Benzie & Ray

Updated 07/04/08 CP story link
Former Ottawa and Toronto Sun staffer Robert Benzie recalls his 1993 interview with James Earl Ray on the 25th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder in today's Toronto Star.

Much of the interview, not previously published, had to do with Ray's ties with Canada and after King's murder in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

"Here, some long-standing myths about Ray's sojourn are debunked," writes Benzie.

It is a fascinating read and includes mention of Earl McRae, who covered Ray's arrest in May of 1968 for the Toronto Star and is now an Ottawa Sun reporter.

Ray died in 1998, still insisting he was a patsy.

The Canadian Press also has a James Earl Ray story re his Toronto days.

65 hot boxes

Newspaper boxes were once called "honour" boxes because people were on their honour to pay for their newspapers.

A thief with no honour at all stole newspapers along with 65 Winnipeg Sun and Winnipeg Free Press boxes in rural and urban areas in the past two years, says CBC News.

Winnipeg police recovered the dozens of boxes, valued at about $42,000, in a garage this week, says the CBC. Motive was not known, but a suspect is being sought.

The CBC said the Sun "declined to comment, saying publicity over the theft could encourage further boxes to disappear" and the Free Press did not return a call.

Funny how media clam up when they are the story.

Globe piece

Recommended reading in the Globe and Mail today:

Konrad Yakabuski's Report on Business analysis of Quebecor's labour woes at Quebec City's Journal de Quebec and pending contract talks at Journal de Montreal.

The focus: Newsroom multi-tasking to provide content for print, the Internet and television.

"It already works that way at most newspapers in North America, including those that belong to Quebecor's English-language Sun chain," says Yakabuski.

"So, what's the reluctance in Quebec, where La Presse only recently came to an agreement with its print journalists that allows their work to be posted on the newspaper's website?"

He has some interesting insights on that reluctance and differences in how the late Quebecor founder Pierre Peladeau and son Pierre Karl Peladeau did and does business.

Random thoughts

The Sun's Help Wanted ads are far more appealing when they include ads for reporters and other positions at 333 King Street East. Today, an ad for another GA reporter. Deadline is April 11.

With all of the talk about educational requirements for journalism teachers and journalists, how many newspaper legends in the past century would not be qualified to apply today?

Did we miss it, or did the Toronto Sun not pull an April Fools prank on its readers this year? How about the other Suns? There was a time . . .

That Steve Buffery sports guy sure knows how to pitch himself in the job hunt department. Odds are he'll be staying put as a Toronto Sun columnist for the next decade or so.

How did Toronto Telegram readers in the 1950s read it on public transit? A 1955 Tely found at a recent auction measures 34 inches wide when open. The Sun? Just under 22 inches.

Print film critics in the U.S. are dropping like Iraq-themed movies, says the FILMdetail web site. An endangered species? No touching our dynamic Bruce-Liz-Jim trio, please.

There is a scent of spring in the air - and Dunlop Award nominations.

EdSun is 30

Happy 30th to the Edmonton Sun.

Daniel MacIsaac, an Edmonton Sun reporter, provides a 30-year replay today, interviewing Sun vet David Black, an EdSun Day Oner and now publisher and CEO.

The Toronto Sun wasn't yet seven years old when Doug Creighton et al focused on Alberta for the first expansion newspaper. It was not a perfect launch. In fact, it was a turbulent launch and in the midst of it all, Peter Worthington suffered a mild heart attack.

But Doug, Peter, Don and Co. worked their Sun magic, changed the game plan and implemented changes in key personnel that calmed the waters.

Back in 1978, the Toronto Sun was giddy with the success of the tabloid and itching to expand with Sun clones. Edmonton was first, on April 2, 1978. Next came the Calgary Sun on Aug. 3, 1980. The Ottawa Sun was launched Sept. 4, 1988.

There were other ventures - purchases of the Houston Post on Dec. 2, 1983 and the Financial Post on Dec. 31, 1987 - but the baby Suns were the darlings and were pampered during the glory years. They've had a rough go of it in the past decade under Quebecor.

But the EdSun is 30.

The EdSun pioneers, including the late David Bailey, former managing editor; former publisher Elio Agostini; former executive editor Kaye Corbett; Toronto Sun co-founder Donald Hunt, general manager, and others who donned cowboy hats and made Alberta their home, share the credit. It was a rocky start but once the kinks were worked out . . .

And David Black gives credit to the late Toronto Sun columnist Paul Rimstead for being a reader magnet in Edmonton from the day the Sun was launched with a daily circulation of about 40,000.

Happy 30th - and many more.

SUNshine wall

Jesus Gonzalez. an Edmonton warehouse worker, is doing what a lot of male Toronto Sun readers did for years before the practice was labeled "sexist."

He has a wall of SUNshine Girls at work with hundreds of photos dating back to 1983.

The Edmonton Sun's Renato Gandia writes about the 15-metre-by-six-metre wall in today's paper and apparently it is not an April Fools joke.

Gonzalez told Gandia he missed viewing the bikini-clad women of native Mexico so started his collection for all to enjoy. No complaints from other workers, he says, not even the women.

Wonder how he feels about the smaller SUNshine girls in the back pages with the circular promotional add-ons.

Newseum Suns

Updated 04/01/08
The Toronto Sun's celebrated front pages are being sent to Newseum- they just aren't showing up in the online media museum's archives.

Thanks to an "anonymous" TSF reader at the Sun, we stand corrected after using a more direct way to view daily front pages from across Canada. Start here.

If you start with a Front Pages archives search for "Toronto Sun," only one previous Sun front page from July of 2007 appears. The tipster assures us Sun fronts have been appearing more frequently, so it is Newseum's bad.

