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