Today on the Scroll: Finally, a decent little dust-up between two Canadian magazines — too bad one of them has been dead for the past year.

Canadian men’s magazine Toro bit the dust one year ago this week, its publisher surrendering the idea of a homegrown equivalent to Esquire or GQ, setting the stage for Driven to claim they had the right formula to succeed in that space.

"We've always been confident that men want to read about what's new in fashion, technology, watches and cars,” boasted Driven editor-in-chief Michael La Fave at the time. “The failure of our primary competitor does not lend credence to the theory that men won't read about products … only that despite offering a quality publication, Toro failed to assess exactly what men are interested in."

La Fave must have sustained that confidence. A year later, he’s struck out with two other former Driven colleagues to launch Sharp, which “aims to delve into the myriad interests of the modern man … the result of careful consideration, years of feedback and experience.” The distribution channels will bear a striking resemblance to Driven  (owned by Quebecois publisher Auto Journal): 150,000 copies in the Globe and Mail and plans to get into Air Canada first class lounges.

“Our intention at the time was not to discredit Toro,” says La Fave, calling from the Canadian International Autoshow. “The message we wanted to get across was that there was a necessity, a demand and a viability for a men’s magazine in Canada. But it also means you need to be doing what’s realistically attainable.”

Reality, based on reader comments on the Canadian Magazines blog and a recent online story in the Ryerson Review of Journalism, means paying writers no more than the decades-old dollar-a-word glossy standard — and sometimes even less — plus editorial content frequently influenced by advertiser interest.

There was never such collusion at Driven, claims La Fave, even if automotive journalism is especially notorious for being kind to companies who supply the test drives. “There are always naysayers challenging anyone’s professionalism,” he says. “The people criticizing us usually have no direct experience running a magazine. I’ve got four years of experience as the editor of Driven behind me.”

Which is pretty good for a 32-year-old, now helming what he describes as blend of the current incarnation of Details and Best Life. Sharp's first of five 2008 issues will cover summer style, hybrid SUVs, golf destinations, digital SLRs and diver’s watches, but also will contain a feature about the smuggling of the mineral Coltan.

The editorial blend sounds near enough to Toro, only without the sex stuff — which initially clashed with what the Globe and Mail thought their subscribers could tolerate when Toro was first stuffed into home delivery editions in 2003.

Derek Finkle, recruited by publisher Christopher Bratty to help realize his goal of creating something akin to circa 1969 Playboy (only without the naked ladies) won that battle after producing proof that the Globe was no stranger to running its own salacious articles. But he couldn’t win over enough advertisers for it to work.

“The owner took the lack of advertising as a typical Canadian slight,” says Finkle, 39. “He was willing to back this magazine for a while, and there was no one else willing to support it — a tepid response to something that he thought was good. Complicating things further, the way we ran the magazine, it was an expensive product to produce.”

Those commissioned celebrity cover shoots, stories from unusual events around the world, and even the occasional coverage of a product promotion provided some impressive clips for those involved, including Finkle, who is back to doing crime journalism. Knowing the expense and intuition involved, he’s skeptical of any effort to succeed with a tamer equivalent to what Toro was.

“I used to think the Americans were the uptight ones,” says Finkle. “But even some members of my staff thought some of the [photographic] sexual content in Toro was beneath them, or too insipid. And the advertisers were totally timid — the Canadian office of Tiffany & Co. didn’t even want to lend us their products for a photo shoot.

“But then I pick up Details, and the same car companies like Volvo, who didn’t want to advertise with us, are in there alongside Meet the Mandingos, or Gay or Asian? Why were they begrudging us for what we were trying to do?

“What I learned is that Canadian magazines were not allowed to have a sense of humour. That they should be more like Flare — or maybe Canadian Geographic.”

Finkle figures it unlikely anything ever produced in this country will, like Toro, qualify for such a uniquely diverse array of National Magazine Awards — from design and photography, to fashion and travel, to columns and investigative reporting — let alone winning them all.   

And it doesn’t help when it’s all but impossible to make a living as a magazine writer. “We’ve got problems when the only way to make any kind of long-term career in this industry is to marry someone who makes more money than you,” says Finkle.   

Naturally, a contender like Sharp is designed with an upwardly mobile reader in mind, the kind that subscribes to the Globe and Mail.

Yet another new custom publication, Argyle, is being distributed with the Globe in certain postal codes — although the magazine is designed for members of the Cambridge Group of Clubs. Published by advertising-media magnate Bassett Media Group, the short and servicey content skews toward the senior executive set. The debut issue’s apparent male slant only reflects the fact that women are more likely to pick it up than the other way around, explains 27-year-old editor-in-chief Alan Evanson.

If nothing else, ye olde dead tree newspapers might have a future in this country as a wraparound delivery system for these glossies.

Still, does the target audience really want to read?

“They’re the ones who are throwing out lines like ‘definitive resource for ambitious and successful men aged 25-54 who value intelligence, style and sophistication in their personal brand,’” recites Finkle from the Sharp press release. “They’re not exactly getting Road & Track.”

A favourite pastime in the Toro office, according to Finkle, was to peruse each issue of Driven to take stock of how the wristwatches were being conspicuously exposed in the fashion spreads — all the better to court potential advertisers with.

But while rumours abound that Toro will be resurrected as a website – perhaps to flounce around in the same low-rent space as XYYZ and its national chain of e-newsletters for guys who want to be like Russell Smith – the last thing Michael La Fave is looking to do is position Sharp as a competitor of a defunct magazine. (Driven, meanwhile, continues to publish with the formula La Fave established.)

“Toro left the marketplace and the publisher gave the impression that men’s magazines weren’t a viable business in this country,” he says. “It was a bit of a backhanded blow to those who were trying to succeed.

“We’re going to show that there is a demand for this sort of product – and how it’s something that Canadian advertisers will want to support.”

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