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 were unable to make ends meet financially. I regret that means we will be unable to fulfill our oustanding subscription obligations, and for that I’m very sorry.

I wasn’t a Western Standard subscriber — I received its e-mails because I had registered for its website, in hopes it would provide grist for this blog. As it has. It is to laugh. All those loyal subscribers with their avaricious belief in the free-market, now invited to place their subscriptions where the liberal sun don’t shine. Perfect.

Levant didn’t help matters by telling The Globe and Mail that “the magazine wasn’t purely an economic mission to begin with, but also a moral one.” Apparently that morality doesn’t extend to meeting one’s financial commitments. It’s not easy to find the responses of aggrieved dumped subscribers on the website (which is, so far, still extant), so — as just another of the many public services we provide here at BoB — sans subscription fee, by the way — I’ve posted a few at the end of this message.

Perhaps this experience will help right-wingers get over their fantasy that an endeavour like Western Standard is possible in Canada without government grants. Even $63,366 in postal subsidies from the feds in 2005-06 wasn’t enough to keep it going; what it probably needed to have a shot at survival was assistance from the Canada Magazine Fund. Let me be a bit conciliatory: I’d gladly have had my tax dollars directed to Western Standard in order to be able to continue to read it; it had some good writers, and its comic value was incalculable.

My schadenfreude spent, let me be even more conciliatory. It’s hard to celebrate the loss of a western Canadian magazine that, its title notwithstanding, aimed to have a national circulation and the sway that goes with it. We do still have among us The Report, a monthly out of Edmonton that is the true heir of the old Alberta Report, but it is largely unknown elsewhere. That leaves those of us west of Mississauga to the ministrations of Maclean’s and various other central Canadian colissi. Maclean’s has made some strides in becoming genuinely national since Ken Whyte took over, but Whyte, for all his talents, is too much now a creature of downtown Toronto to really do the job.

There is one ray of hope, digitally-generated, in all this, and that’s the emergence of a handful of online magazines like thetyee.ca, orato.com, and, dare I say? — backofthebook.ca in and around Vancouver. The Tyee is BC-oriented, orato is determinedly internationalist, but they, like we, are at least coming from someplace other than walking distance of Yonge Street.

Wait, there’s one other. Perhaps the death of Western Standard will spell the end of the absurd conflation of conservative and western Canadian interests that began with Bible Bill Aberhart and picked up speed at Ted Byfield’s Alberta Report back in the days when both Whyte and I were working there. Believe it or not, being right wing and, say, Albertan, aren’t necessarily one and the same. As Ezra Levant is currently discovering, the hard way.

Just some of the happy Western Standard subscribers! . . .

“We too have lost out on most of the remainder of our subscription and while I supported this magazine, I understand people complaining about the loss of their money (especially those poor people who renewed in the past month when magazine leadership should have known that this was going to happen).

“I do not perceive their complaining as being selfish or cheap but I view what has happened regarding subscriptions as an ethical issue.

“By accepting someone’s money for a subscription you are entering into a legal agreement to provide a service for that money. To take someone’s money when you have no intention of providing that service is fraudulent and, in my opinon, immoral.”

***

“Three times I have supported getting out the Conservative message; the first time it was buying $1000.00 in Ted Byfield’s enterprise (last I heard the share was worth 1 cent); the second time it was Link Byfield’s BC/Alberta Report magazine (A two year subscription lost when the Magazine went into bankruptcy); now another two year subscription lost as the Western Report folds. I wonder how much those two “Conservative Cruises” contributed to the bankruptcy and were the two Byfields guests or paying passengers?”

***

“One thing, Ezra. I sent $50 to your magazine to help fight the Human Rights case. After that, I subscribed when you sent me an email promising me your book, “The War On Fun”, if I should subscribe. I never received the book after a year, and stalled re-subscribing until I did. I looked at it like a campaign promise broken, which it really was. Since I stalled on re-subscribing until this book promise was resolved, and your magazine folded in the meantime, I saved my money. This was the only blight on an otherwise politically fresh red apple.”

***

“Great magazine, sad to see it go. However, I am a full time student, and unlike most subscribers, I don’t have money to throw around, and I just renewed last month (after a phone call asking me to renew, no less, which makes me wonder if it was a cash grab).”

