Vue History P06 may 11 2000 recap

See Magazine: think Conrad Black
By RON GARTH published in Vue Weekly May 11, 2000

Vue Weekly is 100 per cent independent.

Since June 1998, Vue had been 50 per cent owned by The Georgia Straight, a Vancouver-based independent newsweekly. But as of this week, The Georgia Straight has given us the opportunity to go it alone as Edmonton's only independent, alternative, Edmonton-owned print media.

You would never know that from reading See Magazine, however. On December 2, 1999, See published the article "Newspaper chain buys Vue Weekly," claiming Vue Weekly had been bought by David Black, a "B.C. newspaper magnate" with "strong ties to Canada's corporate establishment."

This article had no byline, and cited no sources. That's because there were no sources to cite: the article was absolutely false. While Maureen Fleming, associate publisher and equity partner, had entered into negotiations with David Black over the possibility of buying her shares, they had not been sold.

It is obvious that journalism played no part in See's decision to run the article, first and foremost, the point of journalism is to tell the truth. See meant to tar us with the brush of corporate ownership, to claim we were on their level, even after the years we spent struggling to remain independent. It is the ultimate pot calling the kettle black, for there could not possibly be a more corporate and less alternative newspaper than the Southam-owned See Magazine.

Immediately after the article appeared, I wrote See a letter to the editor, pointing out the fallaciousness of the article and setting the record straight. See's editors and management once again revealed that they had no interest in the truth or their journalistic responsibility to tell the truth, for not only did they fail to print the letter, they failed to retract their false claims. Instead, they ran an article titled "Legal snag delays Vue Weekly sale" on December 9, implying that the alleged sale was inevitable.

Now let the truth ring loud and clear: Vue Weekly has not been sold.

Let me make the point again: there was no sale. See Magazine lied, and for the past six months we have been labouring under a cloud of rumoured corporate control due to See's irresponsible articles. This is the ultimate insult; See may be so corporate and mainstream as to not care about their own ownership and the fact that they are posing as an alternative publication, but our independence and lack of a corporate yoke is our reason for being. It is not just a point of pride, it is the very ideal we have struggled so hard to uphold and made so many sacrifices for so many years to stay alive.

See Magazine can now print whatever it wants; the truth is out there. Vue Weekly is 100 per cent independent and See is corporate-controlled.

True, to a casual observer, See Magazine may look like a typical Canadian alternative newsweekly, along the lines of Vue Weekly. But not only is it not independent, it is not even alternative. Controlled by Gazette Press, which is in turn controlled by Southam, it is corporate through and through. The idea of a newspaper owned by Conrad Black being alternative in any way, shape or form is ludicrous. See is a mainstream publication with a mainstream devotion to profit instead of the ideals of independent alternative media. And its deep pockets enable it to survive without the support of readers and advertisers who value independent, alternative media.

However, nothing can compare to the irony implicit in the photo that accompanies this article. By setting up its distribution boxes next to those of the National Post and the Edmonton Journal, See Magazine has eloquently demonstrated Edmonton's triumvirate of soulless, corporate-controlled, Southam- and Conrad Black-owned media, all chained to the same post.

This is the latest chapter in our eight-year struggle to bring Edmonton an independent, alternative media voice. It's been a struggle, but one that we believe in.

The first hurdles we had to overcome happened years before there ever was a Vue Weekly. On July 1, 1992, I published the first issue of See Magazine. It bore little resemblance to the See and Vue of today; it was printed in ponytab format (the size of the Journal's and Sun's TV guides), it came out just once a month, and it was financed entirely by my savings and a mortgage on my home.

Over the next three years, See grew at a tremendous rate. In 1994, we merged with the Bullet, a biweekly magazine that had been on the streets for ten years. We developed a close business relationship with our printer, Gazette Press, who handled our accounts receivable and helped with business planning, in fact, this arrangement was stipulated as a condition for us to receive a loan from the Federal Business Development Fund.

So with no government grants, and with very little in the way of loans, we took See to the familiar large tabloid format, and moved to biweekly, then weekly publication. This was no easy task, every time we doubled our publication frequency, we increased our costs and our advertisers had to commit to doubling their support.

