As ye sow, so shall ye reap

My friend and former colleague Kevin Michael Grace makes a lengthy case, with links to documentary evidence that "....[t]he Report was killed. Starved to death by Link Byfield because its continued existence no longer suited his purposes....."

My own opinion, you may recall, is that the Byfields didn't plan hard enough for a future for my old magazine when and if the second generation of Byfields no longer wanted to be conservative journalists.

But, Kevin's arguments give me pause. They raise the question of how much the end of The Report was due to financial non-viability and how much due to the Byfields' own personal priorities. [If worst had come to worst, Link could have offered the magazine to those of us who wanted to continue. The This Magazine model--the magazine is "owned" by an educational foundation yet remains very political--could have been made to work for The Report temporarily while new money was found. Those who wanted to keep the magazine going could have looked for donors and backing ourselves.]

I would advise Link Byfield, given how the messy end of the magazine played out, to demonstrate to his backers (many of whom bought subscriptions to the magazines, bought shares in B.C. Report Ltd. and responded to donation requests) that he has the best interests of the Canadian right at heart, regardless of what that means for his own personal fortunes.

The Canadian right has so much to do that we don't want suspicious backers to be thinking:
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.