On March 4, 2013, veteran freelancer Jay Teitel wrote Under TC Media’s new contract, introduced in February, freelancers must relinquish all rights to their work, on all platforms and brands TC Media owns now and in the future, without additional compensation. Unlike in the 2009 version of Transcontinental’s agreement, contributors are also stripped of their moral rights, which means the publisher can alter the meaning of the work without a writer’s permission and remove bylines.

Teitel, who has written for Elle Canada and TC Media’s now-defunct More.ca, learned about the new contract from an Elle Canada editor. He says he didn’t read the agreement until Derek Finkle, founder of Canadian Writers Group, approached him asking him to comment on the agreement. When he realized what Transcontinental was asking he thought: “This is a deal killer.”

“Under no circumstances, if it stays the same, would I consider ever working under those conditions,” he says. And he hasn’t. He says the publishing company’s demand for all copyrights violates the “notion of what a freelancer does.”

Transcontinental hasn’t been the only one stirring up controversy with its treatment of freelancers. In February, Toronto Star columnist Ann Douglas left the newspaper after she was presented with an agreement that would allow the paper to reuse commissioned work in its own brand and those of its affiliates and third parties without additional pay.

Star publisher John Cruickshank suggests that such agreements are sparked by the need to protect publications from both legal and financial trouble. 

“It begins with multi-million dollar settlements to the class of freelancers,” he says, referring to the Robertson v. Thomson Corp. class action. In 1996, freelancer Heather Robertson filed a lawsuit after The Globe and Mail republished some of her articles that had appeared in the print edition of the paper in electronic databases—Info Globe Online, the Canadian Periodical Index (known as CPI.Q), and a CD-ROM—without her consent. Robertson eventually won an $11-million settlement when the suit was decided in 2006. A similar case happened south of the border, one that was considered a “landmark” suit for freelancer rights. In 1993, Jonathan Tasini and five other freelancers who wrote for newspapers and magazines published by the New York Times Company, Newsday Inc., and Time Inc., filed a suit alleging copyright infringement upon the reuse of their work in three databases without their consent. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that the companies did not obtain permission from the writers to republish their work.

Cruickshank says the additional rights are there to secure the ability to reuse or sell content in the future, so that the company can continue to monetize freelancer content in the digital world.

“There’ve been so many changes in the industry and the way we provide content that it was absolutely necessary that we look at making these changes,” Susan Antonacci, TC Media executive director of brand development, told The Story Board about TC Media’s new contract. She says it’s a “safety net.” Antonacci could not be reached in time for deadline, and TC Media declined to comment further on its new agreement.

Still, there are those who think such reasoning is flawed. Freelance writer and editor Suzanne Bowness, who stopped pitching to TC Media after it changed its freelancer agreement in 2009, and refused to sign the Star Content Studios contract, says it’s a safety net for the companies but not for their contributors. She understands that it’s an economically difficult time for newspapers and magazines, and there is a need to expand rights, especially with the new digital media. But she doesn’t think these companies need all rights, and believes they should ask the writer for permission before republishing.

Michael OReilly, president of the Canadian Freelance Union, agrees. He remembers when writers would produce a piece for a certain publication and only license it to use the piece once; anything more would require the writer’s permission. He doesn’t understand why companies need moral rights, and says writers should be compensated if their work is reused. “The real problem is that publishers, in this case Transcontinental, want all the rights but they don’t want to pay for it,” he says.

CWG’s Finkle doesn’t think companies need to own copyright or have moral rights waived to republish a writer’s work on a different platform. “It’s an empty premise,” he says. He understands there may be some situations under which a writer might benefit from working for exposure, but he says TC Media’s contract is “so egregious, so outrageous, and so disrespectful” that writers should not be working under these conditions. “I don’t think a lot of people get into this business to get rich,” he says, “but when they create something they want to be able to have a certain amount of control.”

But companies are less likely to make changes if there are writers willing to write for free, or for exposure. And there are, says Canadian Media Guild staff representative Keith Maskell. Freelancers, he says, should try to negotiate as much as they can. “Don’t work for exposure because people die of exposure,” he says.

The Story Board reported last week that TC Media may be making changes to the agreement, and releasing a new draft by early summer. For now, some freelancers have been told they can work under the previous contract. Nothing has been finalized, but “the door that appeared closed is now at least slightly open,” Maskell told The Story Board.

