NOW Communications

Corporate body

NOW Communications

• NOW Magazine

1981-

NOW Magazine was founded in 1981 by Michael Hollett and Alice Klein. In many ways, NOW was modeled as a Toronto equivalent to New York’s Village Voice; a weekly newsprint publication combining progressive news coverage with extensive and literate coverage of the cultural events occurring in the city. However, one essential difference between NOW and its predecessors was that NOW was completely supported by ad revenue and thus available for free. While this was a new concept in 1981, the majority of North American cities now have at least one such publication.
Over the course of its history, NOW’s arts writers have provided in-depth coverage of the film, theatre, music, dance, poetry and visual arts scenes in Toronto. The emphasis in this coverage has been on independent and alternative artists whose work gets little or no exposure in the mainstream press. NOW’s news coverage has also been influential, providing a voice for a variety of communities that were traditionally marginalized elsewhere (including LGBT people, sex workers, labour organizers, environmental activists and so on).

In the course of its coverage of politics and the arts, NOW has published original photography by nationally and internationally renowned names such as Larry Towell, David Hlynsky, Paul Till and Chris Nichols. The magazine has also printed original art by people such as Margaret Hathaway, Buzz Burza, Thach Bui and Kris Patterson.

University of Toronto Media Commons

Created 03/19/2015

NOW Magazine website http://www.nowtoronto.com/

Siklos, Richard. “The Radical Success of NOW.” Financial Post, September 25, 1991, 43.