Off the rack

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED TO REFLECT THE FACT THAT INDIGO DID NOT INTEND TO BLOCK THIS ISSUE:

The June-July issue of Free Inquiry mag was removed from the shelves at Indigo, Chapters and Coles stores across Canada. The editors are mystified as to the reason. I think they're being naive. (The boldface and link are mine.) Here's their letter to Indigo CEO Heather Reisman, as released to the media late this afternoon.

We have been informed by our distributor that Indigo, Chapters, and Coles stores across Canada declined to shelve the June-July 2006 issue of Free Inquiry magazine. This came at about the same time that the June issue of Harper’s Magazine - containing reproductions of the twelve Danish “Muhammad Cartoons” and commentary upon them by Pulitzer Prizer-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman - was likewise barred from your shelves. Oddly, it came after our previous, April-May issue of Free Inquiry - which reproduced four of the twelve Danish cartoons - was, as best we can determine, shelved normally. We are also given to understand that Free Inquiry is now being inspected in advance on an issue-by-issue basis to determine its suitability to be shelved.

        First, we are dismayed when a distinguished bookselling organization such as yours - an organization that is, quite literally, in the business of facilitating free speech - stoops to censorship, whether before or after the fact. Whatever their potential to offend, the Danish cartoons had such important cultural and political consequences that all North Americans deserved the opportunity to examine the cartoons and judge for themselves. That many North American media quailed from republishing them is regrettable; that Indigo and its subsidiaries have refused their customers the opportunity to view them - at least, in the June Harper’s - is lamentable.

        In addition, we are dismayed when a major retailer behaves in a way that sends incoherent messages in the marketplace. Indigo and its subsidiaries refused their customers the opportunity to view the Danish cartoons in the June Harper’s, having previously permitted them to purchase the issue of Free Inquiry including some of the cartoons. Then customers were denied the opportunity to purchase the next issue of Free Inquiry. We are left to wonder whether the censorship of our June-July issue was in retaliation for our having published the cartoons in our previous issue, or whether it was motivated by some controversial content in the June-July issue itself. Presumably the controversial item was not Edward O. Wilson and Arthur C. Clarke, among others, congratulating one of us on attaining his eightieth year. Was it scholar Eileen McDonagh’s presentation of a novel defense of abortion rights? Or perhaps the article by controversial ethicist Peter Singer defending the cartoons and condeming the jailing of David Irving for Holocaust denial?

        Ms. Reisman, we find your organization’s behavior in regard to Free Inquiry most disappointing - not just because we abhor arbitrary restrictions on the free exchange of ideas, but also because we are perplexed by restrictions whose purpose seems incomprehensible. We would be most intrigued to know the reason why the June-July Free Inquiry was blocked from your shelves, and why our publication is now subject to issue-by-issue review. Free Inquiry has never retreated from controversy; if the things your organization objects to in our content turn out to engage the core values our organization exists to promote, we will simply have to content ourselves with reaching our Canadian readers through other venues. At present, however, we can do little more than scratch our heads over what your organization’s course of conduct in regard to Harper’s and our magazine might signify.

        We eagerly await your reply.

        Sincerely,

Paul Kurtz                                             
Founder and chair, the Council for Secular Humanism
Editor-in-Chief, Free Inquiry

Tom Flynn
Editor, Free Inquiry

(Note that the Borders chain in the U.S. banned the issue with the cartoons in it.)

Anyway, I read Singer's piece about David Irving and noted this:

Yet, the outcome of the publication of the Danish cartoons ridiculing Muhammad was a tragedy. More than a hundred people died in Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Libya, Nigeria, and other Islamic countries during the ensuing protests and riots. In hindsight, it would have been wiser not to publish the cartoons. The benefits were not worth the costs. But that judgment is, as I say, made with the benefit of hindsight, and it is not intended as a criticism of the actual decisions taken by the editors who published them and could not reasonably be expected to foresee the consequences.

