Wither the Western Standard
The Zerb reports all is not well at the Western Standard. She cites as evidence yet another goofy fee driven writing contest - “pay us to be a freelance” - and rumours the WS is going monthly and Kevin Libin is jumping ship. All or some of which may be true.
Rising from the ashes of Alberta Report Ezra Levant’s exercise in magazine creation was pretty much hooped from the go. Not because there is not a market for an organ of rightish opinion; rather because this was not the right organ. From the outset WS had some rather critical problems.
First, unlike Alberta Report, there was no clear enemy. The glory days of the Report occured way back when the feds decided to drrop their hand in Alberta’s oily cookie jar. The NEP galvanized Albertans with an anger which had to be seen to be believed. It spilled over into BC and Saskatchewan and there was no doubt who Public Enemy #1 was - the federal government. Now Albertans are the federal government.
Second, Alberta Report was, practically speaking, the only rightish disident magazine being published in Canada. There was no where else for conservatives, socons, libertarians and economic realists to read and write. No more. The National Post, shaky as it may well be, plus hundreds of blogs provide all the right wing commentary anyone can possibly want.
Third, the conservative interest in Canada has changed a lot in the last decade. The socons have been sidelined. The libertarians have been co-opted or cast into the outer darkness. Most importantly, people under the age of 60 have opted in.
Trouble is that those people are more about getting government out of their lives than about the sorts of issues which WS seems to want to cover. And writing a magazine about a negative is tough work indeed.
At the moment there is certainly a market opportunity for a hip, urban, libertarian magazine which pays attention to business and leaves the wider shores of religion out of it. The WS could have been that magazine had it begun with a vision a little broader than the view from the Husky Tower. It didn’t and, perhaps, is paying the price.
When The Report went down one of its writers and Caandian blogger Colby Cosh pointed out that its audience was, literally, dying. The audience for a made in Alberta exercise in socon/libertarian schizophrenia surely has at least one foot in the grave.
But, when all is said and done, the real enemy of the WS is the sheer prosperity of Alberta, the West at large and Canada in general. While people like me may rail about the need to cut the National Debt faster, truth is that the surge in oil and other commodity prices, years of patient deficit cutting and the adoption of relatively prudent fiscal policies by the provinces have meant that the average Canadian is much better off than he or she was a couple of decades ago.
Prosperous people are not angry people and, to survive, the Western Standard needs a lot of angry people. As the anger abates (and shifts leftwards) the demand for the Standard decreases.
Written by jay on August 22nd, 2006 with
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