When it was founded in 1997, the purpose of Blitz Magazine was to bring a high-end media communications magazine to Western Canada. Canada has several such magazines, but they’re out of Ontario and don’t much bother with the west coast. However, within its first year, it became apparent that there was a demand for the magazine on a national scale and, since 1998, Blitz has been the only Canadian media communications magazine delivered nation-wide.

The other purpose of Blitz was to provide editorial which would be of practical use to its readers. Not articles about agencies patting themselves on the back for campaigns, or endless pieces about award wins, but information that readers could use in the course of their business activities.

Finally, we wanted to remove the zzzzzzzzzz factor. Business magazines can easily become dull and dry and we’ve tried to make sure that each issue of Blitz was a little lively, a little irreverent, a little original. It was a four-colour tabloid, beautifully printed on 70 lb stock, the design and production values were top-notch, and the magazine arrived unsullied in a personally-addressed envelope. The magazine’s 80,000 readers were happy, and advertisers were happy.

I, however, had started to have ‘thoughts’. With every issue, my art director would email the issue to me and I would proof the PDF. Then it would go to pre-press, then to print…and I started thinking ‘why don’t I just email this to everyone?’ Why not just put it up and let people read it online?

And here we are.

I’m anxious to know what you think of Blitz online and hope you’ll email me with your suggestions, requests, thoughts, opinions etc. Get in touch: editor@blitzmagazine.com