If all the world's a stage, then the production that's been running at Maclean's magazine for at least the past four weeks could be called Waiting for Ken.
Ken, of course, is Kenneth Robert Whyte, who on Valentine's Day was named publisher and editor-in-chief of the venerable Canadian current affairs/general interest magazine.
Unlike Samuel Beckett's elusive Godot, however, Whyte is actually expected to show at Maclean's offices in the faux chateau headquarters of its parent, Toronto-based Rogers Communications, on Monday morning, his first official day on the job.
Whyte's investiture, preceded by months of gossip, marks the first time since John Bayne Maclean (a.k.a. "the Colonel") founded the periodical 100 years ago (as something initially called The Business Magazine) that its two top management posts have been held by one and the same person.
The combination of editor-publisher is not a new one in the annals of journalism, even at Maclean Hunter, the media conglomerate that ran Maclean's and numerous other magazines before its 1994 takeover by Rogers Publishing. Jean Paré, for instance, served as editor-publisher of L'Actualité, sometimes called the francophone Maclean's, for almost 20 years, starting in the mid-seventies. More recently, Rick Spence spent a three-year stint, ending in 2002, as editor-publisher of Profit magazine, while Lise Ravary is editor-publisher of the French-language Châtelaine.
Still, Mr. Whyte's appointment is an unusual one, and, as a veteran Maclean's staffer remarked recently, "It's got everyone on edge." Normally, combining the roles of editor and publisher occurs early in a periodical's history, when money and manpower are scarce and the hours are long, or as a result of a magazine being so much the vision of one person, as in the case of Playboy's Hugh Hefner and Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner, that the split between its business and editorial functions is moot.
But it has been a long time since Maclean's was the youngest, gangliest kid on the block: In 2003, it contributed an estimated $38-million in pre-profit revenue to Rogers Publishing's gross revenues of more than $280-million. And while in recent years it has suffered from layoffs, poor morale, declines in paid circulation, reduced advertising, an aging demographic and the general malaise of many print organs in the Internet age, the magazine has seen and weathered troublesome times before (the Depression, the Second World War, the rise of television and cable TV) without jettisoning its bicameral management structure. Even its last major convulsion -- the conversion, in 1978, to a newsweekly instead of a monthly -- was overseen with Lloyd Hodgkinson as publisher and Peter C. Newman as editor.
One can understand why Whyte, 44, would want the dual role. On the day his appointment was announced, the former editor of the National Post and Saturday Night said he'd "always wanted to run the whole thing." Being publisher and editor pretty much gives him the power to do that -- even though, unlike at the Post, he's largely inheriting a team (and a unionized team at that, represented by the Southern Ontario Newspaper Guild/Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union) rather than building one from the ground up.
Furthermore, neither the Post nor Saturday Night, although lauded for their vibrant editorial content and design, was a money-maker under Whyte. Maclean's, though hurting, reportedly makes a profit, as Rogers executives like to stress almost ad nauseam, and does so as part of a company that likes to earn a 20-per-cent return on investment. Undoubtedly, they're not keen to have Whyte take what one calls "our sort of flagship" to the red side of the ledger.
What then is the upside for Rogers Publishing besides "not having two health plans going on at the same time," as William Shields, the editor of the trade magazine Masthead, remarked recently?
Allan Fotheringham, who wrote the back-page column for Maclean's for more than a quarter-century, thinks it's because "there's been some confusion over who's running [Maclean's] It's a way of cleaning shop and presenting a clear picture to staff."
Newman, speaking from his home in England, said he doesn't know the answer, other than "it'll certainly make [Whyte]more powerful." He is generally positive about Whyte's rise, not least because of the former University of Alberta dropout's "strong background in western Canada, which automatically removes him from the most dangerous temptation of past Maclean's editors, and that is: seeing Canada with a Toronto-centric bias." At the same time, Newman added, "I worry, in the sense, that one job takes away from the other in terms of time and creativity."
Whyte himself made soothing remarks about the many positive contributions of Anthony Wilson-Smith whose last day as editor was Feb. 25. ("He's made quite a bit of progress in the last few years. . . . Maclean's is well-positioned at this point to start growing again.")
At the same time, Marc Blondeau, the new senior vice-president of consumer publishing at Rogers, declared: "It's not like we need a revolution in there."
"This is a very particular circumstance," Blondeau added. "Ken has got a very unique talent," including "some involvement in the business side of things," most notably a 19-month stint as executive vice-president of Saturday Night Inc. in the late 1990s (when he was also editor) and then, after attending business classes at the Wharton School in Pennsylvania, as deputy publisher of the National Post. That position lasted less than three months as the Post's proprietors, Leonard and David Asper, replaced Whyte with Matthew Fraser.
Does Whyte's arrival portend a shift to the right in its editorial stance? One Maclean's insider said that seems to be the case, at least on the basis of reports from recent editorial meetings. This, the insider acknowledged, would be a definite switch for Rogers since "it's always been very neutral; they're not the Aspers. . . . Unlike you guys, we've never run an editorial endorsing a Prime Minister in an election; we've always run straight down the middle."
Newman said he thinks such a shift would be a mistake, especially in a country with only 33 million people. "Traditionally, we were not a partisan magazine. As a national publication, you can't take a partisan stance that benefits all parts of the country."
Whichever way Whyte's wind blows, "Maclean's will go on," an employee prophesied recently.
"It has tended to have done that. In the meantime, what everyone has to do is figure out Ken Whyte, just like they had to figure out Tony [Wilson-Smith] Newman, Kevin Doyle [editor, 1982-93]and all the other guys."