Crownest Pass Promoter in Alberta closes

Make that 13 Sun Media newspapers shuttered since last fall.

The Crowsnest Pass Promoter in Alberta is toast as of today. 

The latest Sun Media casualtity is said to be a victim of a dispute between the local mayor and the newspaper.  

http://crowsnestpasshome.blogspot.ca/2013/08/crowsnest-pass-promoter.html?showComment=1377436228104

Sun Promo Queen Lesley Annett dies at 65

Her smile and the glow that came from being one of the Toronto Sun's key promotions staffers is what we will remember of Lesley Annett. 

Mike Strobel has written about Lesley in two recent columns, including one today that describes how she danced at her daughter's Aug. 17 wedding just a week before dying of ovarian cancer at 65.

Trudy Eagan says in a Facebook posting: "Beautiful column Mike which captures the essence of our special friend and colleague who taught so many of us to be brave and spirited in so many ways. We will long remember her laughter, sense of humor, and how she made each of us feel,like we were the only one in the room. Thanks."

You can read Mike's column here. 

Lesley, who died Sunday in her Oakville home, was just one of the many positive people who filled the six floors of 333 during the glory years . 

Memories of Lesley can be posted here by emailing thecos@the-wire.com

Open invite to Pyette/Spremo affair

The Canadian News Hall of Fame will induct Les Pyette and Boris Spremo on Oct. 16 and two more deserving Canadian newspaper giants would be difficult to find.

The Hall of Fame was inactive for more than a decade after its awards dinner in 2001, but they are back and honouring those who have earned the respect of media coast to coast.

An email from Ian Connerty, Chair, Canadian News Hall of Fame:

The Canadian News Hall of Fame is honouring former Toronto Sun editor and publisher Les Pyette. Les' induction into the Hall of Fame will take place on October 16, 2013. Attached and below is more information on the event that you may wish to share with the Toronto Sun Family. Thank you.

You are invited to the Annual Induction Ceremony and Dinner for the Canadian News Hall of Fame on Wednesday October 16, 2013 at 6:00 PM at the Rosewater Room, 19 Toronto Street.

This year we have the honour of inducting two Canadian print media giants: Boris Spremo, legendary Canadian news photographer, formerly with the Toronto Star, and Les Pyette, former editor and publisher of Sun Media group, the London Free Press and the Toronto Sun.

Boris and Les will join last year’s inductees Lloyd Robertson and Andy Walsh along with a distinguished list of Hall of Fame inductees including: Allan Fotheringham, Douglas Fisher, June Callwood, Charles Lynch, Trina McQueen, Peter Worthington, Jocko Thomas, Douglas Creighton and Peter C. Newman, among others.

The Annual Induction and Dinner is one of the highlights of the social and media agenda.  Early Bird tickets are $200 per person and tables of 10 are available for $2,000. Email your order as soon as possible to reserve your tickets or table. Attached is an order form, an invitation and a copy of this year’s draft program. Tickets are limited so you should book early.

The evening starts at 6 PM with a reception at the Rosewater Room, 19 Toronto Street, Toronto. Dinner takes place at 7 PM with the induction ceremony to follow at 8:30 PM. Once again I urge you to book early to avoid disappointment.

Ian Connerty
Chair
Canadian News Hall of Fame 

ianconnerty@gmail.com

Andre Forget out as national photo editor

A reliable source tells TSF Andre Forget, an award-winning Sun Media photographer for more than 15 years, has been ousted as the chain's national photo editor.

"Forget ((@QMIshooter) covered the Hill ((#CDNpoli) and other national and local news in Ottawa," says the tipster. 

Andre's work can be viewed at:

http://www.andreforget.ca/

http://blogs.canoe.ca/eyeonthehill/about-andre-forget/

Now who is Steve White, said to have replaced Andre?

The day Lou Grant was senior city editor

Peter Worthington used to say one of the many events that separated the tabloid Toronto Sun from most other print media was the day Lou Grant, aka Ed Asner, worked the city desk.

Lou, hired by Doug and Peter as senior city editor, arrived in the newsroom on March 23, 1979. City Editor Bob Burt surrendered his chair for the fun day.

We recapped the day in a previous TSF post in 2007 - http://torontosunfamily.blogspot.ca/2007/01/mr-lou-grant.html - but we were not aware a Peter Gross bit with Lou for CITY-TV was posted on YouTube in 2011. It is a must-view for Sun vets. Familiar faces are in the background watching Lou and Peter doing their bit.




We are not sure who posted the CITY-TV clip, but many thanks. It brings back memories of a day in the Sun that is still talked about more than 30 years later.

BTW:  How many Sun types in the background can you identify?

Marilyn Linton says farewell

Marilyn Linton is the latest Toronto Sun vet to say farewell.

Lifetsyle's health writer doesn't explain her exit, but a closing paragraph in her final column reads:

After nearly 30 years of working with Sun Media, Marilyn Linton’s column will be coming to an end. As a former Lifestyle editor, Marilyn spearheaded industry-wide changes that are represented today.

