BREAKING | The Globe And Mail Slashing Arts Section

Jennifer Liu

7 years ago

The Globe and Mail (Photo courtesy Karen von Hahn)

Canada’s leading newspaper for arts coverage will be shutting down its weekday arts section by the end of the year.

First reported by Canadaland, The Globe and Mail will be consolidating its “Life and Arts” and “News” sections, beginning in December. The reshuffling means that arts reviews will be relegated to the generic “News” section, and that dedicated space for other arts coverage would be found exclusively in the paper’s weekend edition.

The news deals a significant blow to Canada’s already weakened print media landscape, and comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that The Globe will terminate its Atlantic Canada edition by the end of November.

Emerging from a meeting today with his editor Craig Offman at The Globe, music critic Robert Harris confirmed that the details are “essentially accurate.”

“Partly, this is just economics,” Harris continues in his correspondence with Musical Toronto. “The Saturday section has lots of ads to support content, the Monday to Thursday section hardly any. And, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, they’ve only been running one story a day Monday to Thursday for some time now. The plan is to run the bulk of arts stories on the weekend, and run reviews and other stories that can’t wait until then in the A [News] section.”

Harris’s editor has noted that there will be no immediate change to its engagement of freelance arts writers. The Globe is slated to officially unveil their new plan for coverage at a later date.

Across print publications, this downsizing trend will only continue as newspapers and magazines work to realign decreasing resources, while readership migrates to online media. The extent of this downgrade to The Globe’s arts coverage remains to be seen.

With files by Michael Vincent.

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Jennifer Liu

Jennifer holds a master's degree in piano performance and is pursuing her degree in journalism at Carleton University. Previously, she lived for classical music in Toronto and Montreal.