View topic - Ezra Levant to relaunch Alberta Report! :: Free Dominion - Principled Conservative - Party and Canadian Politics

Posted: 09/ 10/ 03 6:16 pm Post subject: Ezra Levant to relaunch Alberta Report!

September 8, 2003
Bring magazine back
Resurrecting Alberta Report good for province

http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/levant.html

By EZRA LEVANT -- Calgary Sun

Alberta Report magazine closed its doors this summer, and I think that's a real shame.

We need an Alberta-based news magazine that represents our province's independent, conservative, pro-Western point of view.

Those aren't just theoretical ideas -- they are real cultural attributes that distinguish us in everyday life from, say, Toronto and the majority of Canadian media based there.

Albertans look at life through the lens of those principles. That's why stories from the CBC are so alienating (and have such low ratings out West). They just don't fit in with our view of the world.

For 30 years, Alberta Report tapped into the Western spirit. It wrote with a sense of humour, a healthy appetite for controversy and a sense of generosity bequeathed to it by the Byfields, the magazine's founding family.

The magazine punched above its weight on important Western issues. It is fair to say that the magazine was the mid-wife for the birth of the Reform Party, the catalyst for opposition to the 1992 Charlottetown Accord, and the chief promoter of the Triple-E Senate.

This is not to say that the magazine was flawless or that there are no other good sources of news in the West. I like the Sun's common sense, conservative, populist voice. Dave Rutherford's radio show is an important forum for grassroots Albertans. And Pierre Bourque's website, www.bourque.org, though not based in the West, often highlights Western news stories ignored by other media.

But magazines, especially weekly magazines, offer something that daily newspapers and hourly websites can't: A unique mix of timeliness and thoughtful reflection. A good weekly magazine is fast enough to be relevant, but slow enough to have thought things through after the dust settles. It has the time to do serious investigative reporting that might not be possible on a daily deadline. And it is a weekly treat to readers -- not just a daily habit.

I miss Alberta Report because it was a good read. Like many Albertans, I grew up on it -- it helped shape my view of the country and our province. It was as much a part of the prairies as the lonely, friendly hum of telegraph wires in the wind.

I want the magazine back for bigger reasons than nostalgia, though. I think we need it if we are going to chart the future for our province.

The media serves as a public town square where the issues of the day are chewed over. Why would we allow that town square to be run from afar?

How can Albertans rely upon Macleans or the Globe and Mail to tell us what is important to us? And where else could we hear from our own Alberta opinion leaders, instead of from our official minders in Ottawa?

The magazine should not be Western separatist. But it should be a forceful advocate of Alberta's rights. It should not be extreme. But it should be unashamedly conservative, with a good libertarian streak of self-reliance. It should not be a religious crusader. But it must treat religion with deep respect -- especially Christians, toward whom the general media drips with hostility and intolerance.

I want such a magazine again. I've spoken with Ted and Link Byfield, and received their wholehearted support. I've put together a core team of editors and reporters -- and, just as important, business managers and ad salesmen.

We have quietly raised a third of the necessary investment over the past three weeks.

I want a proud, Western, independent, conservative magazine again. If you do, too, send me an e-mail.
_________________
"If Martin doesn't surprise us by becoming a principled leader, then at least we can be comforted that he is preparing his lips for a whole lot of American butt kissing."

--Greg McNeely

Posted: 09/ 10/ 03 7:58 pm Post subject:

from FD's Bloggery

Colby Cosh

http://www.colbycosh.com/

Don't mourn--organize
Ezra Levant has taken his pitch for an Alberta Report successor to the pages of the Calgary Sun. Warning: column may contain ferocious regionalism!

http://www.colbycosh.com/

The media serves as a public town square where the issues of the day are chewed over. Why would we allow that town square to be run from afar? How can Albertans rely upon Maclean's or the Globe and Mail to tell us what is important to us? And where else could we hear from our own Alberta opinion leaders, instead of from our official minders in Ottawa?
The magazine should not be Western separatist. But it should be a forceful advocate of Alberta's rights. It should not be extreme. But it should be unashamedly conservative, with a good libertarian streak of self-reliance. It should not be a religious crusader. But it must treat religion with deep respect--especially Christians, toward whom the general media drips with hostility and intolerance.

