Deadline looms to enter the Editors' Choice awards: March 4

Deadlines are an everyday reality for editors and nowhere is this more obvious than for the Editors' Choice Awards, presented by the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors (CSME). 

Note: The deadline has been extended, and submissions now due Friday, March 18 at 4:30 pm. Submissions are due by Friday, March 4 at 4:30 p.m. The awards honour and celebrate the high-quality work of editors within the Canadian magazine industry. 

Entries are free with CSME membership. Winners will be announced at a gala event in conjunction with the MagNet conference on June 8. 

Winners in each of the small (under 50,000), medium (50,000 to 149,999) and large (150,000+) circulation categories, as well as the trade and custom magazine categories, each earn the right to use the Editors’ Choice Award logo on their cover for a year. There are also awards for best tablet, best website editorial, best front of book, the Jim Cormier Award for display writing, best art integration and, of course, the coveted Editor of the Year.

Rules and entry guidelines

Today's Parent wins big at CSME Editors' Choice Awards; EIC Sasha Emmons is Editor of the Year

Today's Parent magazine was the big winner in the Editors' Choice awards of  the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors (CSME), presented on Wednesday evening in Toronto.

Emmons

Sasha Emmons, the editor-in-chief of the magazine was named editor of the year. Today's Parent was designated best large magazine of the year (150,000 circ and over) as well as for having the best web editorial of the year and best art integration.

In selecting Emmons as editor of the year, the judges said

"Over the past 18 months, Today's Parent seems to have reinvented and reinvigorated itself. It is taking risks and taking a stand, while offering readers a sound and thoughtful resource for the chaos and joy that is parenting. As a service magazine that covers food, behaviour and parental tribulation of all strikes, Today's Parent is comprehensive; its style and voice are engating (great ideas, but not preachy).

Among the other winners on the night:

• Small magazine of the year (circ under 50,000), Spacing magazine, editor Matthew Blackett
• Medium magazine of the year (50,000 circ to 149,999), Cottage Life, editor Penny Caldwell
• Trade magazine of the year, Precedent, editor Melissa Kluger
• Custom magazine of the year, Fairmont magazine, editor Natasha Mekhall
• Best Tablet magazine of the year, Canadian Living, editor Chris Bond
• Best front of book, enRoute magazine, editor Ilana Weitzman
• Jim Cormier Award for display writing, Outdoor Canada, editor Patrick Walsh

For more information, go to the CSME website.

CSME to name Editors' Choice Awards winners Wednesday

The Canadian Society of Magazine Editors (CSME) will unveil the winners of its editors' choice awards on Wednesday, June 3 at the Pilot in Yorkville, Toronto. In addition to category winners, there will also be awards for Best Front of Book, the Jim Cormier Award for Best Display Writing and Best Art Integration. As well as  CSME’s highest honour, the Editor of the Year Award.

The finalists in each category are:

Best Magazine, Small Circulation:
– Avenue Magazine
– Spacing Magazine
– Canada’s History Magazine

Best Magazine, Medium Circulation:
– Outdoor Canada
– Western Living
– Cottage Life

Best Magazine, Large Circulation:
– Reader’s Digest
– Style at Home
– Today’s Parent

Best Magazine, Trade:
– Professionally Speaking
– Precedent
– Natural Resources Magazine

Best Magazine, Custom:
– Fairmont Magazine
– enRoute
– The United Church Observer

Best Web Editorial:
– outdoorcanada.ca
– todaysparent.com
– canadianliving.com
– cottagelife.com

Best Tablet Edition:
– Style at Home
– Walmart Live Better
– Canadian Living

Conference call: editors of the world, unite

 

Those among you who are grammar and usage mavens (you know who you are) may be interested in the forthcoming Editing Goes Global, an international conference of editors hosted by the Editors' Association of Canada and the Professional Writers Association of Canada June 12 - 14 in Toronto at the Metro Convention Centre.

Keynote speakers will be Carol Fisher Saller, editor of the Chicago Manual of Style's online Q&A and the author of The Subversive Copy Editor and Katherine Barber, the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary and author of Only in Canada You Say: A Treasury of Canadian Language and Six Words You Never Knew Had Something To Do With Pigs. Other presenters from the U.S., UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and of course Canada. 

