From left, back row: Ian Portsmouth, Profit; Ann Meredith Brown, Design Edge; Bob Sexton, CSME President; James Little, Explore. Front row: Ilana Weitzman, en route; Jackie Davis, Explore; Dale Duncan, Spacing; and Matthew Blackett, also Spacing. Photography, Rose Pereira.

June 4, 2008

Bob Sexton, President of CSME, handed out the 2008 Editors' Choice Awards on Wednesday night. A large crowd of magazine editors from titles large and small took in the event, preceded by a wonderfully crafted speech by Linden MacIntyre, co-host of the CBC’s the fifth estate.

This year's award recipients are:
Magazine of the Year (small circulation category): Spacing
Magazine of the Year (medium circulation category): Profit
Magazine of the Year (large circulation category): En Route
Magazine of the Year (trade category): Design Edge

The Jim Cormier Award for Display Writing went to Maisonneuve
The Best Front of Book Award went to Explore
The Editor of the Year is Dale Duncan of Spacing

Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks to our CSME members for entering this year's awards! Click here to view photos of the event.

The following blogs are recommended to our readers by "Blogging: Behind the Trend" mixer panelists D.B. Scott and Heather Mallick. Warning: these blogs are so fascinating, you may lose half your day!

D.B. Scott recommends:
This Magazine
Blog T.O.
Law and Style
Buzz Machine
Spacing Toronto
Quillblog
Freelance Switch
Brijit
Media Bistro
Grist Mill
Barbara's Blog (Barbara Ehrenreich)
Smashing Magazine
UK Press Gazette
Pajamas Media
Mag Culture


Heather Mallick's recommendations (with her comments):

1. The Daily Intel blog from New York Magazine. So witty you don’t even have to be familiar with their backstory.
2. Random Acts of Reality is the blog of an Emergency Medical Technician working the ambulances on the night shift in London. His blog has become a book. He could write a novel a week about what he has seen.
3. wvs.topleftpixel.com is the Daily Dose of Imagery blog that produces the best Toronto photograph of the day. It’s quite brilliant as it makes you see the city in a whole new way. It stops you short. Yes, there is art all around me, if I only bothered to look, etc. Its companion, in a country that has architectural beauty to burn, is
derelictlondon.com. It’s pictures of Victorian and earlier buildings left to deteriorate, the beginnings of what Alan Weisman described in his great book The World Without Us. I love squalor and decrepitude; I think it has a poetry all its own. Personally, I would restore every one of these buildings, but it’s not going to happen, is it.
4. NewsBiscuit is a site for various comic writers in London to get a chance to have their work read and seen. John O’Farrell, a very funny columnist and novelist, created it. It takes donations. Ever notice how little humour there is in print journalism in Canada? I love News Biscuit.
5. If you live for good writing, and I do, then it will give you comfort to find similarly passionate people writing about writing. This site leads you to various blogs by Brits about literature. Some of them are really remarkable. So many Brits are effortlessly literate--they haven’t yet been shortchanged by a lousy educational system--and the blogs here are a labour of love. They’ll also lead you to books you’ve never heard of and will come to love.
6. In Geist magazine, Stephen Osborne does this brilliant blog called Dispatches. I love it. I especially love his writing about a little girl he knows called Julia. It makes me sad that if a woman wrote it, it would be seen as cutesy, but when he writes it, it’s magnificent. But it IS magnificent.
7. coupland.com is, naturally, Douglas Coupland’s blog. It’s called News and it’s great, startlingly original.

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On April 24, CSME held a mixer on bloggeing, including:
Douglas Bell, of Toronto Life's Spectator blog
D.B. Scott, of the Canadian Magazines blog
Heather Mallick, blogger for CBC.

Thanks to the speakers for a chance to get into a blogger's mind and for the opportunity to hear what a blog can be -- and what it shouldn't be!

Check back here soon for details of our next event!

Change is afoot in the magazine industry. As of March 2009, Canada Post will cease to subsidize mailing costs for magazines. That’s 15 million dollars that publishers will no longer have as a resource to help offset the cost of mailing.

Click the headline to read more...

Click here for nomination details.