The Georgia Straight
Encyclopedia
The Georgia Straight is a free Canadian
weekly news
and entertainment
newspaper published in Vancouver
, British Columbia
, by the Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. As surveyed by VAC its per-issue circulation average as of January 25, 2011 is 119,971 copies, and its average weekly readership is 804,000.
in May 1967 by Pierre Coupey
, Milton Acorn
, Dan McLeod
, Stan Persky
, and others, and originally it operated as a collective.
The first issue appeared on 5 May 1967 and cost a dime. It was originally a biweekly. On 12 May Dan was taken away in a paddy wagon and jailed for three hours for "investigation of vagrancy." College Printers refused to print the second issue. but an alternative was found.
The paper was raided and fined by the Vancouver Police
for publishing obscenities, and was often banned from distribution for its criticism of the local police and politicians, especially Mayor Tom Campbell. Those controversies ended in the 1970s, as the paper moved to become a more conventional news and entertainment weekly, albeit with a progressive
editorial slant.
Often known simply as The Straight, this large "tabloid" format, unconventional publication is delivered to newsboxes, post-secondary schools, public libraries and a large variety of other locations around Metro Vancouver every Thursday.
In October 2003, the provincial government sent The Straight a bill totalling more than $1 million for outstanding provincial sales tax
. In British Columbia, print publications must have at least 25 per cent editorial content to be considered a newspaper, and to qualify for exemption from PST on printing bills. The extensive "Time Out" listing of the paper, detailing the what and where of virtually every public event in the city, was judged to be advertising - pushing the paper below the required thresholds for a newspaper.
As reported by the CBC
, publisher Dan McLeod said this re-interpretation of the rules was a politically motivated attempt to silence a persistent critic.
However, not everyone agreed with McLeod's interpretation of events and pointed out that The Straight had a significantly lower editorial-to-advertising ratio than many other alternative and university papers. This highly public battle garnered considerable attention, and the BC government later issued a statement reversing their decision, stating; "Clearly the Georgia Straight is a newspaper..."
As noted by McLeod, the paper is known as a vocal critic of government, notably the former Liberal government of Gordon Campbell.
An attempt in the mid-1990s at publishing a second Straight newspaper in Calgary
, Alberta
, the Calgary Straight, was brief.
Bob Geldof
worked as a music journalist for the Georgia Straight in the 1970s before he returned to Ireland
and joined the Boomtown Rats
.
A readership survey conducted on behalf of the Georgia Straight in 2007 found that:
The Georgia Straight however is a weekly newspaper so comparing six weeks of issues to one week of issues is not the best comparison.
advice columnist Dan Savage
with his Savage Love
, cartoons, and a local astrology column.
Special editions of The Straight include:
The Best of Vancouver is a well known feature with whimsical notions of the best place for outdoor sex mixed in with more conventional awards such as Best Dining, Best Bar & Club and Best Radio Station.
The Straight has been criticised for publishing cigarette and other tobacco advertising when most publications in Canada have declined to do so for moral and ethical reasons. And of promoting local events that had tobacco industry sponsorship, such as the formerly Benson and Hedges-sponsored Symphony of Fire. The Straight has long been condemned for this practice by the major health groups and, more recently, by Vancouver businessman and political candidate Dale Jackaman
in a series of Google attack ads.
The paper has received many awards. For example, in 1995, it received five "Western Magazine Awards", and, in the two years up to June, 1996, it was nominated more than forty times and won twenty prizes, including three National Magazine Awards. In 1999, The Straight won eight Western Magazine Awards, including "Magazine of the Year", and its seventh consecutive, "Best Business Article".
On 23 May 2009, The Georgia Straight won the prize for "best magazine article of the year" for "The Pill Pushers" by Alex Roslin from the Canadian Association of Journalists
.
The paper also gives many awards based on readers' polls:
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
weekly news
News
News is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience.- Etymology :...
and entertainment
Entertainment
Entertainment consists of any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time. Entertainment is generally passive, such as watching opera or a movie. Active forms of amusement, such as sports, are more often considered to be recreation...
newspaper published in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, by the Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. As surveyed by VAC its per-issue circulation average as of January 25, 2011 is 119,971 copies, and its average weekly readership is 804,000.
History
The paper was founded as an alternative newspaperAlternative weekly
An alternative newspaper is a type of newspaper, that eschews comprehensive coverage of general news in favor of stylized reporting, opinionated reviews and columns, investigations into edgy topics and magazine-style feature stories highlighting local people and culture. Their news coverage is more...
in May 1967 by Pierre Coupey
Pierre Coupey
-Overview:Coupey was born in Montreal in 1942. He graduated from Lower Canada College , McGill University , the University of British Columbia , and studied drawing and printmaking at the Académie Julian and the Atelier 17 in Paris....