Halfway through his open letter, Teitel compares Canadian print journalism to Hollywood, and refers to a joke often used in the movie biz: “Did you hear the one about the really dumb starlet? She fucked the writer.” Meaning, the writer is the last person the starlet should sleep with because he is the “most powerless person in the movie equation”—the director or producer would be better choices. But, he adds, “What the joke doesn’t mention is the truism that without the writer, and the story he or she creates, neither the director nor the producer would have any movie with which to entice the starlet. So maybe in servicing the writer, the starlet wasn’t so dumb after all.” The same seems true here. Publishers say to survive, they need to adapt to the changing media environment. Still, as CFU’s OReilly says, they need freelancers to survive, because without them “they’ll have nobody to produce for their magazines.”

]]> http://rrj.ca/the-fight-for-freelancer-rights-2/feed/ 0 http://rrj.ca/a-dull-read/ http://rrj.ca/a-dull-read/#respond Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:21:06 +0000 http://rrj.journalism.ryerson.ca/?p=411

By Karizza Sanchez  It’s the September launch party for Sharp magazine’s Book for Men, a hardcover offshoot filled with glossy images of luxurious cars, men’s fashion, and exotic destinations. The ballroom at the new Shangri-La Hotel in downtown Toronto is crowded, lit with purple lights, and filled with loud music playing—a little reminiscent of a nightclub. The male guests [...]]]>

By Karizza Sanchez 

It’s the September launch party for Sharp magazine’s Book for Men, a hardcover offshoot filled with glossy images of luxurious cars, men’s fashion, and exotic destinations. The ballroom at the new Shangri-La Hotel in downtown Toronto is crowded, lit with purple lights, and filled with loud music playing—a little reminiscent of a nightclub. The male guests are all carbon copies of one another: handsome, impeccably dressed in suits, and seemingly successful. They are the men Sharp wants reading its magazine, and the men Sharp’s advertisers want to reach.

Some of those advertisers are at the party. Near the back of the room, in an area dubbed the Editor’s Lounge, there are displays of luxurious Chanel and IWC watches, and bespoke shoes from Treccani Milano. There are also complimentary shoeshines from Walter’s Shoe Care and hand massages from American Crew. Nearby is a bar stocked with drinks courtesy of Glenlivet, Absolut Elyx, Peroni, and Havana Club.

“It’s the one event where Sharp brings everything we think men are interested in to the men we want,” says the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeremy Freed. The coffee-table Book for Men is a biannual publication, one of Sharp’s newer projects under the aegis of parent company Contempo Media. Contempo’s founders, publisher John McGouran and editorial and creative director Michael La Fave, had the idea for the oversized book when they first launched Sharp five years ago, but decided to wait a few years before starting it in 2010. “When you launch those things,” says McGouran, “they’re very expensive and probably won’t make money on the first issue, and it did not.” But it is meant to take Sharp to greater heights, he says. “We wanted that kind of product out there so that people know, Hey, these guys are very serious about what they’re doing and that they have the capability. If there’s one point I would look to that kind of really jumpstarted our fortunes, [it] was when we launched that.”

The Book for Men is sold for $16.95 on newsstands, with total sales amounting to about 9,500 copies, and roughly 10,000 copies are distributed at special events throughout the year. A portion of the leftovers that don’t sell on newsstands (around 10,000 copies) is used for other events and specialized distribution. Readers will sometimes order the book through the magazine’s website; about 7,000 are purchased by companies in bulk to use as handouts. “Sometimes it’s a premium to their customers because it’s a prestigious product,” says McGouran.

The Fall/Winter 2012 edition of The Book for Men is essentially a 268-page guide to the hottest men’s fashion trends and products, including a 32-page “MANual” full of how-to pieces on etiquette, health, travel, and even survival. The content is not far from what can be found in Sharp itself, which is also home to style and grooming manuals.

Flip through any issue of Sharp and you’ll see fashion layouts, service pieces, and plenty of product write-ups. While there are celebrity profiles, travel stories, and car reviews, most of the editorial focuses on Sharp’s idea of the best of what’s out there. “It’s almost like it’s glorified advertising in a way,” says Chris Lachine, a Toronto-based painter and Sharp reader.

Still, Sharp has a great reputation among Canadian men who appreciate the lavish lifestyle, maintains Rob Cribb, a Toronto Star investigative reporter and former columnist. Sharp is smart, he adds, because there’s a sensibility that it’s been able to capture.

Since launching in April 2008, Sharp has courted affluent men aged 25 to 54—and those who aspire to join those ranks—and it’s been able to stay in business in a men’s market where other efforts have failed. The most recent Winter issue is Sharp’s biggest so far—198 pages of editorial and ads, plus an insert of Time & Style, a watch magazine, well up from the 130-page average.

