My great-great grandfather’s scrapbook is a tattered green thing filled with cartoons, clippings and articles. The book tracks news curios beginning July 2, 1884 (written in rather fanciful hand in black ink, page one), and ending sometime in 1907. The 25 years in between are pasted on thick yellow pages, warped by years in my grandmother’s basement. The pages smell musty, and small bits of edges break off each time I look at it. The whole thing is held together by stretches of white cloth tape along the binding, which are themselves old and tearing. There’s something vaguely mummified about the thing, crumbly and dead.

I’ve always loved this scrapbook, and since I began studying journalism myself, I’ve read it with renewed interest. The pages look, still, like the front page of The New York Times – stretches of tight, grey text in a vaguely antique font. Each column of text has deteriorated to a different shade of brown. There are 206 pages in the book, numbered with a stamp in the top corner, 191 of which are filled with whatever caught my great-great grandfather’s eye.

I know little of him. Finally, one afternoon at lunch, I asked my grandmother what he was like, her grandfather, this relic of an ancestor, whose scrapbook has delighted me for years. “He was a real son of a bitch,” she replied.

His name was Oscar Hudson. He was an accountant. He came with his brother – the first of my family in Canada – from England sometime during the late 19th century. He drank and was abusive. His second marriage (after my great-great grandmother died) was to a very religious woman, who left his considerable wealth to the church. My grandmother, an adamant atheist, is still incensed.

The pages were individually set in, by hand. Scanning through, it is possible to find words with a letter missing, though not as common as you would think. Monstrous typesetting machines were used at Toronto papers up until the 1970s, yet it still boggles the modern mind that anything got produced before computers.

The phrasing is similarly obsolete. It reads like news in a very tight corset. The words all seem quaint now, so unfamiliar to the direct conversational style of today’s papers. One first paragraph reads:

“The Toronto papers are assuming prudish airs of disgust and indignation … we may safely believe that a journal of such character as the Gazette would not publish any statements to pander to low lusts.”

Another:

“The upheaval of mosquitoes on Long Island in New York and the New Jersey coast has attracted the attention of seafaring society.”

Either of these ledes played today would cause spontaneous combustion in a journalism school.

As much as things have changed, a lot remains familiar about these clippings. They sit in narrow columns, have headlines and, where possible, illustrations. There are letters to the editor, although commonly signed in cheeky Latin pseudonyms.

The scrapbook documents my great-great-grandfather’s preoccupations and the civilized debate of the day. Evolution and its place in theology was still controversial, the subject of columns, reported-on lectures on “evolution as applied to theology” and resulting in angry letters to the editor.

In lieu of celebrity gossip, the book is filled with social notices of weddings, clubs and luncheons. “To the number of upwards on a hundred, the friends of Mr. William Hudson, of Philpot-lane, met at the Criterion restaurant yesterday afternoon, for the purpose of presenting him with a testimonial as a mark of their esteem and regard.” They end in long lists of attendees.

Oscar must have taken great pleasure in tobogganing, which would explain the various notices of the “Toronto Toboggan Club.” Yachting appears to have been another hobby. The book’s first article is a news brief, a few hundred words detailing a worrisome event involving his father Mr. W. Hudson’s steam yacht, Dotterel. The ship had a run-in with another yacht, “yielding her fore topmast … to the force of the concussion.” Serious danger was avoided, but in the next page’s text, the Dotterel sank, was raised and brought back to Dover for examination.

There is another oddity. A large number of pages are devoted to Oscar’s terrible sense of humour. Here is an example of an early lawyer joke: “Who are the best men to send to war? Lawyers, because their charges are so great no one can stand them.”

Another is titled LOGIC:

“No, sir, I am not a slave to drink. I don’t need stimulants. I c’n stope whenever I wanter.”

“Well, you’ve been off your base for a week. Why don’t you stop?”

“Whasser use of stoppin’ when you know you can stop? When you can’t – then thesh some use in stoppin’ dontcher see?”

My favourite article is a short account from Fort Wayne, Indiana on the subject of Toronto girls. “The girls of Toronto have a way of looking a fellow square in the face with a fearless ‘howd’y do’ smile that makes him stop and wonder where in the world he got acquainted with them. It is a pleasant novelty and makes the observant stranger feel very much at home.”