To restrict freedom of expression because we fear such consequences would not be the right response. It would only provide an incentive for those who do not want to see their views criticized to engage in violent protests in future. Instead, we should forcefully defend the right of newspaper editors to publish such cartoons, if they choose to do so, and hope that respect for freedom of expression will eventually spread to countries where it does not yet exist.

Unfortunately, even while the protests about the cartoons were still underway, a new problem about convincing Muslims of the genuineness of our respect for freedom of expression has arisen because of Austria's conviction and imprisonment of David Irving for denying the existence of the Holocaust. We cannot consistently hold that it should be a criminal offense to deny the existence of the Holocaust and that cartoonists have a right to mock religious figures. David Irving should be freed.

It's tough to argue with that logic. But those who gleefully published the offending cartoons will find a way, no doubt.

Now before some of you jump down my throat, as I know you will, note that I most definitely acknowledge that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, along with six million other Europeans, whether Roma, gays and lesbians, political prisoners or people the Nazis simply didn't like. I am friends with Holocaust survivors. I have seen the numbers tattooed on their arms and the haunted looks that remain still in the eys of many of them. I am friends with the children of Holocaust survivors. I know what it's like for them.

And I take second place to nobody on the history of the Holocaust.

Finally, a deeply personal admission: I called the  diary I kept as a young girl -- I have it still -- Anne, as an homage to Anne Frank's Kitty.

So please stick to the facts of the case here: If indeed Free Inquiry was banned by Reisman because of that Singer article, was it a justified banning? If so, why?

UPDATE (July 8): Today's Globe and Mail reports that the blocking of the magazine was inadvertent.

Joel Silver, senior vice-president of print procurement for Toronto-based Indigo Books and Music, telephoned Tom Flynn, the editor of Free Inquiry, with the news late yesterday afternoon.

According to Mr. Flynn, the Indigo executive "gave me a sort of a stammering apology, said that the June-July issue was blocked by accident, and that they have contacted [Ajax, Ont.-based Disticor Magazine Distribution Services] to send it through again."

<SNIP>

Calls by The Globe and Mail to four Indigo executives, including Mr. Silver, were not returned yesterday.

Mr. Flynn said from his office in Amherst, N.Y., that the June-July Free Inquiry will be available at Indigo for only about two weeks because the August-September edition already has been printed.

Indigo's Mr. Silver told him the issue would be sold "as normal." The retailer usually takes between 300 and 500 copies of each issue.

Mr. Flynn speculated that Indigo's apparent ban may have been prompted by a Free Inquiry editorial by the Princeton bioethicist and animal-rights activist Peter Singer titled "The Freedom to Ridicule Religion -- and Deny the Holocaust."

Mr. Flynn also suggested the apparent censorship may have been "in retaliation" for Free Inquiry's reproduction, in its April-May issue, of four of the 12 hotly contested cartoons that a Danish newspaper published last year satirizing the Prophet Mohammed. Their appearance in Free Inquiry went undetected by Indigo until late May when the retailer unleashed a storm of controversy by banning the June issue of another U.S. publication, Harper's, which had published all 12 Danish cartoons.

Time after Time

Is MarketWatch's Jon Friedman watching Canadian magazines? Looks like it, especially after last week's announcement that Maclean's was moving its publication date to Thursday from Monday.

I have a suggestion for Time magazine, which has been under a terrible strain lately.

In the past six months, America's most influential magazine - yes, even more so than Reader's Digest or TV Guide, to name two competitors for this mythical throne -- has parted ways with several senior business executives, its public relations director and, most recently, the long-time managing editor. Clearly, these moves underscore a sense, at publisher Time Inc. and parent Time Warner (TWX) that the company's flagship magazine sorely needed a shake-up.

Now, I propose that Time magazine should do something truly revolutionary: change its publication day from the traditional Monday so that the newest issue hits newsstands on Thursday. This decision would enable Time to stand apart from its rival Newsweek and create an instant buzz with readers, advertisers and those pesky self-styled pundits who contend that the newsweeklies Time, Newsweek and U.S. News are nothing more than relics in this Internet era.

It would be a way for the new managing editor, Rick Stengel, to show he is not weighed down by Time's legacy.