, Milton Acorn
Milton Acorn
Milton James Rhode Acorn , nicknamed The People's Poet by his peers, was a Canadian poet, writer, and playwright. He was born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island....
, Dan McLeod
Dan McLeod
For the professional wrestler Dan McLeod, see Dan McLeod .Dan McLeod is one of the founders and the present owner, publisher, and editor of the influential weekly newspaper, the Georgia Straight in Vancouver, Canada....
, Stan Persky
Stan Persky
Stan Persky is a Canadian writer, media commentator and philosophy instructor.- Early life :Persky was born in Chicago, Illinois. As a teenager, he made contact with and received encouragement from Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and other writers of the Beat Generation...
, and others, and originally it operated as a collective.
- In April 1967: "The proposed paper is christened the Georgia Straight over beer at the Cecil Hotel. The name aims to play on the fact that the weather forecasts will offer free publicity: they're always issuing gale warnings for the Georgia Strait."
The first issue appeared on 5 May 1967 and cost a dime. It was originally a biweekly. On 12 May Dan was taken away in a paddy wagon and jailed for three hours for "investigation of vagrancy." College Printers refused to print the second issue. but an alternative was found.
The paper was raided and fined by the Vancouver Police
Vancouver Police Department
The Vancouver Police Department is the police force for the City of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. It is one of several police departments within the Metro Vancouver Area and is the second largest police force in the province after RCMP "E" Division.VPD was the first Canadian police force...
for publishing obscenities, and was often banned from distribution for its criticism of the local police and politicians, especially Mayor Tom Campbell. Those controversies ended in the 1970s, as the paper moved to become a more conventional news and entertainment weekly, albeit with a progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
editorial slant.
Often known simply as The Straight, this large "tabloid" format, unconventional publication is delivered to newsboxes, post-secondary schools, public libraries and a large variety of other locations around Metro Vancouver every Thursday.
In October 2003, the provincial government sent The Straight a bill totalling more than $1 million for outstanding provincial sales tax
Sales taxes in Canada
In Canada, three types of sales taxes are levied. These are as follows:*Provincial sales taxes , levied by the provinces*Goods and Services Tax , a value-added tax levied by the federal government...
. In British Columbia, print publications must have at least 25 per cent editorial content to be considered a newspaper, and to qualify for exemption from PST on printing bills. The extensive "Time Out" listing of the paper, detailing the what and where of virtually every public event in the city, was judged to be advertising - pushing the paper below the required thresholds for a newspaper.
As reported by the CBC
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
, publisher Dan McLeod said this re-interpretation of the rules was a politically motivated attempt to silence a persistent critic.
"We're the only paper that is consistently critical of the government in our editorials week after week, and we're the only paper that's being fined a million dollars," he said. "So I put two and two together."
However, not everyone agreed with McLeod's interpretation of events and pointed out that The Straight had a significantly lower editorial-to-advertising ratio than many other alternative and university papers. This highly public battle garnered considerable attention, and the BC government later issued a statement reversing their decision, stating; "Clearly the Georgia Straight is a newspaper..."
As noted by McLeod, the paper is known as a vocal critic of government, notably the former Liberal government of Gordon Campbell.
An attempt in the mid-1990s at publishing a second Straight newspaper in Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
, Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
, the Calgary Straight, was brief.
Bob Geldof
Bob Geldof
Robert Frederick Zenon "Bob" Geldof, KBE is an Irish singer, songwriter, author, occasional actor and political activist. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk rock movement. The band had hits with his...
worked as a music journalist for the Georgia Straight in the 1970s before he returned to Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
and joined the Boomtown Rats
The Boomtown Rats
The Boomtown Rats were an Irish punk rock band that had a series of Irish and UK hits between 1977 and 1985. They were led by vocalist Bob Geldof.-Biography:All six members were originally from Dún Laoghaire, Ireland...
.
- "2006 The Straight moves into its own completely renovated four-storey building at 1701 West Broadway. Architect J. Kerrigan Sproule upgrades a commercial building constructed in 1948 by adding one more level of underground parking and a fourth-floor amenity space with spectacular views of the city. The fourth-floor addition includes a kitchen, lunch room, exercise room, large patio area, and a shower for employees. (We hope the cyclists make use of it.) Extensive landscaping, including 11 trees and various shrubs, transforms the Pine Street side of the site and the back alley. The emblematic Mr. Wuxtry appears on a flag hanging on the Broadway side of the building. The Straight's move comes as this section of the Broadway corridor experiences significant growth with the addition of several new restaurants and retail outlets."