Another piece details the “philosophy of the forehead,” including such information as “Foreheads not entirely projecting, but having knotted protuberances give vigor of mind and harsh, oppressive activity and perseverance.”

The later pages become dull, devoted piously to debate over “the single tax” and poetry that is too rigidly metred and insipid for my tastes. The odd book continues to deteriorate, despite my care, a strange heirloom from my accountant ancestor.

When stock price drives management change at a newspaper – journalists, prick up your ears. In the aftermath of Toronto Star Publisher John Honderich’s resignation over the now famous “corporate desire for change” there remains a creeping cynicism over Torstar CEO Rob Prichard.

In the 1990s, as president of the University of Toronto, Prichard was the billion-dollar fundraiser, but many students recall him differently. In 1997, Prichard gave George Bush, Sr. an honorary degree amid rumours that it was a fundraising favour. Thirty professors walked out of the ceremony, while 4,000 students protested outside. Later that year, Prichard silenced an orientation concert by the band Wide Mouth Mason because it was interrupting a speech by the president of the TD Bank, announcing a new student banking service.

In 1998, when pharmaceutical giant Apotex threatened to sue medical researcher Dr. Nancy Olivieri for publishing her concerns about the pediatric drug trials of deferiprone, Prichard was notably slow to her defense. Later, an inquiry criticized the university’s failure to provide legal or moral support for Olivieri. The next year, when Apotex threatened to reduce a promised $20 million donation to U of T, Prichard lobbied then prime minister Jean Chrétien for a policy change on drug patents – an appeal he made on university letterhead.

I remember Richard’s tenure as one of desperate protests – both public and among friends – on behalf of academic freedom. The underlying questions were always “What is a university essentially for?” and “How should that purpose translate into priorities?” At U of T, he answered the students with unprecedented tuition hikes and an air of corporate encroachment.

I wonder how he will answer the same kind of questions at Torstar. Newspapers, like universities, need autonomy. And what is most disquieting is the fear that Richard will not vigilantly defend that autonomy. Honderich, whose leadership we skewered in a cover story 10 years ago (Spring 1994), has kept Canada’s largest daily strong and successful through the newspaper wars. But he was unwilling to make sweeping cuts that would push the return on investment up from around 15 per cent to the Torstar board’s desired 20. That five per cent difference means the balance between shareholder’s interests and editorial integrity will likely shift perceptibly.

Once again, Honderich finds himself on our cover. And the future of The Toronto Star becomes the subtext for our special editorial section, “Crusades, Convergence and Cutbacks.” Now it’s up to incoming publisher Michael Goldbloom to him to defend the Atkinson principles, which govern the Star’s mandate of socially relevant, progressive journalism. We’ll all be a bit more cynical if Goldbloom aligns himself with Prich ard, whose position has more to do with dollars than sense.

Tony Burman can’t sit still. He shifts and fidgets, changes position, taps his foot, leans back in his chair, never losing balance. He gestures wildly as he talks, touching his hair, then his face, snapping his fingers to emphasize epiphanies. He doesn’t seem bored or distracted. Instead the movements seem like a physical manifestation of the wheels turning, as though talk and action are irrepressibly fused.

That motion happens against a suitable backdrop: Burman’s office is framed by a bank of monitors, mutely broadcasting American news underneath a thick stack of newspapers. A rack displays a smattering of magazines: Maclean’s, Newsweek, Time. His office is The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for the news junkie.

The title news junkie doesn’t quite cover it. Burman is, according to his business card, “Editor-in-Chief, CBC News and Current Affairs, CBC Radio and Television and Executive Director, CBC TV News, Current Affairs and Newsworld.” He has a chief of staff, a team he calls “the cabinet,” and unprecedented editorial power.

