67. Profitable reading?

Unpublished
2 July 1998

Re: Cloak-and-dagger magazine policy, Editorial, July 2. Close on the heels of civic-minded statements from the Association of Canadian Advertisers, the dexterous editorial board is busy pitching magazine policy in favour of the “major Canadian magazines” that make a profit with one hand, while tossing fish to the World Trade Organization’s performing “seals of approval” with the other.
History knows that the cross-subsidised Canadian “majors” have not always operated in the black and that over the years The Globe and Mail has introduced and withdrawn any number of magazine supplements. Frequently these supplements — speaking as a full recycling box reader — have appeared more an exercise in netting extra advertising than in supplying fresh editorial content. Leaving aside the question of whether or not some business glossies are more marketing vanities than magazines of journalistic substance, there remains within the country’s magazine mix some three hundred other Canadian magazines, literaries and journals that provide a wealth of reading specialities and little or no profit. Those publications and their loyal readers should also be given national space to boldly assert what cultural policy paths the Government of Canada should or not be taking.