Brian Kaufman of subTerrain to receive WMA lifetime achievement award

Brian Kaufman, the longtime founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of the literary magazine subTerrain, has been selected to receive the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award of the Western Magazine Awards. The presentation will be made September 26 at the awards gala in Vancouver. Each year, the WMAs select one individual who has had exemplary, sustained accomplishment in the magazine publishing industry.

Kauffman founded the three-time-a-year journal -- which used the tagline “Strong words for a Polite Nation” -- in 1988 to showcase visual art, creative non-fiction, poetry, social commentary, and photography. In a 2008 blog post he said "subTerrain started out as a dream, an idea of literary rebellion, a shadow-self calling out to be born.”

“Kaufman is a richly deserving recipient,” said Jane Zatylny, President of the WMAF. “We are very pleased to highlight his many contributions to our industry with this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.”

“Brian has been responsible for launching the careers of a new breed of writers and artists onto the literary scene in Vancouver and indeed the rest of the country,” wrote Margaret Reynolds, Executive Director of the Association of Book Publishers of BC.

Also a book publisher, a founding member of the predecessor to MagsBC and a director of the Literary Press Group, in 2009 he also received the Vancouver Mayor's Arts Awards for his “significant contribution to Vancouver's arts and cultural community, for shaping Vancouver as a creative city and for enriching the lives of Vancouver's citizens.”

Fishing fame

Patrick Walsh, the editor-in-chief of Outdoor Canada magazine is in the calendar of the Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame (Mr. September). Here holding his 39-inch catch. Which is more than the rest of us can say. 

Editors' Association of Canada rebranding to become Editors Canada

The Editors' Association of Canada (EAC) has rebranded itself and is henceforth to be called Editors Canada  (in French, Réviseurs Canada.)

"We're the same organization that's driven to advance, support, educate and inform editors, but over the coming weeks we'll be rolling out a new visual identity (including a brand new website) and voice. As always, we're committed to community, conversation and collaboration," says  Communications Manager Michelle Ou in a Facebook post.

The association, which describes itself as "Canada's only national editorial organization", has published a PowerPoint presentation to outline how and why the change has been made. Among the reasons: to increase membership, to keep members and "because it's time". 

Finalists announced for PWAC editor of the year award

The Professional Writers Association of Canada have announced the three finalists for the PWAC Editor of the Year Award, which will be presented as part of the PWAC annual awards dinner on June 5 during the MagNet industry conference in Toronto. 

PWAC president Michelle Greysen said

"These are the people who make the life of a freelancer truly rewarding. There's nothing so satisfying as sharing the sense of a job well done and these great editors make that possible day after day, week after week and year after year."

The finalists are

• Martin Dunphy, senior editor The Georgia Straight
• Robin Stevenson, senior features editor Canadian Living
• Catherine Watson, editor Education Today

Graydon Carter named to U.S. magazine editors hall of fame

Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, has been elected to the Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame and will be honoured at the [U.S.] National Magazine Awards dinner in New York on May 1. 

Carter, who was born in Toronto, got his start in Canada in 1973, when he co-founded The Canadian Review, a monthly general interest magazine. It went bankrupt by 1978 and Carter moved to the U.S., working five years for Time magazine then Life magazine starting in 1983. He co-founded Spy magazine in 1986 with Kurt Anderson and Tom Phillips. Spy was highly regarded but ceased publication in 1998. Then Carter was editor of the weekly New York Observer before being named editor of Vanity Fair in 1992. Under his leadership, the magazine has won 14 NMA awards, including two for general excellence; he's also been named Advertising Age's editor of the year, twice (the first journalist to be so). 

(As an interesting aside, Carter is co-owner of three Manhattan restaurants. )

The hall of fame was established in 1995 by the American Society of Magazine Editors and Carter will be joining a diverse, exclusive membership including Anna Wintour, Martha Stewart, Tina Brown, Hugh Hefner, Gloria Steinem, Jann S. Wenner and Helen Gurley Brown. 

Groundbreaking magazine editor Tina Brown leaving the business after 35 years

Tina Brown, who had major successes as an editor (Vanity Fair and The New Yorker) and major failures (Talk magazine and Daily Beast/Newsweek) is leaving the magazine business after more than 35 years. 

A story in the New York Times said that she is ending her fractious partnership with backer Barry Diller who was not going to renew her contract and would be starting Tina Brown Live Media, focussed on building a conference business on the foundation of the Women in the World conferences she has been running for several years. 

