Chinese link

Sun Media is buying into another Toronto newspaper - the Chinese-language Toronto Daily News, the corporation announced today.

A Marketwire press release says Sun Media and Toronto Daily News have inked a deal that allows Sun Media to buy 50% interest in the newspaper, "subject to certain terms and conditions of closing."

Toronto Daily News, launched in 2005, caters to the estimated 500,000 Chinese-speaking people living in the GTA.

"The profile and growth of the Chinese community in the Greater Toronto Area is impressive," says Kin-Man Lee, Sun Media's executive vp and Toronto Sun publisher. "The partnership with Today Daily News helps us become a larger part of that community."

Lee also says the deal will also allow for "synergies in distribution services, editorial content, advertising opportunities and promotion and marketing."

Multicultural media holdings. An interesting concept.

Re John Walsh

It is time for us all - media, police, law-abiding citizens, TV viewers, parents, victims of crime etc. - to salute John Walsh.

Walsh, an untiring crime fighter since his six-year-old son Adam was abducted and murdered in Florida in 1981, is closing in on his 1,000th capture as host of America's Most Wanted.

Saturday's program included the latest of AMW's 995 captures: murderers, rapists, child molesters, bank robbers, con artists, kidnappers, street thugs and assorted other criminals.

It would be fitting for print and broadcast media to mark the milestone 1000th capture in this, the 20th anniversary year of AMW, with a unified thank you for all he has accomplished.

When his son was abducted, murdered and beheaded, Walsh, a builder of high-end luxury hotels, and his wife, Reve, sought justice. Frustrated by the bureaucracy of child abduction investigations, he sought a better way.

The better way, a weekly venue with millions of armchair crime fighting viewers, was as host of Fox TV's America's Most Wanted, launched in 1988 with him at the helm. Except for the program's brief time off the air, his passion for the job has been unrelenting.

AMW case profiles are televised across North America and viewed world wide on AMW's web site. Decades-old cold cases have been solved; long forgotten John and Jane Does have been identified with the slimmest of clues; dozens of abducted children have been reunited with their parents.

The "America" in the program's name is truly America, including Canada and Mexico. Walsh and his AMW staff have been good to Canadian police forces and Canadian viewers have been instrumental in the captures of numerous criminals on the run.

Dennis Melvin Howe hasn't been apprehended for the 1983 sex slaying of Sharin' Morningstar Keenan, 9, in a midtown Toronto roominghouse, but John Walsh did his part in profiling the case numerous times. Other Canadian cases have had repeated airings.

While AMW broadcasts have directly been responsible for the apprehension of 995 criminals, the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh remains open. A prime suspect, Ottis Toole, died in prison while serving life for other crimes.

So there has been no justice for Adam, but his legacy is a safer and more enlightened society, thanks to a father who refused to surrender to red tape and numerous roadblocks.

John Walsh, father, author, the driving force behind the 2006 Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act and widely honoured by community and police organizations, turns 63 in December.

Someday, he will retire as host of America's Most Wanted and when that day comes, John Walsh will be sincerely missed by all but the criminal element.

The pending 1,000th capture in his 20th year as AMW host is the perfect time to collectively praise Walsh for fighting the good fight.

New LFP look

The London Free Press is being redesigned and the new look will be unveiled April 14, says editor- in-chief Paul Berton in a blog he shares with other editors.

"Lots of changes, many new features, a new look, but the same paper at heart, with a focus on local news and local events," Berton tells readers.

"And more references to lfpress.com, videos, special features on the web, etc."

One cynical blogger at From My Bottom Step wonders if the Sun Media newspaper has the manpower to make a difference locally after all of the cutbacks and staff losses in recent years.

"The real truth is that the LFP out-of-town corporate owner did a hatchet job on staff in order to increase profitability and the paper is incapable of delivering more than a small fraction of the local coverage that it once could," says the local blogger.

EdSun bash

The Edmonton Sun's 30th anniversary bash in a hangar at Fort Edmonton Park Friday night drew about 500 current and former staffers and guests.

“It was fantastic," Edmonton Sun publisher and CEO David Black says in an EdSun story. "It was after 1 a.m. when people started piling out of there.”

Among the guests, Pierre Karl Peladeau, Quebecor's CEO, Sun Media president and CEO Michael Sifton and Bill Bagshaw, the Edmonton Sun’s first publisher.

One lucky couple, Frank and Sheri Landry, won the grand prize for the evening draw and wrote about the entire evening on their blog, Landry's Laundry.

"Frank/we won a 4 day, 3 night Pacific Northwest cruise from Seattle to Victoria to Nanaimo and back, including airfare in October," says the posting. "We are pretty excited as neither of us has been on a cruise."

Black said having Bagshaw and other former Sun notables at the party was a highlight.

“It was nice to just look back and take a trip down memory lane."

The anniversary bash was held in the Blatchford Field Air Hanger at Fort Edmonton Park.

It's encouraging to see Sun Media do it up right for the 30th after the Edmonton Sun shared in cutbacks and staff cuts all of the tabloids endured prior to last summer.

Shades of the traditional pre-Quebecor Sun parties Doug Creighton used to throw to thank loyal employees.

The next milestone for Sun Media tabloids is the 20th anniversary of the Ottawa Sun on Sept. 4.

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.