urge firms not to cut ad spend in economic downturn(Guardian)Amazon's UK launch of Kindle delayed(paidContent.org)Granta to launch in Italy and Spain (Publisher's Weekly)Writers pen protest at terror bill (Guardian)Christopher Buckley says he's been 'fatwahed' (The Daily Beast)

Readers feel squeezed, but so far sticking with high-end glossies

While a pessimistic pall seems to hang over the magazine industry in some quarters, there is a view that one of the things that will save some magazines in times of tight money and advertiser skittishness is the tight relationship they have with their readers. An article in the Observer, from Britain, suggests that not only are magazines good value, but that readers will be reluctant to give them

The Secret Life of Bees Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood about The Secret Life of Bees

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Downtown park being named after late, great June Callwood

A park in Toronto, especially designed to serve toddlers and their caregivers, is being named after the late magazine writer and crusader, June Callwood. It's just south of Fort York and connects the fort to the lake. Nice to see such a tribute. [Thanks to spacing.ca for alerting us to this.]

The wayback machine

From time to time, we look back to see what was happening around this time a year or two ago.A year ago...PWAC fighting back against contractual rights grab (16 October 07)Five culture ministers in Ontario in 7 years (12 October 07)Feeling nervous, are we? Canadian Lawyer tries to squelch upstart competitor (10 October 07)CanGeo makes clean sweep of its circ department (10 October 07)Western

Drawing entries

I suppose it is only fitting that illustrators should be expected to put out some first-rate material to invite entries for the annual compilation of the Society of Illustrators called Illustrators 51 (for which Canadian illustrators are welcome). But, oh boy, what a nice piece of work John Cuneo has done with the poster, which can be downloaded as a pdf. Above's a detail: (thanks to the blog

Quote, unquote: Playboy's layoffs

Not even nekkid women can convince people to buy magazines these days.-- Manhattan media blog Gawker, reporting Playboy's cutting of 80 jobs to save $12 million.

Spun sugar coating won't hide bad magazine news

Dylan Stableford, a columnist for Folio:, asks an apt question about the "happy talk" approach of such organizations at the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) and American Business Media (ABM) in reporting what are -- by anyone's definition -- lamentable information about the state of the U.S. magazine industry.He says that the organizations do no one any good by "burying the lead", such as

Ontario says magazine support so far this year tops $1.3 million

The Ontario government has so far this fiscal year invested $1.3 million into the Ontario magazine publishing sector, including $862,500 that has gone to 37 Ontario-based publishers for various strategic initiatives through the OMDC Magazine Fund, according to a release from the Ontario Media Development Corporation. (OMDC is an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture and concerns itself with

PWAC executive director Degen named literature officer of the Ontario Arts Council

[This post has been updated] John Degen, the executive director of the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) is leaving the organization to become the literature officer of the Ontario Arts Council. He replaces the retiring Lorraine Filyer.We read about it in a posting on the Creators' Copyright Coalition website (which is somehow fitting, since Degen has been an outspoken champion of

Mygazines.com folds in the face of industry fury

A brief item on its website signals the end of the pirate magazine-sharing site mygazines.com. It was re-published on Folio: today. While this particular site is gone, no word on what the industry is doing about other sites like this one.Related posts:Blame Canada: Publishers reach settlement with pirate mygazines siteMagazine pirating site in crosshairs of British and U.S. publishersWhat's yours

Rogers sells Ontario Out of Doors to Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters

Rogers Publishing has sold Ontario Out of Doors magazine to Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters. The magazine has been closely associated with OFAH and the magazine is said to be going to carry on with much the same management team, according to a memorandum to staff from Marc Blondeau, Senior Vice-President, Consumer Publishing.Originally founded in 1969, OOD was purchased by Maclean

U.S. TV Guide was sold for $1 plus its liabilities

There's a lot of hidden meaning in the term"conditions of the sale were not disclosed". This week, Macrovision "sold" the print edition of the U.S. version of TV Guide magazine, as reported in an earlier post. But, according to a posting on paidContent.org, based on an SEC filing, the price was...$1.Wow, we knew Macrovision (NSDQ: MVSN) was desperate to get rid of the print version of TV Guide,

Access Copyright urging content creators to register

Access Copyright is urging writers, publishers, photographers and visual artists to register with them so that they can receive payment for secondary use of their work. While registration is free, Access says, reproduction of your content shouldn't be. For more information call 1-800-893-5777 or go online to register as an affiliate.

Thin, light, flexible and not paper

From the BBC, a video story on a plastic "e-paper", a super-thin electronic reader that was developed at Cambridge University and is now going into production in Dresden, Germany. Looks kinda grey to me, but this is probably a future option for some kinds of magazines.

Magazine world view

Vogue Declares Victory for Democrats in November Issue Cover Line (HuffPo)Conde Nast's digital chief swaps Vogue for Glam (UK Press Gazette)Magazine Ad Pages Fall 12.9 Percent During Third Quarter (Folio:)Esquire's E-Ink Cover Inspires Hacker Community (Folio:)Bloomberg reports bids for Reed Business Information have declined (BtoB online)

Europeans may relax direct-to-consumer drug ad restrictions

European pharmaceutical manufacturers seem to be prevailing in their desire to advertise direct to consumers. The High Level Pharmaceutical Forum, a once-a-year meeting convened by the European Commission, concluded at its recent meeting that "all the relevant players" should be able to provide an improved "quality of information" to consumers – though the forum fell short of supporting

Will readers turn against magazines because of environmental impact of paper-making?

Avrim Lazar, the president of the Forest Products Association of Canada, delivered a sobering message to the American Magazine Conference last week in San Francisco -- he predicted that environmentally minded Americans would focus in future on the connection between magazine paper and global climate change."What you're selling when you sell a magazine is identity for the consumer; you have a

Eagle Eye Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews co-writer Travis Wright about Eagle Eye

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TV Guide U.S. sold to private equity firm

While TV Guide (Canada) soldiers on as an online-only product of Transcontinental Media, TV Guide magazine (U.S.) has been on the block. Now its owners, Macrovision Solutions Corporation has sold it to OpenGate Capital. Macrovision announced in January that it was going to divest the print magazine after it acquired the previous owners, Gemstar-TV Guide, although keeping the online

Best and worst magazine design trends of 2008

Luke Hayman, a highly respected designer (partner in the New York firm Pentagram) is featured on the Society of Publication Designers blog talking about the best and worst magazine design trends. The video was filmed at Folio: Show 2008.

U.S. fulfillment operations merge under Palm Coast brand

In a consolidation that was anticipated following a takeover, Palm Coast Data of Florida and Kable Fulfillment Services will be merged and centralized in Florida , closing in the process Kable's Colorado and Illinois operations. Ironically, though Kable took over Palm Coast and the combined entity will still be managed by Kable, it will operate under the Palm Coast name. It is expected that

Maclean's cleared of hate speech by B.C. human rights tribunal

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ruled Friday that a controversial article about Islam by columnist Mark Steyn (left) in Maclean's magazine did not violate the province's hate speech law. The decision was released late Friday afternoon.The tribunal ruled that the excerpt from Steyn's book America Alone was not likely to expose Muslims to hatred or contempt. The excerpt dealt with the

Cosmogirl magazine folds as print product

Cosmogirl magazine is closing, being folded into big sister title Seventeen. Hearst Magazines CEO Cathie Black made the announcement of the "strategic decision" today and we saw it reported in several places, including Jeff Bercovici's column in Portfolio magazine.Effective with the December issue, CosmoGirl will continue to exist online cosmogirl.com. Cosmogirl subscribers will be offered

Sarah Palin, up close and unretouched

Oh, for heaven's sake. Magazines get slammed for airbrushing cover models or putting starlets heads on other people's bodies, fair enough. But then to turn around and criticize Newsweek for showing Sarah Palin in closeup without airbrushing is a bit much. Folio: quotes a Republican media consultant, Andrea Tantaros, saying she is "outraged" that the magazine didn't photoshop the facial wrinkles

Reader's Digest Canada one of few bright spots for parent company

Reader's Digest Canada is one of the few bright spots for Reader's Digest Association, which has posted an operating loss of $337 million for fiscal 2008, compared with a lost of a tenth of that last year. Most of the loss is attributed to writedowns in its school and educuational services division, according to a story published by Folio: According to the report, RDA’s fiscal 2008 net revenue

Alberta magazine business is booming, study says

According to a new study for the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association, the business in Alberta is booming. A story on Masthead says that the study, by Rowland Lorimer & Associates, puts the revenue value of Alberta magazine publishing at $83.4 million and its share of national revenue has doubled over the last decade to 4%. Alberta has 40% of the periodical publishing revenue in Canada’s

Setting a whole new standard for selling magazines

A new magazine store (note, not a newsstand) in Berlin called Do You Read Me? is setting a very high standard for serving people who love magazines. It carries a curated assortment of contemporary magazines, a comprehensive range of art, culture, fashion, photography, design, architecture, literature, music, theater, society, politics and business titles usually of the the high-end and glossy

