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The Walrus

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The Walrus
The Walrus cover, Jan/Feb 2022 edition, featuring illustration by Tallulah Fontaine
EditorCarmine Starnino (Interim)[1]
CategoriesCanadian and international affairs
Frequency8 issues per year
Circulation30,800 (2020)[2]
First issueSeptember 2003
CompanyThe Walrus Foundation
CountryCanada
Based inToronto
LanguageEnglish
Websitethewalrus.ca Edit this at Wikidata
ISSN1708-4032
OCLC680091331

The Walrus is an independent, non-profit Canadian media organization. It is multi-platform and produces an eight-issue-per-year magazine and online editorial content that includes current affairs, fiction, poetry, and podcasts, a national speaker series called The Walrus Talks, and branded content for clients through The Walrus Lab.

History

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Creation

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In 2002, David Berlin, a former editor and owner of the Literary Review of Canada, began promoting his vision of a world-class Canadian magazine. This led him to meet with then-Harper's editor Lewis H. Lapham to discuss creating a "Harper's North", which would combine the American magazine with 40 pages of Canadian content.[3] As Berlin searched for funding to create that content, a mutual friend put him in touch with Ken Alexander, a former high school English and history teacher and then senior producer of CBC Newsworld's CounterSpin. Like Berlin, Alexander was hoping to found an intelligent Canadian magazine that dealt with world affairs.

Before long, the Chawkers Foundation, run by Alexander's family, had agreed to provide the prospective magazine with $5 million over five years, and the George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation promised $150,000 for an internship program. This provided enough money to get by without the partnership with Harper's.[3]

Shortly after Berlin and Alexander hired creative director Antonio de Luca and art director Jason Logan to envision the launch of The Walrus.

The magazine launched in September 2003, as an attempt to create a Canadian equivalent to American magazines such as Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, or The New Yorker. Since then, it has become Canada's leading general interest magazine. Its mandate is:

to be a national general interest magazine about Canada and its place in the world. We are committed to publishing the best work by the best writers from Canada and elsewhere on a wide range of topics for readers who are curious about the world.[4]

Name

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The "walrus" name was at first a working title, but quickly grew on the staff of the magazine.[5] According to their website, the rationale behind it was "to dissociate this country with the 'log chomping' and 'earnestness' of our national animal (and cliché), the beaver"; the walrus, just as much a Canadian native, is "curmudgeonly but clever, bulky but agile (if only in water)."[4] Most importantly, in the words of David Berlin, "No one ignores a walrus."[6]

Magazine

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Berlin resigned as editor in 2004, and Ken Alexander ended his tumultuous reign as publisher, then editor, in June 2008.[7] John Macfarlane, former editor-in-chief of Toronto Life and publisher of Saturday Night, joined The Walrus in July 2008 as editor and co-publisher. With newly returned art director Brian Morgan, Macfarlane oversaw a revamping of the editorial and art direction of the magazine. The new Walrus was to be more consistent and current, with a "far more internally driven" process for story selection, and the reworked cover featuring illustrations that correspond to each issue's content.[8]

The Walrus soon began to receive critical acclaim: its two 2003 issues alone garnered eleven National Magazine Award nominations and three wins,[9] and the Utne Reader awarded it the prize for best new publication in 2004.[10] In 2006, it won the National Magazine Award for Magazine of the Year in Canada. As of April 2017, it has consistently led in the National Magazine Awards,[11][12] earning a total of 70 wins and 231 nominations to date.[9]

In January 2012, High Fidelity HDTV and The Walrus announced plans to air fourteen "original high-definition documentaries" derived from content from The Walrus that had been produced since April 2011.[13] The two companies plan on creating more documentaries in the future.[13]

On 13 September 2012, the Walrus unveiled its redesigned website. It is based on the Wordpress platform and was developed over the course of five months.[14]

Unpaid internship programme

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In March 2014, The Walrus was required to shut down its unpaid internship programme after the Ontario Ministry of Labour declared that its longstanding practice of not paying interns was in contravention of the Employment Standards Act.[15] The magazine issued a statement justifying its practice of using unpaid labour, saying:

We have been training future leaders in media and development for ten years, and we are extremely sorry we are no longer able to provide these opportunities, which have assisted many young Ontarians—and Canadians—in bridging the gap from university to paid work and in, many cases, on to stellar careers.[16]

Since 2014, The Walrus has offered paid editorial fellowships that run six months. In 2020, The Walrus fellowships grew to one year placements.[17]

December 2014–present

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On 1 December 2014, Jonathan Kay replaced John Macfarlane as Editor-in-Chief.[18]

In October 2015, a report in Canadaland provided details of a toxic and disorganized environment at the magazine.[19]

Kay resigned as Editor-in-Chief on 14 May 2017, following a controversy around cultural appropriation in which he dismissed Indigenous concerns about the practice.[20][21] Jessica Johnson was named executive editor, in addition to her existing role as creative director, on 7 September 2017.[22]

Johnson resigned on 2 February 2023, saying "five years is a long time in the life of a magazine editor, and I've had a really good run."[23] Carmine Starnino, Editor-at-large at The Walrus[24] and a founding editor in 2002 of Maisonneuve magazine, had stepped up as Interim Editor-in-Chief by no later than 21 February.[25]

