Monday, April 11, 2011

Eye magazine changing its name and direction

Toronto can say bye to Eye, it’s changing to The Grid | Marketing Magazine
Eye've got a bad feeling about this...

The new publisher and editor-in-chief, who reports directly to Star Media Group president and Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank, used to be the editor of the Globe & Mail's Report on Business magazine (see link here).

Excerpt from the main link above:

The new handle is not some sort of Tron reference, he said.
“It’s actually more descriptive than anything. If you look at a map of
the city and take out the background and just emphasize all the
roadways—North, South, East and West—it looks like a piece of graph
paper. So that notion of looking at the city from a street level and a
neighbourhood level is very much the direction we’re going editorially,”
said Turnbull, who stepped into his role at the Torstar-owned Eye seven months ago.


The name change is part of a move in a radically different direction for the publication, he continued.


Rather than remain an alternative newsweekly heavy in arts, entertainment and listings, The Grid will essentially be a city magazine for people in their 20s and 30s. “So a younger, hipper, more provocative version of Toronto Life in a weekly guise,” he said.


“We’re pretty excited about it because there’s never been a weekly
city magazine for young people in Toronto and we think there’s a real
appetite for it,” said Turnbull. He added that Torstar has put a lot of
resources into the launch.


“There really hasn’t been a big print and online media brand launch in this town for a long, long time. Dose was probably the last thing that would even approach this scale.”


Dose magazine info


And, more on this here:
People In Print: Changes at Eye Weekly and Chatelaine