The link will rot on this one quickly, so Alberta visitors shouldn't put off reading it. Ezra reports that he has raised a third of the money he and his partners regard as necessary to get the thing rolling.

- 1:54 pm, September 9 (link)
_________________
"If Martin doesn't surprise us by becoming a principled leader, then at least we can be comforted that he is preparing his lips for a whole lot of American butt kissing."

--Greg McNeely

Posted: 09/ 10/ 03 8:06 pm Post subject:

from FD's Bloggery

Kevin Steel

http://kevinsteel.org/archive/200309/08-31-09-06.html#Thursday1357

Thursday, September 4, 2003
Posted 1:57 pm MDT (permalink)

NOW, FROM OUTSIDE "THE BOX"

Kevin Michael Grace weighs in on Ezra Levant's proposal to kickstart a magazine like the old Alberta Report, a proposal Ezra made public on CBC Radio's Wild Rose Forum yesterday afternoon. I listened to Ezra on the radio. I had spoken with him previously by phone about this once.

Most of what Kevin says I agree with. As staff, we had ringside seats to magazine's die-off. For a year we sat by, powerless, as the thing was taken apart before us. Though we had no influence over what was happening, we underlings discussed the situation incessantly. Indeed, we got so chatty, catty, and gloomy that Colby--ever hopeful--simply stopped listening to us all. I assume this was because our "The End is Nigh" predictions made it difficult for him to function.

Change--layoffs, reassignments, reformatting--occurred almost daily. Change happens; get used to it. We had lots to talk about, to speculate on. Of us all, KMG was the most accurate in his predictions about when things would happen and why (with one exception; I accurately predicted back in December when the magazine would shut down, though the reasons I gave then for it dying in June turned out to be all wrong--KMG assumed it would collapse in the fall).

I would urge Ezra to give some weight to Kevin's analysis. And I would like to contribute a little as well.

In my phone conversation with Ezra I asked whether his new magazine would have an active and lively website. Before I give you Ezra's answer, I'm going to wind the clock back a bit.

The fate of the website for the defunct magazine, report.ca, is a particular sore point with me.

When I was brought back to the Report in 2000 (after a nine-month layoff starting in October, 1999 when the magazine went fortnightly) it was with the understanding that I would try to inject some vitality into report.ca, then being updated every two weeks by Tony Abad, the company's system administrator. Here I will divert even more and put on the record that Tony, a great guy, was then updating the company's website on his own time, at home, at night. It was unpaid work. He did it because, being a computer guy, he liked to do it, and he believed it would help the magazine. Tony's other duties included running the database that updated the subscriber list. He knew as well as anyone how circulation numbers had been steadily dropping since 1995.

Tony had been bugging management to assign an editor to help him out on the website. That's where I came into the picture. During my layoff, I had occasion to go into the office (on freelance assignments) and had raved about how NRO appeared to be reviving the fortunes of the National Review.

Led then by Jonah Goldberg, it was lively, hip, appealing to a new audience. Goldberg was hilarious at times. A buzz on the Internet had started. People where writing articles in other magazines about NRO, etc.

It was never specifically stated, but I think my yabbering about NRO led to my hiring for the report.ca site. It couldn't have been because of my technical skill. I had absolutely none then.

So for two years I laboured on the site, this in addition to my other duties--for two months, librarian/staff writer, and after that, as art director. I took one week of holiday time during this period. Despite the commitment of Tony and me, management gave us no resources. The Report writers, then required to pump out 4500 words an issue of direct-to-the-page copy (that is, with no editing process following their submission), naturally balked at contributing original material to report.ca without some nominal pay. Colby, for instance, at one time suggested he would write for the site for as little as $40 a column, just something, anything to recognize the fact that he was a professional writer and that this was extra work. But management considered the idea a waste of money. The website doesn't make us much money, they reasoned, so why should we put much money into it? These were the guys that were constantly urging us writers to "think outside the box." Wow.

