Are there any magazine lovers on babble? Do you read any Canadian magazines that you love? I read The Walrus occasionally, when they have good writers, but I find for "Canada's Harper's" it's rather right-wing.

I love Geist, and it almost always has an interesting, provocative theme with great writing and style. I also subscribe to Maisonneuve and mostly love it.

Any other magazines, Canadian or otherwise, that babbelrs recommend? Any blanket generalizations about the state of magazine journalism in Canada?

[ 13 February 2007: Message edited by: Catchfire ]

Also M. Gregus: that Canadian Magazines blog has a lot of great material. Thanks for the link.

What troubles me is Canada has some very, very talented feature writers, and they can't all write for Macleans, nor would they want to. That's why we're lucky to have online outlets to give Canadian writers more oppurtunities.

Heather Mallick's latest offering:

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I also dislike [Harper's new editor Roger D. Hodge] because he is a Tennessee-educated insular boor who has made this well-intentioned American magazine even more boring than it used to be, which is a trick and a half. Read it nowadays and sink into an ennui with knobs on. My other problem with Roger D. Hodge is that he's not an inch as bright as former editor Lewis Lapham. If Hodge had another brain, he'd have just the one. Plus, his magazine radiates misogyny. Only an editor with a mission to fail would be so insulting to the women who are a third of his subscribers.

Women writers have for years been vanishing from American magazines (pleasingly, this is less true of Canadian magazines). It's odd to flip through a magazine passing itself off as general interest and see only male bylines. I don't like single-sex publications, especially when they pretend to be otherwise, as Harper's does. Single-sex institutions seem retrograde and creepy in 2007, like Grade 9 gym class, or women's book clubs that end in bickering, or pale sweaty men not eying each other's genitals in the locker room.

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In my twenties, I looked forward to Spy Magazine every month, and sometimes will pick up a Vanity Fair, also edited by Graydon Carter. In the latter, the contrasts are sometimes mind-boggling; ie, there'll be an article on wounded soldiers in Iraq being mistreated by shoddy medical services, and you turn the page, and there's a piece on George Clooney and his taste in women and what he's wearing to the Oscars. And some of Graydon Carter's editorials have been blistering.

I used to have a subscription to Harper's when Lewis Lapham was editing.

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Last year, an American website, WomenTK, began tracking the ratio of male to female writers in Harper's, The Atlantic, The NYT Magazine, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Arguably, the ratio should be more or less one to one because that's what life is like. As it turned out:

Vanity Fair 2.7:1.

The New Yorker 4.1:1.

The Atlantic 3.6:1.

Harper's 6.9:1 (118 male bylines, only 17 female). Fully six of its 12 issues from September '05 to August '06 had one or no female writers.
The numbers, as Ruth Davis Konigsberg of WomenTK writes, prove Ursula K. Le Guin's remark that “when women speak more than 30 per cent of the time, men perceive them as dominating the conversation.”

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The
Save trees.
Green Subscription

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/

[ 31 March 2007: Message edited by: londoner ]

P.S. Oh. You save three whole bucks? Geez. That reminds me of the joke at Heeb Magazine, that if you subscribe for two years ($43) instead of one ($22), "That's a $1 savings!" Unfortunately, the Walrus isn't anywhere near as interesting or entertaining as Heeb, so I don't find the three dollar savings on the green subscription nearly as tempting!

P.P.S. Satya Magazine, on the other hand, actually offers a REAL incentive - their green subscription is half of the regular subscription price.

[ 31 March 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]

Even if they aren't going to reduce the rate too much, magazines should think about offering an alternative incentive to signing up online. Maybe staying with the theme, somthing enviromentally friendly would be a great hook. Ie. a canvas bag of some sort to reduce the consumption of plastic. Then, not only do you have a subscription to the Walrus, you're also saving trees, and now you're saving plastic, PLUS you're walking around with a cute tote that says The Walrus on it, thus you're advertising excellent Canadian journalism, and the magazing itself is getting publicity.

Just a thought!

[ 01 April 2007: Message edited by: jrose ]

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Earning distinction with the most Award nominations is The Walrus with 51 nominations. Toronto Life is next with 23 nominations. Maclean's, Toro, and Report on Business each have 15 nominations, followed by L'actualité with 14.

The three finalists for Magazine of the Year are L'actualité, Explore and The Walrus.

From an individuals' perspective, Ray Ford is nominated 4 times for 4 different articles in 3 magazines. Also receiving 4 nominations are Trevor Cole and Daniel Wood. For the complete list of finalists and archive of past winners, please visit www.magazine-awards.com.

The Foundation's second annual Best Student Writer Award goes to Buffy Cram for her article "Man Hands" that appeared in Prairie Fire.

The winner of this year's Alexander Ross Award for Best New Writer is Jeremy Klaszus, for his articles "Big Oil on Trial" and "Trouble in the Fields" in Alberta Views magazine.

The NMAF's most coveted prize since its inception in 1990 is The Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement. Kim Pittaway, president of the NMAF, is honoured to name Neville Gilfoy as this year's recipient for his exceptional contributions to the Canadian magazine community.