A readership survey conducted on behalf of the Georgia Straight in 2007 found that:
- "In its core market of the City of Vancouver, 61 percent of all adults 18+ reported reading a copy of the Georgia Straight within the past six issues. By comparison, 48% of respondents indicated reading the Vancouver Sun within the past six issues (past week). The ProvinceThe ProvinceThe Province is a daily, tabloid format newspaper published in British Columbia by Postmedia. It has been a daily newspaper since 1898.According to a recent NADbank survey, The Provinces average weekday readership was 520,100, making it British Columbia's most read newspaper...
followed with 41% reading a copy within the past six issues (past week). The free daily, 24 Hours, had a weekly (past six issue) readership of 38%, followed by Metro at 25%."
The Georgia Straight however is a weekly newspaper so comparing six weeks of issues to one week of issues is not the best comparison.
Content
The Straight carries feature articles, ranging from social topics, such as drug use, to in-depth looks at cultural newsmakers like the writer Salman Rushdie. Writer Charlie Smith has a record of covering women's movement issues as well. There are also many advertiser-related articles and listings on lifestyle and entertainment,commenting on restaurants, new wines, new gadgets, designer clothes, and the latest in music, theatre and movies. Rounding out the regular features are the well-known AmericanUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
advice columnist Dan Savage
Dan Savage
Daniel Keenan "Dan" Savage is an American author, media pundit, journalist and newspaper editor. Savage writes the internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column Savage Love. Its tone is frank in its discussion of sexuality, often humorous, and hostile to social conservatives, as in...
with his Savage Love
Savage Love
Savage Love is a syndicated sex-advice column by Dan Savage. The column appears weekly in several dozen newspapers, mainly free newspapers in the US and Canada, but also newspapers in Europe and Asia...
, cartoons, and a local astrology column.
Special editions of The Straight include:
- The Golden Plate Awards - March
- The Best of Vancouver – September
The Best of Vancouver is a well known feature with whimsical notions of the best place for outdoor sex mixed in with more conventional awards such as Best Dining, Best Bar & Club and Best Radio Station.
The Straight has been criticised for publishing cigarette and other tobacco advertising when most publications in Canada have declined to do so for moral and ethical reasons. And of promoting local events that had tobacco industry sponsorship, such as the formerly Benson and Hedges-sponsored Symphony of Fire. The Straight has long been condemned for this practice by the major health groups and, more recently, by Vancouver businessman and political candidate Dale Jackaman
Dale Jackaman (Canadian politician)
Dale Jackaman is a Canadian politician.-Early life:Jackaman, a social democrat, became well-known in the 1980s and 1990s as one of the founders and past Executive Director of British Columbia's largest anti-tobacco activist and lobby group, Airspace Non-Smokers' Rights Society, later renamed...
in a series of Google attack ads.
- "Now, The Georgia Straight is the only remaining paper of the Underground Press SyndicateUnderground Press SyndicateThe Underground Press Syndicate, commonly known as UPS, and later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate or APS, was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines formed in mid-1966 by the publishers of five early underground papers: the East Village Other, the Los Angeles Free Press, the...
, which once boasted some 400 members and spanned four continents. To survive, the paper has evolved considerably—the new weekly bears little resemblance to its sixties namesake. Once regarded as one of the feistiest underground publications in Canada, The Georgia Straight went straight long ago. Some say a little too straight.
- Today's Straight combines hard news, entertainment reviews and magazine-length features. Bright covers and retro fifties cartoons make the Straight a lively piece of pop art itself. Inside, long, essay-style investigative articles tackle serious subjects like Canada Customs censorship, the exploitation of garment workers, parasites in the water supply and death in the logging industry. More mainstream now, the Straight never publishes the kind of extreme partisan journalism traditionally found in many alternative weeklies."
The paper has received many awards. For example, in 1995, it received five "Western Magazine Awards", and, in the two years up to June, 1996, it was nominated more than forty times and won twenty prizes, including three National Magazine Awards. In 1999, The Straight won eight Western Magazine Awards, including "Magazine of the Year", and its seventh consecutive, "Best Business Article".
On 23 May 2009, The Georgia Straight won the prize for "best magazine article of the year" for "The Pill Pushers" by Alex Roslin from the Canadian Association of Journalists
Canadian Association of Journalists
The Canadian Association of Journalists or L'Association Canadienne des Journalistes in French is one of several Canadian organizations of journalists. It was created to promote excellence in journalism and encourage investigative journalism...
.
The paper also gives many awards based on readers' polls:
- ". . . the Golden Plate Awards for local restaurants, the Straight Music Awards for local musicians, and the Best of Vancouver Awards for every type of business, service, activity, and weird stuff in the city, from the best bowling alley to the best Vancouver excuse for being late for work."