I urged the advertising department to look into selling ads. Don McCallum, head of advertising, showed no enthusiasm for this and we never sold an ad for the site. Somebody included the website in a couple of contra deals, but the value of these banners were never calculated into the "profit" of the website.

This was at a time when they were blowing $10,000 a month on a radio show that was broadcast to a small audience in northern Alberta which resulted in very few subscription sales. This was also at a time when they were trying to drum up new business with expensive glossy mail-outs, all... all of which failed miserably. One memorable mail-out of ten thousand to Fort McMurray (northern Alberta), the brainchild of accountant-turned-marketing-manager Curtis Stewart, produced exactly one new subscription, so I was told in hushed tones. Does this sound like bitterness on my part? Heavens, yes.

I think a certain degree of technophobia played a role in management's "gee, what-the-hell-do-we-do-about-this-Internet-thing?-something/nothing" attitude. Let's face it, very few publishers over the age of, say, 45--most of them only marginally computer literate--have grasped the significance of Internet distribution, let alone figured out how to profit by it. I know how they all smiled at the dot.com stock crash of few years ago. But this was only temporary relief, paid for by foolish investors who understood as little about computers and the Internet as they did. Technology changes; change happens; get used to it. Now I wonder what a 16th-century head of a monastery felt like when he watched a traveling printer wheel a cartload of moveable type past his freaked-out monastic scribes? Did he laugh when the cart hit a bump and few wooden letters spilled off the side? I bet he did, yes, I do.

Anyway, I found my own software and learned how to use it (with Tony's guidance); object editor, scanning, OCR (for posting older stories in the Report Classics section) etc. Because the web stats indicated that an early morning update resulted in increased hits, I started updating the site at 6 am. This meant working at home. And because my art director duties conflicted at times with the web editing job at the office I set myself up at home, at my own expense. In the long run, this was for the best and the reason you are reading this now. But at the time I was dedicating it all to report.ca.

Let me say and stress I was doing this willingly. I knew, somehow, some way, I would benefit in the long run. I did want to work from home. But mostly I thought I was compensating for management's lack of understanding of how the world of journalism was changing.

In order to justify my existence, I argued that the webpage should be considered a cost-effective form of advertising. The efforts of Tony and me seemed to be paying off. Traffic quickly doubled. We were still pretty modest as sites went; our highest daily hit count to the index page was only 1,500. But our stats showed another things. First of all, the heaviest traffic occurred during weekdays between the hours of 11 am and 2 pm. Obviously people were reading us at work where, I venture to suggest, they would never take a hardcopy of the magazine. Second, we received a lot of hits from government servers. We were again connecting to people in power, or at least to people who knew people in power, and eventually--I believed--this would translate to influence.

It took a while to get the e-commerce going. But remember, Tony had to do this on his own time. Once it was rolling, and this effort combined with the daily updates, we sold at least one subscription a day via the website. As you know, e-commerce is completely automated, and the cost of sale is extremely low when compared to telemarketing. Over time it would increase, and the profit margins would increase as well.

I reiterate that I was trying to convince management that the website should be considered effective advertising. Every time someone linked to one of our articles, every time someone swiped, copied and pasted a quote from us (provided they were honest and gave us credit) the awareness of our publication increased. Before I started the project in 2000 I said to Link Byfield, "The Internet will not make you rich, but it can make you famous. It's then up to you to figure out how to turn that fame into cash."

