Ken Whyte on how to edit a magazine versus a book

Interesting mix of shyness and confidence is Ken Whyte. You’ll hear both assert themselves during this conversation. Together they explain his hugely successful career as an editor in Canada over the past 40 years, if you ask me.Ken started editing at Alberta Report magazine during the eighties, then got the job, in 1994, as editor of Saturday Night magazine, one of the oldest and most venerated in the country. In 1998 he was appointed Editor in Chief of Conrad Black’s start-up newspaper The National Post and in 2005 took over as Editor and Publisher of Maclean’s, Canada’s all-time most interesting magazine. In 2017 he launched Sutherland House Books. In the Spring of 2025 it acquired Fitzhenry and Whiteside. And last month Ken made it onto The Biblio File.We talk briefly about the acquisition, take a look at storytelling, descend into despair, talk our way back from the void, and then finally dig into the meat: tearing away at the differences between editing a magazine and editing a book. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe