Battle of the Books

Jeremy Lin heads to the CBC studios to watch the annual Canada Reads face-off.

There have been plenty of Canadian TV shows in which contestants are showcased live on air, critiqued, and then voted off until a winner remains. Canadian Idol, So You Think You Can Dance Canada, and Canada’s Got Talent  immediately come to mind. But, in only one of these shows are the contestants defending novels. CBC’s Canada Reads launched in 2001, and […]

Changes in Style

When it comes to style guides, what's in a change?

  While readers may not notice a publication’s stance on the serial comma or whether it spells smartphone as one word or two, these minutiae are all painstakingly detailed in newsroom Bibles: the style guides. In the case of Canadian newspapers, one of these is likely the CP Stylebook; another is the house style list, assembled […]

Selling Out For Survival

  Flip open the front cover of The Walrus magazine’s January/February 2013 issue. On the inside front cover you’ll see a house ad for all the different outlets at which you can find The Walrus content. Fold out that cover, and across the gatefold you’ll see early evening on the Rideau Canal. Dozens of lamps line the way for […]

Could your tablet save long-form journalism?

  In a world where information can be condensed into a 140-character tweet, the future of long-form journalism looks grim. But newspapers and digital magazines are hoping the growing popularity of tablet technology will fulfill a desire for in-depth, quality reportage and represent a new revenue stream. Last November, the Toronto Star launched Star Dispatches, a service […]

Up against the walls

Canada's leading newspapers are turning to metered subscriptions for much-needed revenue, but will readers be willing to pay the price?

Steve Ladurantaye, media reporter at The Globe and Mail, is blunt: “If we don’t find a way to add revenue, then there’s not going to be a newspaper in five years. This goes for the Globe and everyone else. You can’t lose money forever.” Which is why, almost two years after The New York Times introduced its metered subscription model, […]