the grid is OVER
A few days ago, The Grid, Torontoâs other free weekly newspaper shut down without any warning, instantly rendering itâs staff of 20 or so unemployed.
A lot of other people who work in the media are decrying the death of The Grid as a symptom of a narrowing media landscape, but I think this newspaper was doomed from the start and itâs death isnât a particularly great loss. People are probably sick of reading think-pieces about the end of The Grid by now (letâs face it, to most people, itâs not a big deal), but I have to offer my own perspective since alt-weeklies have long been an important part of my media diet and also because I work in the media.
The Grid was first introduced in 2011 as the newspaper to replace Eye Magazine. Eye, to me, was always like NOWâs less-cool cousin from the suburbs. No doubt, it was a watered-down clone of NOW, with neutered political positions and most of the countercultural points filed down, but it was something still worth reading if you were stuck in the subway holding pattern for a while and had no other reading material. Occasionally, you could actually stand to learn a thing or two from reading it.
When The Grid was launched to replace Eye, some people saw it as a sort of triumph for the local media (i.e. âthe cityâs gentrified and weâve all grown up so much!â), but I felt betrayed. It had a few good things going for it, like fantastic design and Kate Carrawayâs hilarious/frustrating relationship advice column (later replaced by the insipid Dating Diaries column), but for the most part it had given up any pretence it had of being an âalternativeâ newspaper, though it was packaged as one. Columns about new condo developments, obscenely expensive furniture and gourmet restaurants replaced columns about local culture. It was, from the outset, targeted towards the condo clique. An âaltâ paper for people who werenât really alt-ish by anybodyâs standards.
So it should come as no surprise that it never really found much an audience, as the older/wealthier/high-living types were already reading Toronto Life and the younger/poorer people like me were alienated by this paper.
At the time of itâs launch, I took the changeover to be a symptom of the cultural degradation of Toronto and reinforced my belief that the city as a whole didnât give a shit about anything besides real estate and upward mobility. I was a lot more cynical and pessimistic in those days (but donât worry, I got better!).
Anyways, it is for those reasons that Iâm not too torn up about the sudden death of The Grid. It is sad that 20 or so people lost their jobs, but at least the design team should find themselves new jobs soon. The paper was, if nothing else, pretty.