He needs it. Burman’s job, all 22 words of it, just might be the toughest in Canadian journalism. In addition to answering for all information programming that goes to air, he is at the helm of a massive, multi-stage integration at the CBC. He is streamlining radio news, television news and current affairs along with CBC.ca into a sleek, singular body. Editorial integration may revitalize the CBC, or it may become the biggest disaster in public broadcasting history. It’s been tried before and it failed. But Burman – controversial, feared, respected, driven – may, very possibly, pull it off.

o o o

Burman is an elusive figure. He is always busy, out of town, in a hurry. He does things on his schedule and doesn’t waste time. Few people say they know him well. And there is a certain carefulness that descends around the subject of Tony Burman. People measure their responses, conscious of his power.

It’s a power that appears, at times, mythic. People say he never sleeps. (The suggestion amuses him.) “He sees everything we do and he seems to be able to either watch everything on tape or live,” says senior executive producer of CBC News and Newsworld Mark Bulgutch. “He watches everything on Newsworld and he watches every news and current affairs program on the main channel, and he hears everything on CBC radio. Nothing seems to get by him.”

Journalists, producers, vice presidents and anchors all report e-mails from him at bizarre times. Foreign correspondents notice him online at all hours. His feedback is direct, transmitted in e-mails that generally run under one of two subject lines: “Great show” or “About last night.” The latter zing with criticism, often including the phrase:”My dog wouldn’t even watch that.”

His temper is reportedly fierce, though not long-lasting – the product of passion, not grudge. He is affable and engaging in person, funny, but not without a certain intensity. A prolific memo writer, he carves out mission statements in long eloquent prose. “Onward…” they often end. He’s described variously as a workaholic, obsessive, and on occasion as someone who should get a life. Asked what other occupation he might have wished to try, he is without an answer.

Which befits a life that has centred on journalism for four decades. Over the years, he has had nearly every job title available: assignment editor, lineup editor, senior writer, senior producer, executive producer. He was European bureau producer in the early half of the 1980s, senior documentary producer for the later part. Chief news editor for a stint, then executive producer again in the 1990s. Head of Newsworld. Executive director. Elections, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Soviet Union, Mandela, Oka -Burman was there in the background, busy working.

Rewind to fall 1984, to northern Ethiopia. Burman’s team is the first North American news crew in the dust-covered famine camps, hitching rides on relief planes, sleeping when they can in dirt-floored rooms. Aid groups estimate seven million people will die that winter in the civil war-scarred north.

In the cold November dawn, Burman’s team shoots the first report. Brian Stewart’s elegant copy. distills months of research and three weeks on the ground. But to get the story out, they have to get the tape to Nairobi, Kenya, the nearest satellite link, 1,800 kilometres away. They edit through the morning, until almost departure time, arriving at the airport just before the flight. Burman knows that Ethiopia’s Marxist regime has been confiscating and erasing journalists’ tapes, suppressing reports of the famine. So when he sees airport authorities rifling through journalists’ bags, he ducks into the bathroom, takes the four videotapes from his luggage, and tapes them to his back.

The tapes concealed beneath Burman’s baggy sweatshirt made the famine an international cause and made then Canadian ambassador Stephen Lewis get up the next day in front of the United Nations and say he’d never been so shaken. And it was a report brought to the world because of risks Burman took.

The tape episode is a dramatic, though not uncharacteristic, example of Burman’s dedication to news. His resumé speaks to the progressive successes you’d expect from someone who has risen steadily in Canadian journalism over roughly 40 years, and if it were a novel, his story would lack the requisite tension of possible failure. Growing up with a journalist father (George Burman, a news editor for the Montreal Star), he demonstrated the itch early, writing for his high school newspaper and then progressing to Loyola College. Like others whose names have endured – Brian Stewart, Don Murray, Neil Macdonald – Burman worked as a young reporter in Montreal. At the intersection of the 1960s and 1970s they witnessed the drama of the FLQ crisis, the rising tenor of the separatist movement, the debate over a nation’s future. The city was charged with stories, enjoying international attention after the success of Expo 67, and at the centre of issues that continue to resonate, even now.
It was a prodigious place to start. “To be a young reporter in Montreal then was the greatest time to be a young reporter anywhere on earth, except maybe in Paris in the ’20s or New York in the ’40s,” recalls Stewart now. “It was spectacular, and we all knew it.”

In 1972, Burman joined the CBC and, except for those first years as education reporter for the Montreal Star, has worked there his entire professional career. In those early days, when Burman joined the CBC, money was never an issue. Ideas came first, and the money always somehow followed. News, current affairs, radio and television occupied distinct realms. Each had different shows, different staffs and different formats – different cultures of news telling.

Dividing the territory were fault lines that stretch far back into CBC history, rivalries that ranged from friendly competition to nasty backroom battles. In 1965 the news department locked the staff of the current affairs program This Hour Has Seven Days out of the news library, citing distaste for its approach to investigative, satirical journalism. The staff broke in anyway. In the 1980s, tension between The National and The Journal was, at points, palpable. “The Journal. Keep out,” read the sign on the studio door. “The National. Welcome,” was the snide reply.
Burman worked on both sides of that divide before being put in charge of knocking the walls down. And the deconstruction didn’t start with his current job title. He led the redesign that merged The National and The Journal in 1982. These early steps toward the integration of news and current affairs were performed under extensive scrutiny, largely internal: when Burman and his staff moved into The Journal offices, they were quietly known as “the occupying forces.”

After that successful – though not entirely bloodless – coup, Burman continued moving steadily upward. He took over London as European bureau chief in 1982, covering stories in 30 countries – Lebanon, Ethiopia, the Soviet Block – then returned as a senior documentary producer for The Journal in the late 1980s. The program was at its height, a time still celebrated with pride and emotion by those who worked there. “That was a fabulous decade. To be part of that team was just a gift,” says former Journal senior producer Beth Haddon. “I remember somebody said, ‘The Journal is not a program, it’s a cause,’ and that summed it up.” While there, Burman produced some ambitious and important work, notably the first North American documentary about Nelson Mandela, who still sat in Robben Island prison, with no hope of release.

In 1990, Burman became chief news editor, and while certainly still firmly embedded in journalism, he was increasingly called in to take decisive, managerial action. In 1992, Prime Time News a 9:00 p.m. version of The National, emerged as both a critical and ratings disaster. Once again, Burman was called in, to save the CBC from itself.

The new National that Burman launched was a more closely integrated model, combining news and current affairs in a single hour. Burman remained The National’s executive producer for the next five years. And while he hasn’t always been popular internally, he’s avoided major controversy and public dishonour. “Eventually, senior managers at the CBC either tend to fall on their own swords or have their heads lopped off by somebody,” says senior correspondent Neil Macdonald. “A number of managers have either been removed, or have just left because it’s a pretty thankless job. But Burman has endured.”

He has done more than simply endure. Since 2000, Burman has been editor-in-chief of an ever-widening array of news services. He has been aggressively pursuing integration, and if he doesn’t pull it off, he may finally fall on that sword he’s been sharpening for over 30 years

o o o

Parallels are the philosophical architecture of the CBC. French and English. Radio and television. Regional and national. Autonomous but equal. This Pythagorean purity underlies the CBC – ideals of harmony, balance, truth, unity – separate but connected. The chunky cube CBC building in Toronto, with its exhaustive motif of squares within squares, parallel lines that intersect in perfect balance, seems to transform that metaphor to a literal representation. But one characteristic of cubes is that they don’t roll easily. The size and scope of the CBC make it difficult to manoeuvre, change direction, and, if necessary, brake.

Editorial integration is an old idea that has moved in waves through public broadcasting around the world. With monstrous convergence in the private media and the ever-expanding channel universe, public broadcasters face the threat of renewal or redundancy. While an individual broadcaster with multiple newsrooms and programs could be seen as a school of fish – moving in the same direction but fundamentally individual – integration transforms it into an octopus, using all of its tentacles to grab news stories: a much more powerful beast. But integration has met varied success. At the BBC, which aggressively jumped headfirst into radio-television integration in 1996, programs were merged and bi-medial reportage (reporters filing for both radio and television) became the norm. But change came too quickly, with even high-ranking staff left out of the consultation loop (the acting managing director of BBC Radio learned about the changes via a press leak). Internal discontent and public irritation forced the BBC to retreat, with integration efforts now frozen. Meanwhile, South African and Australian public broadcasters have integrated structures and streamlined services to remain competitive and fit news in the digital age.