***

“If the WS still has an Internet presence, then there is still a company carrying on business. It hasn’t gone bankrupt. It is presumably making money off its advertising on the Internet. So why shouldn’t it pay its print subscribers?”

***

And one mildly peeved former columnist, Colby Cosh:

“It has to be admitted that the shutdown was poorly handled from the standpoint of the editorial employees and contributors. I can’t speak for anybody else, but I got the news the same way the public did, from Ezra’s announcement on the Shotgun. I was mere hours away from leaving town for Thanksgiving, and those who depended more heavily on the Standard for their income must have been in the same rather awkward situation. (Cook a bigger turkey, Grandma, I’m out of work!)

“. . . I pers
onally am in arrears for only one issue, and if I never see the final payment that makes me even-steven with the magazine (no one has officially told me it is not in the mail), I will still have been treated more fairly than I was by my longtime employers at Alberta Report, who owed me thousands of dollars in back pay and statutory severance and failed to follow up on repeated verbal promises to send at least some meagre crust. (I’m grateful that the Standard did not attempt some preposterous strategy like converting the magazine to a non-profit while everyone was still employed and then claiming that the old obligations of the for-profit company had been mystically liquidated by the changeover.)”

Now that the merry pranksters at Frank magazine have been outed as the satirists behind the http://www.supportlordblack.com hoax, it behooves us to ask who does support Conrad Black, and why? The March 12th issue of Maclean’s magazine offers an answer: Mark Steyn, a right-wing columnist described by Peter Preston of the London Observer as an “American-based neo-con ranter.”

Steyn, whose by-line also appears regularly in such conservative publications as the Western Standard and the National Review, writes in Maclean’s that Lord Black and his wife, the columnist Barbara Amiel, have been “good for readers and good for newspapers.” He doesn’t elaborate, but we presume he is referring to the fact that Black gave Canada The National Post — a national daily to compete with The Globe and Mail — and that he ran a media company, Hollinger Inc., which owned most of the country’s other major dailies. Were these papers good for readers when Black was at the helm? Sometimes. Black believed in spending money on journalism, and newspapers often put out a better product when the editorial budget is increased.

But was Black good for the newspapers? More specifically, did he provide good leadership for the people who worked at the newspapers? Let me speak from experience here. I worked as a staff writer at the Calgary Herald for 25 years. For more than 20 of those years, I couldn’t have asked for a better job. We had salaries and benefits comparable to those in big newsrooms across the country. We had bosses who encouraged us to do quality writing and photography and respect the intelligence of our readers. My job as a features writer and columnist took me across Canada and beyond in search of good stories. It was one of the best gigs I ever had.

Our winter of discontent began in 1996, a few months before Hollinger assumed a controlling interest in Southam, the company that owned the Herald. With a workaholic publisher in charge, the newsroom turned into a white-collar sweatshop. Reporters were ordered to produce more and more copy, which was then arbitrarily rewritten by newsroom managers to conform to the publisher’s expectations. Dignity went out the window along with respect. We often opened our newspapers in the morning to find our stories altered beyond recognition. “Drive-by editing,” we called it. Many of these editorial changes, done without consultation with the reporters, resulted in errors, and readers demanding printed corrections, apologies, and retractions.

In October 1998, editorial staffers voted to join the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union (CEP). For the first time in 115 years, the Herald newsroom was certified. But two years of Hollinger ownership had failed to fix the problems caused by the previous management. In fact, things had gotten worse. Aside from the drive-by editing, there had been indiscriminate firings. Senior writers were dismissed for the flimsiest of reasons. We needed protection from the madness. We became CEP Local 115A. We spent a year trying unsuccessfully to negotiate a first contract. Then the company locked us out. We were on the picket line for eight months.

In March 2000, Black came to Calgary to attend a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce shareholders’ meeting. Some of the locked-out workers confronted him in the lobby of the Westin Hotel. He told us the Herald had improved as a paper since the start of the lock-out. The paper’s dwindling circulation said otherwise. Union leader Andy Marshall asked Black why he was insulting his once-valued employees. “We’re not,” responded Black. “We’re amputating gangrenous limbs.”