Published six times a year, Sharp is distributed through the National Post in Toronto, the Vancouver Sun, the Calgary Herald, and The Gazette in Montreal (a total of 100,000 copies), as well as through events (10,000), newsstands (20,000 to 30,000, with a cover price of $5.95), and subscriptions (2,500). Copies are also supplied to Air Canada Maple Leaf lounges and VIA Rail Canada, and mailed directly to members of the Cambridge Club health club chain in Toronto and Montreal. Though a majority of its circulation of 146,500 is controlled distribution, Sharp’s subscriptions are increasing, says McGouran. And in 2011, the title landed just outside of Masthead Online’s ranking of the top 50 Canadian magazines according to total revenue, chalking up an estimated $2.3 million.

Much of Sharp’s content is similar to that of other men’s lifestyle publications, such as GQ and Esquire—in theory, at least. Certainly it aspires to be as good as, if not better than, those titles, and thinks it fares well against them. “You can take our products for the year 2012, six issues of Sharp and two issues of The Book for Men, and compare those to any leading men’s lifestyle magazine and say, Hey, this is on par with them in terms of quality,” says McGouran.

But is Sharp really as good as it claims? Does it have the same quality and scope of content that GQ and Esquire offer? Or is it more focused on landing advertisers than serving readers with the best editorial possible?

For a company that touts the look of its magazine, Contempo Media’s head office—on Queen’s Quay West near Spadina Avenue in Toronto—is surprisingly plain. There are off-white walls, black shelves separating desks, and a lone bookshelf holding other publications used for inspiration, but not much else. La Fave’s office is similarly low key. His inner sanctum has few decorations, other than some items from PR companies. His desk features no photograph of his wife and son; there is only a computer monitor beside his MacBook, an empty glass, loose paper, and a copy of British GQ’s October 2012 issue. “In our opinion, the world’s standard for a men’s magazine is British GQ,” says La Fave. “This is obviously the pinnacle. That’s what we aspire to.” Though he seems private about most things, La Fave is honest and open about this goal. He knows men’s lifestyle magazines like Sharp need to be just as good as GQ and Esquire to compete.

Few, if any, would disagree that those two titles are the big dogs in the men’s lifestyle market. Both award-winning magazines have a good mix of celebrity news, serious journalism, fashion, service pieces, product reviews, and literature. As David Granger, editor of Esquire, told The New York Timesin 2004, “Men have range! There’s no man interested only in sports, only in women, only in electronics.” GQ and Esquire balance the different things men are interested in. Take Esquire’s November 2012 issue, for instance. Inside, there’s a feature on the presidential election, while a topless Mila Kunis adorns the cover.

As for GQ, it serves a younger demographic (the average reader is 34 years old; Esquire’s is 44), yet also offers serious narrative journalism. Even its reputation as a fashion magazine hasn’t stopped the editors from publishing excellent writing and earning multiple U.S. National Magazine Awards nominations and prizes in the feature writing and reporting categories. “It’s an important part of the editorial identity of those big American magazines,” says Cribb, “and frankly, it brings a level of credibility that I think Sharp doesn’t have journalistically.”

For his part, McGouran says he’s subscribed to GQ since he was 18, so starting a men’s lifestyle magazine was not so far-fetched for him. Prior to co-founding Sharp, he worked as the director of advertising and sales at Hockey News for five years, and later as the director of sales at Quebec-based Auto Journal Group, which published Motomag, Automag, Auto Journal, Québec Tuning, Auto Passion, and, starting in 2004, Driven. It was at Auto Journal Group that he first got to know La Fave, who would become Driven’s editor-in-chief.

It was actually La Fave who first approached Michel Crépault, the owner of the Auto Journal Group, in 2003, Crépault says, with the idea of starting a Toronto-based men’s lifestyle magazine with an automotive core. “He told me more, and quickly I said yes, because lifestyle was definitely in my court,” says Crépault in his thick Québécois accent. “Also, starting in Toronto was an interesting challenge for me, so I said yes.”

The now-defunct Driven was published six times a year and distributed through The Globe and Mail. Crépault appointed McGouran—someone he describes as the best sales guy he’s ever met—as the magazine’s director of sales. La Fave’s previous business partner and friend, Laurance Yap, became the artistic director, and with McGouran they made up the core of Driven, which at the time had a staff of about six people.

In mid-January 2008, the Auto Journal Group faced challenges—namely, the recession and the crippled automotive sector. But Crépault would come across even tougher times. The core team of McGouran, La Fave, and Yap was leaving Driven, and tendered their resignations, effective immediately. “I was in despair,” says Crépault. Almost four years after the fact, you can still hear the grief in his voice. “I was completely taken by surprise.” There was no explanation provided for the departure, not that one was needed to make sense of the situation. “I knew that if they were leaving together it was definitely to start something,” says Crépault.

