Rimmer CD

Toronto Sun favourite Paul "Rimmer" Rimstead told great tales about being a jazz band drummer in the years before his death at 52 in 1987.

Gone, but not forgotten, Rimmer was back in the Toronto Sun yesterday in a Mike Strobel column about new life for old jazz.

Namely a CD jazz vet Jim Galloway has produced from vintage reel-to-reel tapes recorded at a club called Daniel's in 1973, with Rimstead on drums for three of the 12 tracks.

Strobel says the CD, Vic Dickenson and Jim Galloway — Live in Toronto, can be ordered at  jimgalloway.ca

As Strobel says of Rimstead, who died May 26, 1987, he wasn't Buddy Rich, but he sure could swing.  

Of all the hundreds of men and women who have passed through the Toronto Sun doors since Nov. 1, 1971, Rimstead remains the No. 1 reader-referenced staffer. 

Thanks to Galloway, fans can now capture some of his musical legacy.

Media freeloaders

Actor Kevin Williams was on David Letterman recently talking about New York snow storms and appeals from news outlets for amateur video.

"They go so crazy on the news," he tells Letterman. "It's not just the weather people, it's the reporters. They were actually saying 'if you're out and about and you see news happening, video record it and send it to us, please.'

"And I'm thinking, isn't that your job, really? How lazy can you get?"

Well, Kevin, pretty lazy these days.

Newspapers and radio and television stations are heavily into soliciting citizen-produced news, video and sound bites and, in most cases, without compensation.

Meanwhile, Sun Media's Kincardine News has taken appeals for news and video from citizens to new heights, or new lows depending on how you feel about lazy journalism.

In a nutshell, the Kincardine News says ignore its weekly print edition, help it  produce the news and video for daily online viewing.   

The story reads:

"The nature of the newspaper business is changing drastically to keep up with the progression of free, Internet new content, but the Kincardine News isn't too far behind as part of Sun Media.

"Our focus in the coming month will swing away from a workweek focused on the print product, with an emphasis on posting more news regularly on www.kincardinenews.com and increased sharing with our local daily Owen Sound Sun Times.

"This way, our readers will have the opportunity to keep up with news as it develops throughout the week, rather than relying on radio briefs or next week's paper for the Troy Patterson day's news. 

"We're also shifting so there is a greater focus on Reader Generated Content, whether it be sports reports, briefs from organizations, a series of photos from an event or anything our readers deem newsworthy.

"With the increased frequency of digital cameras, camera phones and the ease of text and e-mails, a lot of people can share the news, so it's recorded by us and isn't lost in the digital universe of a cluttered hard drive or memory stick. It also helps us, as we can't make every event, although we'd like to.

"We do ask that people take the time to make it readable, the rest we can do here."

That is lazy, manipulative journalism. 

Mark our words, the use of citizen stories, photographs and video will come back to bite  understaffed, overworked newsrooms in the ass.

Downing's bucket

John Downing has been working through his Bucket List faster than Sun Media has been making a skeleton out of the flagship Toronto Sun newspaper he helped build.

The Day Oner and former editor recently stroked off fishing on the Amazon and writes about it in two postings on his Downing's Views blog.

"I have been busy crossing dream destinations off my Bucket List (remember the 2007 movie) from the Great Wall to Easter Island," Downing writes. "I have been to a third of the countries of the world, and to almost every country around Brazil, but never into it to see its mighty pump of life.

"My chance to visit the Amazon Basin and fish for one of the most famous of its 3,000 species of fish came when Walter Oster, head of the Canadian National Sportsmen's Shows, told me he was taking a group there for the second time."

And what an adventure it was for Downing, who will celebrate his 75th birthday on June 10.

Thanks to veteran photographer Dick Loek, Downing's Amazon fishing expedition was adequately documented for the Bucket List checkers.

Downing's Views is one of our favourite blog reads, so here's hoping John's Bucket List has many more unchecked adventures.

And to think he might still be sitting behind a desk at 333 if he wasn't squeezed out by the suits in 2007. 

Payne's Fury

Steve Payne

When Toronto Sun reporter Steve Payne became one of the many Sun Media cutback casualties in 2000, he must have thought it a dark day.

But oh so briefly. 

He would soon be living the dream.

Soccer, his life's passion next to his family, has since consumed his globe-trotting life and, as written in the Ottawa Citizen this week, his new field of dreams will be with the Ottawa Fury soccer club.

Payne, who has spent the past year of so coaching on the soccer fields of Australia, is the new head coach of the Ottawa Fury's Professional Development League team for the 2011 season.

He comes direct from a year as the technical director of the Football Federation of Tasmania. 

"The man is a soccer entertainer," the Citizen's Richard Starnes wrote this week. "If pressed a little, he will confess to be a subscriber to the old-school Brazilian philosophy that says if the opposition scores three goals, his team will score four."

The Ottawa Fury website announcement says: "We are delighted to have attracted a coach of Steve’s calibre to the Fury. Last year, we were one win shy of qualifying for the PDL North American Final Four.

"Taking us that next step will be Steve’s main challenge, but I am also sure he will have a very positive impact on all players and coaches within the Fury organization,” enthused Fury owner and CEO, John Pugh.

The club says Payne is "one the most highly qualified coaches in Canada," holding a UEFA Pro-Diploma, considered the highest award for coaching and managing in the world.

He is one of only two coaches in Canada to have completed that diploma – Canadian women’s head coach Carolina Morace being the other.

Payne also boasts UEFA A and Canadian B licences and having coached around the globe, with stops in North America, Europe, South America and Australia, he has also earned his Brazlian A licence and a FIFA Futuro III instructors licence.

“One thing I can promise both players and fans alike is that they will never be bored," Payne says in the club's online announcement. "We will play a technical, attacking, possession-based game in which the team will play from the back forward."

Born in England and raised on soccer, Payne might still be with the Toronto tabloid he loved had he not been pink-slipped.

But no doubt about it, he is more than thankful for being given the boot, so to speak. It landed him where he wants to be - on soccer fields and appreciated.

Changing course

Alan Craig went from a four-year Toronto Sun cop desk ambulance chaser in the 1970s to riding in them as a Toronto Emergency Medical Services employee.

Now former Toronto Sun photographer Greg Henkenhaf has been sworn in as a Toronto police constable assigned to 55 Division.

Craig joined the Toronto Fire Department in 1977, became a paramedic in 1982, was promoted to deputy EMS chief in 1999 and is now the EMS deputy chief-at-large, says the EMS website.  Impressive.

Friends and former colleagues of Henkenhaf, a father of two, say he also has what it takes to do the city and its police force proud. 

Veteran Sun photographer Michael Peake was at the swearing in ceremony for Henkenhaf and 41 other men and women last week.

(Linked photo courtesy of Peter Power's The Occasional Blogger site.) 

Maryanna Lewyckyj, a former Toronto Sun vet, tells TSF:

"I had heard a while back that Greg had left the Sun and was training to be a cop. What a huge loss for the Sun, but what a wonderful addition to the police ranks.

"Here's hoping for a long and distinguished career and a retirement with a decent pension."

Hear, hear.

Along the way, fellow constables will no doubt quiz him about his SUNshine Girl photo duties while at the Sun.

30 - Michel Gratton

Michel Gratton, who was an Ottawa Sun parliamentary bureau columnist for a decade, was found dead in his Ottawa apartment on Thursday. He was 58.

The Montreal Gazette, not the Ottawa Sun, adequately captures the life and times of Gratton in an online obit. The Ottawa Sun online headline mentions Gratton worked there as a columnist, but does not say when in the story.

The lengthy Gazette obit includes quotes from former Ottawa Sun colleagues in the late 1980s and 1990s, including Bob Fife and John Paton.

The Gazette says a public funeral will be held Friday at Notre Dame de Lourdes Catholic Church in Ottawa. He is survived by three daughters, four brothers and two sisters.

Exhibit A, eh?

Rob Tripp out

Rob Tripp, an award-winning crime reporter for the Kingston Whig-Standard, has resigned from the Sun Media newspaper in favour of freelancing.

Now that is a big loss for Sun Media.

Sources say Tripp made his exit last Friday after 20 years with the Whig-Standard as a city hall reporter, crime reporter and city editor. 

His first freelance piece can be found on the Canadian Lawyer website. He is also widely read on his CanCrime website.

Last year, he received two National Newspaper Award nominations for beat and local reporting for his work on the killings of four women near a lock in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. 

Tripp's exit is the third high-profile crime reporter departure at Sun Media in the past month.

A tipster says the Ottawa Sun's Kenneth Jackson left Dec. 31.

"He was their crime reporter, their best reporter," says the tipster.

The Toronto Sun's Tamara Cherry started her new on air CTV crime beat career this week.

Cherry and Tripp became widely read Sun Media staffers for investigative crime specials. Cherry's series on human trafficking in Canada was widely acclaimed.

To lose three crime reporters within a month is a huge loss for Sun Media readers.

Crime reporters are a dying breed at Sun Media, which is ironic because the flagship Toronto Sun was an early success with its emphasis on crime reporting.

Sun Media is losing the cream of the crop.

Tamara to CTV

Tamara Cherry, the Toronto Sun's high profile crime reporter, has moved on to television, namely CTV.

The reporter, widely recognized for her Sun work on human trafficking in Canada, was introduced on air yesterday by Ken Shaw as CTV's new crime reporter, "a specialist in the field."

Tamara, 26, earns top marks for on-air poise during her first CTV appearance, a live report from the streets of Toronto following the death of Toronto Police Sgt. Ryan Russell.

She was a Toronto Star newsroom intern for 16 months, from May of 2006 to September of 2007, before joining the Sun's news team.

Her series on human trafficking began in January of 2008 and earned her wide acclaim.

It looks like the beginning of a long relationship for Tamara and CTV.

But as always, the question is why did the Sun let her talent exit 333? 

Just in case . . .

More than 11 million YouTube visitors have viewed this five-minute Transport Accident Commission drinking and driving prevention ad campaign video, which first aired in Australia in 1989. 

We're sure policemen, ambulance workers, hospital staff and cop desk reporters and photographers everywhere would recommend it as a must-view for young and old. 

At the stroke of midnight each New Year's Eve, the slate is wiped clean for alcohol-related traffic accidents and while the annual stats have decreased, there is still a ways to go.