Re J.T. Lewis

J.T. Lewis, a former award-winning Welland Tribune photographer laid off in November 2006, has responded to a previous TSF posting about a PMO photo being used in the Tribune.

He writes:

"Well, it's interesting to note that people remembered me. I did my internship at the Toronto Sun after Loyalist College.

"From being let go at the Tribune in 2006, it's been a struggle, trying to find my way. Seems that no one wants to pay for photography anymore. Hopefully, I will be making more e magazines soon. The first one, www.thebasicsofphotography.com, was put online early September 2009.

"Friends of mine who still read the Tribune always remark how the photography efforts are quite lacking these days, photos badly composed and mostly out of focus, subject matter in poor taste and photos that really don't match the stories.

"Seems that quality photography isn't an issue in the small newspaper anymore. Shame, but, I really don't read the Tribune anymore as I find that the staffing issues have led to a paper that is barely capable of keeping up with the important news in the community anymore.

"I happened to see one weekend where they were asking for reader submissions for fair coverage one weekend, and others have told me that they have announced that people should send in photos when they go to local events.

"Shame, professionalism in the small media sources has totally gone out the door in Canada.

"J.T. Lewis"

Thanks for your update, J.T.

Re Ken Robertson

Updated
Ken Robertson, a Toronto Sun Day Oner, sailor, WW2 vet, real estate salesman and author, underwent a major operation in Orillia last night.

Doctors at Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital say he has some very serious obstacles to overcome this week so positive vibes from the Toronto Sun Family would be the order of the day.

The former Sun city editor, author of Windcharm: A Dream Delayed, has a couple of other books in the works and more stories to tell, so steer the course sailor.

Wherever Ken is, there is a story.

The hospital he is in will benefit from two Gordon Lightfoot charity concerts Nov. 14 and 15, including a gift of one of his signed guitars which will be auctioned on eBay.

We're sure Ken will be taking notes about his hospital stay for another chapter in his next book.

London Ex -3

One day you are writing Point of View editorials for Sun Media newspapers across the chain and the next day you are the latest pink slip casualty.

Wayne Newton, a Sun Media employee for 19 years, and two other staffers at the Centre of Excellence in London, were terminated Tuesday, says a TSF tipster.

It seems London's COE, once thought to be a refuge from the carnage in the newspaper chain, is returning to graphics production only, where it started three years ago.

There will be fewer employees and no journalists in the building. The tabloid and broadsheet page pagination work that was being handled in London is being shifted to Barrie.

So the London Centre of Excellence, which was producing tabloid and broadsheet pages, including most national lifestyles pages, Fanfare and special weekend spreads for national sports, business and national bureau pages from Ottawa. has been demoted to Graphics Centre.

We noticed Newton's POV in the Sun on Monday. The next day, the national co-ordinator, national comment copy editor and POV contributor, was gone.

A voice gone from the signed editorial side of the Comment page.

You have to wonder how Sun editorial page vets like Rob Granatstein, Lorrie Goldstein, Paul Berton, Eric Margolis and others react to losses of veteran colleagues.

Do they ever ask themselves "when will it end?"

We are dizzy from Sun Media turbulence.

Most extreme makeovers have a cohesive game plan, but we're sitting here on the sidelines wondering how all of this playing with careers and lives is going to end.

If you can paint us a picture, please do.

Star's 117th blow

Updated re Star management comments in CP story
The Toronto Star turned 117 today, but instead of cake, it announced plans to outsource 160 jobs, including 100 newsroom union editing positions, says a CNW Group press release.

All employees have been offered buyouts, says the press release.

A Canadian Press story says employees have until Nov. 30 to apply for the voluntary buyouts, with Star management making its final decision Dec. 7.

The CP story says employees learned of the company-wide buyout offer in a memo from publisher John Cruickshank.

The memo said the broad reworking of the company "will affect every job in every corner of the organization" and could include layoffs.

The Southern Ontario Newsmedia Guild calls it the largest outsourcing in Canadian newspaper history.

"It's bad enough that the Star is turning its back on its own Atkinson principles to shed loyal employees," said Star union head Maureen Dawson. "Star readers will be shocked to hear that core aspects of its daily journalism, that vital role in our society, are now to be farmed out, likely to foreign interests."

The union's press release says 100 editing jobs represents about a third of the newsroom at 1 Yonge Street.

"This isn't outsourcing, this is another example of one of our big media companies abandoning good-paying Canadian jobs," said Peter Murdoch, CEP's national vice-president (media). "The national union will be supporting every effort to protect these good jobs."

Happy 117th, Toronto Star. Shades of Sun Media's Black Tuesday last December. Merry Christmas greetings from PKP, along with 600 pink slips.

