Publishers of The Magazine protest loss of CMF funding

The publishers of the youth-oriented magazine The Magazine,have issued a press release that slams the Department of Canadian Heritage for denying it funding under the Canadian content rules of the Canada Magazine Fund. The release was signed by Eric Conroy, the magazine's publisher.

[UPDATE: The press release has been given wider release through Canada News Wire. A story has been published by Mark Bonokoski of the Sun papers, a friend of the Conroy family, which quotes Nadia Laham and Scott Shortliffe of Canadian Heritage defending the rules. They do a pretty good job of it, too.

[Interesting aspects: Bonokoski suggests that Conroy's release was made known to him by a "third party", but clearly this third party (who sent this blog the release) was asked to do so by the Conroys. And the argument Bonokoski seems to be making is that, because standard fare in the magazine is coverage of Hollywood movies, the government should cut The Magazine some slack.]

The release, which was accompanied by tables showing the grants made to Rogers Media, Transcontinental Media and Quebecor for the past two years, is headed: Major publishers coin taxpayers money.

Recently, our monthly youth title called THE MAGAZINE, was told that we did not qualify because our title only contained 73.5% “Canadian Editorial content” on average, and the cut off is 80%. Apart from the fact we don’t agree with their evaluation, there is no appeal process. The fund for this year has been divvied up and the big boys have taken most of the apples. New magazines aren’t allowed to apply.

The question must be asked, “does Rogers need over 3.1 million dollars from taxpayers to fund their publications?” That’s what they’ve received over the past 2 years!

Rogers and the others big players aren’t at fault here. It is the officials at Heritage Canada that need to take a ruler to their own “Canadian Editorial” evaluation process, instead of just filling the trough for the largest porkers to feast.

The Magazine has developed an unusual marketing plan that involves selling through Safeway, Dominion and Sobey's stores, with the hook that part of the cover price goes to support things like the Kids Help Line. In addition, the magazine announced a couple of months ago that 25% of the value of subscriptions purchased through the Canadian Automobile Asssociation would go to support school safety patrol programs.

According to the Department of Canadian Heritage website, The Magazine received $44,000 in 2006 for content development. The press release has been issued since the magazine was notified that it was denied funding in the current round.

The press release tables indicated that in the two years 2004-2006 Rogers titles received $3,148,718, Transcontinental titles received $2,468,545 and Quebecor titles $1,863,091.