No go. August 2002, at the time of a 10% pay cut, I was reassigned as a writer for the magazine and told I could drop the daily updates on the website. I countered that an inactive website was the first sign of a dying publication--citing the past demise of Lingua Franca. Because of its inactive site, people had been speculating about LF's demise long before it was officially announced. So I continued updating. In December of 2002, management told me pointedly to stop updating the website, even on my own time. Shortly after this, Mike Byfield yelled at me that if the company considered my wages as investment, then the website was a complete and utter failure, a waste of money. Keep in mind I was working as art director while I was updating the site. And I did a lot of work at home, in the early hours of the day and late at night. I still consider this comment by Mike asinine and insulting beyond belief. At least the website, as advertising, was growing even while the magazine was dying. And now, except for a few infrequent editorial pieces appearing on the successor company's site, the Citizens Centre, report.ca is pretty much all that's left. Score one miserable little point for me.

And now, back to my discussion with Ezra. He told me he wants to publish a magazine that is more hip, more urban, more urbane, more in tune with the times than the Report. That sounded great. When I asked how he envisioned the new magazine's website, he paused. Then he said he could not foresee his magazine having an active site. It would be a contact page only. He did not want to invest in something that would lose money, he said.

So I assume he had been talking to my old bosses about this. Not, in my opinion A GOOD IDEA!

How can anyone believe they can create a hip, urbane publication, more "in tune with the times," without an active website? How can you expect to have any influence in the world today without the power of the Internet? Sure, you put the heavy stuff, the long thought-out, really well-written and carefully edited stuff in the magazine, and you sell that for money. That's your main business. But you have to promote that business. So you put the quick-reaction stuff--as good as you can make it--on your website and you use it to generate a buzz and to point to the dead-tree magazine. The dead-tree magazine, physically, can go where the Internet does not, from hand-to-hand, onto coffee tables, into the john, to the cabin at the lake. And the reverse is true. The webpage goes where the magazine does not, into offices, into homes around the world, onto other sites that link to you because what you said is interesting, relevant, fresh.

It's almost oxymoronic to say that people pay attention to fame. But the thing is, people will pay more attention to you in your home area if you are famous elsewhere as well.

You want a magazine that is about Alberta for Albertans? You want Albertans to pay attention? Make yourself famous and Albertans will pay attention.

KMG comments: "Finding the right niche is everything."

A magazine of conservative thought and opinion, which must go beyond its subscriber base to achieve influence in order to satisfy that base's desire for cultural influence, will not find a niche without a website.

Conservatives are all over the bloody Internet. The US had gone through their first "Internet Election" in 2000. Drudge was famous; NRO was famous, and a host of others. These slammed into cyberspace, and hit where only the mainstream press could hit previously. They are probably not the main reason the Republicans won, but I am convinced they contributed to the defeat of the Democrats. (Canada, always a little behind, has yet to go through their first "Internet Election." Our last one was still controlled by the mainstream press. We'll have to wait to see what happens here.)

Now the American conservative sites are slamming into each other with equal force over Iraq, war, etc.

The thing is, for people who like news and opinion, this is exciting. It's all good. This is "where it's at." The point is, publishers who refuse to be involved in this discourse do so at their peril, and people like me lose jobs in part because their publishers are no longer exciting, where it's at.

Yes, Ezra, this is a public plea for you to reconsider your idea about an inactive website for a conservative magazine. And yes, here is yet another link to Matt Welch's article in the Columbia Journalism Review: The New Amateur Journalists Weigh In. (Both KMG and me--prior to a few months ago both professional journalists--have just "weighed in," for free... new, broke amateurs.)

---
_________________
"If Martin doesn't surprise us by becoming a principled leader, then at least we can be comforted that he is preparing his lips for a whole lot of American butt kissing."

--Greg McNeely

Posted: 09/ 10/ 03 8:11 pm Post subject:

FROM FD'S BLOGGERY

THE AMBLER
http://www.theambler.com/sept1-15_03.htm#ezra

FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX?

