Toro was a friend of mine. And you, sir…

Toro was a friend of mine. And you, sir…

By Edward Keenan May 22, 2008 6 Comments

The late, lamented Canadian men’s mag Toro is back, sort of. As my good friend Marc Weisblott of Eye Weekly’s Scrolling Eye puts it:

[Of the relaunched, internet-only Toro] “It’s an example of how a men’s magazine looks and acts when taking advantage of state-of-the-art 21st century digital technology — as opposed to 18th-century printing press technology,” goes Morassutti’s YouTube-posted pitch. “Carrying forward just enough of the branding, categories and contributors for continuity — but also creating, from scratch, an exciting new men’s lifestyle platform that plays to the strengths of the online medium.”

Yet the name recognition owes just about everything to the strengths of the 18th-century incarnation of Toro. The print edition’s editor-in-chief, Derek Finkle, hired on a fluke, was determined to shape Christopher Bratty’s sketch of a Canadian version of 1970s vintage Playboy into something formidable enough to compete with Esquire and GQ on the newsstand. Maybe not every article lived up to that standard, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give it a try. Considering the fate of the print medium, it looked like the last ever such opportunity, too.

Masthead online covered the launch too, pointing out that (whereas old-Toro editor Derek Finkle once bragged to a crowd of college kids that it was the best paying magazine in the country for writers says in the comments below that the old Toro may have been the best paying magazine in Canada after The Walrus failed to live up to advanced-rate hype), the new Toro is putting the “free” back in “freelance”:

The website essentially offers no paying opportunities for freelancers. Morassutti says that while he’s open to hearing pitches, he expects all “professional” content will be produced in-house and by the contributors already on board (including Bidini, Eddie, Rebecca Addelman, Nick Flanagan, Jimmy Hogg and Steve Ricci)…. You won’t get paid for it, but anyone who wants to contribute to the magazine can do so in something called The Arena, a forum for user-generated content that allows “readers” to post columns, blogs and videos. This content will then be ranked by readers and the highest-ranking work will be pulled out and appear on the main page, Morassutti says.

Which may not be such a bad thing, since they allegedly didn’t quite get around to paying everyone last time, according to what this former writer alleges that payment wasn’t that high a priority for the ownership the first time around:

But my biggest ambivalence-causer is the fact that the old incarnation still apparently owes contributors money. Few indie Canadian magazines are great about paying with any sort of punctuality, and Toro editors took a lot of flack for the habitual late payments, but none of it was the editors’ fault. Purse strings at Toro were controlled by exactly one person: Christopher Bratty, who also is funding this new incarnation. Bratty seems like a decent enough guy but he is completely clueless on the financial needs of people who didn’t inherit millions of dollars. I think it was in December 2006 that I finally got frustrated with Finkle and started swearing at him on the telephone over a pair of invoices that were going on three months overdue. I had an excuse — Christmas was coming up, the invoices totaled around $8,000 and my wife wasn’t going to get any presents if those invoices didn’t come in.

As a former Toro guy I know said to me, welching on your debts has to be one of the least manly things you could do.

As to my impressions visiting the site? Well, you know, whatever. There are some talented people working on it, but it’s nowhere near as clever or well written or nice to look at as the original. I’m not so big on the video-as-journalism thing to begin with, but maybe it’ll grow on me. At which point maybe I’ll feel inclined to talk about the content in more detail. Maybe not. It would look like a solid start for a bunch of amateurs, but it’s a disappointment given the strength of the brand they started with.

P.S. I will be in attendance at Luminato’s “The Dark City”, tonight at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre in Toronto. If you see me at the show then say hi. I’m told tickets are still available at the door—walrusmagazine.com/events

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Posted in Act Like A Man

Derek Finkle

I don’t recall bragging to a “crowd of college kids” that Toro was the best paying magazine in the country, but after Ken Alexander and David Berlin rather quickly pulled the chute on their infamous promise to pay Walrus writers $2.50 per word, it was probably true.

As far as Chris Bratty welching on his debts goes, I should clarify that all Toro writers were, to the best of my knowledge, paid in full for their work. That said, Bratty took his sweet time in some cases. (And if we’re being fair here, Edward, The Walrus accounting department has more than earned its reputation for not-so-prompt payment.) Unfortunately, a number of Toro art contributors, particularly photographers, seem to have gone unpaid after the magazine folded (which is what Chris Shulgan is referring to in his blog). If this remains the case, I agree that it’s completely inexcusable, and Shulgan’s ambivalence towards the relaunched version (on that basis alone) is totally justified.

Derek Finkle
http://www.eyeweeekly.com Edward Keenan

Thanks for your comment Derek. I wasn’t trying to be snarky about that “college kids” incident — I believe I read in the Ryerson Review of Journalism back in the heady days when both Toro and The Walrus were new about a crowd you addressed on their campus. In that story, as I remember it, you assured the students that you were fairly certain Toro writers were the best paid in the country (or at least that they were better paid than The Walrus‘ contributors). If that anecdote was inaccurate, or if I am misremembering it, I apologize.

As for The Walrus accounting department, I have nothing to add, having, um, never had any occassion to encounter any issues with them. And I have no particualr axe to grind with Chris Bratty, either. I’ll ammend the passage in question.
Andrew Braithwaite

For the record, I was paid a good four months after Toro 1.0 folded, for work I did on the (ultimately unpublished) final issue. And it took a number of emails to secure the money. But ultimately, Bratty did come through, as I understand that the mag did similarly for most previously unpaid workers.

I do hope that everyone who was owed compensation from Toro 1.0 received it, but if they didn’t I would suggest that the magazine’s online relaunch is as good a time as any to go back after the missing bucks.

And yes, Derek, you are bang-on with the Walrus’s circa-2004/05 accounting deficiencies, though I trust (no way to verify this personally) that they’ve thoroughly improved such practices by now…
Derek Finkle

I appreciate your amendments, Edward, though they weren’t really necessary.

Returning to the subject of payment issues for a second, while Chris Shulgan’s extreme but apt anecdote about trying to get his money from Chris Bratty is entertaining and worth telling, my sense is that The Walrus generated a lot more ill will with freelancers over the years on this front than Toro ever did. So all I’m saying is that even though none of this is your fault, anyone writing for The Walrus should be careful about chastising another publication for the way it treated its contributors. As we all know, people in glass houses…
Neil

I enjoyed this blog. Is it over?
http://walrusmagazine.com Paul Isaacs

Thanks for your concern — Ed’s blog will be returning shortly. He’s having a brief breather.

—
Paul Isaacs
Walrus Magazine Internet Person

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March 2012

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