In May 1978, I got my first and last full time newspaper job working for the Ottawa Journal.
It wasn't my first foray into print journalism. As a 16-year-old, I had a weekly newspaper column with the St. Catharines Standard as a student at West Park Secondary School. The gig paid 25 cents an inch and I learned quickly the art of padding my column with the names of everybody on the football and rowing teams.
The Standard later hired me as a summer student. The editors quickly sized me up, and decided I should become the "first woman" writer. So I wrote inches and inches of copy about the first woman rowing coach, the first woman dump truck driver, and the first woman police officer.
In exchange for selling my soul, I was given some plum assignments, like covering Marvin Gaye at a champagne reception where he was given the key to the city of Buffalo. (Later that day, he returned the favour by bailing on his concert because he was being chased by private dicks who were trying to get him to cough up child support.) I also got to cover the Miss Nude World Contest, a variety of multicultural festivals, and spend six hours drinking, ah reporting, on a naval ship that was going through the Welland Canal.
I learned a lot about the horsie set, the weird and wonderful world of carnies, and the challenges of making the worst wine in the world. I also got my first newspaper column that didn't include listing names and sucking up to teachers.
While I loved the wacky world of St. Catharines, I was hugely ambitious and longed to cover Parliament Hill, which is known in my craft as show business for ugly people. I got my chance by getting a job at The Journal. It's odd working for a newspaper in the Nation's Capital where you can be covering a speech by the Prime Minister one day, and a sub-committee of school board another. But I also got a chance to spread my wings, and review plays and books, write a weekly trends column and do in-depth feature stories for the lifestyles and entertainment sections.
I did all that in less than two years.
And then the paper folded, as part of a deal between greedy newspaper barons.
I was absolutely crushed when it happened. My entire fledgling career went up in flames, and I was out on the street.
Thinking back, I realize I had been warned.
In my first year at Carleton School of Journalism, I attended a lecture by Professor Tom McPhail who told us not to waste our time working in print because, and I quote "newspapers are dead".
I remember thinking at the time that he could have saved me $500 in tuition if he'd told me that before I enrolled in his class. I didn't believe him, of course, and lost all respect for him in that moment.
You see, I was part of the Watergate generation of reporters who watched the Washington Post help take down Richard Nixon. It was a heady time, a bit like the Donald Trump era, when we came to believe it was our job to unmask corruption at all levels.
We would be more than recorders of boring council meetings. We would be truth tellers, boldly challenging the corrupt bosses, ever skeptical of the greedy establishment.
Yeah and all my colleagues looked like Robert Redford.
Needless to say, upon graduation, we were faced with covering school board meetings, county fairs, fishing derbies and 3 a.m. fires.
Still, for me, it was better than becoming the bank teller my mother always wanted me to be.
During my short tenure at the Journal, I saw signs that it was on its last legs. The paper had been on strike the whole time I worked there, and I had to cross a picket line just to get to the elevator bank. Over the next two years, the paper got thinner and thinner as the advertising shrunk like George Costanza's manhood after a brisk swim. And management kept changing.
Then one night, the gig was up.
And my life was never the same.
I couldn't land another newspaper job though I worked for many years as a columnist and feature writer for many newspapers. Luckily, the skills a person learns in journalism are easily transferable and so I've managed to eek out a living as a writer and editor for hire over the past 40 years.
But I still miss the smell of ink wafting through a newsroom as papers right off the press are delivered, the thrill of waking up the city's Archbishop in the middle of the night to tell him the Pope has died ("No not that pope, the one who just replaced him").
And I really, truly miss the camaraderie of 6 a.m. beers, the reward after a tough stint on nightside covering fires, murders and postal strikes. If I close my eyes, I can hear Meg Leonard's perfect pitch singing Judy Collins, and I still smile at Gord Lovelace trimming his lilac bushes with a beer in one hand and a bullwhip in another while his public servant neighbours made their trek to work.
It was hard getting a newspaper job in 1978, but it's almost impossible now, as newspapers are felled like the trees that are killed for newsprint.
I feel sad every time I watch another print newspaper bite the dust -- or switch hands, which is usually another sign that print may not be dead, but is definitely on life support.
So I was troubled today, upon reading that the Toronto Star had been bought by some investors whose only newspaper experience has been delivering them as little kids.
It's doubly troubling for me because the Star also owns the St. Catharines Standard.
Start the Doomsday Clock.
But that's life in the pandemic era.
Tom McPhail was right . Print newspapers are so last century.
I
Comments
Post a Comment