My old friend Ezra Levant was on CBC Radio Wednesday, talking up his desire to revive Alberta Report. He was in fine form: resolutely "on message," as they say. Ezra is a radio natural; I advised him some years ago he should consider a career there. The callers to the show were overwhelmingly unsympathetic, but he turned this to his advantage. Every time a caller compared the Byfields to Hitler or Milošević, Ezra responded that this bigotry—so typical of the CBC listener, so unrepresentative of Alberta—demonstrated just how badly that province needs a right-wing magazine.

I should mention I have no stake in Ezra’s venture. I have not been approached to take part—although I know of several that have—nor do I expect to be. I know that Ezra and his partners have seen the lengthy memo I prepared on the reasons for the Report’s demise and the prospects for a successor magazine with the likely costs explained. I hope they found some use in it.

Amusing as it was to hear Ezra make short work of the Byfield-haters for an hour, he gave few details regarding the new magazine, so rather to my surprise I found myself calling in to request some. Here is what I had learned by the end of the broadcast.

1. Ezra has not raised the money he needs. I’m told his intention is a capitalization of $1 million, but I reckon this 50% to 100% short.

2. Ezra fully intends to take the Canada Post magazine subsidy, which proves he is not a holier-than-thou fool like others I could mention.

3. Ezra will be the publisher. The editor he has in mind is 31 years old. This datum points strongly to a former colleague of mine, but when I put the question to him, he denied it hotly. (Although he did tell me he’d just had his hair cut, which exacerbated my suspicions. What’s next? Hugo Boss?)

4. Ezra says the new magazine will report on Alberta. But I can’t imagine that it could do other than devote considerable editorial resources to the federal scene.

5. Ezra says the new magazine will be a newsmagazine and will be fortnightly for six months, at which point it will go weekly. I have never heard of any magazine making such a transition—it always happens the other way around. And I know of no other fortnightly newsmagazines. The sad example of the fortnightly national Report (1999-2003) should be enough to persuade anyone that this can’t be done and shouldn’t be tried.

6. Ezra says the news/opinion ratio will be 80/20. But a glance at a 1992 copy of Alberta Report shows that even then the mix was 70/30.

7. Ezra says he wants to sign Ted Byfield as a columnist. This is, as I have long argued, a sine qua non. He didn’t mention inking any other Byfields, nor should he consider it. One is quite enough.

I appreciate that my suggestions are unsolicited and probably unwanted, but I do have some expertise in this area, and I should like to see Ezra succeed, if only to remove some of my friends from the unemployment line. Ezra spoke at some length of the glory days of Alberta Report, of the influence it wielded. The argument I tried to make to him on the air was that the Report lost whatever influence it had with top people long before the end because it had become deadly dull. Did I just say "influence"? Top people stopped reading the magazine years ago. Many of them had forgotten its existence.

Messages are for Western Union, as Sam Goldwyn said, and while a magazine is not a movie, it too must be interesting or die. I hope that Ezra understands that his magazine will need to cover "culture" (broadly defined); an obsession with politics (broadly defined) would kill the new Report just as surely as it killed the old one. (Killed it editorially, I mean. It was the Citizens Centre that pounded the coffin nails in the old Report.)

Those that gloated when the Report died lectured us on how much Alberta had changed in the last 20 years. Globalization and all that. But they considered globalization only in the political sense. They have the wrong end of the stick there. Despite their fantasizing, Alberta remains profoundly alienated from Ottawa, and Paul Martin isn’t going to change that, regardless of how many seats the Liberals win in the province next year. But an understanding of globalization remains crucial to the success of Ezra’s magazine. Globalization in the media sense.

Since the 1980s the number of media outlets in Alberta has exploded: TV, radio, newspapers—and the Internet. Sure, hark back to the halcyon days of Alberta Report, if you must, but don’t attempt to resurrect the magazine of the 1980s. Its time has past. The time of "broadcasting" has past. Finding the right niche is everything.

For almost a decade I watched as Link Byfield’s relentless pursuit of the lowest common denominator drove subscribers away in the tens of thousands. And with that in mind, I offer two final pieces of advice, Ezra:

1. Rednecks don’t buy magazine subscriptions.

2. If you hear anyone mention the "Ducky’s Tavern test"—release the hounds.

(Would-be donors can reach Ezra here.)