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[ 26 April 2007: Message edited by: Catchfire ]

Nice to see Alberta Views on the list. It's an underrated but consistently well-written magazine. I wish it was available more widely outside Alberta.

Thanks for the awards list Catchfire!

[ 26 April 2007: Message edited by: M.Gregus ]

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Originally posted by M.Gregus:
Didn't The Walrus win a Magazine of the Year award last year or the year before? I could swear I saw something like that printed on its cover.

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I didn't remember that, but I knew that Maisonneuve sported a "Best Magazine" seal on their cover for awhile. According to the site the Magazine of the Year winner last year (formerly called the President's Medal) was...ick...Macleans. Maisonneuve won in 2004 though.

[ 26 April 2007: Message edited by: Catchfire ]

What a really really REALLY difficult and time-consuming job it was.

I've learned that some people do it year after year. I can't imagine wanting to do it again.

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Originally posted by Catchfire:
I didn't remember that, but I knew that Maisonneuve sported a "Best Magazine" seal on their cover for awhile. According to the site the Magazine of the Year winner last year (formerly called the President's Medal) was...ick...Macleans. Maisonneuve won in 2004 though.[ 26 April 2007: Message edited by: Catchfire ]

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*forehead smack* Of course -- that's right! I could see the Best Magazine sticker in my mind's eye and mentally transferred it from Maisonneuve to The Walrus, because, well, I don't know why. Some unconscious wishful thinking, maybe. I guess I'm behind The Walrus all the way.

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Sharon, out of curiosity, what kind of evaluation process do the award submissions go through? It sounds laborous, whatever it is!

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When the package full of the material to be judged arrived, I put it on my desk and just let it sit there for a few days. It was so fat and so heavy.

When I compelled myself to open it and count the entries, there were more than 50 -- 57, I think.

The judging process is much as you'd expect with points awarded for writing style, content, overall impact and how well the article engages the interest of its intended reader -- 25 per cent for each for a total of 100 per cent.

That part of it wasn't a problem. The main problem was that -- as my fellow judges and I agreed -- the columns/articles were so different from one another that it was like comparing, not apples and oranges, but apples and oranges and bananas and pears and peaches and mangoes.

There were some pieces that didn't seem like a conventional "column" to me but more like a feature story, a profile, a well-researched investigative article etc. And there was a huge variety -- subject matter, writing style, tones of voice.

But that's what one had to work with and so one did.

There were three judges in the category and we judged separately and chose our top 10 or so. Then we had a conference call and discussed our choices. We weren't required to reach a consensus but we were allowed to try to influence one another by being persuasive about our choices. Our scores had been submitted by this point but we could change them after the call if we wished.

It's a pretty complicated process because from there, the scores are added up and then the top ones go off to a bilingual set of judges who judge both French and English entries. Then their scores are added to the unilingual scores.

It was an interesting experience and in the end, I wasn't sorry to have done it. There was a lot of good reading.

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I don't buy newspapers or magazines for environmental reasons.

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Originally posted by Red Partisan:
I don't buy newspapers or magazines for environmental reasons.

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[ 03 May 2007: Message edited by: Bobolink ]

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I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Canadian Geographic.

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I was a judge for the National Magazine Awards this year in the Columns category.
What a really really REALLY difficult and time-consuming job it was.

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Canadian Men's Magazine Toro has just crumpled because "advertising revenue available in Canada for a general-interest men's magazine is such that even a quality book like Toro can, at best, manage to sustain itself...The prospect of significant profits wasn't in the foreseeable future."

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Another men's magazine bites the dust (this time an American one), but this one I'm not sad to see go.

Stuff Magazine to Fold Into Maxim

Though it looks like it's still going to exist as a fold in another smutty magazine (sorry to the Maxim readers out there, if there are any.)

[ 07 August 2007: Message edited by: jrose ]

Masthead magazine (sub req'd) is celebrating its 20th anniversary by assembling a list of the 20 most influential Canadian magazines of all time. An online forum is available* until Dec. 1, at which point an editorial panel "swayed by" the forum discussion will make the final choices. The list will be published in the Jan/Feb 2008 print edition of Masthead.

Influence will be measured by impact on the national agenda, literature, society and social issues, design, the industry or region served, popular culture, the international scene, the careers of contributors and so on.

This 2001 article outlines many subsidies.

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The Rogers winners include flagship Maclean's, ($1,359,603) followed by Chatelaine ($426,087), Canadian Business ($401,491), L'Actualité ($354,757), The Medical Post ($252,059), Flare ($243,150), Today's Parent ($218,073), the French-language Châtelaine ($209,168), Marketing Magazine ($188,780) and the can-do entrepreneurs at Profit ($104,680). Those are just the ones to grab more than $100,000; in all, 36 Rogers titles received federal money, most of them smaller trade magazines like Heavy Construction News, Canadian Grocer and other workhorses of the publishing trade.

