Magazine management needs to pay attention to the thorny issue of unpaid internships

[This post has been updated; after the break] Unpaid internships at magazines may be in jeopardy as the result of recent challenges and court decisions in the U.S. and Britain. 

U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III ruled last week that Fox Searchlight Pictures violated minimum wage laws and employment standards by not paying two interns who worked on production of a movie.

In the ruling [said an Associated Press story] Pauley said Fox should have paid the two interns who filed the lawsuit because they did the same work as regular employees, provided value to the company and performed low-level tasks that didn’t require any specialized training.

Now Canadian magazines are a little out of Judge Pauley III's jurisdiction, but as we know such trends tend to drift north and Canadian publishers can't afford to be insouciant about this. So long as Canadian magazine employers build this large pool of transient, disposable labour they increase the likelihood that someone will take a run at them.

Two days after the Pauley ruling, two former interns at the New Yorker and W Magazine sued parent company Conde Nast Publications. According to a Reuters story

"Lauren Ballinger, an intern at W Magazine for several months in 2009, and Matthew Leib, who had internships at the New Yorker in 2009 and 2010, said Conde Nast violated federal labor laws. 

"Ballinger received $12 a day to organize accessories, run personal errands for editors and make deliveries to vendors. Leib got a flat rate of $300 to $500 for each three- to four-month internship, which included reviewing submissions to the New Yorker's "Shouts and Murmurs" section, responding to emails sent to the magazine, proofreading and opening mail. 

"The lawsuit, which seeks a class action on behalf of all affected Conde Nast workers, said the Fair Labor Standards Act required the company to pay an hourly minimum wage."

From the smallest cultural titles to the largest consumer magazines in this country, management has come to take for granted internships, unpaid or poorly paid. 

Read more »

The Grid lays off four staff

Fresh off its award-winning turn at the National Magazine Awards, The Grid weekly magazine (owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited) has laid off several staff: Deputy editor Pat Lynch, staff writer David Topping, associate editor Matthew Halliday and assistant online editor Rob Duffy. 

Editor in chief and publisher Laas Turnbull said:

"National advertisers are not spending and no one has any visibility into Q3 or Q4, so this is a proactive measure to get cost out of the business and meet our bottom-line targets."

Quote, unquote: The new golden age of magazine publishing

"There is no doubt about it: we are entering a new golden age of magazine publishing, an age where the magazine is supported by the website and app. It’s this ‘support’ that people thought would be the death of the magazine. In fact, with the ‘cross media platform’ working well, it’s formidable to have a magazine, a format that readers and advertisers still adore."

-- Dan Crowe, the editor of the London-based PORT Magazine, introducing the summer issue in which the magazine interviews six magazine editors it admires and who run "the best magazines in the world", including Jim Nelson of GQ, Scott Dadich of Wired, Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair, Hugo Lindgren of The New York Times Magazine, Josh Tyrangiel of Bloomberg Businessweek and Adam Moss of New York magazine. 

Heritage minister refuses to meet about TC Media and its CPF funding

Not that it probably expected much, but the Canadian Media Guild did receive a reply to a letter it sent a month ago to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, James Moore. The reply was posted by Story Board, the joint website of the CMG and the Canadian Writers Group. 

The CMG letter had requested a meeting to discuss funding that TC Media receives from the Canada Periodical Fund (roughly $8 million a year) in light of the company's aggressive freelance contract.

"Instead of enriching the cultural sector and helping to stabilize employment, the latest TC Media contract demands that freelancers sign over all rights to their work, while offering no increase in pay rates," the letter to the minister said. "Under these terms, TC Media has the right to republish or alter the work without permission (including removing the byline) and without paying the freelancer another cent."

Minister Moore's reply rather brusquely turns down any possibility of a meeting and says

"The Government of Canada is not involved in the management decisions of CPF recipients, nor in matters relating to potential labour disputes."

Magazine world view: Video on little rails; newsstand lemmings?; Pippa perfect for VF; Death of pageviews

• Model Railroader launches paid video site (Audience Development)
• Invitation to Extinction? Newsstand Professionals in an Up-roar (Dead Tree Edition)
• Reed Construction Data CEO Iain Melville Quietly Steps Down (Folio:)
• Ripping Off the Band-Aid (Folio:)
• Open Door: The readers' editor on… clarifying the Guardian's view on pornography (Guardian)
• Why Pippa Middleton is right for the Vanity Fair job | Daisy Buchanan (Guardian)
• Pew: Nonprofit news sites are growing, but where’s the business model? (PaidContent)
• The Pageview is Dead (Digiday)
• “In the news business, modernity no longer resides in the Western hemisphere” (Nieman Journalism Lab)

An intense, enjoyable and celebratory magazines week

Coverage of Magazines Week events has improved dramatically in recent years, so it seems(ed) redundant for me to report on the outcomes of the National Magazine Awards when there is an excellent summary distributed moments afterwards by the National Magazine Awards Foundation.

