Edmonton alt-weeklies SEE Magazine and VUE Weekly, once bitter rivals, have announced plans to merge.
That's the question Ryerson Journalism Review's Daniel Kaszor set out to investigate in that magazine's Spring issue. He sits down with independent owners Ron Garth of Vue Weekly, Michael Hollett of NOW Magazine and Dan McLeod of the Georgia Straight, as well as an editor with Eye Weekly, a corporate-owned weekly that competes with NOW in Toronto. His conclusion? "Readers may find it difficult to spot major differences between the two breeds of paper ... [b]ut there are distinctions," Kaszor writes. "Corporate papers are usually more personality-driven and apolitical. And the indies are not so much labors of love as pure acts of will held together by shrewd owners with deep personal and financial interests in their papers."
The cover of the Edmonton alt-weekly's annual sex survey features three naked people, backs turned to the camera, with any naughty bits obscured by text. But the image is still too racy for at least one local resident, who tells CTV Edmonton that she's starting a petition to have the transparent windows of news boxes covered, ostensibly to protect children. "It's basically the same thing you can get in an adult magazine," Michelle Gimenez says, adding that the news boxes are at eye-level with children. But others interviewed by CTV didn't seem to mind. "You see more graphic things on TV in the middle of the day ... it doesn't bother me," says one woman. Vue publisher Ron Garth defends the cover, saying "it's about pushing the limits in every respect (sic)."