What is being lost with newsroom outsourcing and job cuts is the gathering and mingling of newspaper minds. Dedicated editors noting errors and challenging content. Feedback. Personal touches and professional pride lost to uncaring bodies far, far away.

The Toronto Sun's badly botched street map assembled outside of 333 was a classic example of the fallout from detached workmanship. And that work was done in Ontario, not India.

Straight up news?

An innovation from the Netherlands. It is called the "vertical newspaper."

Thumbs up, or thumbs down?

Me thinks the video characters are exaggerating the difficulties of reading a tabloid on mass transit, but broadsheets have always been a nuisance when sharing space on trains, planes and buses.

The Toronto Sun was a hit with transit users from the start because of its size - and content.

Downing & PKP

John Downing's latest blog posting notes PKP made the Financial Post Magazine's performance list of Canadian CEOs - 110th.

Downing, a Toronto Sun Day Oner and former editor, says 110th seems "awfully high."

His Downing's Views posting, titled Stop the Lunacy of Unemployment, reads:

"There are companies making obscene profits which keep firing at the same time. Sun Media makes a lot of money even though, to judge by the empty desks at their flagship operation The Toronto Sun, it acts like it's bankrupt. Just in the morality at head office!

"In the Financial Post Magazine's latest survey of Canadian CEOs, Pierre Karl Peladeau is ranked 110th, which seems awfully high. He runs Quebecor, some would say into the ground. Quebecor, which owns Sun Media, had a profit last year of $187,300,000, while Peladeau himself was paid a basic $1.2 million before various goodies."

Meanwhile, Downing says the annual Toronto Sun Day Oners dinner this year was down to two couples, a long slide from the days when most of the Original 62 celebrated the tabloid's Nov. 1, 1971 launching. And the two couples this year picked up their own tab.

Downing tells TSF:

"Some Day Oners used to dine to celebrate the Sun's anniversary. This year we were down to two couples, and had to do it early, because (the other couple) were off on a cruise out of Istanbul.

"So Mary and I and the (other couple) went to Tommaso's Trattoria which is just over from the Sun at 400 Eastern Ave. Kind of a Sun place. Great food, unpretentious service, reasonable prices.

"We ate and yarned and lied and had warm thoughts of the old days, which often really aren't that great, but with the Sun they were.

"As you've noted, the corporate Sun ignored its own birthday. What a change.

"I remember when Doug Creighton called Trudy Eagan and Dave Garrick (SkyDome VP and Sun letter writer) into his office and said they were to throw a bash inside SkyDome (a far better name than the present self-serving one) to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the rise of the Sun at the Eclipse Building.

"Creighton said, and Garrick just reminded me the other day, that money was no problem. He didn't want to know what it would cost, just do it. And so we had a marvelous party - except for the photog who stripped to his green undies on the carousel and left the Sun shortly afterwards.

"Garrick has never forgotten because it's not every day you mount a midway inside a covered stadium and then light off fireworks. It was the first time for pyrotechnics inside SkyDome, and when they are launched now, I always think of Doug's great birthday bash when rockets were the candles on the cake."

Thanks for the e-mail, John.

There was Doug's give and take corporate philosophy and then there is PKP's take, take, take mentality.

Millar & cases 2

Rob Tripp, the prolific Canadian crime blogger up Kingston way, produced some stunning figures in a recent posting - there are more than 3,400 unsolved murders on the books dating back to 1961.

Collectively, those figures are staggering when you consider how annual murder statistics in Canada barely make us wince when comparing them to the United States.

Says Tripp:

"Roughly 90 of the approximately 600 murders committed in Canada each year are not solved. While every murder leaves a life story unwritten, these 90 are wretched for the doubts and uncertainty they sow."

Tripp, a TSF reader, writes in a comment posted today:

"The idea of an unsolved-murder column is a terrific idea, in part, because there's no shortage of good material.

"I recently blogged over at cancrime.com about the fact that there are more than 3,400 unsolved homicides on the books in Canada from the past 50 years. At one case/column per week, it would take 65 years just to get through that inventory."

How about a decade at a time, starting with this one that is ending in a few weeks?

Odds & ends

It was comforting to see Scott Morrison's photo and byline back in the Toronto Sun on Friday, if only as an op-ed guest columnist. The former veteran Sun sports editor/hockey writer is missed. We'd link it but it is no longer online.

The Globe and Mail's Saturday edition included a story on mental health. It highlighted Sandy Naiman, a former Toronto Sun writer who is now a Toronto Star blogger. The online Globe story provided an active link to Sandy's Coming Out Crazy blog. That is class.

Awards may not be PKP's thing, but Sun Media staffers wanting to go it on their own can apply for the new Tom Hanson Photojournalism Award. Applications can be made online. Deadline is Jan. 4. A CNW press release says it is open to "any Canadian photojournalist who has been in the business less than five years - from students to freelancers to photographers working at regional publications."

