Free Market Fells Free Marketeers

The publisher of The Report, an Edmonton-based conservative news/policy magazine, announced today that the 30-year-old publication is being shut down. The move comes less than four months after the Citizens Centre for Freedom of Democracy bought The Report and declared it would no longer accept an annual state subsidy of $360,000.

Link via Colby Cosh, who is now out of a job.

Comments

[Jeremy Lott]

Oh please. If the rejection of the subsidy is what finally pushed the Report over the edge, well, it wasn't.

Last fall, the Report had to find a way to close a CA$500,000 gap. So the Citizens Centre was started and "bought" the magazine. They begged readers for money. The total fundraising came in at something like CA$600,000, leaving them, one would assume, with change to spare.

Then they decided to junk the subsidy, which they could have offset by doing more fundraising or trimming costs. But instead, they a) started all sorts of stupid Citizens Centre projects, b) cut the frequency and price of the magazine in half (thus cutting sales revenues from over CA$4 million a year to just over CA$2 million).

The Report died either because the management had butter for brains or because, as I suspect, they wanted it to die.

[Colby Cosh]

Yeah, plus you buried the lead. Clearly "Cosh unemployed" is the tangy essence, the earth-shattering crux, if you will, of the story here.

I don't want to contradict either of J-Lo's theories about the demise of the magazine (although cutting frequency and price could have boosted new sales just as easily as it hurt 'em). In fact, I'll observe that the two theories are not mutually exclusive!

[Matt Welch]

Lott -- You know, feeble attempt at headline-humor & all that. Actually, I rather agree with both explanations in your last paragraph, to the extent that my slightly-less-than-vast knowledge of Edmonton publishing allows....

[Douglas Fletcher]

Does this mean Colby is going to have to go to work in the wheat fields?

[Jim N]

Too bad! Good luck Colby. As a fan (the one who emailed you a couple of days ago inquiring about the non-prosecution of gun registry offenders) I hope you get back on your feet soon.

[Jay Currie]

Money was part of it, management too - as it always is; but the fact is that the Report's social conservative agenda was boring even the stubble jumpers.

Link Byfield in his press release pretty much summed it up:

"Today we are announcing the next step in our transition from magazine to movement."

"Over the past several months, we have sought advice from our donors and supporters about which is more urgently needed, a general newsmagazine or an aggressive agenda for constructive change for Canada and the West."

"The answer we consistently received is that people enjoyed the magazine, but even more want to bring about change. On a survey of thousands, they told us they are troubled about one thing: The undemocractic centralization of power in the hands of the prime minister and the courts."

What Byfield is doing is trading a once popular magazine for a certain to be marginal pressure group with a social conservative agenda. His members, who he claims to have surveyed in their thousands, seem to want to axe an intelligent magazine which was read outside their movement in favour of the creation of yet another looney, anti-libertarian, pressure group.

Jeremy Lott has it right when he suggests "butter for brains"; but he misses the more essential point. Strict, religious right, anti-gay, anti-drug, anti-porn, anti-immigration, pro-gun and anti-French social conservatism has been overwhelmed by small "l" liberal and even libertarian postions on social issues in Canada.

Byfield wants to start a movement to jump on the Canadian Supreme Court for doing such awful things as saying that the law of marriage must apply equally to all citizens. While he might be able to round up a posse in High River for this sort of agenda, the rest of the country has moved on.

The real tragedy is that even with the official asshat social conservative agenda, Report was able to do interesting, intelligent and important stories which were not reported in the mainstream Canadian press. Losing that is a shame.

[K Christie]

It's no coincidence that I stopped reading the Report shortly after Link took over from his dad. Ted made no secret of his political and moral bent, but his magazine seemed significantly more ... rational than his son's. What I read of Mr. Cosh's writing on his Blog is nothing like the articles that made me cringe back then, so maybe the quality of the writing improved after I gave up, but more likely it wasn't the writers that were the problem in the first place.

[Kevin]

Re: "Tell us what you really think - now that would be a good read."

As one of the recently "Let Go" from the now-defunct magazine in question, I want to second the above-referenced comment for many reasons, not the least of which is because I know the writer to be a talented and intelligent person.

And, as a former writer, here's a sample of what she is referring to, of what I think:

I think I need a job.

Hope you all enjoyed that.