Finances

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Though The Walrus was initially pledged $1 million annually by the Chawkers Foundation for its first five years, it was unable to access this money without first being recognized as a charitable organization by the Canada Revenue Agency. The Alexander family was forced to support the magazine out of its own pocket until it finally received charitable status in 2005, creating the charitable non-profit Walrus Foundation.[26] In addition to publishing the magazine, the Foundation runs events across Canada, including talks and debates on public policy.[27]

In the relatively small yet geographically large Canadian market, magazines producing long-form journalism have often struggled to stay afloat. Saturday Night, which The Walrus editor John Macfarlane formerly published, lost money continuously despite being a celebrated publication.[28] But as Macfarlane reported in 2011, The Walrus's charitable model, similar to that of Harper's, was thus far sustaining it: donations covered about half of the costs of producing the magazine in 2010, with the traditional revenue streams of circulation and advertising providing the rest.[28] This is all the more important for the magazine because its educational mandate requires that it keep a ratio of no less than 70 percent editorial content to 30 percent advertising.[29]

References

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  1. ^ "Our Staff | The Walrus". 31 March 2016.
  2. ^ "Advertise with us | The Walrus". 25 November 2019.
  3. ^ a b Brown, Liz (2004), "The Walrus Loses Its Carpenter", Ryerson Review of Journalism, archived from the original on 27 March 2012, retrieved 21 April 2011
  4. ^ a b "About The Walrus"
  5. ^ "Letters October 2003", The Walrus, October 2003, retrieved 21 April 2011
  6. ^ Ambrose, Shelley; Macfarlane, John (October–November 2008), "You are The Walrus. Happy 5th Anniversary!", The Walrus, retrieved 21 April 2011
  7. ^ Scott, D. B. (10 June 2008), Ken Alexander resigns as editor of The Walrus, retrieved 21 April 2011
  8. ^ Adams, James (27 February 2009), "A new ethos for the still-endangered Walrus", The Globe and Mail, retrieved 21 April 2011
  9. ^ a b ""Past Awards"". Archived from the original on 7 February 2012. Retrieved 21 April 2011.
  10. ^ Utne Reader Staff (January–February 2005), "The 2004 Utne Independent Press Awards", Utne Reader, retrieved 21 April 2011
  11. ^ Adams, James (7 June 2008), "The Walrus dominates National Magazine Awards", The Globe and Mail, retrieved 21 April 2011
  12. ^ "Up Here top magazine but Walrus snags prizes", CBC News, 5 June 2010, retrieved 21 April 2011
  13. ^ a b Adams, James (10 January 2012). "Walrus magazine branches out into television". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 10 January 2012.
  14. ^ Hayward, Jeff (13 September 2012). "The Walrus magazine redesigns website on Wordpress platform". Masthead Online. Retrieved 13 September 2012.
  15. ^ "Ontario labour ministry cracks down on unpaid internships at Toronto Life, The Walrus", The Canadian Journalism Project, 27 March 2014
  16. ^ "Unpaid Internship Crackdown At Toronto Life, The Walrus Magazines", Huffington Post Canada, 27 March 2014
  17. ^ "Careers & Fellowships". The Walrus. Archived from the original on 7 October 2020. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
  18. ^ "New Editor-in-Chief" (Press release). The Walrus Foundation. 29 October 2014. Archived from the original on 8 August 2016. Retrieved 29 September 2015.
  19. ^ Lytvynenko, Jane (4 November 2015). "Meltdown at the Walrus". Canadaland. Archived from the original on 5 October 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  20. ^ Goldsbie, Jonathan (14 May 2017). "Jonathan Kay out at The Walrus". Canadaland. Archived from the original on 1 October 2023. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
  21. ^ Mendleson, Rachel (14 May 2017). "Jonathan Kay resigns as editor of The Walrus amid 'appropriation prize' backlash". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 1 October 2023. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  22. ^ "Jessica Johnson Named Executive Editor of The Walrus" (Press release). The Walrus Foundation. 5 April 2020 [2017-09-07]. Archived from the original on 3 August 2020. Retrieved 5 November 2023.
  23. ^ Ahmed, Mariam (2 February 2023). "Walrus editor in chief Johnson departs". Talking Biz News. Archived from the original on 4 February 2023. Retrieved 5 November 2023.
  24. ^ "About Our Staff - Editorial | Carmine Starnino Editor-at-large". 24 January 2023. Archived from the original on 24 January 2023. Retrieved 5 November 2023.
  25. ^ "About Our Staff - Editorial | Carmine Starnino Interim Editor-in Chief". 21 February 2023. Archived from the original on 21 February 2023. Retrieved 21 February 2023.
  26. ^ Khimani, Shireen (6 February 2006), "The Fruits of Victory", Ryerson Review of Journalism, retrieved 26 April 2011
  27. ^ Meyer, Theo (5 April 2011), "Cultural critics face off at Walrus debate", The McGill Tribune, retrieved 26 April 2011
  28. ^ a b Macfarlane, John (May 2011), "Editor's Note", The Walrus, retrieved 26 April 2011
  29. ^ McKeon, Lauren (Summer 2007), "Into the Wild", Ryerson Review of Journalism, retrieved 26 April 2011
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