In these times, when no media company would favourably report on a rival without a strategic reason, there was a competitive agenda embedded in the Financial Post’s front-page story last weekend, “Torstar loves Harlequin.” What started as a puff piece, about how the romance publisher boosts Torstar’s bottom-line, veered into a review of Torstar’s stock market misfortune. David Holland, interim CEO for Torstar for the past half year, was officially named to the position this week: “We’re at such an interesting time, in terms of media,” he told one of his employees at the Toronto Star. “There’s no question that media consumption is evolving at a rapid rate. But I do believe the assets that we have, both in print and online, will prove to be valuable to marketers. Nobody’s figured this out yet.” While patting himself on the back, though, Harlequin was having to blow out a firestorm after the Romance Writers of America — along with organizations representing professional sci-fi and mystery fiction scribes — lashed back at the announcement of a new vanity press, Harlequin Horizons. The idea of asking amateur bodice-ripper-writers to pay between $599 and $1,599 to create their own Harlequin-branded romance rankled the RWA so much, they announced the company would no longer be given complimentary tickets to their annual convention, and their authors no longer eligible for their awards. So, the company backtracked on impact, and will instead relaunch the program — without exploiting the “H”-word. “Putting lipstick on a con job doesn’t make it any less of a con job,” reacted blogging author John Scalzi, “doesn’t make it any less of a con job.”

PREVIOUSLY: Big red pen taken to ‘Toronto Star’ publisher’s apocalyptic memo