However, here are a number of miscellaneous observations about things that struck me at the event and during the MagNet conference and Magazines Week which preceded it.

Best cover

• The proverbial pin could have been heard to drop as this year's recipient of the Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement, Stephen Trumper, spoke from his wheelchair and from his heart. He struck a pitch-perfect balance between advocacy for the disabled and his love of being an editor and mentor.
• Small literary and cultural magazines are indeed the seedbed of the industry, giving people their start and making them available, if they wish, for transplantation into mainstream publications. Certainly that's true with Sierra Skye Gemma who won for best new magazine writer for her piece "The Wrong Way" in The New Quarterly. It's the kind of prize that reflects the effort and passion that TNQ puts into developing new voices.
• The buzz of MagNet was probably about the MagNet Marquee keynote with the charming publisher of Garden & Gun magazine Rebecca Wesson Darwin. The fact that she and her team get readers to pay a fee to belong to Garden & Gun clubs (some as much as $500 a year) had people talking. As did her emphasis on following her "gut". Of course it was a fairly experienced gut; she was no neophyte, having been the first female publisher of The New Yorker and publisher of Mirabella.

Read more »

McGill News named best university magazine in Canada by CCAE

McGill News, published quarterly twice annually by McGill University, won the gold award for best university magazine at the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education’s annual Prix d’Excellence ceremony, held yesterday in St. John’s, Newfoundland. 

The University of Toronto’s U of T Magazine earned the silver and Concordia University’s Concordia University Magazine won the bronze.

Scott Rollins won gold for best English writing for a story published in the University of Alberta’s New Trail about the U of A’s varied research projects in the Canadian north. U of T Magazine earned the silver and bronze medals in this category.

Laval University’s Contact won the gold award for French writing for a story by Pascale Guéricolas about award-winning documentary filmmakers Olivier Higgins and Mélanie Carrier. The Université du Québec à Montréal’s Inter- won silver, while Université de Montréal’s Forum won the bronze.

Oxygen publisher RKP abruptly filed for bankruptcy, suspends business

Robert Kennedy Publishing, which produced Oxygen magazine, Clean Eating, American Curves and Muscle Mag International, has gone out of business, a little over a year after the death of its founder and namesake. The closure of the Mississauga company was abrupt, a surprise to the staff and contributors and production on the magazines' current issues has been suspended. According to a post on Hardbody News, 

"We’re told the staff at RKP were not allowed in the building this afternoon [Friday] and the company has filed bankruptcy. The news caught the staff by surprise and while they knew things were tough they didn’t expect to be out of a job today. We’ve also been informed that the printer has stopped printing the current issues of the magazines and are owed large sums of money by RKP."

Three of the titles are licensed to Fitmedia in Australia, which says that the Canadian bankruptcy in no way affects their publications.    

Publisher and circ expert Michael Fox elected chair of Magazines Canada

Magazines Canada has elected Michael Fox as its new chair for the next two years. Fox, a well-known circulator (was senior vice-president, circulation and marketing at Rogers Publishing) is now the CEO of the indy magazine Garden Making. He remains one of Canada's foremost experts on postal matters and has served in many board positions in MagsCan, including being its treasurer and leading the development of its collaborative direct mail subscription campaign. 

The board members, elected at the same annual general meeting, are:

• Michael Fox, Garden Making, Board Chair
• Gary Davies, BC Business 
• Robert Goyette, Reader’s Digest
• Niel Hiscox, Canadian Auto Dealer 
• Scott Jamieson, Canadian Forest Industries
• Mark Jamison, Magazines Canada CEO
• Doug Knight, Toronto Life
• Pierre Marcoux, Canadian Living 
• Kirby Miller, Canadian House and Home
• Deborah Morrison, Canada’s History Magazine, Past Chair
• Julie Osborne, Maclean’s 
• Rob Tanner, Canadian Cowboy Country
• Jennifer Varkonyi, Maisonneuve
• Lisa Whittington Hill, This
• Grant Young, Downhome

PromCanada magazine to launch next fall

Toronto's Family Communications Inc., which produces Today's Bride magazine, is launching Canada's first prom magazine called PromCanada. It will first come out in November and have a circulation of 75,000 copies.

The European digest-sized book will be distributed on newsstands and through retail dress shops across the country. aimed at tapping into the estimated spending on the big night out, reported to be about $1,140 per family in the U.S.

“Before weddings, prom is a big deal. It is the closest a teen will get to their red carpet moment,” says Erin Dym, editor of PromCanada. “Prom is a major milestone and a time for teens to celebrate the next chapter of their lives. This magazine will be the first of its kind in Canada; we are working with teens as well as major players in the fashion and beauty industry to create a magazine that will excite, inspire and inform teens as they plan for their prom.”