The lock-out ended on June 30th, 2000 with the union being decertified and most of the 93 workers still on the picket line taking buyouts. I was one of those who took the money. My job as a columnist had been eliminated and many of my friends were looking for employment elsewhere, including a number of national-award winners who had once combined to make the Herald one of the best dailies in Western Canada. With them gone, I could see no reason for going back into the building.

So, was Conrad Black good for the Calgary Herald? When union leader Marshall said in March, 2000 that the Herald needed us back in the building to restore its status as a quality paper, Black replied: “We’ve got one. And it’s getting better all the time.” Seven years later, I still beg to differ.

Brian Brennan is a Calgary author and journalist. His latest title is How the West Was Written: The Life & Times of James H. Gray.

I was as excited as I know you must have been to receive a note from Ezra Levant, publisher of The Western Standard, announcing that the new Mark Steyn T-shirts are in — and just in time for Christmas.

“Do you love our columnist Mark Steyn as much as I do?” Mr. Levant writes. “He’s only the most amazing writer in the English language.” Now, we know he doesn’t really mean that — that honour, of course, goes to Dean Koontz — but it’s hard not to get all lathery anyway. “It’s time to take your enthusiasm a step further,” the fibrillated publisher continues, “and make a fashion statement and a political statement at the same time!” You know, Mr. Levant’s way with an exclamation mark is positively contagious! He uses them at the end of every paragraph! We want to too!

We can’t quite say that the T-shirt has the same reverberant quality as “the iconic Che Guevara shirts” Mr. Levant claims it’s modelled on. Sure, we’d like to take to the hills with Mark Steyn as much as the next compañero, but we have a feeling he’s too busy for that sort of thing. But it does still have a certain je ne sais quoi. That little cock of the head. The lick of hair spilling onto his forehead. The stubble. Let’s just say, Mark Steyn can be our Broadway Baby anytime. Right, Ezra?

One thing, though. Mr. Levant mentions that Steyn’s book America Alone has been a big bestseller in Canada — “despite a boycott from Chapters-Indigo!” But he must know that last part isn’t true. Surely, being such a big fan of Mr. S, he reads him in Maclean’s too, and so also saw the letter to the editor from Chapters-Indigo denying the charge (first levied in Mr. Steyn’s own column), and offering the less spectacular explanation that they simply underordered. Or the one in The National Post to the same effect. Or, simply being a bright guy, he recognizes a publicity ploy when he sees one.

But no matter! What does the truth matter to a magazine publisher? He has a fashion line to sell! It’s all so exciting! And only 29.95!!!!!!!!

Here at backofthebook.ca we’ve done a rigorous scientific study and determined that Mark Steyn has used the personal pronoun “I” precisely 1,546,784 times since beginning his “Books” column for Maclean’s. We’d provide documentation of our rigorous scientific study, but this is the internet, so we don’t have to. But if, say, our figures were off by a million-and-a-half or so, the findings would still stand: the “Books” column of Maclean’s isn’t really about Books, but about Mark Steyn — part of Ken Whyte’s strategy since his National Post days: More Mark Steyn, All The Time.

That’s why I’ve been putting “Books” in italics. Maclean’s once ran a Books section; now it runs a “Books” section. They might as well put a nudge-nudge, wink-wink after the heading. The reason is obvious enough: Steyn, after his departure in high dudgeon from the Post when Whyte was fired, signed on to write a column for Ezra Levant’s stab at becoming Ted Byfield, The Western Standard. Obviously, The Western Standard wouldn’t cotton to Steyn’s writing another political column for another Canadian magazine, not even one run by a fellow traveller, and so Steyn’s “Books Nudge-Nudge Wink-Wink” column was born.

Mr. Steyn has done us the favour of corroborating our findings this week by publishing a “Books” column about . . . his own book. This must set some new standard in po-mo self-referentialism. He is, of course, a bit embarrassed, adding tugging of the forelock to the general nudging and winking. “Don’t worry,” he assures us, as if the problem is ours; “lest you think this is a book plug, I don’t think it’s possible to plug a book that at the time of writing is unavailable in any Canadian bookstore.” His problem, you see, is that his latest, the breezily-titled America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, is apparently not available in any of the major bookstores in Canada, perhaps because Heather Reisman, who runs them, has something against him. Not that he’d ever suggest such a thing; his many admirers, e-mailing his website, say it’s so. Mr. Steyn is also circumspect enough not to give the name of his book in his column — its “title escapes me,” he chortles — because, of course, that’ll settle the matter of our thinking he might be rolling his own log. It’s not like anyone is going to say, “Hm, I wonder what this book of his might be,” and then type his name into the search engine at amazon. Though he does helpfully mention later in the column that the book can be found precisely there.

