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The Toronto TribuneToronto's news monthly news magazine launches in October. The launch date was chosen to celebrate what should be the end of my chemotherapy sessions. Branching off into a news publication has long been a dream of International Art Treasures Web Magazine IATWM was born of the idea to positively showcase art and artists. We were well aware of the difficulty for contemporary artists receiving coverage at all let alone positive coverage. It is not a new development. All of the great masters suffered from harsh criticism. Some like Van Gogh and Modigliani found success long after they were gone and yet their work stands the test of time. For others like Monet it came after years of struggle and hand-to-mouth existence. Art fairs and shows bring in tourists benefiting the community and yet often the last to receive any funds are artists who created the work in the first place. Restaurants, hotels, the travel industry and the government via taxes all earn their share of the pot but often if the artist's work is admired but failed to sell he or she gets nothing. Throughout our four year history we have often stumbled across stories that deserve to be told but do not fit in an art magazine dedicated to positive promotion of the arts. Thus for sometime we have planned to launch a news version that tells the stories often avoided or overlooked by the Main Stream Media (aka MSM). The four Toronto dailies are not our competition. We had no desire to be like them when we launched International Art Treasures Web Magazine. The same can be said for our news publication The Toronto Tribune. Since February I have written, here in my Editorial Notes, about my battle with cancer and paid great compliments to my wonderful team of doctors and nurse professionals. I do not have much praise for my cancer hospital, one of the stories featured in the premiere edition of The Toronto Tribune. One of the numerous ways IATWM opted to be different was to keep ourselves out of the articles and editorials. That decision was altered to explain the delay in the February edition and of course the smaller versions as I healed from my surgery and prepared for chemotherapy. Being involved in an article is not our preference but sometimes it does happen such as with two pieces for The Toronto Tribune. When our policies prevent a story that should be told we are willing to make exceptions preferably to illustrate the good in the Canadian medical system rather than the not so good. But that story deserves airing. Only by shining a light can positive change be made, that is our goal whether with International Art Treasures Web Magazine or with The Toronto Tribune. |