[erf]

Shouldn't you guys go high-five them for ditching the subsidy? Isn't that yer highest moral achievement around here?

[Ikram Saeed]

Is this good news or bad news?

Bad news: With the demise of the social conservative report, and the "losing-bags-of-money" implosion of the National Post, there is obviously no room for strong conservative media in Canada. Time for everyone to subscribe to This Magazine,and put up posterz of Maude Barlow.

Good news: Now that the retrograde Report isn't eating up cash and attention, a real liberty freedom oriented publication can start-up, and without all that anti-Gay, anti-French, anti-you-look-funny crap. A new, more mainstream weekly or monthly could really take off.

(Is there any reason a collaborative effort like Dominion.ca couldn't work for Canadian righties? Or is that too flaky for a serious capitalist journalist on the Canadian right?

[kathy]

Oh, I dunno: I loved the hate-the-French stuff. 🙂

I wrote just under a dozen pieces for Report. I always seemed to be asked to write about abortion-y stuff, I guess because I'm a girl. And gay stuff, because I mentioned that I lived in Boystown. When not one but two editors asked me to write about My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I came close to losing it!

So for instance, I'd submit a piece (as requested) on PrideTV, asking: if gay men are the huge marketing demographic we keep hearing about, why don't they support their own tv station; and why, even though PrideTV's own market research told them gay viewers didn't want to see sex sex sex, were all the PrideTV shows about... sex sex sex??

When I read it a lot of that was gone. Just lots of tired boilerplate about them wacky Torontonians.

The demise of Report really opens up the truth about the generation/geographic gap in Canadian conservativism. I suspect I'm more socially conservative than many of you, but then I'm pushing 40 -- let's all talk again ten years from now 🙂

Do I hate gays? No, and neither do the Byfields, if their Christianity is for real, and I think it is. But: do I think pre-teens should learn about fisting and cross-dressing in sex ed? Uh, no. And those were the stories you'd read in Report, weeks before Margaret Wente'd reported on it.

Do I think that (yawn) political correctness is still a problem and (yawn) still needs to be battled. Yep. Do I think the only good thing Trudeau ever did was invoke the War Measures Act. Pretty much. Sorry.

When I read about Reese Witherspoon in Vogue, talking about how women should have kids in their 20s, and daring to opine that The Pill has had some _negative effects_ on society, too, I think: social conservativism is alive in the oddest places, huh? Maybe it was Report's 'shocked and appalled' voice, and not its message, that bugged even its supporters.

And I'm not sure 'get over it' is a very stirring rallying cry for the new Right...

I applaud them for forgoing the subsidy. The Idler did the same I think, and ended up the same.

What do you say, guys? What is next? And can I be Religion Editor when you start It? Just askin'

[Janelle]

Well, even though my tenure at Alberta Report lasted a mere three months (five if you count freelancing), I'm sad to see it go. I can't really say that I "liked" working there, but the editors taught me more about writing in those five months than I learned in four years of college. Colby Cosh and Paul Bunner made my sad prose into something that was readable and intelligent. Speaking of Bunner, I haven't seen his name mentioned in any of this, where did he go? But, on the question of whether the magazine failed because of finances or its increasingly irritating tone, I would have to say both. The Byfields couldn't seem to manage the business end of things very well or find someone who was competent to do it for them. As for the tone, I wish the magazine had reflected the talent and ideas of its writers more than it did. It would have been a more interesting read than it's predictable anti-this and anti-that format if the quirkiness and humor of the writers had come through. Maybe now is the time for those writers to produce an alternative publication that isn't more of the formulaic propaganda churned out by the Report. Tell us what you really think - now that would be a good read.

[kathy]

Exactly. I broke into Report with the only column of mine the Toronto Star ever nixed: about the origins of Kwanzaa. It was written in my usual bitchy obnoxious tone, and Report snapped it up. But about half of what I wrote for them was more like, 'By so and so, files from Kathy Shaidle.'

And yes: I too had forgotten all about how to interview people, track down Dr so and so in Armpit, Arkansas, etc until writing for Report made me do it. It is really weird: they taught so many people how to, well, _report_--then changed our voices around in the articles themselves. Hey, I can always stand to improve, but it went a bit too far.

I really enjoyed working for Link and last time he came to Toronto, he had wonderful plans for the magazine, getting away from the Shocked and Appalled tone to something a bit more constructive. Then... well, anyway. A shame.