Canzine shows the roots of magazines and alternative culture

If you want to see the grassroots of the magazine industry, there is no better place than at Canzine, the annual 'zine fair and display of alterrnative culture held in Toronto.This year's event is on Sunday, October 26th, 2008 from 1pm-7 pm at the Gladstone Hotel Downtown Toronto, 1214 Queen St. West (Queen just East of Dufferin). The event has been organized for many years by Broken Pencil, the

Quote,unquote: What the economic crisis demands

The dramatic events of recent weeks have destroyed the idea that markets are best left to their own, unregulated devices. The enormous costs of this complacency have been clearly demonstrated. Government and its institutions must now show leadership and play a more active role in stabilizing financial markets, stimulating real investment, and maintaining employment and incomes.-- from an open

We knew that! Magazines beat TV and online in return-on-investment

A new study of ROI in magazine advertising found that magazines influence people more than TV or online media at two critical junctures: familiarizing people with brands; and forming an intent to purchase. The study by Marketing Evolution is reported in MediaDaily News, and is a compilation of 38 different studies, most focussing on big advertising categories like automotive, entertainment,

e-Mag Ruckus launched by York university arts students

York University art students have launched what they call and "e-mag" (as opposed to a blog) called Ruckus magazine, according to a story posted by BlogTO. Created by grads and current students at York University, the web site is still a work in progress but ultimately plans to feature local artist profiles, info about grants and art focused events, news, reviews and event previews in all arts

Magazine world view

TV Guide Network Being Sold Separately From Mag; Book Finally Out(paidContent.org)Bleeding 'Times' Blood (New York magazine)Sony Updates Its Reader (paidContent.org)Dennis Publishing expands with photography mag buy-up (UK Press Gazette)Some Bright Spots in a Gloomy Year for Magazines (Advertising Age)

Brainy brand magazines using clever, inexpensive means to attract readers

Catching up with a New York Times article of October 2 on the way two so-called "brainy brand" magazines are using whimsical devices to attract readers.The Economist is spoofing the game Twister, distributing it on pizza boxes.The Atlantic is putting out videos of streeter interviews asking passers-by the question on a recent cover 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?' accompanied by a campaign slogan:

Constance Rooke, former Malahat editor, dead at 65

Constance Rooke, a former editor of The Malahat Review, a former president of PEN Canada and a champion of Canadian literature, has died at the age of 65. She and her husband Leon also founded the Eden Mills Writer's Festival.

Magazines Canada ranks swell by 37 titles, including Rogers stable of b2b titles

Magazines Canada just got substantially bigger, with the approval for membership of 37 magazines, the most ever welcomed at one time. This includes 7 consumer magazines and 29 to its new business media category. The new business media membership is largely made up of Rogers Publishing trade magazines that decamped from the Canadian Business Press to join Magazines Canada after the organization

Magazines urged to review new charitable fundraising rules

Changes to rules and procedures at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) should be carefully reviewed by magazines who have charitable status or are associated with a separate organization which does, according to a bulletin just released to its members by Magazines Canada.As part of its crackdown on charities who spend too high a proportion of their fundraising revenue on expenses, CRA) is

Prairies North turns 10

Prairies North, Saskatchewan's Magazine for Good Prairie Living, is this month celebrating its 10th anniversary publishing one of the west's best indie titles. The anniversary event is on Friday, October 17 at the Yvette Moore Gallery in Moose Jaw and will feature a prairie auction highlighted by a painting by the self-same Yvette Moore.The quarterly magazine, which started life as Saskatchewan

Alberta magazines get a promotional boost

The Alberta Magazine Publishers Association (AMPA) is putting on a month-long blitz called RAMM (Reading Alberta Magazines Month) that kicked off Thursday in Calgary. It puts the emphasis on regional talent of which there's considerable. As AMPA puts itNot only is there geographical relevance, but by buying, subscribing to, and reading Alberta magazines, you’re supporting a community of creative

Editorial management of Canadian Home & Country and Canadian Gardening merged

The editorial management of Canadian Home & Country and Canadian Gardening have been merged. Erin McLaughlin (right),editor of CH&C is adding the duties of editor-in-chief of Canadian Gardening, effective January. She replaces Aldona Satterthwaite (below right) who a Transcontinental Media press release says "moves on to explore new opportunities next year".McLaughlin has been with

Here we go again; another magazine-sharing site pops up

Fresh from their relief at having their lawyers stomp on mygazines.com, the pirate magazine file-sharing site, publishers may well want to start looking around for other such sites. Mygazines will not be the last. For example, issuu.com. It describes itself as a "web 2.0 document-sharing company".According to information available online, issuu (pronounced "issue") is still a beta site backed by

Canadian Oxford Dictionary staff (all of them) laid off

Dictionary def. 1. A printed and bound book of definitions and a spelling aid, made redundant by the proliferation of free online sources. 2. A place where real, knowledgeable lexicographers used to work. 3. An icon whose disappearance is a sad sign of the times. (See Canadian Oxford Dictionary)According to a story in the Globe and Mail, declining sales in recent years mean two full-time and two

Carbon atoms adding up to earth; the end of the (news) article

Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor, prolific blogger (Buzz Machine) and columnist for the Guardian, has written an article (you'll see the irony) about the death of the article as the building block of journalism, at least when it comes to news. The article has attracted a lot of comment, both in his blog and elsewhere. Jarvis writes fairly frequently about an important trend: "link journalism".

Parsing your audience; Parenting mag splits itself in two

The U.S. magazine Parenting magazine is splitting itself into two, separate magazines, one for "early years", one for "school years", according to a story in Folio: (This idea resonates with yesterday's posting about Reader's Digest creating a second edition of Our Canada called More Our Canada. The "more" in both cases is followed, we presume, by the words "money" or "audience growth" or both.)

Blame Canada: Publishers reach settlement with pirate mygazines site

Quietly, the major U.S. publishers have reached a settlement with the rogue file-sharing site mygazines.com that will see it remove all copyrighted material. And for the first time it is apparent that the site's originator was a Canadian, Darren Andrew Budd of Toronto, according to a story posted by Folio: and backed up by copies of the various court documents obtained by the magazine.Mygazines

National magazine compensation study launched

A national compensation study for the Canadian magazine industry has been launched by Magazines Canada. With support of the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC), Mercer Limited has been engaged to gather data on market compensation levels for approximately 40 benchmark positions, including base salary, annual incentives, long-term incentives, pensions, benefits and other perquisites.The study

Nothing against editors: Mixing the purists with the barbarians

"Inside the company all the digital content was driven by editors. Nothing against editors, I am a journalist myself, but I thought we needed specialists. So we mixed the purists with the barbarians - I asked a lot of people to join the company to mix with the traditional Conde Nast culture." --Stefano Maruzzi, president of CondeNet International, Conde Nast's digital division, in a story in U.K

Success of RD's Our Canada results in spin off More of Our Canada

Our Canada, one of the most successful launches of recent years, has been so successful that Reader's Digest Magazines Canada has launched a spinoff called More of Our Canada, according to a report in mastheadonline. The bimonthly Our Canada has a circulation of 300,000, six times a year. The new magazine, which will come with a $20.96 sub price (same as OC) will have similar content, generated

Circulation Management to become Audience Development

Circulation Management magazine, considered something of a bible for circulators and publishers, is changing its name to Audience Development effective with the November issue. According to a post from trade journalism blogger Paul Conley, the name change reflects changes in the industry. I applaud the move. There can be no doubt that the jobs and tasks of what we once called the circulation

Magazines Canada discontinues small magazines blog

Magazines Canada has discontinued publication of its Shoestring blog, which served small magazines. The Shoestring had been piloted by Claire Pfeiffer, now Member Projects Manager (who was given to leavening her news items with the occasional piece of doggerel verse -- we'll miss that).MC President Mark Jamison says the decision was part of a review of the whole "communications toolkit". The

Folio: special report asks "What does it mean to be green?"

Folio: magazine has published a special report on being green that is well worth looking at. It addresses the problem of "green fatigue" as every magazine publishes its own version of a "green issue". But what does it really mean to be green in publishing in 2008? it asks, looking at production, distribution, event marketing, operations and digital publishing.The issue contains a really useful

Books in Canada no longer published but hasn't told funders

Globe and Mail arts writer James Adams asks the apt question about the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, (which is being given out in Toronto tonight at the Drake Hotel. Namely, why is it still called that when the magazine Books in Canada has ceased publication. It wasn't an announced closure or suspension; the magazine simply hasn't come out since January/February of this

Dinner, with brains on the menu

Might this be what is called fleeting fame? Ed2010's Toronto chapter is having one of its periodic mixers tomorrow, at which (for a $5 fee), attendees are given a chance at dinner and the chance to pick the brain of Laurie Grassi, the executive editor of Style at Home magazine.The event is at The Duke of York (39 Prince Arthur Avenue) on Wednesday, Oct. 1 at 6 p.m. (Consolation could be provided

