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CASE STUDY 3: Id Magazine | 1996 – 1997

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 20/07/2021
No Comments on CASE STUDY 3: Id Magazine | 1996 – 1997

Expertise: Editing, investigative journalism, art direction, managing teams, strategy, content development.

Location: Guelph, Ontario, Canada 1996 to 1997

ISSN : 1208-4468

Features Editor: David South

Abstract

In 1996 I was hired as Features Editor for Id Magazine, a bi-weekly alternative magazine in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

About

In 1996 Id Magazine, an Ontario, Canada alternative biweekly, was expanding and needed to improve the quality of its journalism, while also making the difficult shift to being a more consistently professional offering. I was hired as Features Editor and set about swiftly assembling a team of investigative journalists. My strategy involved targeting stories overlooked by Canadian newspapers and TV news. In the 1990s, it was often the case the best journalism and the best investigative journalism in Canada could be found in the country’s alternative media. This led to a number of firsts, including an extensive investigation into Canada’s flourishing sex industry, the government’s addiction to casinos to boost revenues, unearthing a plot by neo-nazis to infiltrate Ontario high schools with hate rock, university students’ catastrophic debt culture, reporting from the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Canada’s UN mission, and probing the government’s public services privatisation plans (including being invited to debate this topic on CBC TV’s programme, Face Off). With a keen eye for new media trends, the magazine covered the fast-rising Internet economy, early experiments with digital currencies and smart cards (Mondex) (Canadian Town Tries Out Cash Cards) being carried out in Guelph, Ontario, and concerns about data privacy.

There clearly was a gap in the news marketplace Id could better fill with solid investigative journalism and features writing aimed at a younger demographic.

How large a market gap can be confirmed by various analyses on the state of the Canadian media at the time and since. According to the book The Missing News: Filters and Blind Spots in Canada’s Press (Robert A. Hackett and Richard S. Garneau, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, University of Toronto Press 2000), Canada’s media was in a mess in the 1990s resulting from declining resources, staff layoffs and media closures reducing the breadth and depth of news coverage.

My challenge: Could I bring together a talented, young team and improve the quality and consistency of journalism for a start-up magazine seeking to grow? The proof came in the form of improved audited pick-up of the magazine by readers, the magazine’s confident push to expand on the Internet, and the fact many from that original team have gone on to not only have successful careers in the media and film, but also to be influential in their own right – proof the original belief in their talent was correct.

Pressure on journalists to toe the line and not upset advertisers was also increasing in the context of ongoing high unemployment, a stagnant economy in a recession, and government austerity. Canadian media as whole also has a “great dependence on advertising, which accounts for more than 70% of daily newspaper revenues, about 64% of magazine revenues,” which means there is enormous pressure to only publish stories that do not upset advertisers. And monopolies exert great control over news content in Canada: “In the United States, ten companies control 43.7% of total daily newspaper circulation. By contrast, in Canada since 1996, one single company controls a comparable share of the media pie.”

Quoting Jeffrey Simpson in the book, newspapers are “shrinking in size, personnel, ambition and, as a consequence, in their curiosity,” …. “I believe the result has been a diminution in quality.” (p64)

Fast forward to “Today, we have a crisis in the journalism industry unprecedented in scope. A media implosion. Newspapers being reduced to digital editions, large numbers losing their jobs, circulation falling, ad revenues plunging, near monopoly ownership of big-city dailies, the old business model in a state of collapse.” (Canada’s media: A crisis that cries out for a public inquiry by Lawrence Martin, The Globe and Mail, Feb. 02, 2016).

Brief descriptions of sample issues are below:

Can Harris be Stopped? Cover

My first Id Magazine cover. It was thrown together in a few days after being hired. While a work of resourcefulness under pressure, it did capture the spirit of the times as multiple demonstrations and strikes tried to bring down the much-hated Conservative government in Ontario.

“Can the UN Help Remake a Country?” Cover

This cover photo by Phillip Smith was taken in the market area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I had never seen such squalor and desperation in my life. It got worse as we visited the city’s morgue, packed to the rafters with the dead and mutilated bodies of children and adults. It was a tough assignment and one that was captured with professionalism by Phillip’s camera.

Christmas Issue Cover

Back in 1996, the Thatcher thirst for privatisation came to Ontario with a vengeance. In this issue, we asked if it showed a lack of imagination to just sell publicly paid for assets to wealthy investors. We offered other ownership models and I debated this topic on CBC TV’s Face Off.

“Pulling the Plug on Hate Rock” Cover

This excellent cover by Gareth Lind was, as far as I know, the first use of pop art on a biweekly magazine cover in Ontario at that time (I certainly hadn’t seen anyone else do it). It sold the excellent investigation into skinhead rock bands infiltrating Ontario high schools very well. It was timed for release during the North-by-Northeast music festival in Toronto, and had zero returns (as in all issues were picked up).

Sarah Polley Cover

A regular contributor to Id, Canadian actor and director Sarah Polley challenged the stale Canadian left with her spiky views. In this issue we tackled the decline in the quality of TV programmes and asked if it was a moral vacuum being hoovered up by consumerism.

Student Issue Cover

This cover is by great Canadian political cartoonist and illustrator Jack Lefcourt. Always funny, Jack captures well the corporate take-over of the country’s universities and the introduction of the catastrophic debt culture that leaves so many students in a financial pickle. It was also Id’s first student issue.

“The Great Education Swindle: Are Reforms Destroying Your Future?”

“Today’s Sex Toys are Credit Cards and Cash” Cover

As Ontario’s economy experienced year-after-year of high unemployment and stagnant salaries, its sex economy flourished. In another first, the Id team tackled all aspects of the growth of the sex economy and changing attitudes to sexual behaviour. Beating the big papers to this story, they wrote with honesty and verve and made a refreshing break from the limp journalism of most Canadian newspapers.

Timeline

1996: Hired as Features Editor and assembled editorial and creative team.

1997: Id Magazine begins to simultaneously publish its content online, a pioneering move at the time.

Impact

Micro

reducing returns and boosting audited pick-ups of the free magazine – a key metric for a publication reliant on local advertising
assembled talented investigative team and graphic design and photo team
introduced pop art front covers
increased news coverage, especially impact of austerity in Canada
increased foreign coverage, including on Canada’s United Nations mission in Haiti
introduced high-profile contributors, including actor and director Sarah Polley
debated stories on other media, including CBC TV’s Face Off

Macro

most of the team have gone on to very successful careers in the media
magazine still receives good comments on Facebook many years after its closure
one of the first Canadian magazines to embrace the Internet and publish simultaneously online

A sample of published stories is below:

Casino Calamity: One Gambling Guru Thinks The Province Is Going Too Far

Will Niagara Falls Become the Northern Vegas?

Land of the Free, Home of the Bored

Man Out Of Time: The World Once Turned On the Ideas of this Guelph Grad, But Does the Economist John Kenneth Galbraith Know the Way Forward?

Porn Again: More Ways to Get Off, But Should We Regulate the Sex Industry?

Redneck Renaissance: A Coterie of Journalists Turn Cracker Culture into a Leisure Lifestyle

Swing Shift: Sexual Liberation is Back in Style

State of Decay: Haiti Turns to Free-market Economics and the UN to Save Itself

TV’s Moral Guide in Question – Again

Citations

Political Governance of Capitalism: A Reassessment Beyond the Global Crisis by Helmut Willke, Gerhard Willke, Edward Elgar, 2012

Schizophrenia: A Patient’s Perspective by Abu Sayed Zahiduzzaman, Publisher: Author House, 2013

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=daEHAQAAQBAJ&dq=Schizophrenia:+A+Patient%E2%80%99s+Perspective+by+Abu+Sayed+Zahiduzzaman,+Publisher:+Author+House,+2013&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Other Resources

Freedom of Expression: Introducing Investigative Journalism to Local Media in Mongolia

Ger Magazine Issue 1

Ger Magazine Issue 2

In Their Own Words: Selected Writings by Journalists on Mongolia, 1997-1999 (ISBN 99929-5-043-9)

The back issues of id magazine reside at the Bibliothèque et Archives Canada / Library and Archives Canada [has v.5(1995)-v.8(1999)] collection.