Go directly to the daily fronts by region (North America) option and up pops fronts from across the country. As always, Sun fronts stand out in a crowd. (Click on a front for larger, full frontal viewing.)

Today's Toronto Sun front is one 624 from 54 countries.

Newseum's new media museum in Washington, D.C., which opens April 11, will also display front pages from around the world.

It is a great way for competitive newspapers to boost their presence in the global media village - and do a little chest beating at the same time.

Time after time, since the Toronto Sun was launched in 1971, its front pages have been suitable for framing and Newseum provides a wider audience.

Looking down the electronic road, will there come a day when computer users will be clicking on front pages for pay-per-view reading of all of the pages?

A daily smorgasbord of world newspapers at your fingertips?

PKP & George

Was Pierre Karl Peladeau in awe of the outpouring of love and affection for George Gross after the Toronto Sun sports legend died of a heart attack on Good Friday?

What was the Quebecor chief thinking as he sat in Humber Valley United Church in Etobicoke surrounded by former and current Sun employees who have felt the wrath of his cutbacks?

Was he comfortable at George's funeral service and feeling a part of the Toronto Sun Family, or did he feel like an intruder?

Was it a lesson in humility for him?

All of the above questions came to mind while looking at a Sun photo of Peladeau sitting beside veteran Sun writers Michele Mandel and Steve Simmons.

Mandel, Simmons and many others at the funeral were witness to nine years of Quebecor cutbacks, from 1999 when it bought Sun Media to the first half of 2007. Many good people and most of the morale vanished along the way.

While the tide has turned with Michael Sifton as chief of Sun Media, Quebecor had taken the Suns to the brink. TSF couldn't post dozens of e-mails and comments from employees and former employees angered by Peladeau and his cutbacks to the point of obscenities.

But there he was at the funeral and we can only hope he was absorbing the benefits of what money can't buy - love and respect. The kind George earned from decades of being a professional journalist, a good listener, community motivated and always extending a hand instead of a fist.

That was George, who, like most Toronto Sun Family members, was cut from a different cloth than Peladeau.

When Peter Worthington, a Sun co-founder, eulogized his good friend at the funeral, the words came from the heart, not a prepared script, so we don't have a replay.

Said Simmons in a column "If I die, I want Peter Worthington doing the eulogy. No one has ever been eulogized with more dignity, humour and accuracy than our friend George Gross was on Thursday afternoon."

An old saying is you don't measure the wealth of a man by his bank balance, but by the number of his friends.

George was one wealthy guy.

Sherri Woodstock

Music was Sherri Wood's life, so why not celebrate the all-too-brief life of the Toronto Sun entertainment writer with a summer music festival in her name?

"That was one idea pitched today at services for Wood, who died last Monday after a brave battle with brain cancer. She was not yet 29 years old," Bill Brioux, former Sun TV writer, says in his TV Feeds My Family blog.

What Sherri Woodstock requires is all of the energy and resources Sherri would have contributed to such a project, so Brioux is asking for feedback ASAP re a venue, bands etc.

Brioux says the Sherri Woodstock idea was raised at an "after wake" following funeral services at Turner and Porter. (View the Sun's tribute page.)

"If you are involved in the Toronto music scene and would like to offer suggestions and advice on the best way to push this all forward, please leave a comment here or reach me at tvfeedsmyfamily@rogers.com," says Brioux.

TSF wonders if media musicians abandoned when the plug was pulled on this year's Newzapalooza could make music in memory of one of their own and raise funds for cancer research while doing it.

It's a natural. TSF can already hear the Sherri Woodstock music and the celebration of her life.

TorSun deal

Updated o3/31/08 re Windsor Star
Unionized Toronto Sun employees have a new contract.

A 95% vote by the Southern Ontario Newsmedia Guild members ratifies a second three-year contract, with 2% pay hikes each year, says SONG president Brad Honywill.

The new contract, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2008, includes a $1,000 hike (spread over three years) in wages for reporters and photographers on top of the 2% increase in exchange for increased multi-media responsibilities.

Honywill says vision care will be increased to $200 from $150 and the kilometre rate goes to 45 cents, from 42 cents, over three years.

"We have 110 members in the Toronto Sun editorial unit and that number is expected to rise with the recent round of hiring announcements. Just under 60% voted. The vote was taken Saturday between 1 and 5 at the SONG office on Queen St."

Honywill says the $1,000 in addition to the 2% is spread over three years: $500, $250 and $250. There were also some lump sum payments (not included in wage) and some increases for individuals.

"Congratulations to staff rep Howard Law, bargaining team chair Rob Lamberti and his team of Stan Behal, Jim Slotek, Zen Ruryk and Wayne Janes," says Honywill.

The contract settlement was inked five days after both sides resumed negotiations following a two-week recess. The talks began in January with both sides agreeing not to comment on the status of the negotiations.

Pay hikes for additional multi-media duties have been an issue in contract talks across North America. Fair is fair. At the Sun, a reporter's words, photographs and video can appear in the print edition, on the Internet and on SUN TV.

(See the Windsor Star strike vote story re demands for compensation for increased duties to provide Canwest with online content. The paper's contract deadline for 240 CAW members is April 16.)

With a new Sun contract, additional staff, a return to local news and Lou Clancy in the newsroom, Sun staffers can concentrate on doing what they do best - kick butt by thinking tabloid, not broadsheet.

Congrats to all for what appears to have been an amicable contract negotiating process and for avoiding the roadblocks that 252 locked out and striking Journal de Quebec employees have experienced for 11 months.