Last spring Torontonians saw Eye Weekly boxes disappear across the city. Although they had sat side-by-side with rival NOW Magazine for two decades, Star Media Group (owners of Eye) decided it was time for a change. In May 2011, named after the layout of the city, a fully rebranded publication was unveiled and The Grid was born.
Despite a circulation of over 200,000 at the time of the shift, the popularity of Eye Weekly never could quite surpass that of its lead competitor, NOW Magazine. NOW's circulation sits at about 350,000.
Laas Turnbull took on the position as the publisher and editor-in-chief at the alt-weekly in August 2010 after Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank approached him. “Eye Weekly was not working as a business and John said to me, 'Figure it out,'” Turnbull told me.
This isn’t the first time that Turnbull has been put in charge of a big transformation. When he took over as editor-in-chief at the Globe and Mail's Report on Business in 2003, he completely changed the editorial vision.
Turnbull installed an unapologetically Bay Street-centred perspective. He wanted to focus on the most important players in Canadian business rather than run how-to columns on small-time investment.
“You're talking about huge egos, a-type personalities, intensive competition, and people trying to beat the shit out of each other,” he said. “The stakes are really high. So rather than talking about the dollars and cents, [I thought] let's try to tap into that drama.”
It was time for the Eye Weekly tenure to end for many reasons, according to Cruickshank. “I didn't like that we relied on adult classifieds for our business case,” he said. “And I didn't feel that the editorial was particularly distinguished. I also didn't feel that we were competing successfully with NOW Magazine - Eye's sense of mission was too similar to that of NOW.”
Turnbull agreed: “It doesn't make sense in a city of this size to have two alternative newsweeklies,” he said.
James Adams is the columnist behind the Globe and Mail's “On the Stand: A weekly roundup of the best magazine reads”. Things needed to change or Eye Weekly would have continued to come in second, he said.
“Eye was always the weak sister to the NOW machine,” Adams told me. “Just in terms of page count and ads, it never ever could come close to NOW. NOW's enduring appeal is its listings, it's comprehensiveness of the live culture scene. Eye was never really able to eclipse NOW in that.”
After taking the helm at The Grid, Turnbull thought about where it would fit in the bigger picture. “I wanted to look at the wider scope of what was happening in the publishing scene here and figure out where the sweet spot was going to be,” he said. “And not just the editorial sweet spot – there needed to be a business case that ties into it too.”
That sweet spot is where The Grid has looked to put down its roots.