“In hindsight, it’s clear the reason they left,” says Johnny Lucas, who took over as editor-in-chief of Driven the week after La Fave departed. “They wanted to do their own thing. I just thought the way it was done was not my idea of what was proper.”

Crépault says he sent McGouran a letter in 2010, about a year and a half after Driven and the Auto Journal Group folded, saying he finally understood why McGouran had left, although McGouran denies receiving it. In 2007, a marketing consultant from the Auto Journal Group advised Crépault to hire a director of sales for all the magazines the company published. McGouran wanted the position, and while Crépault thought highly of him, he didn’t feel he was right for the job—he didn’t speak French (Driven was the only English magazine in the group), and he didn’t live in Montreal. “I understand that he was, rightly so, disappointed,” says Crépault. “Maybe pissed off. Maybe at the time that was the button I pushed, without realizing it, that contributed to the three of them leaving.”

As for La Fave, Crépault says he could always sense he wanted to do something bigger, and he kept his door open for him. “But unfortunately, he took his decision without talking to me first, the way I would have wished that things could have happened.”

McGouran and La Fave simply say they left Driven, and took Yap with them, because they wanted to go in a different direction from where the magazine was heading. Both men wanted to start a Canadian-made publication modeled on GQ and Esquire—something they thought was missing in the market.Sharp would grow out of ideas discussed over a casual lunch at Vox on Adelaide Street East in Toronto—although they didn’t meet with that purpose in mind. “It was fate,” says McGouran. They launched Sharp four months later, after starting Contempo Media, which now also publishes the custom magazines Volkswagen, Audi, Time & Style, S/Style & Fashion, and M/Men of Style.

Fate aside, some questioned the pair’s decision to launch a men’s lifestyle magazine, especially in the heat of the recession. “I don’t know that anybody thought it was going to be an easy ride for them,” says the Star’s Cribb. Canadian men’s general-interest magazines have struggled to stay afloat over the past decade—Toro folded in 2007 after just under four years in print, followed by Driven. According to Toro’s former editor, Derek Finkle, the pool of potential advertisers was shallow, especially compared to what was available south of the border. Then with the recession in 2008, advertising dollars overall were down. Any magazine that didn’t have deep enough pockets to help ride it out until things improved was in trouble.

Were McGouran and La Fave concerned about this? They funded Sharp with their own money, so they were taking a big risk. “Absolutely,” says McGouran. “Sleepless nights. But at that point there was no turning back. It’s sort of like swimming halfway across the lake and saying, ‘Oh, I can’t make it, I better turn around.’ That was never really an option. We just had to find a way.”

A large part of that way was to concentrate on fashion. Indeed, Sharp has been able to attract male readers with its heavy fashion content, largely thanks to a growing interest in the subject. Simply, men are no longer as diffident as they were in the past about grooming and style. “Men have always cared,” says Henry Navarro Delgado, an assistant professor at Ryerson University’s School of Fashion. “It’s just a matter of publicizing that care.”

Enter Sharp, whose readers say they look to the magazine for style advice and ideas. “I would say that I wasn’t [a fashionable man],” says Ira Brenton, a business manager and reader of Sharp, “but I’m making more of an attempt right now, and Sharp is a good tool.” The accessibility of the brands and products featured in the publication has also helped build readership. “I know it’s Canadian,” observes Brenton, “so I know that a lot of the stuff will be Canadian-centric.”

But simply offering Canadian content may not be enough. “You can’t rely on that because I’m not sure enough people care,” says Finkle, adding that magazines need to offer comparable editorial to what can be found in the big men’s publications.

Back in 2008, Sharp’s inaugural issue featured Leo Rautins, a former Canadian basketball player and head coach of the Canadian men’s national basketball team—a national celebrity, but certainly not a George Clooney, Denzel Washington, or Leonardo DiCaprio, the Hollywood stars who would appear on subsequent covers. While products and style guides were evident in early issues, there were also full-length features covering such topics as child soldiers, counterfeit fashion, brain injuries, and the Beijing Olympics. Today, however, long-form investigative features in the magazine are scarce. While Finkle says he thinks Sharp has improved and has made genuine attempts in the past, he does wish it had “more stuff to read.”