"It is unclear what Ms. Brown's departure means for the future of The Daily Beast. The Web site has lost millions of dollars since its inception, though Ms. Brown had projected that it would break even long before now. The executive, speaking on condition of anonymity because Ms. Brown was handling the public announcement, said it was unlikely the Web site would be closed.

"Ms. Brown said The Daily Beast "has given me some of the most exciting and fulfilling years of my professional life," adding that she was "enormously proud" of what the Web site had achieved."

Read more »

A rogue shows his gallery -- Mac Parry

 [photo by Steve Bosch, PNG]

In the lead-up to a show this weekend of photos from Mac Parry's Vancouver Sun column, the Sun had a couple of stories by John Mackie that chronicled Parry's remarkable career -- including his long involvement with magazines. He was the editor of Vancouver magazine for 16 years, later editor of Western Living and, for a brief time (10 months) the editor of Frank Stronach's $12 million vanity project Vista magazine. 

The photo exhibit, which chronicles 20 years of people and events he shot, is for one weekend only, June 22-23, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wing Sang building, 51 East Pender, Vancouver. All donations go to The Vancouver Sun's Raise-a-Reader literacy program.

• A rogue’s life: Mac Parry spills the beans 
• Parry’s thrust: A columnist on décolletage, the wee fella and spawning salmon 

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. 

Expat Canadian Tyler Brûlé named editor of the year by Ad Age

Wallpaper and Monocle magazine founder Tyler Brûlé has been named editor of the year by Ad Agemagazine. The magazine said "it comes as no surprise that he remains perhaps the most devoted and adventurous advocate of 'magazine-ness' working today." 

Brûlé moved to Britain in 1989 and launched Wallpaper in 1996 and Monocle in 2007. He is lauded for his insistence on creating substantial, luxurious and high-end publications in an era when most editors are cheese-paring budgets by downgrading paper quality or trim size.

The budget's always been tight at global-affairs monthly Monocle -- launched in 2007, it's still in startup mode -- but for founder and editor in chief Tyler Brûlé, the primacy of the physical product is inviolable. With its glossy heft, sections on all manner of different paper stock, and exquisite printing, Monocle is a media product for the luxury market -- the global jetset -- that actually feels luxurious.

"When the little van comes with the first-bound editions," says Mr. Brûlé, speaking from Monocle headquarters in London, "it's like Christmas. That fresh smell of the glue, the feel of the paper under your fingertips, the click of the pages and the crackling of the spine -- it is touching every single sense."

The Atlantic opens its editing room to its readers

Readers of The Atlantic Wire, the very successful online arm of The Atlantic magazine, are being invited to pitch stories and influence the editing process in an open comments thread, according to a story on Mashable, which quotes editor Gabriel Snyder

“As with many web news operations, The Atlantic Wire is mostly edited via terse messages in a group chat room. Editors and writers spend the day logged onto Campfire pitching story ideas, exchanging links and keeping everyone up to date on the news of the day. So we had a thought: Why not move that out into the open and let anyone who wants to take part?”

[Campfire is the chatroom client used by full-time staff.] According to the story, the editorial team picked up several story suggestions as a result.

The case for editors and editing, in case one needs to be made

I've just come across an article, written originally for the blog Writing for Digital and reprinted by Digital Book World, in which James Mathewson, editor in chief of ibm.com shows pretty conclusively the value of good editors, in this case working on online marketing materials.

Matthewson says that editors are sometimes seen as an extra, and unnecessary, step getting in the way of publishing on the web, but an experiment demonstrated editors' value. The same sample of pages from various business unites were delivered to two, random groups of end users in edited and unedited form. Then the company measured "engagement" which it defined as clicks on the desired links on the page over the course of a month. The result? A 30% improvement from the edited pages.

Now it was just one test and it needs to be replicated before we draw strong conclusions. Your mileage may vary depending on the quality of your editors... But we can provisionally conclude that well edited pages do 30 percent better than unedited pages.What would 30 percent better engagement do to your bottom line? I’m going to let you draw your own conclusions about how 30 percent better engagement might affect your business. But let’s put an end to all the talk about editors being unnecessary.