Cottage Life editor Penny Caldwell named CSME Editor of the Year

Aaron Spitzer (Up Here), Penny Caldwell (Cottage Life), Diane Peters (Precedent),
Simone Castello (Canadian Living) and Karen Eull (Fresh Juice)

Penny Caldwell of Cottage Life won the Editor of the Year award from the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors (CSME). It is the third time she has won.Runners up were  Candice Fridman — Enroute; and Christina Cheung — Precedent Magazine

The judges for the award to Caldwell said 

"It's hard to beat Justin Trudeau writing about his dad's canoes, and I liked the personal, evocative writing in the other columns, too. There's a positive, celebratory feel to these issues. The magazine completely lives up to its mission statement, with strong design assisting the how-to components, making them very readable."

Cottage Life also won the  Jim Cormier Award for best display writing, and as consumer magazine of the year, medium circulation (50,000 to 149,999).

Yellowknife-based Up Here magazine and its editor Aaron Spitzer won as magazine of the year, small circulation (less than 50,000 circulation) as well as for best front-of-the-book.

Details on other awards: 

Read more »

Quote, unquote: the checkout dead zone

“Magazine sales at the checkout rack, as well as gum sales, are down because people are literally no longer looking at the checkout counter,” and are instead concentrating on their phones. “The checkout is now a dead zone.”

-- Jon Steinberg, BuzzFeed’s president and chief operating officer, speaking as the min Digital Summit keynote speaker in New York.

Housing uptick in U.S. results in 9% monthly increase in ads in shelter magazines

A report from the Marketplace Economy blog on American Public Media says that the strengthening housing market has had a knock-on impact on shelter magazines in the U.S. (Presumably, that effect will also be seen in Canada.)

Kate Kelly Smith works with Hearst Design Group which publishes House Beautiful. She says the strong housing market means interior design magazines are selling more ads. Advertising Age says this month's issues have sold almost 9 percent more than last year.

"We'll we're a direct reflection of the market, so when there's an uptick in the marketplace, we can feel it across each and every part of our business," Kelly Smith says.

Quebecor's TVA eliminates 90 jobs

Quebecor Media's TVA group has eliminated 90 jobs or about 4.5% of its staffing. TVA is the largest publisher of consumer magazines in the Quebec market; it is not known what proportion of the layoffs involved magazine jobs. The company recently sold its jobs and dating website to Mediagriff and was reported to have a major plunge in profits in the first quarter of 2013 compared with the same period a year earlier.

Over all, Quebecor posted a 50% drop in net profit of $35.6-million or 57 cents per share in the quarter, compared with $71.4-million or $1.13 per share in the year-earlier period.

Ron Sellwood named marketer of the year, Canada's History mag of the year at ACE Awards

Ron Sellwood of Coast to Coast Newsstand Services Partnership was named marketer of the year at the annual ACE Awards for circulation excellence, presented by the Circulation Management Association of Canada. The award and others were announced Wednesday during a CMC luncheon. 

Canada's History was named magazine of the year for its overall circulation performance. 

Deborah Brewster, the North American marketing manager of New Internationalist,  was recognized as CMC volunteer of the year, the first time this award was given.

Other awards were:

• Trade promotion: Shop Metalworking Technology
• Consumer retail promotion: Chatelaine
• Consumer online: Rogers Magazine Digital apps
• Consumer promotion: Zoomer

Oilweek and Up Here Business win KRW gold as magazines of the year

Oilweek magazine, published in Calgary by June Warren-Nickles Energy Group (a division of Glacier Media Inc.) was named magazine of the year (trade) at last night's 59th annual Kenneth R. Wilson awards in Toronto Tuesday evening.

The magazine of the year (professional) was Up Here Business, published out of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories by Up Here Publishing. 

Best issue of the year (gold) went to Jules-Alexandre Obry, Geraldine Martin for Le pouvoir creatif in Les Affaires; silver to Peter Zaver, Tom Gierazimczuk, David Brown, Rebecca Harris, Alicia Androich, Kristin Laird, Jeromy Lloyd, Ally Tripovic for Facebook Rules in Marketing.

(The KRWs, which are open to all specialized business-to-business media written and produced in Canada in either English and/or French, regardless of association membership, form a bookend of Magazines Week during which the MagNet industry conference runs and which concludes Friday night with the National Magazine Awards for consumer magazines.) 

