Tuesday 2 September 2008

Just wondering

Michael J. Fox recently told the Sun he has always wanted to be a SUNshine Boy.

So why didn't the Toronto Sun dust off the old SUNshine Boy logo for today's Michael J. Fox photo, used with a Bill Harris interview?

Great photo, but a missed opportunity to give Fox his SUNshine Boy status.

And while we're at it, re Ben Spencer's Page 3 "Fridge staff fears bad meat" story: What will the warehousing company do with the recalled Maple Leaf products?

Burn it? Bury it?

Not a word about what will be done with the recalled meat.

OK, one more.

Tamara Cherry's Page 2 plane crash story: The Cessna 172 four-seater plane "came crashing down . . ."

Came crashing down? And "yesterday" in two consecutive paragraphs?

Something tells us if the Toronto Sun's Assessment Notice returned tomorrow it would be more than the page Ed Monteith and his predecessor, Doug MacFarlane, used to post daily.

Sadly, without rewrites and mentoring the new generation of Sun reporters is not learning from the experience of others.

Much like it was for many of us during the Thomson years, when everything we wrote was used verbatim and we thought it was priceless prose.

Little did we know - until landing at a newspaper with crusty old editors prone to ask WTF? and a rewrite desk that offered advice while rewriting copy.

Many of the Toronto Sun reporters from the 1970s and 1980s often praise their mentors - Pyette, Worthington, Downing, Burke-Gaffney, Monteith, MacFarlane, Vezina etc., etc., etc.

They helped move us well beyond our limited Thomson mindset, occasionally in a tone of voice that left us wondering if we would be selling shoes a week later.

And thanks to their mentoring, we would never think of using "came crashing down."

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