Editorial
Colour, commentary
This issue marks the unveiling of a redesigned This Magazine. In our more than 40 years of publishing, This has sported many different looks, and this is just one more step in that evolution. The most obvious difference that regular readers will notice is that we now publish in full colour. But that's just the beginning of the alterations we've made. The logo has changed once again. We've added new typefaces to the palette: Archer, both authoritative and friendly looking, appears in headlines; Gotham, straightforward and hard-working, appears elsewhere (the body text remains the very readable and efficient Scala).
The changes aren't just cosmetic. We've doubled the size of the Arts & Ideas section, added a marquee Q&A at the front, expanded the editorial (which gets pride of place right up front), and added new regular departments to This & That. Smaller, less obvious changes to modernize our language might be of interest to those of you who watch developments in grammar and spelling: for instance, we'll no longer include the "www" in front of web addresses, internet and web are no longer going to be capitalized, and we now use the serial comma (see, I just did it right there).
Some things haven't changed, however, and they're important things. For one, This is now, and will always be, a place where you can find substantive, long-form journalism. That's not to say we believe longer stories are inherently better, but it does mean that when a story warrants it — as Carolyn Morris's moving report on immigrants and refugees forced to pay cash for Canadian health care undoubtedly does — we'll give it the space it deserves. And the political roots of the magazine — in progressive causes such as social justice, labour, racial and sexual equity, environmental sustainability, disability, and other areas neglected by larger, more commercial media outlets — are unchanged.
That does not, of course, mean we're going to stick to tired and predictable positions. While conservative politics is inherently backward-looking and staid (and proud of it), the progressive politics that This Magazine has covered for four tumultuous decades is shockingly dynamic, wonderfully diverse, often controversial and acrimonious, and totally indispensable. We aim to inform and entertain and provoke, and to continue the job of profiling the best and most important new ideas in progressive politics, arts, and culture. In the print magazine and at thismagazine.ca, we are strongly encouraging you to join this discussion, because staying relevant to you, the reader, is our daily concern. If you don't like something, tell us. If we've made a mistake or you feel something is missing, tell us. If you think we've done something great and you want more, tell us. This Magazine is a small enterprise, so rest assured that when you write a letter, send an email, leave a voicemail, or add a blog comment, we're paying attention.
We chose to tackle cars with the cover story of this special issue for one simple reason: there is no other policy area today that affects more Canadians, in more ways, than the politics of the automobile. Whether it relates to controlling the deadly emissions of internal combustion engines, regulating the huge and complicated fossil fuel industry that enables our reliance on cars, redrawing the maps of our cities to combat decades worth of sprawl-producing urban design, or shoring up an automobile manufacturing industry that supports hundreds of thousands of unionized jobs, the politics of cars — making, buying, fuelling, and driving them — affects everyone. As Tim Falconer, author of Drive: A Road Trip through Our Complicated Affair with the Automobile explains starting on page 21, this is not just a policy issue; it's an emotional one. Our society has lived with and, to varying degrees, loved these devices for a hundred years, and while everyone acknowledges changes must be made, any political, economic, or technological changes will have to be accompanied by sociological change too. In other words, the car is just a tool, and it's our job to control our use of it. Some of those choices are individual, and some are collective. But all of them are urgent.
Graham F. Scott
editor@thismagazine.ca
