The B special

Doubtless there will be others, better acquainted and informed, who will eulogize Beland Honderich, who just passed at the age of 86. He was known, during his long tenure as Publisher of the Toronto Star as "B" or, unflatteringly, "the Beast" although no one doubted his power and his commitment to making The Star the best newspaper in Canada. His natural taciturnity was overlaid with restraint

Where shall I go to donate tonight?

This is an idea that more urban magazines might emulate -- Vancouver magazine's Social Datebook, which can be found on their website. It's a listing of philanthropic and fundraising events around the lower mainland. I don't know whether people pick fundraisers at random upon which to bestow their generosity. But the idea that a city magazine rounds up and formats the information seems a very nice

National Post in freefall

Nestled down among the paragraphs reporting on the latest, dismal, results for newspaper circulation, is the stunning fact that the National Post lost 14% of its base in one year according to the latest six-monthly report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That is, the people who pay 50% of full price or more for the paper from Monday to Friday (as opposed to the freebies and near-freebies

Not in our magazine, you don't

Just now catching up to this story, best reported by this item from the website of CBC New Brunswick, about the Irving interests in New Brunswick yanking the magazine Here off the trucks last month because it contained a cover image of a baby being breastfed.The editor, Miriam Christensen, (who had apparently indicated she was about to quit) was fired and an innocuous cartoon replaced the image

Discretion, what discretion?

"I am now 100% certain that The Walrus's future is secured," says Publisher Ken Alexander, according to Antonia Zerbisias's blog for the Toronto Star. Madame Z, as she archly calls herself, interprets this as meaning that Alexander has a commitment from Ottawa that his the Walrus Foundation will be granted desperately needed charitable status, previously denied. But, as one astute observer noted,

Options may make fetching wallpaper

Apparently Maclean's supremo Ken Whyte believed assurances from Hollinger executives that options he held to buy stock were safe, even after he was fired as National Post's Editor in Chief and the whole edifice was crashing around Conrad Black's ears. The Globe today reports that, last June, Whyte sued Hollinger International Inc. in New York to try and recover the $680,000 he says these options

A new template turns one

Warrior magazine celebrates its first anniversary Sunday with a DJ-driven party in Montreal. Warrior (despite a name that conjures up aboriginal manhood) is a 5,000 controlled circ cultural magazine published by Média Guerrier. Besides congratulating them on their first birthday, we can do no better job of describing the magazine than they do themselves:Warrior supersedes the inherently