Besides, if Time doesn't do seize the moment, then Newsweek might!

On many levels, the move would make sense for Time, as Friedman argues.

But I have to say that I personally think it would suck. I still have a backlog of last weekend's papers on my kitchen counter. Soon I'll be throwing Maclean's and Time on the pile of the unread dead.

H/t to my Star colleague Nick vanR!

Saturday's alright for fighting

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

The July 1 Maclean's "From the Editors'' page has revolutionary -- for the newsmagazine world anyway -- news.

After nearly 30 years of putting out a magazine every Monday, Maclean's has decided to stop. From now on, we'll be putting out a magazine every Thursday.

Weekly current affairs magazines in North America have been published primarily on Mondays for as long as they've existed. There may have been a rationale for this long ago, but we don't believe the schedule suits the lives and habits of our readers today. The simple fact is that people have more time to read at the end of the week and on the weekend. And since we've increased the amount of content offered in each issue of Maclean's by 50 per cent over the last year, it makes sense to deliver it when readers have more time to enjoy it.

Also, as part of publisher Ken Whyte's continuing efforts to increase newsstand sales, the later, more current edition is expected to move more mags off the rags.

According to the editors' note, the newer, more improveder Maclean's will also be more up-to-the-day. (It's a weekly so it can't be up-to-the-minute.)

We will no longer be following the weekend newspapers; we will be out ahead of them. The whole of the magazine will be more urgent and relevant than ever.

Speaking for myself, I think the idea blows. That's because, come the weekend, I am too busy trying to read the weekend papers. I get to Maclean's early in the week when the dailies are thinner and less meaty.

That said, it will be fascinating to watch the effect Maclean's will have, if any, on the Saturday papers -- especially the Globe and Mail and the National Post. My sense is, somebody is going to get hurt as a result. The question is, who?

UPPITY DATE: I am reminded that, since he's been publisher/editor, Whyte has hired Dianna Symonds, Dianne de Fenoyl and Sarmishta Subramanian, who all worked as weekend editors during his time at the Post.

DAY AFTER DATE (June 28/06): Here's the official word from the corporate types:

The change to delivery will also offer a strong alternative to advertisers wanting to reach a very desirable audience. In addition to offering the benefits of magazine production quality and the unique relationship magazine readers have with their favourite publications, Maclean's will also offer greater immediacy, speed to market, and flexibility.

"We took a look at our audience and our advertisers and we believe that increasing our speed to market will benefit both," says Deborah Trepanier, associate publisher, general manager and vice-president, Maclean's.

Advertisers, start your engines.

 

Tangled up in web blues

National Post columnist Robert Fulford, who has a regular media piece in Toronto Life magazine, this month zeroes in on the Star's attempts to ''lure'' readers back from the Internet.

It's not online so I will have to type whatever excerpts I select with these already-ruined-my-manicure fingers. Because of that, I'll sum up what he says, cautioning that I bring my own filter to his view of the Star. These are not quotes, unless marked otherwise. My comments are the purple prose.

The Saturday Star is ''gargantuan'' and threatens to break the back of anybody who hauls it off the front stoop. Reading it the other day made me feel ''like Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, boldly going where no man has gone before.'' (Cool!)

310 pages, not counting ad brochures. But it mostly sucks. (Didja happen to mention you work for the competition, Mr. Fulford?)

Oh look! The Internet is there, on the horizon, threatening newspapers. It's attacking! Eating! Killing off Star readership! Some people don't actually read newspapers anymore. Many young people never read them in the first place. (Stop the presses on this one.)

But the Star is fighting back, even though  its website doesn't look as good as the New York Times'. (You talking to me? You talking to me? You talking to me? Then who the hell else are you talking to?)

The Star's journalists can't write their way out of a paper bag. (Must be because they like to use cliches like ''can't write their way out of a paper bag.")

The Star is all about ''assembly line'' journalism. (All this is ostensibly coming out of the mouth of editor-in-chief Giles Gherson and yet, strangely, there is no quote from him to this effect.)

Technology, technology, technology. (Scary stuff, kids!)

