Mike Strobel writes the most entertaining, offbeat columns for the Toronto Sun. He is one of three surviving "five best reasons to read the Sun" writers, which says a lot for the appeal of his prose.
The veteran Sun staffer - he has the Sun logo tattooed on his butt - added editor-in-chief and managing editor to his impressive Sun resume before gliding smoothly into the columnist slot. He can make us laugh and he can make us cry. He has that range as a writer.
As we said, he can make us laugh.
Mike writes:
"I don't agree with half the decisions made around here. Never have. Hell, not even when I made them, as editor-in-chief or managing editor of this paper for a dozen years.
"We have lost some good people lately, one way or t'other. Val Gibson, Alan Cairns, Len Fortune, Bill Brioux, Brodie Fenlon, to name a few.
"But the paper lives, breathes, fights another day.
"Worthington and Donato and Goldstein and Bonokoski and DeMontis and Slotek and Kirkland and Warmington and Gross and Coulbourn and Buffery and Leatherdale and Mandel and Braun and Blizzard and Levy and Simmons and Elliott and Weston and Zeisberger and on and on."
Why the continuing Quebecor hatchet job?
The Toronto Sun "remains one of the most profitable in the country," but Mike and Glenn don't offer any insight into how a newspaper in the toughest newspaper market in North America can compete with a decimated newsroom. It can't - and isn't.
Readership is down, staff numbers are down, morale is down. All of these negative factors are catching up to the Sun and it isn't a pretty sight, within the Sun and beyond its walls.
Toronto Sun Family members all love the Sun for what it was and could still be if spared the inevitable on its present course.
The direction Quebecor has taken with Sun Media since 1999 is flawed and self-destructive. Cutbacks and the very long list of talent lost to firings, layoffs, buyouts and resignations tell the story and that is the story the Star told on Friday.
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