Facebook group protests discontinuation of small arts and literary mag funding

[This post has been updated]A Facebook group called the Coalition to Keep Canadian Heritage Support for Literary and Arts Magazines has been created to try and reverse a decision to discontinue funding for magazines under 5,000 annual circulation.The Facebook group was started by John Barton, the editor of The Malahat Review, Jon Fiorentino, editor of Matrix, Anita Lahey, editor of ARC Poetry magazine and Andris Taskans, editor of Prairie Fire. It has already had 773 1,100 members signed up.

The new funding floor, to come into effect in about a year was announced February 17 by Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore. The Facebook group site says, in part:

With a few exceptions, the circulation of virtually every Canadian literary and arts magazine, large and small, is below 5000.

We have to make sure this possibility does not become an actuality, for if it does, as April 1, 2010, these important and praiseworthy magazines will no longer qualify for funding that they have been receiving for years from the CMF and PAP despite the excellent work that they undertake for the readers and writers across Canada (and around the world)! The Coalition to Keep Canadian Heritage Support for Literary and Arts Magazine feels strongly that to render these magazines ineligible for this support would be unjust.

To quote Andris Taskans, editor of Prairie Fire, to do so would be "a slap in the face"---not only to the magazines themselves but to the many writers that they publish, many of whom began illustrious, international careers in these seminal if modest publcations. To do so would also be a "slap in the face" to the ordinary (and extraordinary) Canadians who read them.

One comment on the site suggest that the Heritage doesn't realize the importance of these little magazines or the impact the floor will have on them:

By definition little magazines are have little audiences but they do mighty deeds. Their small circulation is not a sign of failure, it is a proud tradition started by some of the most influential and yet most exclusive magazines in history--Athenaeum, Blast, Poetry, McGill Fortnightly Review, Contemporary Verse, Contact, blewointment, Tish, Brick--magazines that started the publishing careers of most of the giants of English and Canadian literature. I don't think [Heritage Minister]James Moore set out to extinguish this glorious tradition. He just doesn't know what he has done because he did NOT do his homework. Now we must do it for him.

[Hat tip to the blog Word Things]]