By necessity we incurred debt, as every business does during its initial growth. Our primary creditor was Gazette Press, who agreed to let us defer our printing costs up to a point. That point was passed and Gazette Press owner Duff Jamison called in the debt. Because of a "General Security Agreement," Gazette Press was contractually entitled to be paid first in the event of bankruptcy.

Since Gazette Press had prepared business plans for See, they were very aware of the publication’s potential. Rather than just accept the guaranteed revenue of the print job for Gazette Press for years to come, Jamison saw the opportunity to use Canadian bankruptcy laws to his own advantage. See owed Gazette Press more than the value of its accounts receivable (which had been agreed to as a credit limit). I offered to convert this balance to equity, a common business practice, which would have given them 20 per cent of See. But Jamison refused to take the 20 per cent, because he perceived that he could get it all.

Some time later, a judgment of the Court of Appeal of Alberta (as documented in issue 47 of the Alberta Weekly Law Digest) stated that Jamison "formed a plan to use a receiver to take over the newspaper and eliminate most of the employees and other creditors." By calling in the debt, Jamison gained control of a viable business for a fraction of its worth, burning off its other debts, including that of the FBDB, who had insisted on Gazette Press's involvement in the first place. The FBDB had authorized a loan at 4.75 per cent interest. The loan had numerous clauses which allowed for lapses in principal payments and a lengthy repayment schedule. This was money loaned under the "arts" umbrella for film and publishing, money that should have been repaid, and to burn it away and at the same time run a faux-alternative publication that purports to support the arts community is the absolute height of hypocrisy.

I built See on an ideal: that of independent media. And that ideal was supported by many people, including our advertisers, but most importantly, our staff. See owes its existence to the many people who for years worked excruciating hours for a fraction of what they were worth, sometimes having to defer paycheques themselves. They did so because they believed in the newspaper and in the importance of independent media.

This staff was now faced with the prospect of Gazette Press taking over and cleaning house. As the Court of Appeal of Alberta ruling says, "The evidence before us makes it very doubtful that the receiver had any interest in keeping most of the staff, or contributory of See or Vue." It's a familiar tactic in Canadian media: a large corporation takes over a small paper and fires the majority of the people whose blood, sweat and tears built the company. Conrad Black's Southam, Inc. did just that to hundreds of Canadian dailies and weeklies, and at the time of Gazette Press's takeover of See, Southam owned 49 per cent of Gazette Press. Five years later, Southam's equity is 70 per cent or more.

So See staff decided en masse that they would not let years of sacrifice amount to naught, and together we put the first issue of Vue Weekly on the streets on September 20, 1995, the day before See's receiver was appointed, continuing our efforts to ensure that Edmonton had an independent alternative newspaper.

See's receiver requested, and was granted, a court injunction to stop us from publishing Vue, claiming we were unfairly using See's property and its advertisers, most of whom made the switch to Vue right along with us, since they supported our efforts.

An unprecedented four days later, the Court of Appeal of Alberta convened and quashed the restraining order, even going so far as to say the injunction should not have been granted in the first place. ("An injunction should be used to prevent irreparable harm, not to cause it.") In their judgment of Vue Weekly v. See Magazine Inc. (Receiver of), they wrote: "It seems to us that the only motive for getting this injunction, the only good that it would do anyone, is to kill off the defendants' business and so remove competition."

See Magazine missed one issue, then continued to publish. But no longer was it an independent, alternative newsweekly. Jamison staffed it with employees of Gazette Press and its subsidiary newspapers, and for the past five years he has taken every opportunity to drive Vue Weekly out of business, using tactics both within and without the boundaries of fair competition.

Southam-owned See has been able to use tactics employed by many large corporations who find themselves faced with a small competitor: running at a loss in order to drive its competition out of business.

In June 1998, we entered into a partnership with The Georgia Straight. It was out of financial necessity that we allied ourselves with another newspaper, and although See Magazine cast aspersions on this arrangement in print, the fact remains that our business partner was another independent alternative media source, not, as in See's case, a mainstream media baron like Conrad Black.

After a year and a half of partnership with The Georgia Straight Maureen Fleming moved to Detroit to be with her husband, and offered up her shares of Vue Weekly. At this time, The Georgia Straight also offered up its shares to Vue Weekly for a reasonable cost (considering the value of the company). If we were unable to come up with this amount of money, the entire company would have come under the control of The Georgia Straight.

