Magazines Week notes and comments

In the wake of an incredibly busy Magazines Week, it's worth looking back at several things worth remembering:

• By now, most of you will have read or heard somewhere about the golds, silvers and honourable mentions at the National Magazine Awards in Toronto on Friday night. Here is a summary. And a link to the Globe and Mail's coverage.
  
  
• The membership of the Canadian Business Press (CBP) at its annual conference embraced the words "digital media" in its explanatory tagline; this is only a sensible reflection of the prevailing reality.
  
  
• Peter Legge, the Chair of Canada Wide Media from Vancouver has been elected the CBP board; it's perfectly sensible, since his company publishes a number of prominent trade titles. But it is odd in that his daughter, Samantha Legge, sits on the board of Magazines Canada, which just took the next step in its "big tent" strategy of changing its bylaws to allow business-to-business magazines to join. (If they want to, the two of them have a rare opportunity to diffuse the recent tension between CBP and MagsCan.)
  
  
• In his acceptance speech at the National Magazine Awards where he was given the coveted Outstanding Achievement Award, Charles Oberdorf took a few moments to address the issue of payment to freelancers.

  "The editors already know this, but to their employers I would just like to point out that most Canadian consumer magazines still pay freelance writers exactly what they were paying 35 years ago when I was a young freelancer. The few exceptions only pay 25 to 50 per cent more than they did then, while the cost of housing in Toronto, for example, has multiplied four hundred percent."

  The warm reception of these remarks indicate that there is a developing consensus that the issue of retaining, developing and nurturing freelancers -- and that includes paying them -- is a critical one for this business.
  
  
• What a great guy! Women in the audience fell instantly in love with Patrick White, who won the best new magazine writer award for Red Rush in The Walrus. Not only did he bring his mom and dad and his girlfriend, but he introduced them proudly from the stage.
  
  
• It's always encouraging to see great art direction recognized, with Malcolm Brown accepting the award for art direction for an entire issue on behalf of the recently launched magazine unlimited (Venture Publishing of Edmonton). It was for only the second issue. And best cover going to Maisonneuve magazine,Anna Minzhulina, Art Director.
  
  
• Was it just me, or was I right in perceiving that there fewer balcony dwellers at the National Magazine Awards this year? The two-tier pricing structure of the awards doesn't seem to have had a major impact on those who buy table seats on the floor of the Carlu, but perhaps it's not such an alluring prospect for those who sit out the event -- drinkless -- upstairs. I heard more than one of those people saying that the evening got tired faster for them than for the people downstairs and they bailed for the bar before the night was out.
  
  
• Equilibrium seems to have been achieved in the National Awards, with the Walrus making a respectable showing (6 gold and 4 silver), but not hauling away the hardware in such volume as in previous years (despite the Globe saying it "dominated" the awards). A mark of the awards this year was the variety of winners.
  
  
• The choice of Toronto Life as magazine of the year seemed to have been a popular one, particularly as it was a capstone on the remarkable career of John Macfarlane, who has retired from its editorship and last year was named for the outstanding achievement award. We hope that other editors noted Macfarlane's graceful acceptance speech and the way it spread the credit around, equating the magazine's success as much to the people who sell the ads and find the readers as to the editors and writers who create the content.
  
  
• I wish I had a nickel for every time someone this week misspoke themselves and said "MagsU" when they meant "MagNet" or vice-versa. We can't afford to continue to have two major industry conferences in the same week; this seems obvious to so many people -- when will the meeting be held that resolves this?
  
  
• One of the best innnovations of recent years in this award-laden month has been the Canadian Newsstand Awards, the results of which were announced at MagsU and displayed at the National Magazine Awards. There is no clash between art and commerce; these awards manage to strike a fine balance between how many copies are sold and what sells them.
  
  
• Good things sometimes take time: the advent of the "wheat sheet" in the current issue of Canadian Geographic was the result of an effort of almost four years to make it happen. Congratulations to Markets Initiative and CanGeo, particularly editor Rick Boychuk and publisher Andre Prefontaine (and past publisher John Thomson) for making it happen. It will be interesting to see magazines keep up the momentum of switching to "green" paper stocks.