Toro's William Morassutti proves that running a website can actually get you chicks

The resurrection of Canadian men’s glossy Toro as a piece of internet real estate, 16 months after the print edition was shuttered, looks determined to capitalize on the elegies surrounding its demise. This time around, well-heeled owner Christopher Bratty is keeping control in the family, handing the toromagazine.com address over to cousin William Morassutti.

“It’s an example of how a men’s magazine looks and acts when taking advantage of state-of-the-art 21st century digital technology — as opposed to 18th-century printing press technology,” goes Morassutti’s YouTube-posted pitch. “Carrying forward just enough of the branding, categories and contributors for continuity — but also creating, from scratch, an exciting new men’s lifestyle platform that plays to the strengths of the online medium.”

Yet the name recognition owes just about everything to the strengths of the 18th-century incarnation of Toro. The print edition's editor-in-chief, Derek Finkle, hired on a fluke, was determined to shape Bratty’s sketch of a Canadian version of 1970s vintage Playboy into something formidable enough to compete with Esquire and GQ on the newsstand. Maybe not every article lived up to that standard, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give it a try. Considering the fate of the print medium, it looked like the last-ever such opportunity, too.
 
The demise of Toro offered a window for publisher John McGouran and editor Michael La Fave (then working for automotive-based magazine Driven) to start Sharp — immediately adopting Toro’s primary distribution model, stuffed into subscriber copies of The Globe and Mail. (See “The new Toro?”, Feb. 13.)

Sharp’s first issue, dated May 2008, delivers just what was promised, with national basketball team coach Leo Rautins looking calmly assertive on its cover, and editorial dominated by pictures of products geared to professional young men with disposable income to burn. There are feature stories, too, including a “Sharp Woman” Q&A with actress Cate Blanchett. But there’s not a trace of cleavage, or cockiness — or overt attempts at humour.

This brand of audacity remains the domain of toromagazine.com, then. The launch party Wednesday night at the Brant House at King and Spadina telegraphed this message by having models in tight and/or skimpy uniforms meant to represent the various sections on the site: sports, style, drinks, cars, gadgets. But the scene was understated in comparison to the first Toro launch party, held five springs ago at Casa Loma. For one thing, there were no desperate freelance writers working the room, given how the site isn’t looking to hire them. However, a naked woman serving as a sushi platter — or any other relatively outrageous real-life distraction — couldn’t have hurt.

The focal point of the evening was Morassutti attempting to explain the different elements of the website on a large screen — a frustrating enough process in a boardroom, let alone a crowded bar. But he managed to communicate that the rebirth of Toro is going to be largely driven by video.

While the approach is more likely to give the site broader appeal than relying on mere words as a point of entry, it plants toromagazine.com more in league with deadpool-diving dot-comedy offerings from the US. Anheuser-Busch breweries thought they could cut out the editorial middleman and corner the guy market with their Bud.TV; Time Warner burned plenty of cash on Office Pirates, geared to young male cubicle dwellers; and Super Deluxe, an alternative comedy site established by Turner Broadcasting, laid off its entire staff earlier this month.

Not that there aren’t a few apparent success stories producing original video irreverence — although frequently cited examples The Onion, College Humor and Funny or Die also don’t claim to offer "What Men Need to Know." However facetiously that toromagazine.com tag line is spun, it will register with those advertisers looking to sell those curious men more stuff. 

Whether this can work without the psychological benefit of ink on paper remains to be seen — although, for a change, it’s a test case worth watching.

By contrast, consider a panel at this week’s annual Mesh Conference in Toronto, “The New Front Page” — based on the liveblogged evidence. Speakers from three sites whose business model is entirely reliant on unpaid input — the Torstar Digital-owned OurFaves, a service recommendation site GigPark run by the former management of dead-tree freebie Dose, and vote-based collective link farm Digg — are now seemingly revered in the Web 2.0 world as more relevant than the wretches who hold the old media model in any regard.

Then again, it may just be a Toronto thing. Today, as chat windows across NYC are lit up like ticker tape parades in response to a New York Times Magazine tell-all cover story by an ex-Gawker editrix, The Globe and Mail is touting a five-part series on how retirement homes are just like high school. (“You may never look at your grandparents the same way again,” reads the Globe's press release — now wait, since when do grandparents have their own living grandparents?)

But if there's still enough local media enthusiasm for a Port Perry-based Playboy Playmate of the Year — whose most interesting feature is a tattoo reading "Respect" arched above her nether regions — then maybe there's enough of an appetite for this new virtual Toro.

Peter Coish, the founder of XY Media Ventures — currently operating service journalism sites for men in five Canadian cities, with three more to come, along with a New York-based version — first waded into this space two years ago. The venture currently boasts 27,000 subscribers to its emailed newsletter, The Wire. Coish figures the debut of toromagazine.com will raise awareness to the fact that, unlike the lucrative pack of print magazines aimed at women, media for guys is destined to be a primarily online concept in Canada. But getting the potential audience to pay attention is the first hurdle to clear.

“Women are quicker to embrace this sort of thing,” says Coish. “Not only do they read more, they’re likely to pass things they find interesting around.”

For the XY sites, particularly its Toronto flagship xyyz.com, the main driver has been media stunts, executed with varying degrees of success. A campaign to get the city to issue booty-call parking passes, drew attention in the right places — whether it was positive or not. Coish admits a billfold where restaurant-goers could express their opposition to bottled water didn’t translate nearly as well.

But last month, planting the site’s editor Russell Smith at downtown intersections with warning sign-holding models — drawing attention to the site’s new speed-trap mapping service — got the site enough mass media attention to sign up 600 new subscribers. Coish has learned, when it comes to drawing style-obsessed men aged 25-to-45, tabloid media tactics usually trump publishing homages to Cary Grant.

Video is a whole different story, though. The initial efforts to produce it on the XY sites were met with reader feedback that they couldn’t watch it at work.

“What we’re doing is a little more of a sure bet,” says Coish. “It’s less risky than having viral content serve as your holy grail, because that’s like trying to make lightening strike every day. And there’s no guarantee of it even working once.

“We experimented with material that was a bit more saucy. Then we pulled back a bit — even if the temptation is always there to just publish lingerie spreads. But I’ve heard that you can already find pictures of women on the internet.”

Previously on The Scroll: The new Toro?

Send news, tips, links about arts, culture, media to scroll@eyeweekly.com

Email us at: LETTERS@EYEWEEKLY.COM or send your questions to EYEWEEKLY.COM
625 Church St, 6th Floor, Toronto M4Y 2G1