Among other highlights of the evening were 

• the naming of Precedent magazine for website of the year
• Katie Keir was named best new journalist (a new category) for her article When Good Partners Go Bad in Advisors Edge
• the gold award for best profile of a company to master of ceremonies Tom Gierasimczuk, for his article Vice Age in Marketing (Gierazimczuk is now editor in chief of BCBusiness); silver in the category went to Nicolas Mesly for Conterra, la perle convoitee du Pacifique in Le cooperateur agricole
• the awarding of gold awards only (no silver) in two categories: best merchandising/marketing article for Kristin Laird for her article Everybody Loves Target in Marketing;  and best website editorial package to Brandon Tenebaum, Brett Ruffel for the Brandon Tennebaum blog in Canadian Healthcare network
• A tie for gold (no silver) in best professional article to John Lorinc, for Waste Watchers in CAmagazine; and Mark Anderson for The Changing Face of Risk Management in Listed
• Both prizes in best resource/infrastructure article went to Alberta Oil: gold to Jeff Lewis for The Nordic Way; silver to Darren Campbell for Black Art

Read more »

Calgary's Avenue magazine asking its readers to come up with new gelato flavour

Calgary's Avenue magazine has come up with a delicious promotional contest whereby its readers will create a new gelato flavour. Its partner is a Calgary "artisan gelaterie" Fiasco Gelato. The prize is not only the fame of having designed a new flavour, but free gelato for a year.

Entries may be submitted until midnight, June 30 and will be narrowed to six final flavours (manufactured by Fiasco) before the winner will be selected by a panel of expert judges including Jennifer Hamilton, executive editor and food critic at Avenue magazine; John Gilchrist, food critic and writer; James Boettcher, chief idea officer at Fiasco Gelato; Connie DeSousa, co-chef and co-owner of Charcut Roast House in Calgary; Sarah Crosbie of Q107’s Jeff & Sarah Show; Julie Van Rosendaal, food writer and critic; and Dan Clapson, food writer and critic.

The winning tasty creation will become an official Fiasco Gelato flavour in August, just in time for Avenue’s Best Neighbourhoods Block Party, where the Fiasco Gelato food truck will be on hand to showcase the Give us a Taste contest-winning flavour. The party is tentatively scheduled for Aug. 17.

Questions and lots of answers during Magazines Week

Tomorrow (Tuesday 4th) starts Magazines Week in Toronto, the biggest concentration of events and learning opportunities of the year, anchored around MagNet, the annual magazine industry superconference. 

From Tuesday's marquee presentation by Rebecca Wesson Darwin, the president and CEO of Garden & Gun,  to the finale with the National Magazine Awards* on Friday 7th, There will be a lot of talk about the change and opportunities facing the Canadian industry. Panels, presentations, speeches and hallway natters will abound and they all could be summed up under the heading "Where are we going?" There are a few questions that occur to me:

1. How much does good, basic storytelling contribute to the health and prosperity of the business? Are we forgetting -- in our pursuit of technical innovation -- that this is basically journalism, aimed at building audience?
2. When, if ever, will we have alternatives to delivering printed magazines to household letterboxes via Canada Post? Do we want to?
3. What are the alternatives to selling single copies in the ever-shrinking cohort of magazine stores? How do we nurture the independents we still have across the country?
4. Are we investing enough in training the next generation of ad sales, production and circulation people?
5. What proportion of readership will be delivered and measured in digital form in the next five years? And what difference will that make to the way writers, art directors, editors, publishers, circulators and ad sales people do their jobs?
6. Will we finally sort out whether internships are intended to be training or free labour? Or both?
7. Are we gaining readers or losing perspective with social media?
8. Where are the biggest opportunities for startups? 

Among the interesting daily keynotes at MagNet (all "imports" to use a Canadian football analogy) are David Carey, the president of Hearst Magazines, Bo Sacks, the president of the Precision Media Group, and T. J. Tucker, the creative director of Texas Monthly. 

It's heartening to see a diversity of talks and panels ranging from recycling, small magazine finances and cultural publishing to social media and digital technology as well as some big picture discussions about the future of publishing and federal magazine policy. This is what comes of true partnership between the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors (CSME), Circulation Management Association of Canada (CMC), Magazines Canada (MC) and the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC). It's proof that the "big tent" approach works.

Above all, it's nice to see magazine people getting a chance to gather, collaborate and learn from each other. If you're in the Toronto area, there's still room at some of the sessions to join the conversation and even if you can't be there in person, follow the tweets at @magnetcanada, hashtag #MagNet13.

*Scan the Magawards nominees

Three finalists named for PWAC editor of the year

White

Finnamore

Berkowitz

The Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) today announced the finalists for its editor of the year award; an award prestigious because it is a recognition by freelancers of the important role that dedicated editors make to their success.

The finalists (the winner will be announced at a luncheon as part of the MagNet conference on June 7 in Toronto) are:

• Peggy Berkowitz, the editor in chief of University Affairs magazine (published for faculty and administrators of Canada's universities)
• Allison Finnamore, the editor of FCC Express (the weekly e-newletter of Farm Credit Canada) and
• Heather White, the editor of Saltscapes (the Halifax-based Atlantic provinces lifestyle magazine)