The changing anatomy of a magazine
Is it time for magazines to restructure the front of book?
By Blair Mlotek and Viviane Fairbank The front of book (FOB) consists of the first few pages of a magazine, with smaller pieces and graphics meant to ease a reader in before the long features. FOBs may have been relevant once, but today, when shorter articles and listicles are the majority of content found online, they don’t add […]
Thanks, Lynn
A long-suffering journalism instructor retires
By Ronan O’Beirne There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes at the Review, and nobody has seen or done more than Lynn Cunningham. A widely respected editor before joining the faculty at Ryerson (she received, among other accolades, the National Magazine Awards’ lifetime achievement award in 1999), Lynn has been a mentor to countless writers […]
I’m dyin’ up here!
Why Canadian magazines have come to bury humour, not praise it
The Set-up Definition: the premise of a pre-arranged outcome A writer and an editor are lost in the desert. They’ve been without food or water for days, and it’s beginning to look like this is the end. Then, they see a shimmer on the horizon. They run toward it. It’s an oasis! An editorial team […]
Off the Rails
Prue Hemelrijk and the golden age of fact-checking—and why magazines will never see such rigour again
Prue Hemelrijk sits at her desk on her first day at The Canadian, a national general interest magazine. She’s unsure what’s in store for her as editor Harry Bruce, carrying a manuscript, makes his way toward her. He sets it on her desk and says, “We need to do something called fact-checking. Do you know […]
The Outsiders
Down in the back alleys of Canadian publishing, three feisty and rebellious cultural magazines are ready to rumble
Stephen Osborne can be an intimidating guy. Even some long-time members of his own staff think so. Maybe it’s the beard. With his greying whiskers, a steely, confrontational stare and a manic twinkle behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, the founding editor and publisher of Vancouver’s Geist magazine conjures a cross between the ghosts of Rasputin and […]
