Alberta Report

Alberta Report was a right-wing weekly newsmagazine based in Edmonton. It was founded and edited by Ted Byfield, and later run by his son, Link Byfield. It ceased publication in 2003.[1]

History and profile

The magazine began as St. John's Edmonton Report in 1973. The founders were Ted and Virginia Byfield.[2] It grew out of the older Byfield's lay Anglican religious order called the Company of the Cross which operated boarding schools) in the 1970s, where employees were paid $1.00 per day, and lived in a communal apartment building.[3]

The magazine was published for a time in three separate editions, the Alberta Report, BC Report, and Western Report. These were merged in 1999 into The Report, later known as the Citizens Centre Report[2] in connection with Link Byfield's successor organization, the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy.

The magazine often struggled financially, with the senior Byfield mortgaging his own house four times to keep it afloat. It shut down in June 2003.[2] According to the Edmonton Sun, some employees were still owed back pay nearly six months later, and complained when the Citizens Centre was directing money toward its political agenda.[4]

A number of right-wing journalists/commentators or pundits in Canada who are prominent today began their careers writing for The Report magazines, including Kenneth Whyte, the editor in chief of Maclean's; Colby Cosh of the National Post, Kevin Michael Grace, Lorne Gunter, Ezra Levant, Brian Mulawka, and Kevin Steel. Other former staff include: freelance journalist Ric Dolphin, former National Post writer Dunnery Best, U.S. food writer (and founding editor of Equinox magazine) Barry Estabrook, former Profit editor and publisher Rick Spence, author D'Arcy Jenish, and Paul Bunner, who in 2006 became a speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The Western Standard, launched in 2004 by Levant with the participation of several other Report alumni, aimed to fill the space in the market that had been held by the Report. The Standard became an exclusively online publication in 2007.

References

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