New EIC at Elle Canada promises openness and approachability

The new editor-in-chief of Elle Canada, Noreen Flanagan, has submitted to an interview with the Globe and Mail for its Saturday edition (up now on the web) in which she goes to some lengths to explain how her editorial management approach will differ substantially from that of her recently turfed predecessor, Rita Silvan. The leitmotif of the article is access and openness (which not so subtly suggests that the previous regime had neither). For one thing, Flanagan puts a lot of stock in social networking:

“I think that, through Facebook and Twitter, the level of intimacy that people are comfortable with today is so dramatically different than [it was] five, even three years ago,” she said. “People right now want intimacy and immediacy and that’s something that print has to adapt to. We’re a little late in the game but we’re catching up.”

Flanagan told Globe writer Tiyana Grulovic that her style is both retro and futuristic -- retro in the sense of injecting more storytelling in the magazine, futuristic in taking maximum advantage of blogging, e-readers and the like.

Flare fashionista Lisa Tant's busy, busy life

Lisa Tant, the editor-in-chief of Flare, the fashion magazine from Rogers, was home for dinner only 5 times last month. This, among other things, we learn from her blog posting about her  "typical day", which isn't. She compares herself to her father, who worked to the clock and hated his job. 

I’m out a minimum of three nights a week attending everything from new product launches to fashion shows to black tie dinners. In October (one of my busiest months) I was home for dinner a grand total of five nights – including weekends. That’s a great schedule for a Type A personality like me, but not so good if you love to spend time with family and friends. The idea of going to a movie mid-week sounds like fun – I can’t remember the last time I did that!

[Pic above shows Tant at the P&G Beauty Awards with Joeffer Caoc (where FLARE’s Elizabeth Cabral won Best Fashion Editor) -- photo by George Pimentel]

Adventures in long-form magazine editing

J-source has adapted and re-published an excellent article on long-form magazine editing, originally written last year by Bill Reynolds for Literary Journalism, the newsletter of the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies. Reynolds is head of the magazine stream at Ryerson University.

It's relatively unusual for such reflective writing about the craft, based on real stories and well-written itself (as opposed to turgid academic jargon). It provides good examples of how a story can be saved or made better by the way in which it is told.

American editors say retouching is a fact of magazine life

Slimming down celebrities (particularly scantily clad ones) with Photoshop won't be ending anytime soon in the States. The American Society of Magazine Editors will talk about it but that's about all:

“ASME is not considering a ban of any kind,” Glamour editor and ASME president Cindi Leive tells Folio: “Given the ubiquity of retouching technology these days—think of brides and their wedding photos—it seems unrealistic to forbid all digital manipulation of photos in any magazine.”

But Leive says ASME is considering a panel discussion on the topic. “Readers should never be misled about what they’re looking at.”

The ASME considerations apparently follow on a similar discussion in Britain where it seems there may be a voluntary code forthcoming that will guide editors on use of electronic buffing, slimming and virtual surgery.

Folio: reminds us that Glamour, which came under fire for its apparent slimming of Ugly Betty star America Ferrera (Glamour denied they did so); Time placed a teardrop on Ronald Regan for its March 2007 cover; and Blender put Britney Spears’ head on someone else’s body.

PWAC launches Editor of the Year Award

Editors sometimes don't get the respect they deserve from writers (and sometimes vice versa) and from awards programs. Editors generally have to bask in the reflected glory while underpaid but visible freelancers and designers get the trophies. The Professional Writers Association of Canada are attempting to rectify this with the launch of their first annual PWAC Editor of the Year Award.

[This is not the first national Editor of the Year award. A similarly named award is made by the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors (CSME) and awarded along with other awards at the association's annual dinner.]

Nominees for the PWAC award may be staff editors, freelance editors or editors associated with one or more publications and they may work for any print medium. They may only be nominated by one of the 600 PWAC members in good standing. The winner will be announced each May at the PWAC National Conference Awards Banquet, and will also be congratulated at the PWAC Luncheon during MagNet, the annual Canadian magazine industry conference in Toronto (of which PWAC is a founding partner).

“As professional freelance writers,” explained PWAC President, Carolyn Gibson, “we are often privileged to work with outstanding editorial professionals who respond quickly and positively to our queries, help us shape our ideas and work, improve our writing, and smooth the process of publication, invoicing and payment. Starting this year, PWAC members now have the opportunity to bring national recognition and praise to our too-often unsung business partners – the editors.”