OCLC Number/Unique Identifier: 1082496695

ISSN: 1208-4476

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/06/01/case-study-2-watch-magazine-1994-and-1996-2/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/05/25/ger-mongolias-first-web-magazine-and-a-pioneering-web-project-for-the-united-nations-12-january-2016/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/12/southern-innovator-magazine/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2025

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Casino Calamity: One Gambling Guru Thinks The Province Is Going Too Far

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 16/06/2020
No Comments on Casino Calamity: One Gambling Guru Thinks The Province Is Going Too Far

By David South

Id Magazine (Canada), May 16-29, 1996

Will Ontario become saturated with gambling? It is a question being asked more and more as the provincial government moves to allow unprecedented choice for gamblers.

Bars and hotels will soon have video one-armed bandits (known as video lottery terminals and slammed by the Addiction Research Foundation as video crack) and permanent charity casinos will be set up throughout the province.

Finance minister Ernie Eves’ budget may have brought joy to the hearts of the province’s gambling fanatics, but whether this is sound economic policy is less certain. Eves hopes to reap $60 million this year from the VLTs, or fruit machines.

Speaking to id under anonymity due to the sensitivity of his work, a private gambling consultant to the provincial government says the extended gambling could monkey-wrench the government’s on-going plans to build casinos to attract American tourists.

He says, “There is a maximum to any market area, to the number of people who will come. In Ontario, the idea was to have monopoly markets to create jobs and revenue for government. Spreading casinos out on the border areas would maximize jobs. But the introduction of VLT machines and permanent charity casinos means there will be a narrowing of the market. As soon as you set up the VLTs, there will be a permanent impact.”

He believes littering the province with casinos – both large and small – and VLTs, will be the equivalent of pissing in the wind for the government, arguing tourists will only be attracted to Ontario casinos if they consist of only a few, flashy must-see attractions based on the Las Vegas model.

Tourist temptation

The focus on tourists is key. Research has shown that gambling aimed at residents living near casinos can actually harm other local businesses like restaurants and movie theatres, as people spend more of their entertainment budgets on gambling. Add to this equation the fact that most of the profits go out of the community to Queen’s Park, and a casino can hurt local economies.

Knowing this, the government has instead focused on attracting tourists. In the case of the Windsor casino, it has worked – 80 per cent of gamblers there come from the US. The economic equation is simple: every dollar sucked in by the casino is a net gain for Canada that doesn’t hurt any other Canadian businesses (as for Detroit, that is anther story).

If the government keeps on its current course, Ontario could have 10 working government-owned casinos in the near future. By year’s end, the Windsor casino will be joined by Niagara Falls and the Rama First Nations casino near Orillia.

According to Anne Rappe of the government-owned Ontario Casino Corporation public outrage could change plans. “The government has been clear in its commitment to letting voters voice their view on casinos for other sites.”

Just a fad

Governments, like people, follow fads. The trend towards harder forms of gambling, like casinos and VLTs, as opposed to softer gambling like lotteries, represents a desperate move by local governments to hang on to tax revenues.

Even more than flashy schemes to build theme parks, art galleries and museums, casinos are seen as a sure-fire way to revive ailing communities by attracting tourists. Throughout North America, consultants and casino companies are telling government to turn to gambling if they hope to boost public treasuries and generate jobs. The pitch in these hard economic times goes down a treat with governments beseiged by voters to, on the one hand, reduce debt and deficits, and on the other be seen to be creating economic opportunity in the age of downsizing.

Casinos also serve another purpose. While taxes seem punitive, making money off of gamblers appears on the surface to be a win-win situation. The government gets the money it wants,while gamblers get the adrenaline rush they crave, and maybe some cash. The whole arrangement seems to be victimless – if you want to gamble, you pay the price.

For their part, gambling advocates envision Ontario as a Mecca for American gamblers chasing our low dollar, low crime, no tax casinos. They say we can have it both ways: a safe, low-crime Ontario in which islands of gambling fever suck in much-needed American dollars to prop up the provincial government treasury.

Gambling has been legal in Canada since 1969 (though the oldest casino is the gold rush-era Diamond Gerties in Dawson City, Yukon), but it wasn’t until the New Democrat government of Bob Rae that the idea of government-run or sanctioned permanent casinos became an option in Ontario.

The gambling consultant says the appeal of casinos is that they offer a sure-fire anchor to a local economy. He criticizes other developments like theme parks for being “too risky.” To make the most money, he says, casinos should avoid any pretensions to be slick, high-society affairs and instead go after the folks with “the family restaurant-style dress code.”

While the casino in Windsor is a lucrative success for the government – taking in a “win” of $500 million – local businesses have yet to report any of that money coming their way. Gambling experts say that isn’t about to change. With $400 million going directly to the government, and the rest covering expenses and the management fee paid to an American consortium running the casino, there will be little left for anyone else.

The Windsor casino is also drawing criticism for being a social parasite on Detroit, which supplies 80 per cent of the casino users. The influx of $1 million into Windsor means between 2,000 and 3,000 jobs are lost in Detroit, according to gambling expert William Thompson of the University of Nevada. Because of this, it is believed Detroit will soon set up a casino if voters say so.

A 1993 Coopers and Lybrand study commissioned by the government estimated Windsor’s win would be reduced by 60 per cent if Detroit were to open a casino.

That same study strangely found comfort in its findings that the average “pathological gambler” is male, under 30, non-Caucasian, unmarried and without a high school diploma.

It then goes on to say, “The typical US casino gaming patron earns thirty per cent more than the average of the US population, is between the ages of 40-64, is college educated and lives in a household of two or more members.” Just the kind of market that sends corporations into ecstasy.

Quebec example

The Quebec experience offers some valuable lessons for Ontario. Quebec’s three casinos were also looking to be a success until recently. The Quebec government and gambling advocates maintained the casinos (located in Montreal, Pointe-au-Pic and Ottawa’s sin-bin, Hull) were squeaky clean. Just like in Ontario, they remarked upon the impressive revenues – $1 million a day – and the huge influx of tourists. But closer scrutiny reveals the three casinos have not come without a cost.

Both Montreal and Pointe-au-Pic casinos have been criticized for preying on poor locals who spend the pittance out of their entertainment budgets on gambling. The casinos have also been involved in high-profile drug busts, money laundering scams and even murders committed by gambling addicts trying to extort money from relatives. At the Montreal casino, enterprising youth gangs targeted winners as they left the casino when it closed at three am. The robberies worked like this: A confidant would spot winners in the casino and then use a cellphone to tell accomplices waiting outside to mug the unsuspecting “lucky” ones still intoxicated by their good fortune.

All the rosy projections about casinos reviving the Ontario economy are based on several key assumptions: Americans will be the main users of the casinos, casinos in Ontario will not compete with each other or other sectors of the economy (restaurants, movie theatres, etc.), the social costs will be low and crime will not increase significantly, and most importantly, American casinos won’t lure away gamblers.

As for the gambling consultant, he doesn’t think the casinos slated to open later this year in Niagara Falls will drag the city down any farther. “Niagara Falls isn’t the nicest place now. The casino will finally give an economic reason to upgrade these places (hotels, motels and restaurants).”

And while the Niagara Falls casino will most certainly be popular, it will not be able to operate free of competition for long. Across the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls, New York, preparations are being made to open a casino by 1997.

Windsor will also face competition from the American side. Voters in the state of Michigan will be asked to vote on whether to allow casinos at the next state elections. Several groups, including a local Indian band, have been pushing for a casino to be located in downtown Detroit. Canadian casinos must also compete with river boats from Illinois and Indiana.

The government has reached a watershed in its gambling policy, leaving it with few choices. It can either allow unfettered growth in casinos as more and more communities scramble to find any means necessary to generate jobs and tax revenues, or it can recognize there is a limit to gambling as a solution to economic woes.

As the source says, “The government is in a quandry: they like the revenue but hate the way it is raised.”