The CBC has been moving toward integration of news and current affairs since at least the late 1960s. Knowlton Nash pursued elements of the idea throughout his tenure as director of news and current affairs, but attempts to merge radio and television were rapidly dissolved. At the time – 1969 – radio was concerned it would suffocate in a television world.

There are reasons integration hasn’t been seriously revisited at the CBC until now. The dramatic budget cutbacks and subsequent layoffs in the early 1990s left not only a institution starved of personnel (including most of the younger journalists who lacked critical seniority when layoffs came), but also burdened by withered morale. In 1994, budgets dropped 40 per cent, board chair Patrick Watson left after having to defend stripped budgets, and president Tony Manera resigned in protest against what he saw as betrayal by the federal government.

Ten years, two presidents, a few cash infusions and dozens of policy initiatives later, the CBC is in a position of relative, and rare, managerial stability. The corporation is hiring a new generation of employees. And, says Burman, the combination of psychological recovery and youthful energy fuels the current integration push – as does the growth of private mega-media monoliths like CanWest Global and Bell GlobeMedia. Integration in the CBC context, Burman insists, is not about spending less. His vision is one of optimism, not fiscal persecution. “Ten or 20 years from now the strength of the CBC will have a lot to do with what we have been able to pull off now.”

In practical terms, Burman’s plan is for a single CBC force, communicating across those traditional divisions, using resources to do excellent journalism that resonates through every corner of the country. Trusted. Connected. Canadian. Structurally, this means merging idea meetings and assignment desks, sharing reports, breaking stories when and in whatever medium will garner the greatest impact.

Integration has inspired an entire vocabulary at the CBC. ‘Breaking down the silos’ is the choice code for shattering the barriers between radio, television and the Internet. They are no longer called services, but ‘platforms’. This will “maximize the impact of the CBC News Brand,” as one integration briefing document reads. Decisions are made by ‘working groups’ and presented at ‘news summits.’ Assignment desks and planning units will become more ‘bi-medial,’ journalistically ambidextrous, simultaneously collaborating radio and TV resources, or ‘tri-medial,’ extending to the CBC Web presence.

It won’t – and can’t – happen overnight. The CBC learned from the BBC’s failure, when radical changes alienated listeners and staff. More practically, the technology just isn’t ready yet. Philosophical divisions aside, radio and television use different editing systems, preventing material edited for one medium to be re-edited for another. Digitizing the CBC will take years to complete. Montreal has completed the process, and Quebec City, Edmonton, Halifax and Ottawa are next. Like any major technological shift, this doesn’t come without a degree of chaos. Why, one CBC insider marvelled, integration would be pushed before digitization is complete, is beyond logic.

Shift from virtual space to physical space. Another reason radio and television don’t talk more is not ideological distance, but geography. In Toronto, radio and television news and current affairs are only one floor apart, but in Ottawa and St. John’s the distance is measured in kilometres. Ottawa will move into its new, single building next year, and Edmonton’s new digs are state-of-the-art, but some of the walls that need shattering at the CBC are literally the big brick kind.

Thicker still are the cultural walls. Just as integration has its own vocabulary, so too does dissent. Some journalists fear their reports will be recycled on television and the Internet, used again on Newsworld, and cut up for re broadcast on radio. They complain the CBC has become a ‘sausage factory of news,’ ‘Feeding the goat,’ they call it. And while Burman argues such hesitancy is based in misunderstanding, the passionate guarding of programs’ character, content and autonomy remains very real.

Burman’s approach to conquering these fears is to move slowly and carry a big working committee. They are his modus operandi, designed to get the opinions and ideas of a range of employees based on their experience and concerns, and involving them in the process. There have been meetings, memos, working groups and job-swap programs, all designed to allay pernicious resistance.

Outside the corporate offices, though, integration is looked at with the skeptical eye notorious to journalists. “This is what’s in right now,” says senior television producer Arnold Amber, comparing integration to the corporate craze for open-concept offices. “As long as it gets written up by someone who went to Harvard, it becomes a theology.”

