Faced with declining ad revenues, Toronto Life has cut about $2,000 $14,000 from its editorial budget by slashing payment for its four-month internship program. "It’s a temporary suspension," says publisher Sharon McAuley. "We’re going to reassess when we do our budgeting for 2010. It affects the last four months of the year." Previous Toronto Life interns received a monthly honorarium of $500, but any intern hired by the magazine this fall will work for free.

Ad pages for Toronto Life were down 14.2% in the first quarter and 25.8% in the second quarter of this year, according to data from Leading National Advertisers Canada. "It’s been a very hard slog for us, as it is for other magazines," McAuley says. "We’re just trying to cope."