The Canadian Magazine Fund paid out a total of $5,115,514 to titles owned by Rogers. To put this in perspective, in the year ending Dec. 31, 2000, the publishing division of Rogers Communications recorded an operating profit of $30.6 million. That means taxpayers handed Rogers an amount equivalent to 17 per cent of the publishing division's annual profits.

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Looks like Chatelaine has lost another editor. There sure has been a lot of staff turnover at that magazine in the last couple of years.

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Looks like the french division is having the same problem.

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The editor of Châtelaine, the French counterpart to Chatelaine magazine, has left the job after only 8 months. France Lefebvre, left Transcontinental's coup de pouce (the French equivalent of Canadian Living) to be appointed editor-in-chief at the Rogers title just last February. She resigned recently, without any fanfare.

This means that both the English and French versions of this flagship of the Rogers women's division are without editors. Sara Angel resigned in July from Chatelaine after only 13 months in the editor's chair at what is Rogers most successful consumer magazine.

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I was a judge for the National Magazine Awards this year in the Columns category.

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Last Call for Entries
The deadline is just days away – January 9, 2008 at 5pm EST.

The National Magazine Awards Foundation (NMAF) is searching for Canada’s best in magazine journalism, photography, illustration and design from 2007. The Foundation will present Gold, Silver and Honourable Mention Awards in 39 categories at the 31st annual gala on June 6, 2008 in Toronto. Gold awards carry a prize of $1,000; Silver $500.

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I was a judge for the National Magazine Awards this year in the Columns category.

What a really really REALLY difficult and time-consuming job it was.

I've learned that some people do it year after year. I can't imagine wanting to do it again.

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This year, I'm judging in the Politics & Public Interest category.

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This year, I'm judging in the Politics & Public Interest category.

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It looks like you didn't learn your lesson!

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Looks like Chatelaine has lost another editor. There sure has been a lot of staff turnover at that magazine in the last couple of years.

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Maryam Sanati appointed to position of editor-in-chief at Chatelaine

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Maryam Sanati has been appointed to the position
of editor-in-chief at Chatelaine. Sanati, who has been with Canada's leading
women's magazine for more than 18 months as Deputy Editor, steps into her new
role at Chatelaine on the eve of its 80th anniversary celebrations. Canada's
first national magazine for women will unveil a brand new look with its May
2008 issue. The announcement of Sanati's appointment was made earlier today by
Kerry Mitchell, Publisher and Vice-President of Rogers Consumer Publishing,
the owner of Chatelaine.

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Sharp Magazine looking for a piece of the men's market

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Yet another newspaper-carried glossy men's magazine has dropped out of the Globe and Mail today. As reported here earlier, Sharp is the brainchild of former partners in Driven -- with which they will be going head-to-head -- and seems remarkably similar in content and design: fast cars draped with gorgeous women; chunky and expensive watches and other toys; yet another spread on men's suits (has there ever been man who went out and bought a suit based on a magazine fashion spread?).

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Canada’s most venerable women’s magazine has burned through two editors-in-chief and dozens of staffers in the past three years. The inside story of the battle over Chatelaine.

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[ 26 April 2008: Message edited by: Dana Larsen ]

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I'll venture a guess and say Frank Magazine doesn't get subsidies,

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Check out this massive list of publications which receive government subsidies. Frank magazine is in the "List of publications benefitting from the Publications Assistance Program"

[ 26 April 2008: Message edited by: Dana Larsen ]

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The Walrus leads all magazines with 37 nominations. Toronto Life is next with 29 nominations, followed by Maclean’s (18), Report on Business (16), L’actualité (15) and explore (14).

The three finalists for the coveted award Magazine of the Year are L’actualité, Maisonneuve and Toronto Life.

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[ 30 April 2008: Message edited by: M.Gregus ]

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I've got my fingers crossed for Maisonneuve going home with the Magazine of the Year title.

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Originally posted by jrose:
I always seem to be bumping this thread, so here we go again:

Sharp Magazine looking for a piece of the men's market

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Originally posted by Catchfire:
Canadian Men's Magazine Toro has just crumpled because "advertising revenue available in Canada for a general-interest men's magazine is such that even a quality book like Toro can, at best, manage to sustain itself...The prospect of significant profits wasn't in the foreseeable future."

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Originally posted by jrose:

I'm very confused. I just did a google search for "Paul Newman" because, well, even my salad dressing (Newman's Own) at lunch got me a little teary-eyed. My search turned up an article on TORO. I feel cheated. Has Toro been posting online content all this time, and I just didn't know about it?

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jrose your finding prompted me to do some detective work on the Toro site and this is what I found in their media kit:

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Toro is Back

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - May 21, 2008) -

Online media will never be the same as TORO, the award-winning Canadian men's magazine, which attracted a loyal, sophisticated readership, makes the leap from the printed page to the virtual world with the official launch of toromagazine.com. The site goes live at 6:30pm EST (3:30pm PST) tonight. As a Web-only multimedia publication, toromagazine.com, co-founded by Chris Bratty and William Morassutti, stays true to the same playfully provocative wit of its former print incarnation. It will serve as the go-to destination for the discerning male in the digital age.

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