The Mirror’s 25th anniversary issue is on the stands now. Aside from the usual weekly features, it includes a pullout with a look back at the first quarter century of the paper’s existence, including a selection of covers, the various logos and a timeline.
As part of its multi-page collage, the paper has the first Best of Montreal poll, the first Sasha column, the first Rant Line, as well as a list of contributors over 25 years (one that wasn’t well edited – there are quite a few repeats) and a bunch of those under-the-logo taglines.
It’s unfortunate that more of an effort wasn’t made to bring those early stories and columns online – many of them are unreadable in the anniversary issue. Fortunately, the Mirror has among the most ancient online archives of Montreal media, going back all the way to 1997, so more than half of its history is now online – in a format that seems to have changed little in 13 years.
The anniversary got a bit of attention, from Radio-Canada and Montreal City Weblog, the latter pointing out that it was the first alt weekly in Montreal, predating Voir by about a year. (Which I guess means we should expect a Voir 25th anniversary special in 2011.)
Steve, would you consider “Voir” alt at all? Guess it has its flashes, but it is squarely centred on entertainment and consensual consumption of culture and everything else.
I may be crotchety, but alas find rather little of value in any of those free papers nowadays.
It depends what you’re looking for. News is my thing, which is why I don’t read them much any more, but their core function is music and arts coverage, including event listings. That’s what they do well.
I was wondering if the repeats meant higher importance or something. Darn these kinds of things! At least I got namechecked for all my art reviewing.
Did Voir ever dedicate space to news reporting?
Good luck to the Mirror. It paid my rent on more than a few occasions.