Posted on 06/24/2003 7:59:56 AM PDT by Loyalist
CALGARY -- After 30 years of preaching Western conservatism to Canadians, The Report magazine has gone the way of the Prairie grain elevator and bitten the dust.
The bible of the Prairie right, previously known under the mastheads Alberta Report and Western Report, has published its final issue, Link Byfield, editor and publisher, said yesterday.
The controversial magazine failed to increase circulation beyond 40,000, attract readers outside Alberta and absorb the high costs of publishing.
"It means that the right wing, the Prairie right wing, the Alberta right wing, has lost a voice. That's always important for a political movement," said political scientist Keith Brownsey of Calgary's Mount Royal College.
The news saddened Canadian Alliance MP Myron Thompson: "I think that they really spoke the heart of a lot of ordinary Canadians that never get heard."
"If I had a dollar for every time somebody said to me, 'Did you read the last Alberta Report?' I'd be a rich man," said Mr. Thompson, who previously represented his central Alberta riding under the Reform Party banner.
The magazine, founded by Mr. Byfield's father Ted, was described at various times as homophobic, conservative, Christian, and the driving force behind the Alliance.
"In its heyday, it provided a distinctive Western Canadian voice on national issues," said Calgary political scientist Barry Cooper.
It took aggressive stands against abortion and gay rights -- and didn't care who objected.
Mr. Cooper quotes from an article by Link Byfield:
"We're rednecks, we're out of the closet, and we're proud," said the article. The phrase summed up the magazine's agenda and, in its deliberate parody of gay rights rhetoric, its cheek.
It also had a pro-Western slant that set it apart, Mr. Cooper said. "It [came from] the kind of political mythology that most Albertans grew up with. It was kind of refreshing to see. It didn't take a back seat to 'national unity' or 'sucking up to Quebec.' "
It also left a lasting mark on Canadian politics with its support and enthusiastic coverage of Preston Manning's fledgling Reform Party and Alberta Premier Ralph Klein's early days as a budget-cutter, Mr. Cooper said.
"They had an impact on the provincial government and, through the provincial government, on the general political agenda of the country."
But despite its marks, the magazine has been gasping for life over the past decade. It was saved by a group of Calgary entrepreneurs in the 1990s. Last fall, the private, for-profit enterprise teetered on life support and was turned into the non-profit Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy Foundation, which focused on positive news designed to win a broad base of readers. That's where the Byfield family and members of The Report staff will continue to work.
The magazine also became a training ground for conservative journalists such as Ken Whyte, founding editor of the National Post. Its homespun newsroom even inspired a full-length play.
Mr. Whyte, who spent most of the 1980s working at the magazine, called the news a "tragedy" that's "devastating to hear."
He said the magazine offered a voice that was unique in North America. It filled a void -- particularly between the introduction of the National Energy Program and the rise of the Reform movement -- when other regional publications such as the Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald "were profoundly out of step with public opinion," he said.
Mr. Thompson expected there would be a public outcry, and hoped something else would emerge to feed an audience starved of "traditional" Canadian values.
Mr. Brownsey wasn't so sure. "If the Alberta Report can't make it, what market is there?"
Roger Gibbins, president and CEO of the Canada West Foundation, a non-partisan, public-policy research group based in Calgary, said The Report had become a less-influential force over the decade.
"When it emerged, it was clearly filling a hole. I don't think that people were picking up either on the theme of regional discontent or on the theme of social conservatism," said Mr. Gibbins, adding, "although it seldom said things that I particularly like."
It failed to grow with the region and reflect new Western realities, he said. "The magazine seemed to me to be increasingly dated in its vision of the West."
He also noted parallels between the gradual death of the magazine and what has happened as the Alliance has attempted to move out beyond its Western social conservative base.
"It seemed to me that The Report failed to grow in the same way, but you might worry that what's happened with The Report is perhaps a harbinger of the problems the Alliance faces," Mr. Gibbins said.
Rumours of trouble at the magazine were often in the air.
In his Oct. 21, 2002, letter from the publisher, Mr. Byfield responded to newspaper reports that his "arch-conservative Report magazine" was in dire financial straits.
"I wish to correct this misapprehension. The Report is always in dire financial straits, and the present dire situation is not really exceptional."
Alberta Report articulated for me what I had merely been thinking for some time. Its articles were usually better-written and its arguments more clearly thought out than what I was used to reading in Maclean's. It was quite a formative influence on my thinking and outlook on politics and society.
Ted Byfield was a rare breed in Canadian journalism; his like have almost all now been driven out of the field by the stifling orthodoxy that has become a sine qua non in the Canadian media.
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