Chatelaine

There’s a lot of talk on the publishing pages about the new editor of Chatelaine magazine. For non-Canadians, Chatelaine is an iconic Canadian women’s magazine. I remember first seeing it at my grandmother’s house, then my mother subscribed to both the English and French versions. So when you hit middle-age in Canada, it seems to be a given that you start subscribing to Chatelaine. So I did this a couple of years ago, when an offer of a cheap subscription came in the mail. For the first year or so, I liked it. It was what I expected. Then the magazine when through a change of editor and that brought a change in format and content, and frankly, I think the magazine totally stinks now. It is boring, trite, says nothing new, and tries way too hard to be Cosmo girly about sex. It’s just dumb and insulting .

But when I renewed my subscription (when it was still alright) they accidentally renewed it for two years instead of one, and they never cashed my cheque, so I am getting this now crappy magazine free for two years. This isn’t necessarily a good thing. I thumb through it, go “bleh” and it goes into recycling pretty darn quick.

I am curious to see if this latest change in editors will make a big difference. I’m not optimistic. But it certainly can’t get any worse.