Maclean's
Maclean's is
Canada's leading weekly
news magazine.
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A cover of the Canadian magazine Maclean's. |
It was founded in 1905 by
Toronto journalist/
entrepreneur Lt.-Col. John Bayne Maclean. The 43-year-old trade magazine publisher purchased an advertising agency's in-house business journal — along with its 5,000-strong subscription base. The
Business Magazine, was launched in October of that year as a pocket-sized digest of articles gathered from Canadian,
U.S. and
British periodicals. It sold 6,000 copies. Inside its bright blue cover, the fledgling monthly anointed itself, "the Cream of the World's magazines reproduced for Busy People". Its aim, Maclean wrote a year later, was not "merely to entertain but also to inspire its readers." It was renamed
The Busy Man's Magazine in December 1905, and began soliciting original manuscripts on varied topics such as immigration, national defence, woman's suffrage and home life as well as fiction. Maclean renamed the magazine after himself in 1911, dropping the previous title as too evocative of a business magazine for what had become a general interest publication.
Maclean hired
Thomas B. Costain as editor in 1917. Constain invigorated the magazine's coverage of
World War I, running first-person accounts of life on the
Western Front and critiques of Canada's war effort that came into conflict with wartime censorship regulations. Constain was ordered to remove an article by Maclean himself as it was too critical of war policy.
Constain encouraged literary pieces and artistic expressions and ran fiction by
Robert Service,
Lucy Maud Montgomery and
O. Henry, commentary by
Stephen Leacock and illustrations by
C. W. Jefferys,
F.S. Coburn and several
Group of Seven members, including
A. J. Casson,
Arthur Lismer and
J. E. H. MacDonald.[
1].
In 1919, the magazine moved from monthly to
fortnightly publication and ran a notable expose of the
drug trade by
Emily Murphy. Constain left the magazine to become a novelist and was replaced by
J. Vernon Mackenzie who remained at the helm until 1926. During his tenure,
Maclean's achieved national stature.
H. Napier Moore became the new editor. An Englishman, he saw the magazine as an expression of Canada's role in the
British Empire. Moore ultimately became a figurehead with the day to day running of the magazine falling to managing editor
W. Arthur Irwin, a Canadian nationalist, who transformed saw the magazine as an exercise in nation-building, giving it a mandate to promote national pride. Under Irwin's influence, the magazine's covers promoted Canadian scenery and imagery - the magazine also sponsored an annual short story contest on Canadian themes and acquired a sports department. Irwin was also responsible for orienting the magazine towards both small and big "l"
Liberalism.
During
World War II,
Maclean's ran an overseas edition for Canadian troops serving abroad. By the time of its final run in 1946, the "bantam" edition had a circulation of 800,000.
Maclean's war coverage featured war photography by
Yousef Karsh, later an internationally acclaimed portrait photographer, and articles by war correspondents John Clare and Leonard Shapiro.
Irwin officially replaced Moore as editor in 1945, and reoriented the magazine by building it around news features written by a new stable of writers that included
Pierre Berton,
W.O. Mitchell,
Scott Young,
Ralph Allen and
Blair Fraser.
Allen became editor upon Irwin's acceptance of a diplomatic posting in 1950. This era of the magazine was noted for its articles on the Canadian landscape and profiles of town and city life. The feature article "Canada's North" by
Pierre Berton promoted a new national interest in the Arctic. Prominent writers during this period included
Robert Fulford,
Peter Gzowski,
Peter C. Newman,
Trent Frayne,
June Callwood,
McKenzie Porter and
Christina McCall. Exposes in the 1950s challenged the criminal justice system, explored LSD and articifical insemination.
Maclean's published a memorable editorial the day after the
1957 federal election announcing the predictable re-election of the
St. Laurent Liberal Party. Written before the election results were known, Allen failed to anticipate the upset election of
John Diefenbaker's
Progressive Conservative Party.
The magazine struggled to compete with television in the 1960s by increasing its international coverage and attempting to keep up with the
sexual revolution through a succession of editors including Gzowski and
Charles Templeton. Templeton quit after a short time at the helm due to his frustration with interference by the publishing company, Maclean-Hunter.
Peter C. Newman became editor in 1971, and attempted to revive the magazine by publishing feature articles by writers such as
Barbara Frum and
Michael Enright, and poetry by
Irving Layton.
Walter Stewart, correspondent and eventually
managing editor during this period, often clashed with Newman.
Under Newman, the magazine switched from being a monthly general interest publication to a bi-weekly news magazine in 1975, and to a weekly newsmagazine three years later. The magazine opened news bureaus across the country and in
London, England and
Washington D.C..
Today
Maclean's remains one of Canada's leading sources of news and information.
Maclean's is also famous for its annual ranking of Canadian universities for the "undergraduate experience", which compares universities in three peer groupings, and for its annual announcement of Canada's Top 100 Employers. In 2001,
Anthony Wilson-Smith became the fifteenth editor in the magazine's history. He left the post at the end of February 2005 and was replaced by
Kenneth Whyte. The magazine has been owned by the
Rogers Communications conglomerate since Rogers acquired
Maclean-Hunter, the former publisher, in 1994.
Noted
Maclean's contributors during its incarnation as a newsweekly include columnists
Barbara Amiel,
Allan Fotheringham,
Diane Francis and
Paul Wells as well as Newman.
Maclean's has been criticized for having a supposedly pro-Liberal (both the
party and
political stance) position by
conservatives such as
Conrad Black. Whyte, a former editor at the
National Post, is seen to have taken the magazine in a more balanced direction. He has hired a number of former
Post writers and has brought back former
Maclean's columnist
Barbara Amiel, wife of Conrad Black, as well as noted liberal academic Andrew Potter. Recently,
Steve Maich wrote a story in the July 25, 2005 issue praising
Wal-Mart, in which he argued that Wal-Mart benefits the community, with the cover showing a halo over a Wal-Mart store. The magazine has also published a sympathetic portrait of New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton and criticisms of Canadian environmental policy. It has created waves with investigative reports on Canada's powerful Thomson family and the apparent mistreatment of a squadron of snipers in the Canadian military. Maclean's was recently nominated for nine National Magazine Awards.
The
Maclean's Guide to Canadian Universities is published annually in March. It is also known as
Maclean's University Guide. It includes information from the
Maclean's University Rankings, an issue that is published annually in November. Both the Guide and the Rankings Issue feature articles discussing
Canadian universities and ranking them by order of quality. The rankings take a measure of the undergraduate experience, comparing universities in three peer groupings: Medical Doctoral, Comprehensive and Primarily Undergraduate. Medical Doctoral institutions have a broad range of PhD progams and research, as well as medical schools. Comprehensives have a significant amount of research activity and a wide range of graduate and undergraduate programs, including professional degrees. Schools in the Primarily Undergraduate category are largely focused on undergraduate education, with relatively few graduate programs.
In early 2006, Maclean's announced that in June, 2006, it would be introducing a new annual issue called the University Student Issue. The issue would feature the results of a survey of recent university graduates from each Canadian university. However, some universities, such as the University of Calgary, McMaster University and the University of Toronto, refused to take part in this exercise. [
2] In response, Maclean's sought the results two university-commissioned student surveys: the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium and the National Survey of Student Engagement.[
3] Results from these surveys, along with Maclean's own graduate survey, were published in the June 26, 2006 edition of Maclean's.
*
Media in Canada*
Macleans: the First 100 Years*
Maclean's website*
Macleans.ca: Universities
