What’s most important for the Review’s future? You
A note to readers from Ivor Shapiro, chair, Ryerson School of Journalism, and publisher of the Review
Dear readers, After more than a year of questions and discussion about the future of the Ryerson Review of Journalism, our plan’s building blocks are in place. It will be an audience-focused, audience-driven, audience-supported multiplatform magazine brand that continues to include an annual print edition, plus much more. By audience, we mean you. But first, […]
Can Seven-Minute Speeches Save a Magazine?
How The Walrus Talks series is helping to keep a venerable publication alive
A heavy silence takes over the room as Sylvia Maracle, executive director of the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres, takes a pause during her seven-minute speech. “You need to make sure that when people arrive they understand that some of the trauma they have left is the trauma that exists here for the original people […]
That time we launched a magazine
By Daniel Sellers By quarter to nine last Thursday night, the crowd at the back of Toronto’s Esplanade Bier Markt had thinned into discrete, scattered clusters. The party launching the Spring 2014 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism was over, and members of funk and soul cover band Soular were beginning to set up their gear. […]
A dull read
Sharp's John McGouran and Michael La Fave say they want to produce a magazine of GQ and Esquire quality, but is it really more than a catalogue of pricey boy toys?
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 […]
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 […]
Watered Down
Staying afloat is no easy task in the tiny publishing world of Atlantic Canada. The surest way to smooth sailing? Don't make waves
Coastlife magazine was conceived in November 1998 around a coffee table laden with a pot of tea, mugs and bowls of hummus and chips. Kyle Shaw, Christine Oreskovich, Catherine Salisbury and Heidi Hallet had gathered at Shaw and Oreskovich’s Halifax home for the fall board meeting of The Coast, at the time a five-year-old weekly […]
Scribble Scramble
The life and times of an unregenerate freelancer
The first piece I published in Toronto Life appeared in October, 1973. Actually, it was the first piece I’d published anywhere, except for a precious little effort in Performing Arts in Canada, which examined wrestling as a clue to society’s ills, and another that wound up hacked to bits in Maclean’s, one of whose editors […]
Breaking Point
Chatelaine demands a lot from its writers—sometimes too much
Every freelance writer has run into conflict with an editor at one time or another. Writing is a very subjective thing, and some conflict is inevitable. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen all that often. Most magazine editors are willing to negotiate with writers, and vice versa. And both editors and writers realize there are certain obligations […]
