Three-quarters of a million people should be able to support a monthly general-interest magazine. We're the fourth-largest business community in the country and many comparable cities have one. Ottawa does not.
We do have Ottawa Magazine. But it only comes out six times a year, and for the past couple of years the owners haven't bothered to put out anything between June and September. Publisher Peter Ginsberg says that's because of the lack of sufficient advertising support from a business community that assumes the city's population evaporates in the summer.
Ginsberg is right about his advertisers, but the magazine's problems go much deeper than that, as many a former editor and freelance writer can attest.
The masthead is always a good place to begin a diagnosis. Rarely does an issue go by without changes to the list of editorial employees. Ginsberg just can't seem to keep editors around for long.
The most recent departure was editor Mark Sutcliffe, who lasted just seven months. In his place, Ginsberg hired Ottawa Sun city columnist Ron Corbett. Although Ginsberg has high hopes (and Sutcliffe high expectations) for Corbett, I can't help but wonder how a daily newspaper columnist will be able to give both his column and the magazine the attention a city magazine deserves.
(The next issue, due to hit the streets later this month, is pretty much a Sutcliffe product. Corbett's influence won't be felt until the fall.)
Even if Corbett sticks around for a while, it's doubtful things will improve. Dory Cameron, for one, doesn't have much confidence in an organization that couldn't remember to include her name on the masthead on a regular basis, even though she was managing editor for more than a year. "It was all very ridiculous," she says. "Sometimes I was on the masthead, sometimes I wasn't."
Cameron, it should be noted, is still waiting for an long overdue cheque from OM, so she might have an ax to grind. But she's not alone. Mention the magazine to any freelancer who's written for it and you'll hear similar stories.
Freelancer Richard Cléroux, who's also waiting on an OM cheque, agrees that "they've had trouble paying everyone on time." To be fair, however, he says he's confident he will be paid ... eventually. The real problem, he suggests, is that Ginsberg pays his writers the way major organizations like the Globe and Mail or the CBC do -- relatively well, but slowly. "I've waited as long for payments from the Globe," he adds.
But Cléroux, a well-know entity in the business, may be the exception that proves the rule. Other, not-so-established writers haven't fared as well. Some have had to make dozens of phone calls to extract payment as much as four months after publication. This in a business where's there's really no excuse for anything less than payment upon acceptance of a story.
"Every one of us was telling everyone else that if you could go to anyone else on Earth, then pitch it there, unless you didn't want to get paid," says Cameron.
On the other hand, no one I talked to about the magazine bears Ginsberg any ill will. Cameron calls him "brilliant" and suspects he wants to be able to pay his writers, it's just that he can't. Former editor Rosa Harris-Adler, who ran the show three years ago, calls him "a pretty damn good deal-maker" and points out that printers and anyone else doing business with the magazine received similar treatment.
A more serious problem might be OM's lack of direction. Sutcliffe says that, under his watch, the magazine tried to cover both the news and issues side of things while at the same time offering lifestyle-oriented features (we're talking fashion and interior design). Like most editors, he'd rather do one of the other. Not both.
Ginsberg, when I asked which direction OM would be said only that we will be seeing more of an "edge" or "attitude," the kind of words usually associated with the X Press. Only time will tell.
There is some good news associated with OM of late, however. Ginsberg and his Toronto partner, Marion Bogart, recently sold their sister publication, Ottawa Business Magazine, to the Business Press Group, which recently scooped up the Ottawa Business News newspaper and just about every other business publication in town. (Sutcliffe went with the business magazine and is now editor under publisher Peter Crosbie.)
That should permit Ginsberg to focus more time and money on OM. As Sutcliffe says, "They've already put a lot of money into it and they haven't seem much in the way of return."
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