"Le Lux" to honour Quebec photographers and illustrators

Tomorrow, the Canadian Association of Photographers and Illustrators of Canada (CAPIC) and the Association des illustrateurs et illustratrices in Quebec, in collaboration with the magazine Infopresse will be presenting Exposition Lux, the 11th annual gala where photographers and illustrators are honoured. It is at the Just for Laughs theatre 2111, boul. Saint-Laurent, Montreal at 8 p.m., with

Primeau's gardener's memoir recalls when front yard gardens were leading edge

Liz Primeau, the founding editor of Canadian Gardening magazine, and former editor of Ontario Living, is in the midst of a whirl of publicity for her recently published memoir My Natural History: The Evolution of a Gardener. (Tonight she'll will be signing and selling copies at 7 p.m. at the Mississauga Central Library. On the weekend,she was reading from it at Word on the Street in Kitchener.)

Magazine world view

Washington Post Company acquires Foreign Policy magazine(Folio:)Rejected bailout decimates media stocks (MediaDaily News)Borders Books UK launches buy-one-get-one-half-price offerCreative Loafing files for bankruptcy"New York Sun" Sets (MediaDaily News)Revenue growth at largest media dips to 4.6% (Advertising Age)[U.S.] Senate creates "copyright czar" (Wired)

Jewish Living magazine folds after five issues

Since this blog has written several items in the past about the launch of Jewish Living magazine, we feel under some obligation to report, with regret, that publication of the magazine has been suspended after five issues, according to a posting on magazine's website.Publisher Dan Zimerman who, with his wife Carol Moskot as art director (formerly of Toronto Life magazine), moved from Toronto to

CBC.ca apologizes for columnist Mallick's article about Palin

[This post has been updated] The Publisher of CBC News, John Cruickshank, has written a column apologizing for publishing a column by Heather Mallick about U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.The volume of complaints played a part in prompting his apology and CBC Ombudsman, Vince Carlin, fashioned the justification. Cruickshank said:Mallick's column is a classic piece of political

Quote, unquote: Stephen Harper's hidden theo-con agenda

They see him as an image-savvy evangelical who has been careful to keep his signals to them under the media radar, but they have no doubt his convictions run deep—so deep that only after he wins a majority will he dare translate the true colours of his faith into policies that could remake the fabric of the nation. If they’re right, it remains unclear whether those convictions would turn

Daybook : Cracking U.S. market; Marking TFEW's 10th

Reminders about a couple of worthwhile events in Toronto posted about before, that may be of interest to readers:Cracking the 49th parallel: Thursday, October 9, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Ryerson University School of Journalism, 80 Gould Street, Toronto. Price is $20, $10 for students (free to Ryerson students). It's being sponsored by the American Association of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), a

British mag wins cover contest by taking a chance on "Dalek" concept

That it pays, sometimes, to take chances is apparent by the outsider win from Britain's Radio Times magazine in a cover competition held by the Periodical Publishers Association.( Of course it may also be an expression of a public write-in campaign on behalf of a wacky entry.) More than 10,000 members of the public cast ballots.The May 2005 "Vote Dalek*" cover (shown above in its full gatefold),

Search will drive sales, but content can build branding

I have often felt that so-called "traditional" magazine publishers are being mistaken in chasing after online dollars by trying to compete with search advertising. This doesn't play to magazines' strengths. I found some reinforcement for this view in a posting about a speech made by David Churbuck, Vice President, Global Web Marketing, at Lenovo (what we used to call IBM). He said that search is

Choke Q&A

Senior Editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews debut writer-director-actor Clark Gregg, actress Gillian Jacobs and actor Sam Rockwell about Choke

Copyright Unlikely Films, Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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It's not nice to fool your readers

Some readers of women's weeklies in Britain are not only grumbling about inflated headlines, they're holding the magazines to account. According to a story in the Guardian, two separate complaints to the Press Complaints Commission were about tantalizing coverlines that turned out to be misleading.One reader objected to the front cover of Look magazine which pictured Jennifer Aniston with the

Rogers's Pharmacy Post relaunched as Drugstore Canada

Pharmacy Post, a 15-year-old Rogers Publishing business-to-business title, is being completely renovated,with a new name, a new size (from tab down to standard magazine) and a new look, according to an item posted on Mastheadonline.It will now be called Drugstore Canada and its new look and editorial structure will reflect changes in modern pharmacies which often seem more like cosmetic boutiques