Look, we understand. When you write as much as Mark Steyn, who currently also contributes to The Atlantic, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Telegraph, Aluminum Today, and his mother’s bridge club’s newsletter, it’s hard to come up with new subjects. But, as the local Buddhists like to say, “Wherever You Go, There You Are.” Oneself is always good for a thousand words. This approach worked well enough at the Post, where Steyn’s putative subject was Canadian politics; how else to make it entertaining? It works less well, though, applied to books (without the quotation marks), because, last time we checked, some books are actually more entertaining, or interesting, or full of ideas, or full of good ideas, than the person writing about them. It’s hard to believe, Mr. Steyn, but it’s true.

Oh well, let’s give the kid a break; he’s just trying to build a career for himself. Our real beef is with Whyte, for turning the once respectable, if not exactly scintillating, Books section of Maclean’s into a Yuk-Yuks franchise. (”Good evening, ladies and autodidacts . . .”) It happens that I once sat in Whyte’s office at Saturday Night and spied some copies of Henry James on the floor behind the desk, so I have the idea that he actually likes books. It’s possible they were left behind by Conrad, but let’s just say. Why he can’t find something else for Steyn to do is beyond me. Maybe, as he does for The Atlantic, Steyn could write the obituaries. Or should that be, “Obituaries”?

Does a magazine’s title determine its chances of success?

It doesn’t seem to. The Walrus, having weathered that not-paying-freelancers-on-time thing, seems to be doing all right, despite being named . . . The Walrus. And despite being . . . dull. (The Walrus reminds me of nothing so much as The New Yorker in its pre-Tina Brown and David Remnick days, when worthiness was everything, and style and entertainment-value had died about the same time as Harold Ross.)

But enough about them; let’s talk about us. This magazine is called backofthebook.ca. The back of the book, in publishing parlance, is the latter, say, third of a magazine, where most of the commentary usually goes. I like to think of it as the place where the smart kids hang out. But then I would; almost everything I’ve written for magazines over 25 years has been for the back of the book.

One colleague has suggested the name is a bit of a mouthful. Fine; call us “Bob,” then. Bob. There’s a nice, friendly name for a magazine.

By either name, we aspire to be nothing less than a successor to the late, strangely under-lamented Saturday Night magazine. The key word here being “aspire.” I realize, given the humbleness of our beginnings — you’re looking at ‘em — any such claim may seem risible. But give us 118 years, which is how old SN was at the time of its apparently final death, and then see how we’re doing.

There will be differences, of course. Plenty of them. The main one, you will have noticed, is that we’re online. When I worked for Saturday Night as a writer and editor, back around the fin de siecle, I lamented the fact that it didn’t have a better website. And as it was going through its various death throes, I wondered why it didn’t just morph into a Canadian version of Salon or Slate and be done with the cost of mass-murdering trees. Readership would have dropped, sure. But it might have survived.

But of course, the generation responsible for publishing our magazines and newspapers remains paper-centric. So much the worse for them (and those trees). We note that the success of Salon and Slate has put to rest the old canard that people won’t read a magazine online. Some won’t. And for them we recommend the Print function in their web browser. (Try it now. There. See? How easy was that?)

We also come to you from the West. We don’t intend to make a big deal of that; it’s not our intention to be a non-crazy version of Western Standard. But it will, no doubt, inflect the way we choose and write our stories. Place does that — something which editors in Toronto have never managed to figure out.

Our politics are liable to be left-of-centre, if only because my own are. But mostly I hope we’ll be contrarian, afflicting conventional wisdom of all kinds. Personally, I don’t care what a story’s politics are as long as it’s smart. And entertaining. Did we mention entertaining?

The rest we’ll make up as we go along.

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