‘You’re out of your mind!’: Rheostatics guitarist launches out-of-date journal in Toronto

A crime down a travel involving deli meat. How Airbnb is “ruining” your neighbourhood. A pet of a month feature. Comic strips and brief stories created by your neighbours.

If a usually approach to get that kind of concentration on a stories in your village was to spend $50 a year to subscribe to an out-of-date journal delivered to your doorstep, would we do it?

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Author and musician Dave Bidini is betting you’d contend yes. So he ignored a doomsayers who indicate to a heartless layoffs and plummeting revenues of a journal attention to launch a West End Phoenix, a new 20-page broadsheet in Toronto.

“The pleasing thing is no one told me, ‘You’re out of your mind,'” a paper’s founder and editor-in-chief recently announced from a theatre during a well-attended kick-off celebration inside Toronto’s hipster-friendly Gladstone Hotel. It was during this indicate that a voice from a throng shouted, “You’re out of your mind!”

Telling a stories of a community

Bidini is best famous for his 30 years personification guitar for The Rheostatics, a Canadian indie band with a constant cult following. He’s also published 12 books, many of them either about hockey or music.

He held a journal bug in a Northwest Territories, while he was operative on his subsequent book.

“I detected The Yellowknifer there, and it’s one of a few places where a city journal is totally abounding as against to constrictive — since it’s a usually thing that a people of a North unequivocally have,” he explained. “I mean, a internet is still flattering crappy adult there, and also a approach The Yellowknifer goes about a business is that it engages a city and a village by revelation a stories of a city and community.”

The editorial group of West End Phoenix accommodate to plead a initial edition. (CBC)

Back in Toronto, he found himself wondering if that form of hyper-focus on village would work in his possess neighbourhood.

Before proceeding, he consulted Ali Rahnema, a former VP of selling and plan during a Globe and Mail. Rahnema gave Bidini a thumbs-up, desiring that a good, old-fashioned newspaper still had appeal for readers.

“I’m not certain that a height is indispensably a issue,” Rahnema told CBC News, station inside a repository emporium on Toronto’s Bloor Street. “It’s a kind of calm that goes on it.”

As Rahnema sees it, newspapers can still be successful if they have a right strategy. Instead of slicing staff and costs, he believes struggling papers could win behind readers by changeable divided from customary news coverage and investing some-more in peculiarity inquisitive work, strange stories and analysis.

Long-time journal executive Ali Rahnema suggested Bidini on his business strategy. (CBC)

“Do we unequivocally wish a headlines a subsequent day of a stories that I’ve already seen in a accumulation of other places?” Rahnema asked, putting himself in a reader’s shoes. “I’d like to rise a deeper understanding. Or if we have an hour to flog back, unequivocally get during a kind of loose mindset of immoderate media in a opposite way. Print is extraordinary for that. we don’t unequivocally wish to do that on my smartphone.”

Door to doorway sales

Bidini listened a identical view this summer, when he went doorway to doorway to foster a paper, perplexing to line adult intensity subscribers for a West End Phoenix. CBC News followed Bidini during partial of his subscription drive.

“We’re unequivocally meddlesome in stream events and also editorial work, like opinion,” a lady named Jane told Bidini on her front porch. “What we unequivocally need is people to assistance we appreciate a news.”

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Another recommendation from Rahnema was to follow a PBS business model, that is to find sponsors instead of advertisers. Bidini jumped on that idea.

“We’re boiled in ads these days,” he said with disgust. “It’s a flay of media in a lot of cases, and we consider digitally, too, it’s a scourge. We hunt for a X’s to tighten down a ads on each web site we visit.”

West End Phoenix is a 20-page broadsheet. The pages are incomparable than those of many newspapers. (CBC)

Going ad-free lifted a turn of challenge, though. Bidini had to work tough to attract congregation into ancillary a venture, that is set adult as a non-profit. Penguin Random House Canada, Margaret Atwood and a copy organisation all done “significant” contributions, Bidini said.

Money still matters

Even during a kick-off party, a Phoenix was still in fundraising mode, with branded T-shirts and receptacle bags for sale, as good as silent auction of donated art.

“We won’t sell advertising, though we’ll sell art,” said Bidini with a smile.

Most of a people in assemblage were eager about a venture, nonetheless not everybody is assured a business indication will work. Michael Hollett, a owner of Toronto’s long-running weekly NOW Magazine, praised Bidini’s initiative, though when asked about a no-advertising policy, he laughed.

“I’d have advertising,” he pronounced simply.

The initial emanate seemed only over a week ago, and a second emanate is scheduled for December. The paper now has about 1,500 subscribers. Bidini said the aim is to see dissemination grow month by month, with a aim of 5,000 subscribers by next June. 

But a biggest idea is to enhance a clarity of village in a neighbourhood, while charity decent compensate to writers and artists.

Bidini said he likes to quote his mother on this philosophy: “She says we’re starting out where each other journal has finished adult — as a nonprofit.”

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/new-local-newspaper-bucks-trend-1.4367539?cmp=rss