The review Relationships is in a coma; To port! And Off-screen are turning to crowdfunding. And the new funding allocation for the operation of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) is proving insufficient for the majority of periodicals. Result? Lureluthe only magazine devoted to children’s literature, is also at stake for its survival. And the Société de développement des époquets culturels no longer has the means to maintain its brand new website… which pooled the sale and subscriptions of cultural publications. Review of the state of magazines.
“Since July, everyone has been in shock when faced with their budget columns,” explains Hélène Hotton, general director of the Society for the Development of Cultural Periodicals (SODEP).
“I feel like we’re just one gang of deer frozen in the headlights of our Excel files, making us wonder how not to have a structural deficit. If, as now, our subsidies do not allow us to keep up with the dramatic increase in the price of paper, printing and transport, we are suffocating the magazines,” continues Mme Hotton.
A survey conducted among SODEP members reveals that on average, local cultural magazines, historically not rich, obtained 70% of the amount they had requested from CALQ.
The 15 publications that responded to the questionnaire will have an average of $70,529 per year for the next four years. To operate, pay rent, employees, contributors and journalists, and, of course, produce issues.
This CALQ grant represents some 75% of the funding for the majority of publications. Some also receive, or rather, money from the Montreal Arts Council and the Canada Book Fund.
To avoid red ink, “magazines are making different choices: cutting pages, cutting issues, reducing the number of employees, cutting salaries, cutting columns, reducing collaborators,” adds Hélène Hotton. “Which means that the conditions of cultural workers are deteriorating. And some magazines are thinking of closing.”
Period magazines
Esse, Boards, Variable sky, Cine-Bulles, Moveo, New notebooks of socialism (yes! yes!)… Very few Quebecers know about these publications, which are considered effective starting from 1,000 subscribers. Too niche? No longer of their time? Absolutely not, according to Gina Cortopassi, assistant editor ofSpacewhich has 250 subscribers.
“Cultural periodicals animate, fuel and legitimize specific artistic practice environments and communities,” she explains. “They offer a voice to their actors and an influence outside of traditional presentation venues—artist centers, cultural centers, museums, theaters. They are essential to the development of practices and discourses to describe, understand and appreciate them.”
“Judging a cultural magazine with the same standards of performance and distribution as mainstream media is a profound injustice,” believes Mr.me Cortopassi.
Hélène Hotton continues: “It’s really the entire intelligentsia of Quebec that writes in cultural magazines. That’s where most of the movements that have led to social change are born. That’s where feminism, counterculture, and the artistic avant-gardes were first thought of.”
“I had a lot of hope when the government’s new plan on the French language came out in April,” continues the director of SODEP. “If the government says that it is its priority to promote and shine, protect and defend French-language content, it seems to me that this should extend to cultural magazines.”
Because they are, since the Montreal Literary Gazette from 1778, one of the “historical and privileged vehicles of Quebec and French thought. It’s not Bombardier, you little bastard, who’s going to promote the French language in Quebec culture!” exclaims the director, before recovering herself with a laugh: “S’cuse, I have the Gaspésienne coming out again… I’m so discouraged…”
Out of sight of readers, out of mind
Cultural magazines are trying to recover from a serious distribution problem. During acquisitions between distributors, from 2014 to 2016, when Benjamin moved to LMPI then to Messageries Dynamiques, and then LMPI to Disticor, these publications were dumped: not profitable enough.
“While we used to be able to buy cultural magazines at Jean-Coutu and at the convenience store, overnight we no longer saw them at all, anywhere. At SODEP, we have been working for years to repair this historic deficit in visibility,” recalls Hélène Hotton.
“Since the pandemic, the government has been telling us all the time, ‘Be bold!’, ‘Reinvent yourself!’, ‘Innovate!’, ‘Help your community!’ And we, the arts service organizations, have been told, ‘Share!’, ‘Create services!’, ‘Get off the platforms!’ The money was there. We got it. We did it. We developed SODEP Diffusion, with Dimedia, to meet the specific needs of magazines. We got them into bookstores. Now, we’re entering museum shops, theaters, artist centers, where there is a natural audience.”
Hélène Hotton says that after designing a new website, her organization saw magazine sales increase by 30% in the first six months. But a lack of resources is now threatening the sustainability of the platforms developed to adapt to the new context.
“These are cuts in the tools that we put in place so that things could start to go better for us. I find myself no longer able to pay for my website maintenance. And I am in open source. Imagine the cultural organizations that have had websites made customs with all the great subsidies granted to digital technology.
“With our very small teams, we cannot achieve this in two years. booster subscriptions, to set up a specialized broadcast service, to federate all subscriptions on a transactional site. We can just go there little by little.”
“When you give resources to develop, but not to support afterwards, what do you call that? For me, it’s cultural money thrown down the drain.”
Money on paper
SODEP was granted an increase by the CALQ, however. “True,” confirms Hélène Hotton, “but compared to the amount it received in 2017. It’s less than what we received the two previous years, when bonuses were granted and mutualization projects were funded.”
“I have the same financial problem as my member magazines,” says the woman who runs their association. “First of all, I lowered my salary. I have to cut more. And it’s not nice what I’m about to do to my employees’ working conditions. I’ve been crying about it.”
“Journals are living organisms: they live, they change, they die. I’m not saying to keep things alive that are no longer relevant. But here, we’re talking about cuts to journals that are performing,” as Quebec letters, Caribou, New Project, Freedom, Essethere Review of the history of New Francewhether in terms of notoriety or in terms of sales or number of subscribers.
“Afterwards, when we react, the entire cultural environment seems to be begging, all the time. While the problem is the decision-makers who make incoherent decisions; who take one step forward and two steps back.”