Not a word in the Toronto Sun on Sunday to mark the tabloid's 38th birthday. Perhaps the little lady on King Street East has gone feminine and isn't mentioning her age these days. The big 4-oh in 2011 is the one we want to see, but there are some doubters out there.

And then there were four. The Toronto Sun's list of editorial execs in the Comment masthead is down to four. No editor-in-chief, no managing editor. But a lot of decisions they were called on to make have been channeled to other buildings.

Joe Warmington's exclusive on a plan to rejuvenate Maple Leaf Gardens no doubt prompted cheers from readers who grew up counting on the landmark building for sports and entertainment. New York City saved Radio City Music Hall. Toronto can save Maple Leaf Gardens.

Op-ed Sun Media columnist Eric Margolis penned a fitting In Memoriam tribute for his late father in today's Toronto Sun. Henry Melville Margolis died on his 80th birthday on Nov. 1, 1989, and, as Eric notes, what a life his New York City-born dad lived.

In 1963, this blogger, while working for a Thomson newspaper, was asked to mail a parcel to head office. Addressed it to Thompson Newspapers. The city editor caught the error. On Sunday, we said Jim Thompson was one of the four remaining Toronto Sun Day Oners. TSF readers quickly pointed out it is Jim Thomson. Mental lapses. Some things never change.

Cal Millar's cases

Cal Millar, a former Toronto Sun cop desk master who moved to the Star and is now retired, has a new book about old cases that never got solved.

It is something more former police desk vets should do for The Forgotten, as the new American television series calls them.

The Sun caught up to Millar for a story in today's paper.

Ian Robertson's story says the book is called Find My Killer, published in September and already getting results.

Millar's book includes profiles of 38 Canadian homicides among the 264 unsolved North American cases.

The Sun story doesn't say if one of Millar's Canadian profiles is for the 1975 abduction of four-year-old Cameron March.

The unsolved vanishing in Burlington in the summer of 1975 was the front page story for the first Sun edition printed on the new presses at 333 and it still haunts this former colleague of Millar's today.

Cameron's parents welcomed this reporter into their home, provided the most recent studio photo of their curly-haired son for publication and they posed for a photo on the back steps of their rural home.

If Millar, who now lives in Burlington, didn't research Cameron's unsolved abduction for this book, hopefully he will find time to do it for the sequel he is planning to write.

This blogger suggested the case to John Walsh of America's Most Wanted years ago, but it didn't make the program. It has been 34 years, but some cases are never too old to solve.

A lot has changed since 1975, in police labs and on the Internet.

It is just so wrong that someone out there knows what happened to Cameron and isn't talking.

How do you live with that knowledge?

In a perfect world, there would be no cold cases.

Kudos to Millar, who retired from the Star in 2004, for not forgetting. We are looking forward to reading Find My Killer.

As we've said, a weekly cold case column in the Sun would have been a popular read. Maybe Millar can be talked into a column with excerpts from his book.

Robertson's story says the 326-page print-to-order book, published by Createspace.com, is available through Amazon.com for $21.95 U.S.

Clancy retires

The Toronto Sun says goodbye to Lou Clancy in today's Sunday Sun, two years after he returned to the tabloid as editor-in-chief.

The official goodbye - Clancy stepped down as of Friday - comes on the 38th anniversary of the founding of the Toronto Sun and two weeks after TSF reported his pending retirement.

You don't lose newspaper people of Clancy's calibre if you are looking to the future of the tabloid, but that doesn't appear to be a priority for Sun Media these days.

Pros like Clancy, in the news biz for 45 years, Mike Burke-Gaffney etc., are too competent and highly paid for today's morphing Sun.

The cream of the tabloid crop has been siphoned from the newsroom at 333 since Quebecor bought Sun Media 10 years ago.

Each departing body moves the Toronto Sun that we knew and loved for most of its 38 years to the abyss.

Only four of the Sun's original 62 former Telegram employees who launched the tabloid on Nov. 1, 1971, remain - Peter Worthington, Andy Donato, Christina Blizzard and Jim Thomson.

That Day One must seem like another lifetime for the foursome and all of the other Day Oners.

Chances are there will be no Day Oners to celebrate the Sun's 40th in 2011. Just a feeling we have as we say goodbye to Clancy.

Mike Strobel also says his farewell to Clancy in today's Sun.

We agree with Strobel. Clancy has more years to contribute to print media.

At least this pro didn't quietly leave the building without a word of thanks in the paper.

No word on a new editor-in-chief for 333. Might not be if the trend continues. The tabloid dropped the managing editor's position when Burke-Gaffney called it quits last spring.

Your Lou Clancy farewell comments can be e-mailed to TSF.