Page 12 - 08_Oct-2025

(“Crescendo Ending”); Russell Cobb and Sarah Brandvold’s feature
on a contested museum artifact (“The Secret Life of Horus”);
and Zachary Ayotte’s essay on the future of arts funding (“Keeping
the Curtains Up”) — consumed more than three-quarters of our
editorial budget. Each went through multiple drafts and was
meticulously verified by our lead fact-checker, Brooklyn Hollinger,
before moving to creative director Kim Larson and her roster
of freelance photographers and illustrators. After designing them
into stunning features, Kim returned each story to undergo
several rounds of proofreading by every member of the editorial
team, including associate publisher Jennifer Walton. Keeping in
mind that our production involves two fewer editors than it would
have 10 years ago, the combined hours for these three stories was
still over 150.
Quality takes time, and time is expensive. This is why we cannot
publish work of this depth online alone. Digital ads may support
lighter coverage — restaurant reviews, event guides, artist profiles
— but not the ambitious, time-consuming reporting that serves a
wider public interest.
Few city magazines in Canada still publish fact-
checked reporting and in-depth literary journalism.
Each closure means the loss of a civic voice.
This precarity isn’t unique to Edify. It defines journalism today.
Since 2008, Canada has lost 11 per cent of its local news outlets.
Edmonton has been hit especially hard: the Local News Research
Project ranked it the third-most “news-deprived” city in
the country, losing a third of its outlets, from Metro News
and Alberta Venture to Vue Weekly and See.
It’s in this context that people sometimes complain
to me, “The magazine is all advertising now.” I welcome
the chance to correct them. Proportionally, Avenue and
now Edify have always been majority editorial. Believe
me, businesses try to buy coverage — an entitlement
encouraged by less transparent magazines blurring
journalistic red lines, undermining readers’ trust and, quite
frankly, insulting their intelligence. To be clear, we don’t
take money from subjects, never have, and any potential
conflicts of interest are disclosed in the writer’s words or
in mine through an editor’s note.
So no, there aren’t more ads. Rather, their presence is
more prominent because the page count is half what it
once was, and because their nature has shifted. Advertisers
increasingly want advertorials: articles that tell their
brand story. We’ve always offered these with ethical
standards — different design, typeface and labelling to
distinguish them as advertising — but demand has grown
since businesses have become more proficient with social
media. Any company can post a slogan or graphic online,
but a printed profile carries weight. What advertisers
seek from us is credibility. And credibility comes through
storytelling — the thing magazines have always done best.
It’s rooted in centuries of tradition, dating back to the
first magazine, published in Germany in 1663 and aptly
the epicentrics