Mediacy Articles - Volume 17, No. 1
One of the challenges of being a media studies teacher is finding the time to deal with the stacks of excellent resource materials available to us. Heck, I barely have time to get through the bibliographies of resource material, let alone actually read/view the stuff – I don't know how people like George Ventura do it! (Editor's Note: George is a Toronto high school teacher whose presentations at AML events provide participants with a mind-boggling wealth of resource materials.)
Well, I'm afraid I've got bad news – another title needs to be added to the list. It's Shift, a Toronto-based quarterly now in its third year of publication whose goal, according to publisher Andrew Huntsman, is to "bring context to a changing culture."
The issue I read, Winter 95, went some way towards accomplishing exactly that. It contained articles on an eclectic range of topics, from comic books to Internet sex. The writing was engaging and mercifully free of the empty puffery and cheap cynicism that all too often typify reporting on the media. By and large, the pieces accomplished the difficult feat of communicating something of substance with a brevity that will come as welcome relief to information-overloaded media studies teachers, among others. As a bonus, the magazine seemed to be doing some interesting things with typefaces, layout and photography, while refraining from the calculated artiness of its American counterpart, Wired.
Highlights of this issue included an interview with Jane Siberry, Daniel Richler's fascinating exploration of youth culture in Hungary and an amusing parody of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition which included candid shots of Atom Egoyan, Steven Page of the Bare Naked Ladies and Imprint host Guy Lawson. Perhaps most compelling of all was a piece on Toronto writers who had interviewed Camille Paglia, undertaken in place of the real thing when the mercurial feminist apparently stomped out of the scheduled interview with Shift's own reporter. A quick glance through two previous editions (all I had time for, sports fans) confirmed my positive impressions. Perhaps the ultimate tribute I could pay this publication is that I ungrudgingly put aside my hectic social schedule to devote a full three hours of my March Break to it!
I look forward to the next issue, which should be out soon, although it'll probably be the summer holidays before I have time to get to it!