Call it evolutionary integration – coming in not with a bang, though certainly not without the occasional whimper. And while most integration efforts will seep in unannounced, an imaginary ad campaign might well read:
Editorial integration. What will it mean for the CBC?
A) Memos and meetings.
B) A revolt in radio.
C) Superior journalism on every platform in every corner of Canada.
Watch. Then decide.

o o o

It’s March 2003, a week before the bombing starts in Baghdad. Burman is in Iraq checking on reporters, planning exit routes and delivering funds. The Baghdad airport shut, he flies instead to Jordan and drives 10 hours into Iraq, with a bag full of American money.

It’s not where you’d imagine the top man in CBC news would be, smuggling cash across the Iraq border. “I was kind of looking as they went through the various parts of my bag,” Burman recalls, “wondering, what in God’s name am I going to say if they stumble upon $65,000 in hundred-dollar bills?”

When the first bombs fall, Burman is back in Toronto. The news machine has been planning the war coverage for months, and when it begins, everybody knows what to do. Months of planning become action, with experts, video feed and reporters all in place. The CBC – like any news organization – lives on this adrenaline high: elections, wars, disasters become a focal point, where vision comes to life. A spark animates the whole machine.

“He’s tense on those days. He’s waiting,” says National anchor Peter Mansbridge “He’s on edge, second guessing everything until he sees those ratings numbers 24-hours later. And when we win, he’s like a puppy dog, big smile, laughing, kidding everybody. In that 24 hour cycle, you see the real Tony Burman: the tension, the determination, the ambition and the dedication to being number one.”

Competitiveness carries a price. The CBC’s performance in Iraq, and elsewhere, has drawn considerable ire from its critics, particularly of the Asper persuasion. Owners of the CanWest Global universe – 16 television stations in Canada, 11 major metropolitan dailies, and a smattering of weeklies, plus media in four other countries – the Aspers have used the National Post to wage a bloodthirsty campaign against the CBC, known by some at the Post offices as ‘The Corpse’ (the same moniker Frank magazine employs). Last December, the Post delighted in the front-page headline, “In-house study calls CBC ‘stuffy, uptight,'” and included the sub-head, “Many viewers of The National are turned off by ‘endless pontificating experts.'”

But the Post’s editorial page is more often the aggressor. Its “CBC Watch” has, since last June, dedicated space to letters and editorials on CBC coverage. What is evident from the letters is that some people love to hate the CBC. But until the Post stepped up, they didn’t have a focused campaign with such prominent placement in a national daily. It’s a campaign that aims not just at specific journalistic quarrels, but at public broadcasting in theory and practice. The Aspers have clearly stated their displeasure that the CBC uses public money – roughly $1 billion annually – to compete with private broadcasters.

The CBC’s efforts to revitalize happen against this wider landscape and any failures will get smug front-page treatment. But beyond cheap shots, integration is the counter offensive against convergence by both the Aspers and the Bell GlobeMedia machine, an effort to prove that that the CBC is bigger, better and branded.

And Burman, who has managed, for the most part, to stay on the other side of the camera throughout his career, is now, more and more, in front of the lens. “Recent criticisms by Jonathan Kay and the National Post of CBC Radio fundamentally misrepresent the mandate of its programs, and cannot go unanswered,” his response on the letters page began. The letter only fueled the Post’s charges, and subsequent missives criticized and ridiculed him more in the following weeks than in the months before. “A tad defensive, aren’t we?” one letter asked. “Mr. Burman has clearly closed his mind,” another read.

That Burman has managed to maintain a relatively low public profile until now is surprising. “He should be someone who is, maybe not a household name, but pretty close by the nature of his position,” says David Studer, executive producer of the fifth estate. “The ‘Tony Burman’ of Great Britain is a famous public figure who is being talked about in the media all the time.”

The anticipated federal election will be a major test of Burman’s vision, if not of a fully integrated CBC, then of the first steps of the new CBC Frankenstein creation. How the villagers react will determine if the experiment is a success.

The unexpected part is this: Burman is actually winning many over, internally at least. The meetings and memos are beginning to puncture CBC cynicism and territoriality. And critics who questioned Burman’s vision in whispers and groans are beginning to believe that change will happen slowly, organically.

Throughout, Burman has stayed steady, unflinching in his defence of CBC reporters, policy and relevance, never bending. “He’s a creature of the CBC,” explains Macdonald, “and he’s very, very intense in his defence of CBC and his belief in public broadcasting, his belief in the principles of public broadcasting – more so than a lot of us.”

If you talk to proponents of the CBC, they are talking about much more than a broadcaster. They are talking about something personal, something almost religious. And Burman, the believer at the centre of it all, continues to preach, to argue, to shape. As editorial integration continues to take shape in the coming months and years, all we can do is this: Watch him. Then decide.

At the Toronto Star, the drab-brown hermetically-sealed high-rise by the lake, sits a pile of paper. It lies on a desk, a dozen snaking turns down the early-seventies hallways, stuccoed and beige, among the editorial offices.

“Dear editor,” each page begins.

They go on to document, argue, insist, clarify or plead. But first, they have to get out of the pile on the desk. Welcome to the office of The Star’s letters editor.

The letters page has been around as long as there have been newspapers to contain it. It is something of a relic that way, an old-fashioned forum for public debate. Before there were blogs and message boards and chat shows, there was a letters page.

And before there is a letters page, there is the pile.

The pile is about four inches tall. It comprises, on any given day, about 150 letters, about the same as a similar – though electronic – pile at the Globe. At The Star, the pile is always paper, even the 70 per cent that come in by email are printed and stacked, sorted by hand. The other 30 per cent are faxed sheets or real letters, written out and mailed to The Star.

The letters editor pares down the pile to the 13 or so letters that will appear in the paper the following day.

It is Gabe Gonda’s last week at the job, his last week in this small, windowless room. Next week, he moves to the city desk in the open concept, possibly more socially stimulating newsroom.

Maybe it’s this move that has made Gonda, like a good letter, reflective about his subject. At 27, he has been letters editor at The Star for three years. Stylish, witty and articulate, he can discern the types of letter writers and the qualities of great and important letters.

There are distinct types of letter, Gonda explains in a deep voice, and dozens of regular writers. There are those who write four times a week, possessed by a single subject, a single viewpoint. These are the anti-Chretiens, the anti-Bushes, the anti-Israels, the pro-Israels.

There are other regulars, skilled, eloquent, thoughtful. “It’s almost like it’s a professional class,” he says. “It’s rare to get a good letter to the editor from someone you haven’t heard from before.”

“Some of the most thoughtful letters come by snail-mail,” Gonda says. “People who have learned to write in elegant longhand, express themselves in complete sentences, before email and the Internet destroyed people’s ability to write anything other than fragmented thoughts.”

Unfortunately, says David Watson, Gonda’s Globe counterpart, very few paper letters get used, because their subject has, like their form, become obsolete.

The Globe has a few dozen regulars, who write about once a week. One, a local high school history teacher, was subsequently hired to write a few Comment pieces.

The level of skill in writing and argument is sophisticated at the Globe, Watson says, adding he looks for wit and wisdom in equal measure.

To get out of The Star’s pile, letters should be “short, pithy, funny,” Gonda says without hesitation. “It’s nice to get letters that put a human face on a policy debate. Someone who can take a sort of bare bones news story and put flesh and blood on it,” he says.

“People who can play against type. Westerners who are pro-Toronto. Arabs who are pro-Israel. Israelis who are pro-Arab. Torontonians who are pro-suburbs. It’s nice to confound people’s expectations on the page. It’s nice to be contrarian.”

All of these contradictions behind the news and the newsroom, they are all in the pile. Whether or not you read the letters page, there is something about the idea of it – something direct, honest, real.

In most papers, letters usually run with the editorials in a half-page of popular opinion. The Star, on the other hand, runs letters across from the editorials, gives it a whole page – space, Gonda notes, usually reserved for op-eds and opinion pieces.

Sifting through the competing opinions, Gonda describes the job as equal parts referee and traffic-cop. “You’re in the crossfire internally, because you are criticizing your colleagues or refereeing criticism of their work. You’re also in the crossfire as a representative of the paper, because people have complaints about your coverage.”

But by day’s end, the pile whittled down, readers-turned writers-prepare to be printed, read, ripped apart and rebuked. And by morning, there will be a fresh pile on the desk.