By Frank Moher The more Maclean’s changes, the more it stays the same. At a recent public discussion in Calgary, co-presented by Maclean’s and CPAC and titled “The West is in. Now What?”, the panel included Fort McMurray Mayor Melissa Blake, Alberta Minister of Culture Lindsay Blackett, Saskatchewan Environment Minister Nancy Heppner, University of Winnipeg […]
magazines
The Beaver turns tail
By Bev Schellenberg The Beaver is no more. Begun in 1920 in celebration of the Hudson Bay Company and the fur trade, Canada’s foremost historical magazine will now be titled Canada’s History. Who would’ve thought such a venerable institution would buckle under to a bit of competition from internet porn sites? According to its publisher, […]
Another “national” publishing award
By Frank Moher A number of years ago I proposed a story to Saturday Night magazine on the journalist Barry Broadfoot, veteran western Canadian newspaperman and pioneer in Canada of oral histories (Ten Lost Years, Six War Years), who had a new book coming out. Over the phone, I extolled his virtues to my editor […]
A Frank appreciation
By Frank Moher Your feckless Media blogger has been off cheating with his other mistress — theatre, of all things — which is why this section has been quiet as a dying newsroom lately. While I was away, Canada lost one of its few genuine sources of shit-disturbance, Frank magazine. Its folding was duly reported […]
White wash
By Frank Moher The various human rights commissions that rejected the complaint against Maclean’s magazine — most recently the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal — were right to do so, of course. Members of the Canadian Islamic Congress had charged Maclean’s with inciting hatred and contempt towards Muslims when it published an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s […]
Maclean’s serves it cold
By Frank Moher Jonathon Gatehouse’s biopsy of the Asper family in Maclean’s does a workmanlike job of pursuing the boss’s business. Leonard Asper is presented as earnest but clearly in over his head in trying to run CanWest Global, thus maximizing any damage the article might do to the company (probably not much). A heaping […]
Standard procedure
By Frank Moher I felt some sympathy for Ezra Levant around the shuttering of his Western Standard magazine, until I received this item of boilerplate e-mail: Dear Western Standard reader, I’m sorry to report that we’ve had to shut down the print edition of the Western Standard. Despite nearly four valiant years of trying, we […]
Not all Black
By Frank Moher Naomi Klein characterized the trial of Conrad Black as class war. Elsewhere it was posited as a case of dueling tax systems (Canadian v. U.S.) or legal systems (ibid.) I’d say, though, it was a broader culture clash than that, between the populist traditions of the United States (of whom prosecutor Patrick […]
About that $100,000, Ken . . .
By Frank Moher Monday’s New York Times contained an article with the hed Trial of Black Raises Conflict Issue, about the game of Twister that Maclean’s has gotten itself into trying to cover the proceedings. It noted that Lady Black is the magazine’s star columnist, and both main trial correspondent Mark Steyn and publisher and […]
Nice!
By Frank Moher Maclean’s gaily partisan coverage of the Conrad Black trial has now spread from Mark Steyn’s blog to what we thought was its straight news reporting (if there’s such a thing in Maclean’s anymore). “In a piece that cries out for a copy editor like a wounded seal pup for its mother,” writes […]