The Star is big. (Boo!)

The end.

The rest of the magazine has some fun stuff on things to eat, drink and do around town this summer.

Falling stars

On Monday, Torstar (which owns the Star which owns this blog but not me) announced that it was closing the book on Weekly Scoop, the celebrity glossy it launched eight months ago. It was the first Canadian English-language magazine of its kind and, in terms of ''quality'' -- to the extent that celeb rags are quality -- was indistinguishable from its U.S. competition.

Okay, maybe it was nicer. And had more pictures of Hollywood stars in Calgary. And a token story or two on actual Canadian celebs.

I am sorry it folded. Not just because jobs are gone, and not just because it cost this company who-knows-how-much, but also because I saw it as a lost opportunity to promote homegrown performers. What's more, as one teenaged friend said to me, it was great to see that you could buy so-and-so's lipstick at Shopper's Drug Mart instead of at Walgreen's.

Pretty soon Rogers Publishing will launch a Canadian version of Hello! My guess is that it too will eventually tank.

Canadians are accustomed to the entrenched U.S. brands (People, Us, etc.) which have bigger bucks for both the dirt and the distribution.

But perhaps even they are in trouble, as this New York Times story about the not-so-exclusive Brangelina baby photos reports. It suggests that, in age of freebie gossip websites, celeb mags may be going down.

After winning the very expensive rights to the first photographs of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, the editors at People magazine formed a publicity plan. Appear for an interview with Matt Lauer on the NBC "Today" show. Give the photos to the tabloids, which will run them in full color on their front pages. Then, on Friday, release the pictures in glossy form to the world on newsstands everywhere, for an increased cover price of $3.99.

Instead, days before their official publication, the pictures of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt cuddling their days-old infant first appeared on Gawker, PerezHilton.com and about two dozen other gossip blogs and Web sites. Some photos were taken from a bootleg copy of Hello! magazine, which had obtained the rights in Britain to the photos for a reported $3.5 million. Others that appeared later were from copies of People that the magazine says may have been stolen before official distribution. Within an hour of the first postings, lawyers for the magazine began unleashing cease-and-desist letters to the offending Web sites.

But did the Internet publication of the pictures really undermine People's publicity plan?

Magazine analysts say the blogs may have actually done the magazine a favor by drumming up even more interest that may translate into higher newsstand sales. But the episode does show that it is no longer business as usual for celebrity magazines, as gossip blogs take on an ever-larger role.

Not only that but, in an age of mobile phones with cameras, anybody can join the stalkerazzi corps.

Besides, gossip sites are so much funner -- more gay, shall we say? -- than the magazines which tend to maintain some modicum of of propriety.

Here are a few for when you have both time and brain cells to waste: Defamer, Gawker, Jossip, Junk Feud, Pink is the new Blog, The Superficial, We Smirch ...

Just remember to come back here, okay.

Oh and warning: Some of them are NSFW. (That's ''not safe for work'' for all you parents out there.)

 

New leaf

Sara Angel is the new editor of Chatelaine, which has been without an editor ever since Kim Pittaway walked last year.

Considering her stellar background in design and publishing, perhaps she can give Chatelaine the heft it lost years ago. Right now, the only time I bother with it is when I am stuck in doctors' waiting rooms.

Goo goo g'job

Here's yesterday's treeware column about The Walrus, easily the most exciting thing to happen in Canada's magazineland in ages.

There's no doubt that the last three years have been tumultuous. You can see the skid marks leading from the editor's office to the lobby door. Critics kept predicting that Walrus would drown, that it was too ambitious, too grandiose an effort for an independent journal.

Tensions ran high.

Turnover ran higher.

But, as (editor Ken) Alexander, 46, points out, The New Yorker never publishes a masthead "because they don't know who is going to be working there week after week."

Alexander, who established Walrus by sinking his inheritance into it, began as publisher but, as growing pains mounted, he also assumed the role of editor. Now that's his only title.

"I'm an employee; I am not on any boards anymore," he says.

