Anodyne
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
 
Terminal City Broke, Suspends Publication

"'We had tremendous talent,' [publisher John] Kay said of the paper's staff."

Yes, until Kay either fired or alienated them all.

Former editor Bess Lovejoy's several-month reign at Terminal City was a breath of fresh air in media-saturated Vancouver; for that brief interval, everyone I knew was either reading or writing for the paper, and it looked like the Straight might have some genuinely literate competition.

And then?

Kay's spectacularly goofy and ill-considered decision to fire Lovejoy, dismiss books editor Aaron Peck and visual arts editor Adam Harrison, and to replace all this lively content with full-page images of knitted bikinis, "street" art (spraycans; hip-hop; skateboards; bling bling), a coffee column written by an advertiser who coincidentally owned a coffee shop, and lots of equally worthless infotainment.

So long, John! From my perspective, it looks like you pretty much got what you deserved.

(In criticizing Kay, I don't mean to impugn the paper's hard-working columnists and freelancers, talented writers like Ian King, Jada Stark, and Chris Eng, who I looked forward to reading every Thursday).

- posted by cjb @ 8:29 PM


<< Home

Powered by Blogger

.post-title { display: none!important; }