Nonetheless, La Fave says the magazine has done well over the years. “We’ve had a number of pieces that I’m very proud of and that I think are definitely noteworthy,” he says. He’s entered features, such as the brain injury story, into the National Magazine Awards, albeit without success. “To not even receive a nomination had us wondering, Are we on the outside of this community or something?” La Fave says Sharp would love to publish stories that could be picked up by CBC. They’re on the lookout for great writers, he says, and want to make more space for features. They also recently commissioned award-winning writer Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall to contribute a fatherhood column. But, La Fave adds, with a hint of uncertainty in his voice, “A lot of the things we’ve done haven’t necessarily attracted attention within the writing community. Perhaps it’s just a case of Canada. Perhaps people are more inclined to go to Maclean’s or someone else with those types of stories.”

Certainly that wasn’t the case with Toro, which leaned heavily toward strong magazine journalism. The men’s lifestyle glossy was generally well regarded by readers and the industry, and was a frequent National Magazine Awards nominee—and winner. The content was witty, honest, intelligent without being overly intellectual, and at times unabashedly sexual. In one issue, you could read a serious, long-form feature on the Canadian Mafia and then a more humourous piece on the 24 pick-up lines that never work. While not all were award-winning articles, they sparked conversations. “If you went into a news meeting after Toro would come out,” says Cribb, “inevitably, somebody would say, ‘Hey, did you see that piece in Toro?’”

Sharp sparks a different kind of conversation. The publication does a great job of capturing the lighter side of the market, says Cribb, but adds, “I worry a little bit about the relationship with the advertisers and to what extent editorial is influenced by advertising.” In its September 2012 issue, Sharp ran a feature titled “Sharp’s Guide to Effortless Italian Style,” with ads from the Italian brewer Peroni. The fashion spread, shot on location in Italy, included a photograph that showed models drinking Peroni’s Nastro Azzurro beer. “We were in Italy and we thought it was appropriate to have Peroni there,” explains La Fave flatly.
The separation of editorial and advertising has long been a concern for editors, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to uphold as advertisers make greater demands for reader engagement. But the advertising-editorial guidelines, created by a Magazines Canada task force to help editors, publishers, and advertisers maintain a distinction between editorial and ads, state: “Advertisements should not be placed immediately before, within or immediately after editorial content that includes mention of the advertised products or services. Exceptions are allowed for listings and contests.” So, was Sharp’s piece about Italian style more advertorial than actual editorial?
Other conversations have revolved around the ads on Sharp’s covers. In the April 2010 issue, an Audi ad was visible beneath a transparent plastic cover. Some argue this contravened one of the magazine industry’s key guidelines: “No advertisement may be promoted on the cover of the magazine or included in the editorial table of contents, unless it involves an editorially directed contest, promotion or sponsored one-off editorial extra.” Then in the September 2011 issue, there was a BMW ad that incorporated cover flaps that revealed the company’s tagline “Shape the Future”—one flap turned theSharp nameplate into “Shape” while the other revealed “the Future.” Again, Sharp arguably contravened the guidelines.
But Todd Latham, publisher of ReNew Canada, says the ethics of such covers are debatable. “It depends on how it’s done,” he says. As with other publishers and editors, he suggests the lines of editorial and advertising are blurred only when the ad is directly on the cover; flaps and gatefolds are similar to ads on the back of the cover, so those are okay. Consider: Cottage Life has published a “peel and reveal” cover featuring Corona beer andMaclean’s featured a “trapdoor” ad for the Audi Q5 on its cover.
Still, D.B. Scott, president of Impresa Communications Ltd., a magazine industry consultancy firm, says covers should not include ads, referring to such “flapvertising” as gimmicks. “It sends the message that everything in the magazine, including its brand and its cover, is a commodity and it’s for sale,” he says.

So, is Sharp more focused on landing advertisers than building its readership? A source close to the magazine says he worries that sometimes it “doesn’t care enough about the reader” and it’s concerned “more about creating that beautiful environment and creating a nice premium package.”

As Sharp marks its fifth year in the market, the questions are beginning to pile up. Will it finally win a National Magazine Award in something other than the beauty category (Sharp won gold for “Fragrances,” a visual spread that ran in the Fall/Winter 2011 Book for Men)? Will it once again give readers more than a look at the best new suits and manly gizmos? And will Canadians ever recognize Sharp in the same way they do GQ or Esquire?

On the cover of the December/January issue, Ryan Gosling wears a red lumberjack jacket and holds a flaming bottle. Across the page, in bold letters: “Ryan Gosling Is a Better Man Than We Are (and We’re Okay with That).” Would Sharp say the same if it were comparing itself to the heavyweights in the American men’s lifestyle market? More likely it would say, “GQ Is No Better Than We Are.” But to convince some industry observers of that, Sharp clearly still has some work to do. “It’s a catalogue of things to buy,” concludes Johnny Lucas, La Fave’s successor at Driven. “Is that a magazine? Meh.”

Photographs by Darrin Klimek