Kevin Michael Grace, 2.36 a.m., September 4, 2003►
_________________
"If Martin doesn't surprise us by becoming a principled leader, then at least we can be comforted that he is preparing his lips for a whole lot of American butt kissing."

--Greg McNeely

Posted: 09/ 10/ 03 8:27 pm Post subject:

FROM FD'S BLOGGERY

http://www.jaycurrie.com/

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

Better than Ezra III

How can Albertans rely upon Macleans or the Globe and Mail to tell us what is important to us? And where else could we hear from our own Alberta opinion leaders, instead of from our official minders in Ottawa?
link the calgary sun (will degrade quickly)
Of course, this raises the question of whether Albertans need to rely upon anyone, least of all Ezra Levant, to "tell us what is important to us." As I suggested below, Ezra is far too much the politician to be an effective magazine proprietor. Earlier in the piece he answers the critics who suggested the web might be a way to go,
But magazines, especially weekly magazines, offer something that daily newspapers and hourly websites can't: A unique mix of timeliness and thoughtful reflection. A good weekly magazine is fast enough to be relevant, but slow enough to have thought things through after the dust settles. It has the time to do serious investigative reporting that might not be possible on a daily deadline. And it is a weekly treat to readers -- not just a daily habit.
Nothing if not conservative is our Ezra. On this logic, while a weekly is reflective, a fortnightly would be insightful, a monthly deep and a quarterly just plain profound. In fact, where the web is so much better than dead tree publishing is that a single website can be updated hourly and run quarterly meditations. Take a look at Tech Central Station for a pretty solid example of what can be achieved on a single website.

Good luck to Ezra and all who sail in him; but a provincial weekly without a really stron web component will be stillborn.

posted by jc | 11:04 PM
_________________
"If Martin doesn't surprise us by becoming a principled leader, then at least we can be comforted that he is preparing his lips for a whole lot of American butt kissing."

--Greg McNeely

Posted: 09/ 10/ 03 11:57 pm Post subject:

Bump!

Posted: 09/ 11/ 03 10:18 am Post subject:

Albertans with the Internet can already read Ted Byfield columns for free at Canoe.ca. A new Alberta Report has to offer us something more than what we can already access on the Internet. What does Ezra have in mind? Launching it as a biweekly newsmagazine means it won't cover new stories but old stories. Naming it "Alberta Report" and taking the Canada Post subsidiy is certain to limit its appeal outside Alberta for the former reason and inside Alberta for the latter.
_________________
Alberta is prosperous, the population is growing and the government is debt-free. I have no doubt that Liberals, NDPers, Red Tories, Kyoto Treaty bureaucrats, and other provinces will try to make Alberta into Canada's ATM machine.

Posted: 09/ 11/ 03 3:21 pm Post subject:

Save your money, Ezra. You already are heading your magazine into bankruptcy.
_________________

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?"

But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal." -JOHN F. KENNEDY

Posted: 09/ 11/ 03 3:28 pm Post subject:

Posted: 09/ 11/ 03 3:35 pm Post subject:

Look out!

Ippy and Hitiler agreeing? The end of the world is nigh! Very Happy

Posted: 09/ 11/ 03 3:48 pm Post subject:

Posted: 09/ 11/ 03 3:49 pm Post subject:

Are you sure?

Posted: 09/ 11/ 03 4:01 pm Post subject:

Posted: 09/ 11/ 03 4:08 pm Post subject:

Ok then. I just figured...you know... liberal,tory, same old story. Perhaps she secretly loves Martin (or even worse...Copps). Very Happy

Posted: 09/ 11/ 03 4:19 pm Post subject:

So nice to have Ipberg agree with me. So if I love Martin and/or Copps than Ipberg must too. Very Happy

_________________

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?"

But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal." -JOHN F. KENNEDY

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