All About the Bling Bling!
How the hip-hop vocabulary is working its way into everyday use
Bling is everywhere. Its omnipresent fabulousness has consumed me. I work with bling. I wear bling. I’ve visited Swarovski Kristallweltn Gallery in Austria, the place where bling could have been born. I have a fish named Bling. I have already used bling far too many times in this paragraph. I thought Journalism would be a […]
The Bible of Rave
How a middle-aged man created Toronto's infamous rave magazine
Having just downed a Diet Coke and with Nikon camera in tow, Alex strolls along Queen Street West in downtown Toronto. With every step, the pulsating beat of hypnotic house music intensifies. As he reaches the apex – the door of Element Bar – the bouncer shakes his hand and waives him inside. Weaving through […]
It’s all in the STRUT
The Batchoun brothers unleash their stylish Brit-influenced fashion mag to Canadian audiences
The intoxicating smell of Skyy Vodka and Redken hairspray spiced the air. At Toronto’s eau restaurant this past October, a crowd of four hundred polished and preened advertising types and a small number of media representatives were introduced to Strut a unisex fashion magazine base in Montreal. They sipped alcoholic drinks and watched a hair […]
The Death of Canada’s Oldest Newspaper
Torstar shuts down the Cambridge Reporter after 157 years in print
Reporters, editors and staff members arrived for a Monday morning meeting at the Ainslie Street office in downtown Cambridge with little idea of what was to ensue. Few were aware that by the end of the week their jobs would be terminated and the doors to the country’s oldest newspaper would be closed for good. […]
Dear Blog…
From jaded teens to aging bachelors, online diaries give us a glimpse into the average life
She is 20 years old. She was born on September 11. She hates Toronto girls for being so skinny. She hopes her father will kill himself. She feels like a loser and a poseur for discovering cool bands through eye Weekly, not through the so-called “scene” she desperately longs to be part of. She is […]
So Long, Elm Street
Stevie Cameron talks about Elm Street's demise
Elm Street founding editor Stevie Cameron snaps, “Oh, for Christ’s sake! That’s the kind of jealous sniping I don’t accept. What’s the matter with food and fashion? Vanity Fair has fashion!” Cameron is reacting to post-mortem comments on the reasons for Elm Street’s demise in January 2004. She’s not buying the prevalent suspicion that the […]
Too good to be Stu
Prankster columnist Jesse Brown fabricates an anti-lad magazine about the average Joe
Embarrassment and amusement. That’s the official reaction from Doug Bennet, the publisher of Masthead magazine, after his publication was taken in by an elaborate ruse perpetrated by known prankster and Saturday Night columnist Jesse Brown. Brown decided to fabricate an anti-lad magazine called Stu because he was tired of getting beaten over the head with […]
Copywrong
Does the publisher or author hold the right to secondary publication?
Heather Robertson, Mary Soderstrom and Jim Carroll all tell similar stories. In the early 1990s, they searched online databases and were shocked when they found their own articles. No one had asked their permission or given them extra money to put their work in a database. They felt cheated. The publishers were making a profit […]
