A Tale of Two Weeklies

In bringing this tale to a close, we step inside Vue Weekly‘s office during its final years. Editorial morale had plummeted, ad targets were crucial, and readership wondered if the paper was in its final throes. The last issue of Vue ran in November 2018; in the year since it’s been absent from Edmonton streetboxes, we … Read More Read More

While readership and advertisers continued to shift away from print media, in the early months of 2011 Vue Weekly and SEE Magazine finally saw their longstanding rivalry reach a conclusion. In the end there would be just one paper left standing—but surviving in the new media landscape didn’t feel like much of a victory. Thanks … Read More Read More

While both papers were struggling with the new world order of the Internet and social media, SEE Magazine took this challenge in a different direction than Vue Weekly. It meant shrinking its page counts and swift personnel changes—a lot of them. In this episode, we focus on what was happening in the office during SEE‘s final years. Thanks … Read More Read More

Though many alt-weeklies had a music-heavy focus, Edmonton’s theatre scene required some special treatment. From hosting the world’s second largest Fringe Festival to boasting a season with the most theatre per capita in North America, there was—and continues to be—a lot of drama in YEG. And it spilled over the pages of Vue Weekly and SEE Magazine all … Read More Read More

As their rivalry carried on in the streetboxes week to week, dozens of young writers and editors cycled through the doors of SEE Magazine and Vue Weekly — some cognizant of the papers’ bitter history, others not so much. In this episode we hear from a number of writers who cut their first bylines at … Read More Read More

As Ron Garth and his former SEE Magazine staff set up their fly-by-night operation in a basement office, they managed to get the first issue of Vue Weekly without skipping a beat. Great West assembled a team to stay on to produce SEE, and kept the weekly publication schedule, too. After the split of Garth … Read More Read More

On November 29, 2018, Vue Weekly published its last issue. As it hit the streets in Edmonton, Alberta, the community realized it was losing yet another voice in independent, local media. But it was a long time coming. It all started out in 1992 with SEE Magazine, which—after racking up a hefty print bill—abandoned its … Read More Read More

“It was a newspaper war. A good old fashion knock down, drag out newspaper war…” – Rich Cairney, former editor at SEE Magazine For 26 years, two alt-weekly newspapers battled it out in the streets of a mid-size Canadian prairie city. Hundreds of writers, editors and creatives cut their teeth at the papers as they … Read More Read More