Winnipeg independent music magazine set to fold

The future of Stylus Magazine, Winnipeg’s flagship indie music publication, is in jeopardy.

“We don’t know if this is the end of Stylus, but there is only one more issue after the one that’s out that’s budgeted for,” says Rob Schmidt, station manager at CKUW 95.9 FM, the campus and community radio station based at the University of Winnipeg.

The station assumed financial and publishing responsibilities for Stylus in 2015 after the University of Winnipeg Students’ Association (UWSA) cut its funding.

However, Schmidt says CKUW — which is funded through the UWSA and independent fundraising — is currently experiencing its own budgetary challenges, owing to a drop in student enrolment and what Schmidt describes as a budgetary dispute with the association.

This week, the station announced it had decided to cut Stylus’s funding.

“In the last three or four years, again, we’ve come into some real friction with the students’ association. We don’t want to run out of money and jeopardize the radio station’s operation, so, we’ve got to make a change. It’s been painful,” Schmidt says.

The UWSA did not respond to requests for comment about Stylus’s impending closure or the alleged budgetary disputes with CKUW.

Maggie A. Clark, Stylus’s assistant editor, says the end of the magazine will be a heavy blow for the music community and budding Winnipeg journalists.

“It’s a huge bummer. Personally, I’ve been a reader of Stylus long before I was involved as a contributor and now as the assistant editor,” she says.

“And there’s really not many other sources of media that cover the same beat that we do. It’s a huge loss that I don’t know if we can exactly measure.”

“It’s a huge loss that I don’t know if we can exactly measure.”

Stylus was established in 1989 during the heyday of college punk and DIY music zines — and remains, for the time being, one of Canada’s oldest surviving independent music magazines.

Many local and Canadian bands praised or lambasted by Stylus writers over the years have gone on to international recognition. The magazine also served as a springboard for some prairie music and cultural journalists, including writers and editors at the Free Press.

Clark says Stylus offers, “a light and jokey space to hone their craft of writing,” while Schmidt describes it as a place “to build their skills and showcase the wonderful local culture that we have.”

“Its intention was never to make money,” he adds, noting Stylus has struggled to attract new advertisers and appeal to a younger generation of readers who consume most of their music news on social media.

These pressures are evident in the wider music media landscape, with Vice and Pitchfork — once considered the cornerstones of indie music journalism — experiencing major cutbacks in recent years.

It’s hard to compete with short-form, algorithmically driven content on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, where musicians can promote themselves directly and music fan critics can fire off witty posts that might reach millions.

“A lot of people do just get their news from social media, just the endless scroll, the endless un-fact-checked infographic. I kind of take it as self-evident that having more sources of information is good because people’s tastes are idiosyncratic,” says Clark.

Winnipeg music professionals are expressing concern over Stylus’s impending closure.

“Stylus was the first time I had my name or art ever in print and it felt like a milestone,” writes Steve Teixeira, known in music circles as BBS Steve.

“Aside from being scattered all over the studio, our local reading material of choice, Stylus, fills a much greater role in Winnipeg’s arts community,” writes No Fun Club, a music studio in Winnipeg.

“It can’t be understated how cathartic it can be to sit down at a local haunt … with a drink and flip through a fresh Stylus.”

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca