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.

Saving Tesfaye Kumsa’s life may have destroyed his reason for living. In 1992, Kumsa, a documentary and features program producer for Ethiopian Television in Addis Ababa, was imprisoned in a concentration camp after refusing to abide by government imposed censorship laws. When released 11 months later, he was undeterred and organized a handful of colleagues to start Urjii, an independent weekly newspaper dedicated to honest and accurate reporting. Four years later, Kumsa and his staff were convicted of treason, and Urjii was shut down after publishing an article criticizing the Ethiopian government. Thanks to scores of letters from human rights groups around the world, Kumsa was eventually released, but the government made it clear that if he wrote another word in the country, he’d be executed. Although he was determined to resurrect Urjii, his wife was terrified, and free expression groups insisted he seek exile in Canada.

Today, Kumsa, his wife and daughter Urjii (which means star), live in a one-bedroom basement apartment in a house in Scarborough, Ontario. Unable to find a job in journalism, Kumsa first took a job as a file clerk at Big Brothers but is now studying full-time. His wife, a former bank clerk, is unemployed. “Losing my paper happened to be one of the biggest losses of my life,” says Kumsa. “Working as a journalist was what I loved and what I do, but I think I’ll have to give it up for good.” Although he’s grateful to the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression for helping him once he arrived in Canada he can’t help but resent his dim career prospects. Although the CJFE’s support meetings for displaced journalists help soothe his feelings of alienation, they can’t give him the Canadian background, education and job experience he needs to get a job in the media, meaning he may never regain the life for which he longs.
Kumsa’s story is just one example of the problem that has dogged the CJFE since its early days as a committee of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in the 1980s – how to be effective with limited money and volunteers. Unlike its predecessor, the CJFE has no real way to measure the success of its protest campaigns. Refugees like Kumsa often give up on journalism in Canada when their experience and help from the CJFE amounts to little more than welfare cheques and dead-end jobs.
This problem is not unique to the CJFE. The Canadian Association of Journalists, the country’s other main group for journalists, also has trouble making money and attracting and retaining members. Some think that the organization’s broad-based educational approach to improving journalism has turned the organization into a get-together for journalists just out of grad school – instead of a resource for serious journalists.

But just because the CJFE and CAJ can’t make a go of it with tight budgets and a lack of people power doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Many journalists say the CIJ did an excellent job of fulfilling its mandate of introducing more investigative journalism to Canadian newsrooms in the 1970s and 1980s. But the dismantling of the CIJ created two weak organizations with lofty aims. The CJFE and CAJ are largely ineffective in championing journalism issues due to limited resources that are stretched too thin, and that’s troubling. If journalists don’t care enough to support these organizations and their goals of promoting the value of free expression and independent media, no one else will step up to the plate, and we risk losing the values on which journalism is based.

o o o

There was a time not too long ago when journalists felt so strongly about their craft that they jumped at the chance to join an organization dedicated to its excellence. When the Watergate scandal broke in the early 1970s, it sprayed investigative journalism with a glamour dust that brought an influx of young people into the field. Before Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s groundbreaking work sent ripples through newsrooms worldwide, the odd reporter spent six months chipping away at a big story, but true investigative journalism was a foreign concept in Canada. Source-sharing was unheard of, inter-provincial communication was non-existent and cross-outlet collaboration was akin to treason.

That environment spurred longtime cbc Toronto television reporter Jock Ferguson to rally fellow reporters Henry Aubin, Nick Fillmore and Jean-Claude Leclerc to found the CIJ. The organization promoted the idea that all good reporting was investigative. They wanted to shatter the shallow reporting that filled most newspapers at the time. “Everyone, no matter what their politics, agreed that journalism was very superficial,” remembers Aubin. “No one was rocking the boat with really investigative journalism. Most people wanted their paper as warm as the cup of coffee they were drinking while reading it.”

Their rallying cry struck a chord. By 1979, more than 400 journalists had joined the CIJ’s ranks. To reach its goal, the group organized workshops across the country to help journalists make their work more investigative. They focused on a range of strategies, from how to mine public documents and company reports for information to how reporters at small regional publications could win support and funding from their editors. The CIJ was organized on a shoestring budget and depended on the work of volunteers, but Aubin says the workshops were a great success. Within five years, there were investigative units at virturally all of Canada’s major dailies.

Such a groundswell of support wouldn’t have been possible without the influx of young journalists expanding the CIJ’s membership. While they helped the CIJ achieve the critical mass required to carry weight with publishers across the country, the young crowd also turned the CIJ on its head by wanting to expand the group’s mandate. By 1981, the CIJ was involved in political matters its founders never intended to address, helping squash 1981’s Freedom of Information bill, backing the Kent Commission’s recommendations to curtail media convergence and supporting the Edmonton Journal’s Marilyn Moysa when she went on trial for refusing to disclose sources in a story about unions at the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Although working on a number of fronts pleased the CIJ’s younger membership, it didn’t go over well with the group’s founders. By 1986, Ferguson, Aubin and Leclerc had all abandoned the CIJ. “I left the CIJ board when it became apparent to me that more board members wanted to generalize the organization,” says Ferguson. “I had put a lot of energy into helping build [it] and felt it was time for others to take the lead.” The group’s identity crisis came to a head at conference in 1990, where new members out-numbered old. By that time, some of the membership had already left to work on advocacy issues with the Canadian Committee to Project Journalists, formerly the CIJ’s Latin American committee, known today as Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. A sizeable contingent of remaining CIJ members wanted to expand the group’s focus beyond the promotion of investigative journalism to include advocacy and professional development, and change its name to the more inclusive-sounding Canadian Association of Journalists. “I thought keeping the name CIJ was a recipe for small membership,” says Stephen Bindman, CIJ president in 1988-89. “And there was another school of thought that all journalism was investigative anyway, so why call it the CIJ? Why include the elitist ‘investigative’?”

Although remaining founding director Nick Fillmore opposed the name change, insisting the group’s broad new focus would mean death by a thousand cuts, he lost and the CIJ became the CAJ. Having two organizations was supposed to usher in an era of heightened awareness of free expression issues by expanding the mandate and work of the CIJ. But as Fillmore predicted, neither of the CIJ’s offspring have achieved a comparable level of success and today wage an uphill battle for funding, members and relevancy.

o o o

The CJFE has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a glorified letter-writing campaign originating in Fillmore’s basement. Today, the group employs approximately 11 staffers, most of whom have journalism and NGO backgrounds. Since 2000, it has assisted 37 journalists in hostile situations around the world. Its goals are to defend the rights of journalists and contribute to the development of free expression at home and abroad. But according to some critics, the CJFE spends too much time and money on international campaigns at the expense of domestic projects and the journalists-in-exile it brings to Canada.

Joel Ruimy, former executive director, says the CJFE’s major projects include media training in countries such as Thailand and Sierra Leone, coordinating its Journalists in Distress Fund and organizing its annual Press Freedom Awards. But the CJFE’s biggest responsibility is managing alerts from the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, a worldwide network of organizations that communicates freedom violations and synchronizes letter-writing campaigns via e-mail.

Financially separate from, but managed by, the CJFE, IFEX occasionally advises the CJFE where to direct its Journalists in Distress Fund. It takes up so much time and so many resources that staff have little left to do more for the journalists they rescue. Initially, exiled journalists are hooked up with emergency financial aid and granted office space to hold meetings. The CJFE organizes the odd ESL training session and meet-and-greet with Canadian media heads, but only a handful of refugees get jobs this way. When they do, it’s dead-end, short-term contract work. Many are on welfare or freelancing for low-paying, foreign-language publications while holding down jobs in restaurants and gas stations.

For Kumsa, who has been in Canada for two years now, that isn’t good enough. He says the CJFE should take greater responsibility for finding its transplanted journalists “some kind of jobs related to media, but prior to that, helping them gain Canadian experience in the form of long- and short-term training.” Barrie Zwicker, former Vision TV director and current director of the citizen-based International Inquiry into 9/11, says the CJFE does good work but needs to do more than government lobbying. “The most important role of the media in society is to wake people up,” he says. “Where does the power really lie? What does it do? People need to see the elephant in the room.” Zwicker says that timidly- phrased protest letters aren’t enough when expression violations often come from the corporate world, shadow governments and military.

Many argue the CAJ suffers from a similar problem – with a long list of goals and short list of volunteers, many of its projects are underwhelming and fail to convince journalists they should join. Since rising from the ashes of the CIJ, the CAJ’s goal has been to promote excellence in journalism by offering workshops and lectures, awarding investigative efforts, speaking out on issues like media convergence and researching topical issues such as acceptable uses of hidden cameras.

But its ongoing struggle for money and members makes critics wonder how it can ever be effective. For instance, the CAJ receives money from the cbc, which also sometimes pays employees’ ways to CAJ conferences – something the CIJ, with its position of corporate non-sponsorship, might have avoided. “The old CIJ really had balls. When CIJ voted to become the CAJ, I was disappointed,” says Zwicker. “There was a softening of its mandate. Although CAJ has done a lot of good work over the years, it started taking corporate money, and then seeking it, and you know who calls the tune: it’s he who pays the piper.”

Because of funding issues, the CAJ has a full-time staff of only one and relies on volunteers to do the rest of the work, which is problematic given how few journalists are willing to donate their time. Of Canada’s huge pool of journalists, only a fraction – about 1,500 – belong to the CAJ. And only a fraction of those actually volunteer while the majority kicks back and expects the others to keep at it. Former president Robert Cribb felt the burn in 2002, after leading the organization for two years. “Nobody ever really wants to be president of the CAJ, it’s a horrible job. It’s tons of work for no money, and you spend your weekends and weeknights on it after working 10-hour days, so there’s nothing pleasant about it.” Even the social events hosted by chapters around the country, which try to lure new members into the fold with a mix of business and pleasure, aren’t enticing.

o o o

It’s the end of a 10-hour Thursday in October. The Elephant and Castle at Yonge and Gerrard is mad with the 7:30 dinner rush. In the balcony, 20 men and women from the CAJ’s Toronto chapter surround a line of tables, hunched over pints around a speaker at the centre of the scrum. National Post reporter Chris Wattie’s casual lecture on war reporting has drawn three times the crowd that usually shows up for the monthly pub night. Late-comers on the fringe of the group are out of luck, as Wattie’s words die on the cement walls that are the acoustic tomb of the pub. People twist toward the table, squint, strain, give up, sink deeper into their seats and drink deeper from their glasses. An hour-and-a-half later, Wattie has finished, and everyone stands for social hour. After handshakes and chatting, it’s 9:30 p.m. and most head home. When journalists hang out they often end up being competitive, insolent and slagging each other. Freelancers and journalism students might be into the “let’s-be-journalists-talking-about-being-journalists” scene, but pub night isn’t a big draw for most staffers.

Geoff Baker, a sports writer at The Toronto Star, joined the CAJ in 1994 so he could get the discounted rate for a weekend conference, but never renewed his membership. “It’s like j-school for people who haven’t been in j-school for 10 years or never went in the first place,” he says. It’s hard to learn at a conference where most people are schmoozing or learning how to write leads. Baker says if the CAJ wants to remain relevant, it needs to balance its existing activities for new writers with ones that will interest experienced writers as well.

He isn’t alone. Like many established journalists, Star media columnist Antonia Zerbisias says the CAJ has no real influence or impact in the media business in Canada. She blames its ineffectiveness on the inherent cheapness and laziness of journalists who don’t want to get involved. “It’s funny how little some seem to care about our craft; it astounds me,” she says. “During the CanWest editorial policy [debate], the [Montreal] Gazette people took a stand, and everyone else just bitched. Journalists are professional bitchers.” Zerbisias says many were too lazy or scared to say anything about the Aspers’s national editorial policy – and with good reason. When the CAJ announced its opposition, CanWest, previously a major supporter, stopped sponsoring the organization. It hurt the CAJ, but Cribb says he has no regrets. “If we’re not going to speak out on issues like that,” he says, “it’s time to fold up the tent and go home. I’d far prefer to go into debt than to shut up.”

Leaders of the CAJ and CJFE say it’s their willingness to take stands on controversial issues that individual reporters might shy away from that makes them essential and why their critics should support them, not deride them. “The more members we have, the more money we have, the more we can do,” says CAJ national director Jennifer Fowler. “The CAJ is faced with the challenge of growing itself because people have full-time lives and full-time jobs and tend to take for granted that the CAJ will keep running with or without them.” But if the CAJ wasn’t around to speak up for journalists’ rights, who would do it? Cribb says the CAJ has a long history of good work even if it can’t please everyone. He points to its recent campaign to protect journalists’ rights to protect their sources. Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O’Neill’s house was raided by the RCMP for information relating to her work on the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen deported to Syria, his birth country, by U.S. authorities while he was on a stop over in New York. Cribb also points to when the CAJ handed the Nova Scotia government its annual Code of Silence award for being the most secretive government department and having the highest freedom-of-information fees in Canada in 2002. Cribb did dozens of interviews, and the negative press led the government to ease up on access regulations. But before the CAJ brought it up, the public was unaware. Nor was it aware that journalists make only 20 per cent of all access requests; the remaining 80 per cent come from the general public itself.

The CJFE’s Ruimy says his organization does important work too, even if it goes largely unnoticed by journalists. The general public also benefitted from CJFE’s brief to Canadian government regarding Bill C-36. Its concerns over 2002’s anti-terrorism bill helped sew a sunset clause into the legislation, ensuring it would be reviewed in five years. And the CJFE changed the lives of journalists in Sierra Leone by acquiring a printing press and enforcing a code of ethics on journalists using it, thereby abolishing most of the blackmailing Sierra Leonean journalists once used to secure advertising. Ruimy says he wishes the CJFE could do more, especially for the foreign journalists it brings to Canada, but says his hands are tied because of under-funding. That’s why the CJFE doesn’t promise to line up careers for journalists-in-exile; it only promises safety.
But for refugees like Kumsa, being cut off from journalism is its own kind of death. So much so, that if he could, he would return to Ethiopia and revive Urjii. But he realizes that can’t happen, so he’s trying to make the best of his new life as a student. By all rights, the CJFE should be doing more for him, but when it is already stretched so thinly over so many projects, it isn’t possible. It’s a stark illustration of one of the CAJ’s philosophies – the organization is what its members make of it. And when there is too little money and too few people are involved, the organizations and their work appear irrelevant and ineffective when they are, in fact, essential. If journalists aren’t willing to work for the cause of free expression and against media convergence, no one else will pick up the slack. Without widespread support, organizations such as the CAJ and CJFE will disappear, taking the principles of a free press with them. If that happens, journalists will have no one to blame but themselves.

Mark Cripps, senior editor of The Stoney Creek News, strides into the Animal Control Centre with a mission. He’s here to take pictures for a regular animal adoption spot in his paper, called Pet Pause, which he started at a local girl’s suggestion.

“Hi Mark. I didn’t get my paper last week,” a woman at the counter greets him.

“Yeah, we’ve been having some problems with distribution lately,” Cripps sighs.

He doesn’t mention that the problems stem from the takeover of the paper by the Canadian newspaper and book-publishing giant, Torstar Corp., in June 2003. And he certainly doesn’t mention that the takeover could possibly mean that local features might become less frequent. He just prowls the room looking for photogenic subjects.

Cripps’s editorial domain is Stoney Creek, Ont. – population 55,000 – located on Lake Ontario’s western shore between Niagara’s wine region and Hamilton. It’s the kind of place travel writers would describe as “quaint” and “picturesque.” But Stoney Creek is more than tree-lined streets and sun-dappled lawns. A proud, outspoken community lives here. Cripps embodies it.

His paper is printed on 38 x 30 centimetre newsprint, folded neatly in half, tabloid-style, and delivered to 24,362 homes and businesses weekly. It’s a professional-looking paper with full-colour pictures, an attractive layout and a black, white and red banner across the top. Last year, it earned three Ontario Community Newspaper Association awards, including one for General Excellence. A quick flip through the pages of a fall 2003 issue reveals community-centred stories such as “Flag day revival underway” and “Hamilton set to welcome Road World Cycling Championships next week.”

The cycling story is important to residents not just because their schools will be closed that week, but because Stoney Creek is part of Hamilton. It has been since 2001 when Hamilton, pressured by the province, amalgamated it and four other surrounding communities into one megacity. At the time, the four communities opposed the plan and the struggle played out in newsprint: The Hamilton Spectator, the region’s dominant daily, also owned by Torstar, supported the policy, while the News and other local weeklies rallied against it. Now that they’re part of Hamilton, Stoney Creek residents want to reverse the decision and the News supports them.

But will it do so in the future? Under Torstar’s ownership, the News has been put under the Spectator’s management. And that’s raised concerns that the new structure could hurt the News’s ability to freely reflect its community – not only on amalgamation, but on other issues as well. “[The News] gives everyone a chance to voice their opinion,” says Dave Cage, executive director of the Stoney Creek Chamber of Commerce. Paul Attallah, associate director of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University, says the concern is one that applies not just to the News, but at every small paper that Torstar – and other media conglomerates – have bought up lately in pursuit of a business strategy known as regional convergence. “It could shut out other points of view,” he says. “And if people are unhappy, where can they go to get heard?”

In the Animal Control Centre, the cats gathering around Cripps suggest the answer. Politicians in Hamilton’s new city hall wanted to close the Stoney Creek shelter to cut costs, saying it duplicated the services of the Hamilton SPCA. Cripps wouldn’t have it. He barked about the issue in his columns, keeping it in the news. The centre stayed open.

Once he’s done taking pictures, he chats with the workers. The sun catches his eyeglasses, casting a glow around his head like some rebel saint.

“So Mark, have you heard any tips about what’s going to happen to us?” a worker asks.

“Why?”

“It’s budget time, and we’re not sure what’s going to happen to us.”

“Well,” he says, “We’re just going to put the pressure on again.”

Every week, Cripps finds himself playing out scenes like this and every week he’s convinced that community papers like the News represent more than the impersonal broadsheet and bylines of larger papers. “I take pride in getting as many people’s faces in the paper as I can each week,” says Cripps. These people aren’t just the subjects of the stories; they’re readers, news suppliers and critics as well. And the News’s staff are just as much a part of the community fabric as the people they cover. “The [staff at] that paper are really woven into the city,” agrees Leon Sauers, a Stoney Creek senior who’s been reading the News for as long as he can remember. “It’s not like a newspaper comes out as though it’s an obligation. They’re really part of the community.”

And that’s what’s at stake under Torstar’s new ownership structure: a situation where people in the community are involved in every step of their newspapers’ production from Monday to Friday. A situation where a week in the life of the paper is, in essence, a week in the life of Stoney Creek.

o o o

The News’s office is a two-level concrete slab in Stoney Creek’s industrial area. On the lawn, eraser-pink flowers bloom beside a picnic table. It’s a streamlined operation with one editor and three reporters, two of whom it shares with five other Hamilton-area weeklies that Torstar also bought when it acquired the News in 2003. (These papers are known as the Brabant Group, as they were under their former owner.) Cripps is 36 years old and has been working in the News’s editorial department for five years. Kevin Werner, one of the shared reporters, writes about 10 stories per week. Cripps and another reporter, Abigail Cukier, work alternate weekends just to get the work done.

This late-fall Monday morning, Cukier and Werner are out working on stories in Stoney Creek, while Cripps is attending a day-long editorial meeting with four other Brabant paper editors in the offices of The Dundas Star News, on the other side of Hamilton. The agenda calls for them to discuss this week’s stories, but there’s an air of uncertainty in the room. Five months after the takeover, Torstar has cut eight people from Brabant’s 65 member staff, mostly in the circulation, classified and distribution departments, and routed their responsibilities to the Spectator. The editors don’t know if Torstar will streamline them further, and no one from Torstar, or even the Spectator, has visited to formally tell them what will happen.

They’re not the first group of editors to feel such uncertainty. The deal that made the News and the rest of the Brabant Group part of Torstar was just the latest in a series of acquisitions the company has made in recent years in the name of regional convergence. It started in a big way in 1999, when Torstar nabbed four Southern Ontario dailies, including the Spectator, for $355 million. The next year it snagged Eedy Publications, with its 10 weekly community papers in Southwestern Ontario towns such as Fergus, Elora and Hanover Saugeen. Torstar next aligned itself with Southern Ontario’s Annex Publishing & Printing Inc. in 2000, acquiring two dailies and three weeklies in the Woodstock-Tilsonburg area. In 2003, Torstar swapped papers and paid an additional $30.6 million to Osprey Media Group for a printing company, the nine Brabant and Fairway weeklies and three others in the area. As a result, Torstar now covers Southern Ontario like the Irving newspaper dynasty covers New Brunswick.

Torstar manages most of its more than 70 weeklies through its Metroland community newspaper subsidiary. But in some cases, as with the News and the other Brabant papers, it’s arranged for one of its dailies to manage the weeklies in its region. What has this meant for the News? In addition to the staff cuts at Brabant’s circulation and distribution departments, the News’s production schedule has been shifted, so the paper is now published on Fridays rather than Wednesdays. Torstar also ordered a higher advertisement-to-editorial ratio, up to almost 70 to 30 from 60 to 40. “Really, bottom line, what it’s about is generating maximum efficiency so we can produce the best possible newspapers and other products in our market,” says Jagoda Pike, president of Torstar’s CityMedia Group, publisher of the Spectator and regional go-to for the News and other Brabant papers. “It’s eliminating duplication where we can; it’s eliminating waste.”

Pike may be number one in the Hamilton area, but the ultimate authority for what happens to the News and other local papers resides 70 kilometres to the east – in the Toronto Star building, an office tower located an hour’s drive down the Queen Elizabeth Way, at the foot of Yonge Street. With the looming skyscrapers and permanent rush hour that is downtown Toronto, we’re not in Kansas anymore – or, for that matter, Stoney Creek.

Robert Prichard is the man behind Torstar’s curtain. In 2002, fresh from 10 years as president of the University of Toronto, Prichard replaced David Galloway as Torstar’s chief executive officer – and immediately picked up where his predecessor left off. Prichard declined to be interviewed for this story, but he outlined his intentions in a 2003 National Post article in which he said, “Our shareholders don’t want us to make bet-the-business decisions. We think it’s better to grow through incremental, organic growth within our two core businesses. The modest bet.” More regional convergence, in other words.

As we’ve seen above, Torstar was already well down that path by the time Prichard took over. In replacing Galloway, Prichard inherited a company that, in the late 1990s, had followed a different course than its chief Canadian competitors, BCE, CanWest Global and Quebecor. While those other firms all pursued the late ’90s dream of synergizing cable, computer and print media, Torstar failed in its only major stab at media convergence – a proposed $4 billion merger with Rogers Media that fell flat. As a result, it soon found itself free to embark on the regional convergence trend, unencumbered by the crippling debt that would soon weigh down its rivals.

In opting for regional convergence, Torstar was following a trend that began in the United States a few years earlier. Also known as “clustering,” regional convergence is a financial strategy similar to one you would adopt in a game of Monopoly, but instead of buying houses and hotels, you’d buy weekly newspapers and dailies. Rather than owning properties scattered across the board to earn a few dollars here and there, you’d concentrate them in one area where they are more valuable as a group. When properties are clustered together, it’s easy to reduce the duplication of services in the region and generate profit. Each property’s value then lies in how well it serves its niche audience within the broader ownership area – whether that’s providing a regional or community-based perspective. In some cases, the strategy can extend beyond newspapers to include local and regional broadcasting – a notion that explains Torstar’s rumoured interest in acquiring Craig Media Inc.’s Toronto1 television station, which is already up for sale despite being launched just last fall. Although Prichard denies any current intentions to purchase the station, putting in a bid at a later date hasn’t been ruled out.
Though community papers’ perceived status is more like that of Baltic Avenue than Park Place, this view is misplaced. For many readers, a community paper is often the only available source of purely local news. This translates into a higher readership: A 2003 Canadian Community Newspapers Association survey found that 69 per cent of people had read the last issue of their community paper, while only 47 per cent had read the daily newspaper from the previous day. More readers, coupled with weeklies’ relatively low costs, translates into more profit. Consider Torstar, which owns four dailies in Southern Ontario and more than 70 community papers. In 2002, Torstar’s Metroland subsidiary reported an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $68.2 million, up $16 million from the previous year. (In the third quarter ended September 30, 2003, community papers’ revenues rose $6.4 million from the previous third quarter to $79.5 million.) Torstar’s regional dailies’ EBITDA, on the other hand, reached only $19.1 million in 2002, up a mere half-million from the previous year.

Within Torstar’s large group of community weeklies, there are undoubtedly some winners. But it’s the obvious failures that have staff at its newly acquired papers worried, their readers on edge and critics of regional convergence raising red flags. Take the case of The Canadian Statesman, the community paper in Bowmanville, Ont., a lakeside community about as far east of Toronto as Stoney Creek is west. For four generations, the James family owned the Statesman, before selling it to Metroland in 2000. Now, most locals now regard it as a wrapper for flyers. Metroland closed the office in Bowmanville and moved it to Oshawa – at the prophetic address of Farewell Avenue. People still come in to the James family printing business to complain about what Metroland has done to their community paper.

When this example is brought up to Cripps, he winces. “Do the dailies understand the community paper?” he asks rhetorically. “It’s not about managing assets, it’s about managing a community. People’s emotions are involved.”

Not all editors see it this way. Kirk LaPointe, who edited the Spectator before moving to The Vancouver Sun, argues that convergence doesn’t necessarily jeopardize community papers’ editorial integrity. “There is no centralized [editorial] control anywhere,” he says. “I think that’s one of the great fallacies at the moment.” And when it comes to the News, Jagoda Pike agrees. On regional issues where the Spectator’s stance differs from the News, she says there won’t be any pressure to adopt the daily’s point of view. “They write what they write,” she says. LaPointe adds that regional convergence is logical in the fragmented media environment – it’s just another way to avoid duplication and maximize efficiency. In cases like that of the Statesman, though, regional convergence proves to be a tragic irony: in their attempt to maximize efficiency, major corporations risk alienating their most loyal and lucrative readers – the readers of community papers – whom the company hopes most to reach.

o o o

Tuesday morning. Cripps is at his desk in the News’s office, fielding angry calls and e-mails from advertisers and readers. Thousands of homes didn’t get the paper last Friday because of wrinkles in the new distribution system. Sauers is one of them. He’s upset that the News won’t be delivered to certain areas of Stoney Creek that now aren’t part of the new megacity. “All of a sudden when [the News] changed ownership, they no longer delivered [to our condo]. We had to drive to the News office to pick up a copy, which to me is ridiculous,” he says. “Now they’ve finally started to deliver it to our building, but I understand they’ve discontinued the rural areas.”

In addition to shrinking the paper’s circulation department, Torstar has fired about 650 newspaper carriers, mostly kids, who delivered the News and Brabant papers. Now Ad-Bag, a company that delivers flyers, does it. “Do they care about the paper?” Cripps asks once the calls subside. He silently shrugs his response. But for Pike, refining distribution is a way to increase efficiency and lower costs. “[It’s] another example where we’re trying to have one carrier go to one door.” Back in the fall, Cripps often met people who used to deliver the News. At the time, he felt that the News’s carriers were about more than distribution-they were another way to involve the community in the paper. “I like to see the paper make money,” he said. “[But] it’s sad. We’re saving money, but we’re also losing kids’ involvement.” Now Cripps feels that the loss of the carriers had fewer ramifications in the community than he expected. Readers however, still lament the loss of the local carriers. “It’s unfortunate they got rid of the Stoney Creek carriers,” says Sauers. “Many of them were young people and were doing a great job.”
When he’s not fielding calls about deliveries, Cripps is hearing from readers about other recent changes at the News. Michael Gemmell, a long-time reader and curator of a local museum, is among them. He says he has noticed the News running fewer local stories and more regional items – and he’s not happy about it. “There’s a larger paper, the Spectator, that covers the regional things. If I’m looking to the Stoney Creek News, I would prefer to have more of Stoney Creek specifically.”
If Gemmel’s instincts are accurate, a likely factor would be Torstar’s possible decision to give the News access to and the right to run stories written at other Torstar papers, including the Spectator. That move has yet to happen but if it did, the decision would have positive aspects as well. “It makes a lot of sense to avoid excessive duplication,” says LaPointe. “There were, over the years, a lot of stories and photos that were often taken by two services when one was only needed.” He also argues that writers at the smaller papers should appreciate the fact that this change means their stories are now available to other Torstar papers. “One of the best things about regional convergence is that it permits community papers to bring their work to a wider market.”

Pike agrees. “Essentially, the weeklies will be able to come into that loop which already exists,” she says. “In fact, it will allow them to be able to focus on what their interest is in the community. At the same time they’re able to pick up from a larger news file. So if anything, it will provide for greater variety and greater quality.”

What’s good for the paper’s staff is one thing. Most News readers might argue, on the other hand, that there’s no substitute for local coverage of local stories. One of the News’s most popular features, for example, is the police briefs – concise kernels of crime and punishment in the community. Every Wednesday, Cripps treks to the Community Policing Centre to harvest them. Today is no exception. The officers milling about greet him by name.

Cripps is accustomed to working with the police. About two years ago he drove past a hospital parking lot and saw a security guard chasing a kid who was trying to break into a car. Cripps stopped his car and yelled for the guard to jump in. Once they cornered the kid, Cripps got out of the car, pushed him against the wall and barked, “You’re not going anywhere.”

Now, in the policing centre, Cripps waits for the briefing officer with Marg Marshall the co-ordinator of the centre and the committee chair of a police-sponsored clothing drive.

“Are we going to get the paper on Wednesdays still?” Marshall asks.

“No, they’ve moved the day to Friday.”

“That’s good because when I get the paper, I open it and read it immediately. I end up trying to read it and cook supper at the same time,” says Marshall. “I only can read so much, so the next time I’m able to look at the paper is on the weekend anyway.”

It’s the kind of scenario Torstar and its advertisers imagined when it changed the paper’s distribution day. With Friday delivery, people are more apt to read the paper – and the flyers and ads that come with it – over a leisurely Saturday breakfast, after which they may go shopping. The adjusted workweek is good news for Cripps as well. Under the old schedule the paper would hit the press on Monday, so most of the work fell on Fridays and Mondays. This meant spending the weekend worrying about unfinished stories rather than finding more news.

But Cripps doesn’t drown Marshall in these details. He just says, “It’s good for us too since most news happens in the middle of the week and now we can cover the weekends. Some decisions we don’t agree with, but this one we do.”

o o o

By the time Thursday morning rolls around, most of the week’s stories are written, submitted and edited. There’s more tension in the air at the News office, as writers pound out last-minute items to fill holes and Cripps races to finish laying out the paper for the 1 p.m. deadline. Shrouded by newspapers and notepads, he sits on the edge of his seat, hunched over his keyboard. A Tim Hortons coffee cup sits beside him. He hums commercial jingles while he works. Between bursts of flurried hunt-and-peck style typing, he taps his foot impatiently.

Werner pops his head into Cripps’s office and watches him working with the layout on his computer. Cripps chops an amalgamation story to fit an allotted space and asks Werner to find a story that will fill a spot on the front page.

“Is it a brief?” Werner asks warily.

“Well, I have an open space,” says Cripps. “Eight inches.”

“It’s a brief,” Werner says, feigning annoyance. “I’m going to do all this work for a brief.”

Cripps sighs loudly as if he’s dealing with an errant child.

Briefs are more common now that Torstar has increased the percentage of ads in the paper to almost 70 per cent from 60 per cent. It’s true at the News and it’s true at other Brabant papers. “We can’t run as many stories, and we can’t run really [long] articles,” says Julie Slack, editor of The Hamilton Mountain News.

By 11:55 a.m., Cripps is on his fourth mug of coffee. Forty-five minutes before deadline, Werner finishes the story Cripps asked for – a piece on getting the flu shot.

“You’re the best, Kev,” Cripps says.

“So you’re going to shoehorn it into that little five-inch space, huh?” Werner asks, grinning at Cripps like a mouse taunting a cat.

“I’ll shoehorn you into a little five-inch space if you don’t smarten up.”

At 1:10 p.m. Cripps is done. He rolls his chair away from his desk and raises his arms in victory, grinning like a kid. “You’re 10 minutes late, buddy,” Werner says. Cripps ignores him.

o o o

Early Friday morning. Across Stoney Creek, the latest edition of the News – fresh off the press and 44 pages thick – is hitting readers’ porches. In the News office, a co-worker hands Cripps a copy. He thumbs through it. On page six is a de-amalgamation story and on the next page is Werner’s flu brief (it turns out the text runs three and a half inches). Page 10 houses the police report (they finally found that missing 83-year-old man). And in the corner of page 20 is Pet Pause, with four cats – Mickey, Cupcake, Scarlet and Willow mugging for the camera. Four pages over is the picture Cripps took of Marg Marshall and two police officers on Wednesday. “It’s a good issue,” he says. “It’s got good pictures and good stories.”

The phone rings in Cripps’s office It’s a reader complaining about Cukier’s bad grammar. As editor, he takes the bad with the good. On balance, he says, most readers are willing to overlook small errors.
Museum curator and reader Gemmell, agrees: “We’re all about community identity, and we’re partnering [with the News] in that respect.” He continues, “I certainly would encourage the retention of the News as an independent entity because it’s invaluable to somebody like myself, not only for providing news, but allowing us to get information out as a non-profit place.” Cage, who works at the Stoney Creek Chamber of Commerce, concurs. “It’s very much our community paper. We think of it as ours,” he says. “I can’t see [the Spectator] telling Mark what to do.” Cage laughs. “He’s very much his own person.”

Another issue down, Cripps and his staff turn their attention to next week. Another paper, another test. Not just to get the stories, but to do so while continuing to adapt to the new reality of life under regional convergence – a phenomenon that tests a community paper’s ability to keep producing good issues while turning a hefty profit for their owners. A 17-year-old boy once approached Cripps at a local banquet and told him he was his hero. “Keep sticking it to them,” the boy said. Cripps was humbled and speechless. “I don’t think of myself as anybody’s hero. But that just makes me want to write harder. I know I’m never going to make $77,000 a year [as the editor of a daily], but I believe in the value of community papers.”

The search for the real Matthew Fraser began last September with a phone call to the editor-in-chief’s office at the National Post. Fraser had left a shallow footprint in media circles up to his surprise appointment, at age 44, to the Post’s top newsroom job four months earlier. Nobody knew much about this guy who had suddenly become one of the most influential journalists in Canada. His success begged a profile.

“Mr. Fraser is too busy,” came the curt reply from Alexandra Macfarlane, his personal assistant at the time.

Will he be available at some later date?

“Not likely.”

If at first you don’t succeed, goes an old journalism adage, do an end run. I e-mailed Fraser, hoping to reach him directly. “Dear Adrienne,” replied the attentive Ms. Macfarlane on October 3. “Unfortunately, Mr. Fraser is not available for interviews at this time. Best of luck with your story.”
She wasn’t the only one who’d reject me and then wish me luck. I received that message again and again and again as I phoned and e-mailed my way through a long list of sources who might give me a better idea of what makes Matthew Fraser run.

Mark Stevenson, managing editor of the Post: “I’m too busy to talk to you.”

Alison Uncles, Stevenson’s predecessor: “I’m sorry I’m not able to comment. Good luck with your article.”

Jonathan Kay, editorials editor: “I can’t comment.” Even anonymously? “No, I’m sorry. I can’t comment.”

Terence Corcoran, editor-in-chief of the Financial Post. “Our contact – good, bad or indifferent – is just between us.” He added that he doesn’t like to talk about anybody.

Sarah Murdoch, associate editor of the National Post: “I’ve been talking to some of my colleagues, and we agree there’s no benefit for us to talk to you.”

Those are just snips from a tale of turndowns that spun from Christie Blatchford (“I’m not sure this is something I want to do…”) to Keith (“No comment”) Spicer, who was chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission when Fraser worked there.
Leonard Asper, chief executive officer of CanWest Global Communications Corporation, the media conglomerate that owns the Post and Global TV network, didn’t return my call. Neither did his brother, David, chairman of the Post and Fraser’s immediate boss.

The only Post person who talked to me for more than a minute or two was Gillian Cosgrove, who thought Fraser had refused to see me because my piece was certain to be a hatchet job. That would have been easy. Before his leap to the top, Fraser’s reputation, while sketchy (“He keeps to himself,” I kept hearing), was pretty negative. People saw him as an opportunist who rubbed shoulders with all the right suits in the ownership class of Canadian media. He was pompous and arrogant, a hothead who blustered against people and situations he knew little about. He was a pest who didn’t know when to stop needling. He had no time for anybody who couldn’t further his career. It was the reverse of the Jekyll and Hyde story, according to Antonia Zerbisias, The Toronto Star columnist who spent a season fighting with Fraser as co-host of CBC Newsworld’s Inside Media. “At the full moon, it was Jekyll who came out.”

But what about Fraser’s other side? The bright scholar who gathered post-graduate degrees – including one from the Sorbonne – like bowling trophies? The talented writer who has published three books, one of which, Quebec Inc.: French-Canadian Entrepreneurs and the New Business Elite is considered a seminal work in its field? The enterprising reporter at The Globe and Mail who made and kept great contacts? The charming lunch companion and boisterous one-of-the-boys? The wit with the perceptive eye for, and sharp insights into, business and politics? The tennis player who never questioned a call? These qualities came out as I struggled to get as balanced a picture of Fraser as I could. Here was a guy who could affect the lives and livelihoods of a lot of journalists at the Post and beyond, to say nothing of the course of Canadian journalism itself. What got him to that perch?

As we know, he wouldn’t tell me. Neither would anyone else in a position to know. So I tried looking at the circumstances of his success. Before his ascension, Fraser had three jobs. His main one was associate professor of communications in the School of Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson University, while he moonlighted as a columnist for the Financial Post and co-host of Inside Media.

I looked at the column first. From 1999 to 2000, it was a tough-minded weekly look at the business and regulatory side of Canadian broadcasting, in which Fraser railed against the owners of the communications industry, particularly the late Izzy Asper and his Global television network, for using loopholes in CRTC regulations to build their empires. He agreed with the Friends of Public Broadcasting and its support for the CBC. “Global had built an impressive broadcasting asset in Canada,” he wrote in his second book, Free-for-All: the Struggle for Dominance on the Digital Frontier, “while giving precious little back to the country whose regulatory system had fattened its profits and financed its international expansion.” He slammed Global’s lack of Canadian content, calling it the “Love Boat network” and an “idea-free zone.” In October of 1999, Leonard Asper wrote to the Post criticizing Fraser for repeatedly and, in his mind, unfairly targeting CanWest Global. “Every time Mr. Fraser seeks to denigrate the broadcasting industry, he picks CanWest…. Perhaps Mr. Fraser could let us know what CanWest has done to deserve his persistent rage. He is so far removed from the industry that he shouldn’t be taken seriously, but nevertheless the national platform you have provided to him to pick his petty fights is something we would ask you to reconsider.”

By the summer of 2000, the prospect of a deal between Conrad Black’s Hollinger Inc. and CanWest Global to buy Hollinger’s Canadian newspaper chain was in the air, and Fraser was all for it. He argued that Izzy Asper “must now turn toward a ‘convergence’ strategy for CanWest Global, which is well positioned to leverage its powerful television network to seek synergies in multi-platform deals with other Canadian media groups. A more logical alliance for Global would be Hollinger Inc.” That fall, in a $3.2-billion deal, CanWest Global bought Hollinger’s 14 big-city dailies, 126 smaller papers and half of the Post (it would acquire the other half later).

But Fraser didn’t just buy into convergence. “At CanWest Global,” he wrote, “CEO Leonard Asper must feel unfairly treated by the regulators.” What Fraser described less than a year earlier as CanWest’s “tentacles” had now become “well-plotted acquisitions.” He turned on his friends at the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, claiming spokespersom Ian Morrison, and his wife, Pauline Couture, had a conflict of interest and were not acting in the interest of the CBC. At the time, Couture was involved in a lawsuit with the Aspers.

Through 2001, as the convergence dreams of Bell Globemedia and others fell apart, Fraser insisted that CanWest’s strategy would hold up, referring to it as a “smart money merger.” To him, CanWest was a model of how a conglomerate should work. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone apologize for the owners of the communications industry so vigorously as Matthew Fraser has done in his column,” a prominent business columnist told me.

o o o

In early 2002, Fraser interviewed the man he’d been lauding for the past two years. This was before Inside Media, when he was hosting a cable show on the i channel called i on media. His guest was Izzy Asper, chairman of CanWest Global and patriarch of the Asper clan. Asper was there to defend his national editorials and Fraser was there to give him a platform.

It was well known that CanWest had a draconian attitude toward its employees. Nobody at the Post or at CanWest’s 14 other major market dailies would forget the brutal tactics the company used to put down a newsroom uprising at the Montreal Gazette last year over CanWest’s national editorials. (This past February the Gazette finally reached an agreement with the Montreal Newspaper Guild that allows its reporters to speak out against CanWest without fear of reprisal.) Many Gazette journalists withheld their bylines and 77 of them signed an open letter condemning the must-run editorials as undermining local autonomy. Immediately, a “Reminder/ advisory to all staff” from management went up on newsroom bulletin boards. It reminded them of their obligation “of primary loyalty to [the employer],” and warned they could be suspended, or even fired, for revealing confidential information about the company and its owners or engaging in gossip or speculation.

David Asper, whom a group of Gazette writers called the “ideological pitbull of the Asper clan,” weighed in with a speech denouncing the protesters as childish and accusing them of leaking inside information to competitors. “If these people in Montreal are so committed, why don’t they just quit and have the courage of their convictions. Maybe they should go out, and for the first time in their lives, take a risk, put their money where their mouth is and start their own paper.”

“David Asper has come to my attention,” wrote the late Dalton Camp, “because of his remarkably abusive oratorical style, which is striking for its bullying tone. The most common kind of bully is the bullying son of a rich man. The world, alas, is full of them.”

But on Fraser’s i on media cable show, there was no need for the rich man to bully anyone. Throughout the hour-long interview, Fraser lobbed soft questions across a kidney-shaped coffee table and called his guest Izzy. The discussion touched on everything from the Hollinger buyout to Asper’s days as a Liberal politician. Still, he kept a professional distance. Some highlights:

“At what moment did you decide to get into broadcasting and get out of politics? What light bulb went off in your head?” Fraser asked.

“Good, very erudite question,” Asper responded with a flash of teeth. “I should never have gone into public life [but] I’m very glad for the experience I got. It really told me… how the world works… but I did not enjoy it.”

Later, Fraser asked about the critics who charge that Global has no quality Canadian programming.

“That’s a media myth,” Asper replied. “We do not broadcast, never have from day one, one minute more American programming than CTV does. And the rebuttal to that myth is that not only do we not run any more, we spend more money, proportionate to audience, on quality Canadian programming, drama, children’s programming and variety programming than CTV does.”

Fraser, who didn’t question Asper’s use of CTV as a model for quality Canadian programming, went on to ask about the CRTC. “Is it irritating to genuflect in front of regulators?”

“In the U.S., in Australia, in New Zealand, in Ireland, wherever we are, license renewal is automatic. You don’t have to bow and scrape and yes sir, yes sir, three bags full. It’s automatic. You write a letter. The whole license renewal situation in Canada is utterly archaic.”

Fraser asked how Asper saw himself as a media baron.

“I’ve often said that if you’re a press baron it doesn’t bring you any new friends, it only brings you a better class of enemies.”

Then Fraser got to the heart of the interview: national editorials. Asper’s critics, he said, “are beating you up about editorials and so forth… Do you think it has been concocted by the Toronto media?”

“When we bought,” Asper said defensively, “I said, of course, we intended to make our point of view heard. That’s one of the joys of being a publisher-in-chief… So we’re not doing anything we didn’t forecast and we’re not doing anything close to what the blind, one-eyed critics are saying we’re doing: threatening freedom of the press, ordaining censorship. That is just utterly misguided, and deliberate in some cases, mischaracterized garbage.”

“I can’t wait to write my next column, Izzy,” Fraser said and cut to commercial.

One year later, Fraser got a letter from Izzy Asper. It was a long letter of condolence in which Asper offered his sympathy on the death of Fraser’s wife, Rebecca Gotlieb, of cancer. “Izzy was at his Palm Beach residence at the time,” Fraser later wrote, “and he insisted that I come down to get away and reflect on the meaning of life. At first I balked at his invitation. But Izzy kept insisting, so a couple of weeks later I got on a plane and flew down to Palm Beach.”

(The account of his visit was part of an in memoriam Fraser wrote in the Post after Asper’s death on October 7, 2003).

“Izzy and his wife, Babs, welcomed me affectionately and put their magnificent beachfront estate at my disposal. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Izzy had already planned, and was ready to orchestrate an entire program to cheer me up.

“One day, we jumped in his vintage Mercedes and Izzy gave me a guided tour of Palm Beach’s most opulent mansions. We stopped in front of the resplendent residences of Conrad Black, Gerry Schwartz, and assorted American plutocrats whose names escape me.”

“In the evenings, Izzy and Babs took me to posh restaurants where Izzy recounted, with great flourish, hysterically funny details of his greatest triumphs and setbacks. Later in the evening, back at the Asper estate, Izzy and I sat up drinking until the small hours of the morning. As the brandy flowed generously, Izzy chain-smoked and told me more hilarious stories about his zany escapades in business and politics.”

“You were the perfect guest,” Asper told Fraser at the visit’s end
On April 30, 2003, CanWest announced that founding editor-in-chief Ken Whyte and deputy editor Martin Newland, the two defining figures of the Post, were fired. They were replaced by David Asper, as chairman of the Post, and Matthew Fraser as editor-in-chief. They were given three years to turn around a publication that was losing more than $20 million a year and showed no signs of staunching the bleeding.
Within two months of the announcement, a stampede of name writers had quit the paper. Gone were the marquee columnists Blatchford, Mark Steyn, David Frum and Paul Wells. There were other defections – Scott Feschuk, Robert Benzie, Mark Hume, Derek De Cloet, Maria Jimenez, Susan Delacourt among them – but not all of them were running from Matthew Fraser. Some left as a gesture of loyalty to Whyte and Newland, who had put together a quality newspaper with a quirky, cheeky style that they loved. Others, like Wells, who epitomized the style, were fussy about whom they’d work for. Wells had a list of preferred names. Fraser wasn’t on it.

Had he known Fraser would continue to put out Whyte’s paper, Wells might have changed his mind. For the new editor-in-chief has altered little since he’s been on the job. The Post has a new slogan, “Your Canada, your Post,” which reflects a mellowing of the anti-Canadian tone that hurt the paper’s readership and credibility. Otherwise, the formula of celebrities, sex and intriguing trivia remains unchanged. And, of course, the Post retains its role as the voice of Canadian conservatism, with the spun polls to prove it.

Some media watchers, such as Carleton University journalism and communication professor Andrew Cohen, say it’s too soon to judge Fraser’s performance. Others see Fraser’s sticking to the status quo as a welcome thing. “The good news is he hasn’t wrecked the paper,” a longtime journalist tells me. “It has really held up well, given the rather devastating nature of the sudden firing of the two people, the guys who founded the paper and put their personal imprint on everything. In their absence, Fraser steps into what I thought was a terrible void… and on that basis, I would say he’s done really well. The quality of the paper has been maintained.”

Others see some slippage. Donna Logan, director of the school of journalism at the University of British Columbia, feels that the quality of writing has dropped since the exodus of star writers such as Blatchford and Steyn, and she doesn’t think the present writers can make up for them. She may be right, given that they’ve been replaced on the op-ed page by the likes of Colby Cosh, a graduate (like Whyte) of the Ted Byfield school of journalism, and Ann Coulter, the she-wolf of the American right who once wrote that she wished Timothy McVeigh had chosen to blow up The New York Times instead of an office building in Oklahoma.

Christopher Waddell, another Carleton professor, sees an increase in CanWest shared stories, especially out of Ottawa. He believes this kind of boilerplate will ultimately lead to a decline in quality stories across the board.

As a caretaker editor – so few changes have been made, maybe curator is a better word – Fraser has kept faith with the Asper’s main concerns: the health of private television operators, lower taxes for rich people and unquestioning loyalty to the State of Israel. One of Fraser’s few innovations – CBC Watch, which invites readers to complain about bias at the public broadcaster – is itself open to accusations of bias in favour of the first Asper concern. “If Fraser were hit by a bus today,” a prominent writer told me, “his legacy would be CBC Watch, which is a standing insult to ethics because it has no disclaimer about Post ownership by a CBC competitor.”

The Post is clearly in the service of CanWest Global in another way. “It’s a crime,” the writer said, “the gushes they print about Global shows.” He pointed out that the Globe, though owned by the same company that owns CTV, doesn’t go in for that kind of self-serving programming.
Still, to Fraser’s credit, the Post remains recognizably the Post, the paper whose editorial verve since its birth in 1998 has challenged the other major papers to get better or get out of the way. Unfortunately for the Post, they got better.

As for Fraser, he barely considers himself a public figure – and that’s the way he wants it. Last February 6, I wrote him an old-fashioned letter and sent it special delivery. In it, I again asked for an interview “in the interest of getting all the facts correct and in order to do your career the most justice.”

On February 11, he replied by e-mail. “I do not give interviews,” he wrote in part, “except on issues concerning the media industries – and, recently, on the subject of my latest book. I sometimes speak publicly on behalf of the National Post, but I do not give interviews about myself.
“You should not feel singled out, as I have consistently turned down all interview requests by journalists wishing to write profiles of me. I am indifferent to whether a proposed article might be positive or negative; I simply do not give interviews.”

In that case, let me give the last word to Zerbisias, Fraser’s erstwhile sparring partner on Inside Media. Besides his lack of preparation and constant retakes, another thing that bugged Zerbisias was Fraser’s attitude toward the people who served him. He made no effort to learn the names of the crew or even that of the woman who did his makeup. “There was no point,” Zerbisias explained, “in sucking down.”

The Rogers campus at 1 Mount Pleasant Rd. in Toronto is a towering, pinnacled, cathedral-like edifice of brown brick and mirrored green glass. The lobby is sunlit and impersonal with white floors and grey and white granite walls, three-storey windows, and a giant stone and steel spiral staircase. Marketing Magazine is cloistered on the seventh floor and is just one of the 88 publications and supplements that are spread out over four floors. There’s an uncomfortable, penitent air to the place.

Everyone is quiet and busy in Marketing’s workspace. You can hear change jingling and the muffled thump of loafers on thin, grey-striped carpet as people walk around their grey cubicles. The place smells like a new car and the glass-fronted offices and big windows give it a zoo-like, institutional feel. People speak in hushed tones, no phones ring, no one hangs out around the coffee maker making chitchat – there is no coffee maker. Large windows allow bright light, but it’s a little cold, in more ways than one.

Recent firings and a downturn in the advertising sector have meant hard times for Marketing. The 96-year-old publication laid off 11 people last May, reduced its frequency from weekly to biweekly for the summer, and cut its page count. Low advertising revenue, a wrongful dismissal suit and a reputation for being “boring” have also haunted the magazine. Marketing may not be the holy book of the advertising industry anymore – maybe it never was – but its been given the King James revamp all the same. Redesigned to attract readers and advertisers back into the fold, the new Marketing debuted on March 15, 2004. Stan Sutter, associate publisher and editorial director, is convinced the relaunch will answer all Marketing’s prayers.

o o o

It’s November, four months prior to the relaunch, and Sutter is sitting in his obscenely organized office that he swears is usually a mess (“I just straightened it five minutes ago”). The piles of multi-coloured folders and papers are so neatly stacked that it’s hard to believe him. With his messy, sandy-grey hair, silver-rimmed glasses and rolled up shirt sleeves, Sutter comes across as a nice guy. His quiet voice betrays little emotion, although he can’t stop gesturing with his big hands – they’re like manicured baseball gloves – as he talks about the vision he developed for Marketing over his 18 years with the magazine.

Sutter started at Marketing full-time in 1986. He became news editor in 1993, was promoted to editor in 1996, and became associate publisher and editorial director in May 2002. After editor Jim McElgunn was laid off in May 2003, Sutter floated back down to share editorial duties with managing editor Margaret Nearing, while still overseeing the magazine in his associate publisher role. Marketing’s last revamp was in 1993, when it became obvious that it needed to stay current in design and function. “You always have to guard against being seen as boring and stodgy,” says Sutter. That has been a particular challenge for Marketing, which started in 1908 and remained an independent publication until bought by Maclean Hunter in 1954 (Rogers in turn bought Maclean Hunter in 1994). Plans for the latest revamp began last July when Sutter hired Liz Torlee of Kaleidovision Marketing Communications Consulting to find out what readers thought. Her recommendations were “harsh” and worded in “very unvarnished terms,” says Sutter.

Torlee found that Marketing’s readers wanted instant gratification. They liked headlines. They liked to skim. They wanted deep analysis but also short articles about trail-blazers and innovators. Marketing is giving it to them, and even considered changing its format from tabloid to standard magazine size and becoming a monthly. Instead, a daily e-mail delivers snappy news shorts, while the weekly printed version carries in-depth, analytical features.

But these upgrades may not be enough to sway disillusioned readers, such as Gary Prouk, president of Sebastian Consultancy, whose office is located on Bloor Street not far from Marketing. With its checkerboard black-and-ochre marble floors, a portrait of Prouk as the Mona Lisa, and walls decorated with Ralph Steadman’s illustrations from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the cathedral seems more than a few blocks away. There’s even a “Jesus helps me trick people” bumper sticker. To Prouk, the pre-relaunch Marketing resembles an ugly, small-town newspaper. “It looks apologetic,” he says. “For a magazine that’s supposed to cover communication arts, advertising, graphics and design, its looks have never been entrusted to the proper parents, someone to help it dress better.” He says major players in the Canadian ad industry rarely pay attention to Marketing because it has no investigative journalism or critical reporting and has degenerated into a public relations medium.

Except for Prouk’s contributions, of course. After writing a popular series of columns about the 2002 Winter Olympics, as well as several sarcastic letters to the editor, Prouk received a standing invitation from Sutter to write whatever he wants, not a word changed. But this – and his friendship with Sutter – wasn’t enough to stop him from cancelling his subscription to the hard-copy edition. “There’s no reason why some of the writing shouldn’t be about issues that are of real interest,” he says. “If there’s a reason to complain, complain.” He worries that Marketing is being controlled by its advertisers, that Rogers’s management pressures it to play safe. “No one wants to upset the Pope,” he says.

Brian Harrod, formerly of Harrod & Mirlin Advertising, agrees. He says the Association of Canadian Advertisers has too much control over it. “If it’s provocative, there are fast and furious complaints,” he says. “The ACA encourages the magazine to be bland. Marketing needs these people, but if it could run without advertising, it would be better.” Harrod points to Campaign, the magazine for Britain’s ad industry, as an example of what Marketing should be. Campaign is well known for its scathing critiques of ad campaigns, and Harrod thinks this freedom to say what needs to be said stems from its independence. The Canadian ad industry, he says, craves a trade paper that can be just as honest. Harrod says the only frank writing in Marketing appears when Prouk gets published, but admits that hiring someone like him might elicit more anger from advertisers than interest from lapsed readers. The ACA denies leaning on Marketing to pull its punches. “Trade magazines can be very pandering,” says president and CEO Ron Lund, “very kowtow towards the industry, and this magazine isn’t.” That’s not to say the ACA thinks the magazine is perfect. “If we have one complaint about Marketing,” says Lund, “it’s that they need to bring more ad stories to their content. They’re a very agency-centric magazine.”

Marketing always has something to atone for, it seems.

o o o

Back in the Rogers cathedral, the only disorganized area on the seventh floor is the boardroom Marketing shares with other Rogers publications and outside businesses. There’s a conspicuous pile of electronics next to the glass wall – black and grey phones, keyboards, a tan computer monitor and tower. In a place with no lint on the carpet you have to wonder: are these things here in case someone has a bad day and needs to go Office Space? “Oh, no,” says Sutter. “You can’t do that. I would probably get a memo and security wouldn’t be happy.” Sutter is deadpan, but not sarcastic. He actually looks scared. And maybe he should be. Not everyone has as much faith in the revival as he does. Journalists and insiders in the advertising sector note that while Marketing had been the trade magazine for the poshest, most glamorous guys in the industry, it has been softening and losing money partially because it doesn’t listen to its own people. Many staff members, particularly those in the advertising department, complained among themselves about the decision to go biweekly last summer and this past holiday season, saying that the weekly schedule was one of the magazine’s only edges over its competition. “I’ve talked to previous clients,” says one ex-staffer, “who have said to me, ‘Marketing is no longer considered the bible.'”

Many people in the ad industry have been reading Marketing their entire careers, Sutter says, making it tough for the magazine not to be seen as predictable. He admits that magazines can fall into ruts, and there are times at every publication when the news is not as exciting or as fast-paced as the editors might like it to be. “It does cut both ways,” Sutter says. “You don’t want to be trendy, but you do want to be contemporary. It’s a fine balance between being totally frivolous and being so deadly earnest and boring that you become a duty read.” With the relaunch, the tone of the columns will be more provocative and they will have more intriguing themes, he says, but adds, “Marketing and advertising is a serious business. It’s not all Skittles and beer.”

Jim McElgunn agrees. He was editor of Marketing for exactly a year before being let go. He thinks Marketing has a good future. “We were always trying to do a great mag,” he says. “We do well at the Kenneth R. Wilson Awards every year.” Presented by the Canadian Business Press, these are the annual awards for trade magazines, and Marketing’s continued good showing is proof that it’s recognized as a good read beyond the marketing and advertising field, he says. McElgunn also points out that the magazine’s distribution depends entirely on paid subscriptions, which is unusual for a trade publication. In June 2000, there were 12,500 paid subscribers and a total readership of 81,000 per week. According to the most recent survey from Statistics Canada, there are only 54,000 people working in advertising in Canada, which makes these numbers outstanding. But the numbers have been dropping. In 2003 the magazine had a paid circulation of 10,000 subscribers and an estimated 75,000 readers. Still, McElgunn says there must be a large and satisfied readership in order for the magazine to stay in business. “Marketing has one of the most demanding readerships out there,” he says. “Yeah, it could always be better, but that’s what the magazine is doing now.”

To retain and increase readership, Sutter established a board of advisors in 2000, drawing its members from senior levels in the ad industry. They meet twice a year to discuss what they feel is pertinent to their sector. Alan Middleton, executive director of York University’s Schulich Executive Education Centre at the Schulich School of Business, is board chair. He thinks the magazine desperately needed a revamp and had the chance to say so last November when Sutter specifically invited the board to comment on the magazine. The board suggested that no one in the industry read the online edition of the magazine, even though it’s the one thing Sutter planned to expand. “The group felt that the magazine was all chatty daily stuff,” Middleton says, “not good on up-to-date or in-depth news. It needed to make up its mind which it wanted to be.” The board also said the magazine wasn’t visual enough, that it should have more illustrations and charts, and that it should reprint more articles from other ad industry publications.

Middleton points out, though, that the problem of bland content isn’t Marketing’s alone. “It’s a structural problem with trade magazines,” he says. “They don’t have huge budgets.” They can’t afford to have “really grizzled” reporters on staff, he says, and instead hire journalism school graduates who don’t have the experience to go toe-to-toe with senior executives of ad firms. “That’s the real reason Marketing’s not edgy.”
Snappy new format aside, for many in the advertising industry Marketing will continue to be a duty read. Whether the new version of the magazine proves to be a worthy incarnation or leads to an exodus of subscribers, well, Sutter will just have to cross his fingers. And say a prayer or two.

It was baking hot in Nelie Alfredo Marinze’s little mud-walled shack, but we sat inside and she pushed the tin door closed against the prying eyes of her village. With the help of a translator who spoke her native Shonga, she told me how her husband left Lionde, in southern Mozambique, to work in the mines in South Africa years before, and how one day he just didn’t come home. (The HIV infection rate for miners in South Africa is estimated at 35 per cent.) She told me that for the past year she had been troubled by diarrhea and an infection in her throat, that the nurse at the bare little health outpost in town told her that she should have “the test.” She had it, and the nurse told her she had AIDS. When she told her new boyfriend the news, he fled. She didn’t know what to say to her two children, nor did she know how to feed them. These days she was often too sick to work her small plot of land.

We talked for an hour or so, sitting amid the cooking pots and a small stack of clothes, me on the one good chair she insisted I have. I thanked Nelie for answering my questions (some of them terribly intrusive), and asked if there was anything she wanted to add. Shyly, she held out her hand and said there was one thing. “What is this AIDS? I have heard people talk about it. They told me at the clinic I have it. But I don’t understand. I don’t know what it is, and no one will tell me. Does it mean I will die?”

It was a sickening moment. The day before, I had interviewed a miner with AIDS who had perhaps hours left to live. He clutched at my hands and sobbed, pleading with me not to leave him there. A few days later, I would meet a crowd of orphaned children who played a rambunctious game of Simon Says with me – and who would probably be dead within two years. These experiences, which come with each day of covering the AIDS pandemic in Africa, gnaw at my thick journalistic calluses. But Nelie, Nelie ripped the skin right off.

I don’t remember what I told her. I fumbled and stuttered and searched for any answer but the obvious. I said that HIV was a germ that causes a disease called AIDS, and that it is AIDS that is making so many of the people in her town waste thin and then die. I said that a person can have the germ and still live for a long time (although looking at the lesions on Nelie’s arms, I thought it would not be long for her) and that there are drugs that could keep her alive for years – that her government is trying to figure out how to get the drugs out to villages like Lionde. Lamely I suggested that she should ask about the drugs at the clinic, keep pushing the nurse to find out when anti-retrovirals would be available there. “This,” I remember thinking, “is wrong. I’m not a doctor. I should not be answering this woman’s questions.”

Nelie listened silently, and nodded when I trailed to pained silence. She gave me a little hug goodbye, and I got back in my car feeling utterly useless.

I left Canada last summer to take up the new post of The Globe and Mail Africa correspondent, full of great intentions to make Globe readers see Africa differently: no more skinny babies with flies in their eyes, not just “Africa,” one big country with an indistinguishable smear of wars and famines and kleptocrat dictators. I had lofty goals about introducing Canadians to my Africa. I wanted to write about Nigeria’s booming film industry, Namibia’s microbreweries, South Africa’s obsession with Barbie and the cellphone toting, belly-baring cool girls of Kampala. And about all the good things that happen: the Kenyan women who organized to outlaw the circumcision of their granddaughters; the little Angolan television show that helps reunite families separated in the civil war; the former poachers in Rwanda who now fiercely guard the endangered mountain gorillas.

When I had been here for three months, my mother asked plaintively on the phone one day, “When are you going to write a happy story?” I realized my well-laid plans to show a different Africa had been swamped by the pandemic.

The thing is, happy stories are a little thin on the ground these days. There is a nice new shelter for elephants orphaned by the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, but it’s hard to bring myself to write about elephants when 3,000 people die of AIDS in Zimbabwe every single week.

The crisis is so immense that it dwarfs all else. In the mountain kingdom of Lesotho, more than half of the adults have AIDS, virtually none are being treated – and the government is confronting the very real possibility that the country will not exist in another three years. In Zambia, one in three children has no parents, and no one has a clue what it’s going to mean when they grow up, uneducated, unsocialized and unloved. Nelie Alfredo Marinze is one of 1.6 million Mozambicans who have HIV/AIDS; there are only 300 public-sector doctors in her entire country of 18 million people. I feel paralyzed in the face of stories such as these, with no idea how to make them real for Globe readers in Halifax or Regina.

I am immensely glad that the Globe chose to send me here – no other Canadian media outlets are opening new bureaus. Africa is, in the words of editor-in-chief Ed Greenspon, not an “obvious” place to put a reporter. I am one of only three permanent Canadian correspondents on the continent (there is a CBC bureau in Cairo and a CTV correspondent in Kampala.) That’s three people to cover 56 countries, a half-dozen wars, three incipient famines, the most corrupt mining industries in the world – and, oh yes, the fact that 36 million people have HIV/AIDS and will die within the decade, barring some dramatic international intervention.

I don’t know how to tell these stories. But what really mystifies me is why more people aren’t here trying.

In early March 2002, Byron Christopher, senior journalist for CHED radio in Edmonton, stumbled onto a story. While looking into a lawsuit against Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc., he discovered that the company had been accused of bombing, raping, enslaving, kidnapping and executing citizens in Southern Sudan, where it operated the Heglig and Unity oil fields. In the course of his research, Christopher contacted a Talisman executive, who made it clear the company didn’t want anyone to know about the lawsuit. Barry Nelson, Talisman’s communications officer, sent a letter to CHED indicating that Talisman could sue if the story about the lawsuit went to air.

Christopher filed his story anyway, only to find out how powerful a weapon the threat of libel can be. Fearing a suit from Talisman, the station delayed going to air with the piece. Christopher asked his news director whether the station retained a lawyer for such matters. The director said he didn’t know. “Translation: fuck off,” says the reporter now.

But Christopher didn’t give up. He tried to interest other outlets in the potentially explosive story. He faxed court documents to Global TV Edmonton, which passed them onto its affiliate, Global TV Calgary 7. It also avoided the story. Christopher found out through a friend, who was also a Global employee, that the station was scared of a lawsuit. Christopher then tried the Edmonton Journal, the city’s largest newspaper. The paper wasn’t interested in the story either. After all these rejections from mainstream media, Christopher finally turned to rabble, a Web site that publishes underreported or unreported stories. Rabble was definitely interested.

Rabble published Christopher’s Talisman piece on March 19, 2002, after Christopher waited three days to see if CHED would air it. About a week after the story ran, The Financial Times in London, England picked it up. Then major wire services – including Associated Press, Canadian Press and Reuters – started running with it. Even after the piece had hit the wires, the Journal didn’t touch it. According to Christopher, eight people wrote to the editor complaining about the omission, but the Journal didn’t publish the letters. Christopher phoned the Journal to ask business editor Kathy Kerr why she didn’t run anything on Talisman. She replied, “It must have fallen between the cracks. The international response was astounding given the lack of media coverage in Alberta. As a result, pressure increased from human rights groups and shareholders for Talisman to pull out of Sudan. The company sold its interest in the country to an Indian oil company about one year later.

If a story this big “must have fallen between the cracks,” it makes you wonder what other stories are wedged down there. “There really shouldn’t be any rabble, or sites like it,” Christopher says, “but they exist because the mainstream media aren’t doing their jobs.” It’s important for alternative media to act as watchdogs, but lately the lack of funding has limited rabble to volunteer contributions and republished work.

Rabble is the brainchild of longtime social activist and feminist Judy Rebick. Previously, she was marginally involved in an effort to produce an independent national newspaper, but it made more sense to start an online publication because it is interactive and links to other progressive publications. Rabble became the next best solution. “In the same way that the dawn of radio spurred the creation of institutions like the CBC,” says Mark Surman, the site’s business developer, “we now have emerging public interest models for the Internet like rabble.”

Rabble is one of many progressive Canadian sites. Others, like Straight Goods, Dooney’s Cafe, Supporting facts and The Tyee, were similar to American counterparts such as Z Magazine Online, Alternet.org, Common Dreams News Center and Counter Punch. Many journalists visit these sites for commentary and news not found in the mainstream. Antonia Zerbisias, media columnist for The Toronto Star, figures she spends about half her life online. “Mainstream media just don’t cover all the bases,” she says. “Part of it is because they’re old and calcified. A lot of young people who don’t have access to mainstream media have access to the Internet, so you have fresher takes.”

Rebick envisioned rabble as Canada’s answer to Z Magazine Online. Both aim to publish different perspectives on mainstream stories and occasionally break a story that interests the mainstream media. It helps that rabble’s message board, babble, has become a hotbed for 5,000 media-savvy social activists. “In a time when the neo-liberal agenda has significantly reduced our democratic space,” Rebick says, “there’s nowhere for people to get together anymore for discussion. Rabble’s message boards provide that.”

Rabble was launched with support from Alternatives, a Montreal-based NGO, and the Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The Atkinson Foundation contributed $40,000 as a startup grant, and $60,000 in donations came from various wealthy individuals. ‘The word ‘rabble’ represents the site’s promise to deliver news “for the rest of us” – meaning those seeking a progressive point of view. The majority of rabble’s audience is under 35 and the next largest group is over 50.

The first story appeared on rabble on April 18, 2001. The site’s launch coincided with the anti-globalization protests at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. Today, rabble republishes columns by Rick Salutin, Naomi Klein, Thomas Walkom and Linda McQuaig, and includes work from less established writers like ubiquitous protestor Jaggi Singh. Some dismiss rabble as a rehash of already available content, but it does reach a national and even international audience. The site averages 100,000 visitors and over two million page views per month.

Rabble focuses coverage on demonstrations and NGOs, which mainstream media usually ignore, or cover only when there’s conflict. For example, there were very few mainstream reports from the World Social Forum in India in January 2004, although there were 75,000 participants. And when Singh was arrested at the Summit of the Americas conference the mainstream press missed a real story – that police had manipulated the law to arrest a prominent protestor. “Rabble had the perspective of the demonstrators right away,” Rebick says. “I was reporting from Quebec City and not from the perspective of the government, which most of the media reports were.”

The absurdity of Singh being arrested for using a teddy bear catapult wasn’t picked up by regular media until after rabble had run the story repeatedly. Judy MacDonald, rabble’s then editor, responded to the arrest by posting a tongue-in-cheek press release from the Deconstructionist Institute for Surreal Topology, which claimed Singh had nothing to do with the catapult the group had built. Although the press release was humorous, it certainly wasn’t in-depth reporting based on facts or interviews. While rabble claimed its mandate was to combine the “cool eye of journalism with the hot energy of activism,” it failed to measure up on the journalism side. This story served as little more than a thumbing of the nose to mainstream media.

Rabble publishes stories that might otherwise go untouched, but the site has struggled financially for most of its existence, and has almost gone under twice. Its first near-death experience occurred around September 2001. A couple of years later, in November 2003, rabble almost ran out of funds, but a fundraising effort coordinated through the babble message board saved it. Over six weeks, the drive brought in a $50,000 cash infusion from donors, readers and unions providing sustaining partnerships. The “in cahoots” section, which posts stories from NGO Web sites, brings in money from sustaining partners who donate $5,000 to $10,000 per year. Most of the donations come from various unions, but they aren’t allowed to exceed the self-imposed $10,000 limit.

Most of the time the site endures a hand-to-mouth existence, spending money as quickly as it is donated. When rabble started, its budget was around $40,000 a month; now it’s about $15,000. Becoming partners with OneWorld, an international portal for NGOs, in January 2004 meant many employees now work for both organizations, which has helped rabble cut costs. Between the two organizations there is a global budget that also helps to pay rabble’s two exclusive employees, editor Sharon Fraser and bulletin board moderator Audra Estrones Williams. Since August 2003, when Rebick accepted her teaching position at Ryerson University, she has worked for rabble on a volunteer basis.

Rabble generally relies on volunteer effort for original content, and cutbacks haven’t yet affected its usual output of one new story a day. But when the site began, it was able to pay writers, whereas now it relies on volunteers. Fortunately, there are reporters like Christopher who have a passion for reporting, a sense of justice and ethics, and are willing to work under conditions where expenses far outweigh income.

The site’s main drawback is that it is too financially feeble to expand. “Financial weakness feeds through the whole site,” says Dennis Sherbanuk, former CBC radio producer and avid reader of many alternative sites, including rabble. “They need more intensely researched pieces and a wider variety of stories to move beyond their leftist political perspective. Stories on technology and economics could round out their coverage, but it’s expensive.”

Financial weakness also affects the types of stories covered. MacDonald, who published the Talisman story, comes from the feminist and anti-globalization movements. She had more money to work with and her mandate went well beyond the mainstream. Fraser is against globalization as well, but here’s the irony – rabble was created to showcase cutting-edge journalism, but now it’s so broke it offers refried columns from dailies while its editor, by default, covers mainstream politics.