In an effort to avert this outcome and keep a percentage of the company in my control, negotiations were opened with David Black. As a result of a dispute over a clause in the shareholders’ agreement, negotiations reached an impasse and an arbitrator was appointed, with an arbitration date set for April 19,2000. Although I am grateful for David Black’s recognition of the publication’s value and his timely involvement, as time passed and the arbitration approached, I realized that in this "David and Goliath" situation, I could battle Conrad Black but I could not battle Conrad Black on behalf of David.

It was at this time that an eleventh-hour agreement was reached with Georgia Straight publisher Dan MacLeod whereby I was given the opportunity to buy back The Georgia Straight’s half share in Vue Weekly over a period of two years. Thanks to Maureen Fleming’s willingness to retain her share of the company, we have come full circle. I will be forever indebted to those people who have made it possible for Vue Weekly to retain its independent voice.

In the midst of these negotiations, See Magazine blatantly and unethically misused the power of the press to print their lie about Vue Weekly, and thereby tried to gain a business advantage over us through methods completely outside the realm of fair business competition.

It's a given that the ideal of independent alternative media is important to us: the question is, is it important to you? If not, it should be.

In Canada, we take for granted the freedom of the press. This ideal was mandated into our government, society and culture centuries before we were born, making it difficult for us to realize that a free media independent of government control is a privilege.

However, recent decades have seen the rise of a corporate media monopoly that our founding fathers could not possibly have predicted. Media empires like Southam have flourished, seizing control of newspapers that had been independent and serving the needs of their communities for generations. They have bought papers, forcing out the people who built them from the ground up and replacing community- and socially-minded journalists and editors with businessmen and bureaucrats. Gone is the ideal of truth and making a difference; it has been replaced with the ideal of turning a profit at any cost.

Corporate control of the media is no less pernicious than government control; in fact, it is in many ways more execrable, for at least in democratic societies governments are periodically accountable to the electorate, whereas corporations answer to no one but their shareholders, who are also interested in nothing more than making a return on their investment.

And in the past decade, the rise of trade agreements like NAFTA and of organizations like the World Trade Organization has made multinational corporations more powerful than governments, even giving them the power to sue governments to obtain their "right" to make money.

As recent protests in Seattle, Switzerland and Washington, D.C., have shown, many people are concerned about the direction that globalization is taking and on a smaller scale, this is the same fight Vue Weekly is pursuing in our quest to remain independent.

See Magazine has pointed out that Conrad Black has never visited their offices. But Black wasn't a physical presence at the Calgary Herald, either, and you can ask any one of their striking journalists whether his ownership has had an effect on the content of their newspaper.

Black's right-wing views are well-known, as is his intolerance for people who don't share those views. This creates a work environment of upper-management bureaucrats hesitant to draw attention to views he doesn’t share.

True, Southam has recently put the majority of its empire up for sale, but there are precious few buyers. Even in the unlikely event that See Magazine is sold, it could only be to another media corporation; should Jamison buy back control of the Greatwest Newspaper Group, including Gazette Press, he would constitute a mini-empire of his own. No ideals are in the future for See other than profit.

Any system requires checks and balances. Unfortunately, free-market capitalism has none. While government mandates competition laws to prevent monopoly, corporate interest has taken over the vast majority of Canadian media. And in our increasingly complex world, media plays a vital role. The average citizen is now an information consumer, and most of the information comes from a corporation.

A strong system of independent, alternative voices keeping tabs on the mainstream press is enough to keep corporate-controlled dissemination of information in check, to give them the obligation to at least pay lip service to fairness and truth, or else their shortcomings in this regard will be pointed out in another publication.

And these publications, like Vue Weekly, must remain independent and free to tell the truth, to make the truth their ideal in the place of expediency for profit's sake.

Living in a society where freedom of the press is guaranteed and the free market can do no wrong, it's easy to be complacent. We're all in danger of remaining complacent until one day no information can reach us without the approval of a CEO.

Vue Weekly is 100 per cent independent. But it won't be easy to remain that way, especially in the face of deep-pocketed, corporate-controlled competition.

So next time you pick up Vue Weekly, keep in mind that you're supporting an important independent, alternative media presence in Edmonton.