She is an acclaimed cookbook author, an author of health books, and her creative background  has been passed on to her daughters, both in media in various forms.

You can follow Marilyn daily on Twitter @Marilynlinton1 and watch for her take on current, relevant women’s health at marilynlinton.com.

TSF says all the best, Marilyn.

It seems health, education and Bono's political views are no longer relevant in Sun Media's world?

One less vet to remind PKP of the glory years.

Dresden-Bothwell Leader-Spirit axed

 Make that 12.

Twelve Sun Media newspapers shuttered since last fall. The latest casualty this week - the Dresden-Bothwell Leader-Spirit in Southern Ontario.

Not a large newspaper, but community to the hilt with solid advertising support as we discovered in this online copy of a printed issue from April:

http://issuu.com/sunmediachatham/docs/leader_spirit_apr._13

Twenty pages. Solid community effort. Sad that effort is not worthy of Sun Media's stable of newspapers.

If this is a Sun Media link, it might soon be deleted, as was the link to the newspaper's website.

The Leader-Spirit doesn't have a history of 100 or so years, as many of the Sun Media casualties had, but it did have devoted readers and advertisers. 

Internet sources say The Dresden Leader, originally known as the North Kent Leader, was founded in 1965 by Ted Misselbrook and Gord Clauws. The Spirit of Bothwell was launched in 1992 by Jim Kish. They merged in 2008.

As we've suggested before, independent dailies and weeklies owned and managed by many of the hundreds of laid off media employees could be the answer for journalists, advertisers and readers.

Print is where the money is and not all advertisers and readers have abandoned the format. To appease generations young and old, quality community print/online newspapers out of the grasps of out-of-touch conglomerates make sense.

That is why we are rooting for the Chatham Voice, recently launched and sounding like a keeper.

Sitting here thinking of the very talented Sun people pink-slipped over the past two decades leaves us wondering why more of the men and women haven't launched independent newspapers.

We'd subscribe to any community newspaper offering the talents of Mark Bonokoski (Bancfoft), John Downing (Toronto), Gary Dunford (wherever he hangs his hat), Moira MacDonald (Toronto), Bill Brioux (Brampton) etc.

The writers, photographers, editors and execs out there wondering what to do next would do justice to communities abandoned, or neglected, by the conglomerates.

All you have to do is commit to the "community" 100%, working there, living there, eating there, playing there. 

Chatham Voice - community first

The recently launched Chatham Voice, owned and managed by former Sun Media news vets Bruce Corcoran and Jim Blake, gives us goosebumps.
 
The thought of small, community-minded newspapers sprouting from the indifference of conglomerates like Sun Media warms the heart.

It takes us back to our roots when we worked for independent and chain-owned community newspapers that swore by the code - community news, sports, social events and entertainment first.

(Much like the Brampton Times city editor who refused to use my photos of the Beatles snapped at Maple Leaf Gardens because there were no local people in the pictures.)

Chatham Voice's Corcoran, Blake and Fatima Pisquem all worked at Sun Media's Chatham Daily News before parting company. A fourth, Tricia Weese, will join the Chatham Voice next month.

When Tricia joins the weekly paper, there will be eight men and women devoting their time and energy to making the Chatham Voice a community newspaper of old.

The free print edition, in full colour, and the online edition, have been welcomed by the community.   

"Feedback from the community has been extremely positive," Corcoran tells TSF. "We currently put out a once-weekly publication, delivered to homes and businesses in Chatham, with a weekly circulation of more than 20,000.

"Printed in full colour - every page. Looks great. Everything, with the exception of printing, is done locally. The content is local, the ownership is local, and the readers appreciate that."

We wish the Chatham Voice only success, with the support of readers and advertisers. Nothing is more contagious than the will to succeed in a new venture.

This blogger's first reporting job was at the Chatham Daily News in 1963 and it was pure joy from the first assignment - take the Speed Graphic, pocket full of bulbs and pocket full of film slides out for a spin.

The focus of the Daily News, a Thomson newspaper at the time, was Chatham and a few nearby communities. The op-ed pages had some outside content, but largely it was local front to back.

We didn't mind working 14-hour days because we wanted to succeed and, as long as we paid the rent and had enough to eat, money was not an object. The money comes later.

The recent launch of the Chatham Voice reminded us what the Toronto Sun must have felt like on Day One and the potential it presented to the 62 former employees of the defunct Toronto Telegram.

Perhaps the hundreds of men and women axed by Quebecor in recent years might consider branching into independent weekly or daily newspapers in their communities.

Can you vision a movement of new, community-driven Voice newspapers to replace the apathy of Sun Media in supporting community newspapers?

We are sure the community newspaper vets at Chatham Voice have some pointers.

Contacts: jim@chathamvoice.com or bruce@chathamvoice.com or 519-397-2020.

If the owner/managers of other independent community newspapers launched across Canada since this blog began in 2006 want to provide updates on their experiences, please do.

Mark Bonokoski says farewell

Mark's final Sun Media column:

When Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin penned his final piece for New York’s Newsday, he signed off to both management and readers by writing “thanks for the use of the hall.”

Today I wish to express the same thanks.

When I put the final touches to my first newspaper column way back in 1977, banged out in triplicate on a manual typewriter from a low-rent motel room near Kingston Penitentiary, I did not expect my run to ever end.

But it did, on Tuesday.

Hard as I tried, I never got as good as the legendary Jimmy Breslin, but he was my template for what a hardcore newspaper columnist should be — gruff, opinionated and fearless, but with a soft touch when a soft touch was needed.

While there were times with Breslin when it seemed he couldn’t have cared less, there was never a time when I could have cared more, nor when my harshest critic was not the face in the mirror.

I hope it showed in my work because I always gave the best I had to give.

Since 1974, I have worked for no one else but the readers of this space.

And now, thousands of columns later, and millions of words having lined the bottom of bird cages, it has come time to say goodbye.

It’s not easy.

My worst days, of course, were those three years back in the late 1990s when I was publisher and CEO of the Ottawa Sun, and my eyes were buried in budget books and not staring at a blank page on a computer screen with a column deadline looming.

Anyone who knows me knows this to be true.

Writing is what I loved, not management, and so it is good to go out as a writer.

Not many in the game have been as fortunate as I have been, who have been given a column at such a young age — then one of the youngest in Canada — and with it a ticket to virtually travel the world over the course of decades.

There is no greater adventure than to be a history’s elbow when the world changes, to be in Berlin at the very moment the Wall came down, to dodge gunfire in Rhodesia, to find yourself in a room in the Vatican next to where a pope lies recovering from an assassin’s bullet, or to be in an IRA funeral cortege in sectarian Belfast when two off-duty soldiers get lynched.

And that’s just a quick whetting of the memory.

During my days as the marquee columnist in Toronto, often punching out five columns a week, my memory quickly flashes to the phone call to the newsroom from the hitmen who had just whacked Toronto mobster Paul Volpe, and directing me to the exact location where his body could be found.

How’s that for having contacts?

During more recent times, there was the opportunity to write a 15-part series on the urban aboriginal which, while winning a couple of awards, was important in that it put a face to an oft-conflicted First Nations, and addressed those conflicts through their own words, not just the words of bureaucrats and politicians.

The capper, perhaps, was Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin launching the largest investigation in his office’s history as a result of another award-winning series I wrote on post-traumatic stress disorder among Ontario’s provincial police, and the force’s reluctance to deal with the turmoil and the anguish.

This issue must continue to be pursued.

Throughout the course of my career, rarely has a week gone by when I am not stopped in the street by a reader, many times to remind me of a long-ago column about their aunt, or their uncle, or someone they know who had fallen on hard times but were picked up by my words in this space.

Small victories, yes, but important ones too.

It signals a connection with readers.

So this is it, then. The end of this road, so to speak, but not the end of the adventure.

Somewhere, out there, another challenge awaits with my name on it.

Until then, thanks for the time and the use of the hall.

You will be missed.

— markbonokoski@gmail.com

Is the 1903 Eclipse building doomed?

It has been nine months since David Mirvish unveiled plans for a massive facelift for King Street West. The project would include demolition of the Princess of Wales Theatre and the nearby Eclipse White Wear Company Building.

All has been quiet on the Mirvish front until the pending sale of Honest Ed's at Bathurst and Bloor and nearby Mirvish real estate was announced this week. Funds needed for the King Street West redevelopment?

Makes us wonder if the Eclipse building, home to the Toronto Sun from its launch on Nov. 1, 1971, until the summer of 1975, will soon vanish.

Hundreds of Sun employees and former employed crammed into the Eclipse building in November of 1992 to celebrate Doug Creighton's 64th birthday just weeks after he was ousted.

During the party, it was announced if $200 was paid to the Toronto Historical Society, a commemorative plaque would be added to the Eclipse building tagging it as the birthplace of the Sun.

Dropped by the building a few times over the years and it appears that plaque was never paid for and attached to the building.

If and when the Eclipse building is demolished, sentimental Sun vets interested in owning a piece of newspaper history should be offered a piece of 322 King Street West.

A brick, perhaps? Surviving Toronto Sun Day Oners and those who followed might cherish a piece of the building. Once it is gone, it is gone.  

If there is a countdown to demolition, TSF will round up favourite photos of the Eclipse building for a photo album.

A 2012 National Post photo by the late former Sun photographer Mike Cassese shows the proud white Eclipse building and the nearby Princess of Wales Theatre. 

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/10/06/on-theatre-an-agitating-critic-writes-in-praise-of-the-princess-of-wales/  

And a Toronto Star story profiles buildings in the way of the major facelift.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/10/01/historic_king_street_buildings_face_demolition_if_mirvishgehry_project_gets_green_light.html