Macleans or Corporate Knights?
Macleans magazine has pissed off a lot of people I know lately.
Firstly, it has been insinuated that Macleans “borrowed” the idea for their June cover story Canada’s 50 Best Corporate Citizens. It turns out that Corporate Knights magazine, run by my friends Toby Heaps and Karen Kun, has published an eerily similar ranking scheme since 2002 called Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada. Now, I’m no lawyer, but that seems a bit too close for comfort. Corporate Knights is now exploring legal action against Macleans according to the Canadian Trademark Blog.
Secondly, while exploring an otherwise legitimate story on West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver, a Macleans reporter (who will remain nameless) offended jhr staff member Andrew Rusk. She asked Andrew a series of questions he found to be highly leading and unprofessional. After Andrew blogged about all this here, both he and I were contacted from various people associated with the unnamed reported, asking Andrew to amend his post out of fear that it would damage the young reporter’s reputation. Because Andrew is highly considerate, he took her name and many details of his frustration down.
Thirdly, for the sake of full disclosure, last September Macleans published an article about some of the difficulties associated with sending young Canadians overseas for volunteer placements. The article opened with a few quotes from a disgruntled former jhr-trainer. It went on to explore the challenges other organizations face, and returned with a few positive comments about jhr from a more upbeat former jhr trainer (who represents 95% of former trainers, thankfully!). I don’t mind being used for target practice from time-to-time, but the main problem with the article is that it’s lead was far more negative than its body–misrepresenting the essence of the story to sell a few more copies at our expense.
I’m not going to make any overarching statements or analysis of Macleans here–read what you want into these individual stories. I have great respect for many people that work there and they still produce some solid journalism. I just wanted to get a few things off my chest.