"It would be easy to dismiss him as a Richie Rich with a trust fund to burn on starting a magazine. Easy, but wrong," I wrote in 2004 after the magazine scored three NMAs and won best new title in the U.S.-based Independent Press Awards. ("A flash of brilliance," the judges called it.)

"With his handsome looks and rich baritone," I added, "Alexander, a former high school teacher and producer of CBC Newsworld's now-defunct counterSpin, could have done anything. Or nothing."

But Alexander is a believer — a believer in supporting excellent writers, in creating a reading culture, in powerful journalism, in the need for a strong magazine sector in Canada.

Which is why he put $2.5 million into it.

What did his wife Sharyn, a family lawyer, think of that?

"She said: `I only ask that you be both functional and ornamental if you're going to be a pauper,''' he jokes, running a hand through his rumpled hair. "The rumour is that our house is the only house in Riverdale going down in value."

Here's the part I left out because this, after all, was in the business section where I am supposed to be all seriosa. The first time I met Ken when, as a producer for CBC Newsworld's now-defunct counterSpin he booked me for a panel, I almost smacked into a wall.

He's that good-looking.

Sorry but I just had to say it.

CC this

NeoCon blogosphere hero and former columnist-at-a-whole-bunch-of-papers Mark Steyn, now writing political diatribes disguised as book reviews for Maclean's, has been targeted by members the literary community who accuse him of borrowing an analysis of The Da Vinci Code from others without the generally accepted principles of attribution if you get my drift.

Specifically, he stands accused of using some of the words and many of the ideas of linguist Geoffrey Pullum whom he cites, but doesn't really credit, deep into his column in the May 15 issue, a version of which is online here.

Compare and contrast: This and this are what Pullum wrote for Language Log in 2004.

According to several extensive discussions and comparisons by Mark Liberman of Language Log -- here, here, here and here -- Steyn broke the rules.

It seems clear to me that in Steyn's 550-word discussion of Dan Brown's style, he took the terminology, most of the basic ideas, all of his three examples (in order), a couple of turns of phrase, and his punch line from one of Geoff Pullum's Language Log posts. He credits Pullum by name (though he gives no link or any other sort of source citation) for the term "anarthrous occupational nominal premodifier", but not for the rest of his borrowings.

You'll have to go through Liberman's analysis to see exactly what he accuses Steyn of.

As for Pullum, Language Log states that, when he complained to Steyn, he unleashed this (scroll down) from his "assistant.''

It is up to you whether you wish to escalate this any further. [...] But, given the intemperate nature of your e-mails, I think it would be better if you spoke to your lawyer and we will refer him to ours.

Note that Steyn's representative also denies that he was aware of Language Log.

Mark's interest in this subject was piqued not by your website, with which he was not familiar, but by an item by Mark's former editor at his London newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, on the missing definite article in the first sentence of The Da Vinci Code.

Brett Reynolds, and English professor at Humber Institute, tipped me to this by sending a copy of a letter to the editor of Maclean's.

Let's see if it gets published.

 

Media, heal thyself!

Further to yesterday's post and treeware column about how the corporate media never report on the bad news about their owners, here's the Maclean's cover story about the Thomsons that inspired it. It's finally on line and it begins like this:

On March 10, 2006, Benjamin James Ludwick Thomson, the future Lord Thomson of Fleet and heir to the country's greatest fortune, was born in Toronto. Not a mention of it was made in mainstream Canadian media, not even a birth notice. Also unreported was the fact that little Benjamin's father, David Thomson, chairman of Thomson Corp., signed an application for divorce from his son's mother, Laurie Ludwick, that very day. A server arrived at the new mother's door with the papers three hours after she returned home from hospital.

Thinking about all this, it occurs to me that CBC, in covering the government of the day, is the only news organization that reports the news, both bad and good, about its proprietors. 

MisChatelaine

I've lost count of how many editors-in-chief Chatelaine has gone through in the past 10 minutes. As I reported, Rogers Publishing went looking in the U.K. for a replacement for Kim Pittaway who quit last year. Now I hear a replacement is about to be named, and she is as Canadian as this Canadian institution.