Sun colours

The people in charge of the crayons at the Toronto Sun should reconsider colour schemes in ads and stories that induce eye strain.

Print newspaper customers should not have to make an effort to read text, but that has been the case with the ill-advised use of some colours.

The Casa Loma ad on page 70 of the Sunday Sun is a classic example of poor colour coordination.  If it was a Sun display ad department creation, we'd ask for a refund or deep discount.

There have also been feature articles and story sidebars in the Sun that have turned reading into a chore.

The Toronto Sun championed the use of colour in the late 1970s. It still excels, but quality control is occasionally lacking when it comes to ease of reading the paper.

Rural readers

Are the days of Sun Media newspaper deliveries to areas beyond their community borders coming to an end?

Could readers beyond the GTA soon lose the option of buying the Toronto Sun print edition at a premium price in local retail outlets?

News this week that the Peterborough Examiner is eliminating delivery to retail outlets in Port Hope, Cobourg and beyond could be a new trend in Sun Media penny-pinching.

The Examiner has advised Port Hope retailers:

"Thank you for your support of The Peterborough Examiner throughout the years.

"Due to rising costs of distribution, gas and car maintenance, we will no longer be servicing your area.

"As of Monday January 31, 2011, you will no longer receive The Peterborough Examiner in your store."

A TSF tipster says readers of the daily beyond the Peterborough distribution area can  still order it by mail. Same day delivery? Doubt it.

Or they can pocket the $1.25 per printed edition and read the limited online version for free.

Another tipster says the Lindsay Post has also reduced its daily retail distribution area.

So there could come a day when the convenience of picking up the Toronto Sun's print edition beyond the GTA will be a memory.

Ditto for all of the other Sun Media newspapers across the chain. 

Readers who do not find online newspapers their cup of tea won't be happy, but keeping the print customer satisfied isn't a Sun Media priority.

Meanwhile, advertisers face reduced exposure in tough economic times.

Examiner woes

Retail outlets out Cobourg-Port Hope way have been told the Peterborough Examiner will no longer be distributed to outlets in their area beginning Monday.

That is sure to tick off Peterborough advertisers who have drawn a lot of business from Cobourg and Port Hope over the decades. 

It's just another dagger in the once proud Examiner, a newspaper that has been published since 1847 but has been sliding since Osprey Media was purchased by Quebecor in 2007.

A TSF tipster writes:

"Five drivers in rural areas have lost their runs as the Examiner has decided to mail papers to subscribers in rural areas. How would you like your daily paper two days late? Not going to be good for subscriber numbers."

It was written 2

The countdown to the Toronto Sun's 40th anniversary this Nov. 1 continues. 

More tidbits from its birth from Ron Poulton's 1976 book Life in a Word Factory:

(Eaton) Howitt didn't get a clear look at the Sun's city room until 48 hours after he had started running for his new employers.

When he got the chance to settle in, he found that the sports department consisted of one small room containing three desks for five people. The copy was being marked on an orange crate in a corner. Three reporters were writing and two couldn't sit down.

Sun sports editor George Gross and the rest of his staff began coping with these surroundings at 9 a.m. on that Sunday when Howitt's cup of loneliness was running over in New York (his last Tely sports assignment). 

. . . Outside the Sun building, future executives and a horde of hastily recruited kids were running upstairs, downstairs and all around the town. The children blitzed apartment houses with a letter signed by Doug Creighton to announce the coming of The Toronto Sun.

"At the same time," Creighton said, "the rest of us were slapping Sun stickers on Tely boxes and spraying as many of them as we could with paint. We even managed to move some of the boxes to the right side of the street to accommodate the in-bound traffic."

When the edited news copy began to flow, Gross found he had to share the Sun's entire fleet of cars (two Volkswagens and a Cadillac) in order to get his sports copy to the Inland Publishing Company presses in Mississauga, 20 miles across the city. 

Niagara - 5

Four art department staffers in the Niagara area were painted out of the Sun Media picture yesterday, says a tipster.

Gone are two in St. Catharines, one in Welland and another in Niagara Falls, says the tipster.

Any names or years of service?

Meanwhile, another source says entertainment/arts reporter Lori Littleton of the St. Catharines Standard has notified local arts groups she is gone from the paper this week.

No reason for her departure, but one tipster says it was her decision.

Journal No. 2

As anniversaries go, today's second anniversary of the Journal de Montreal lockout of 253 employees isn't one to celebrate.

Coverage: CBC  - Toronto Star (CP)

Citizen photos

Former Toronto Sun vet Bill Sandford tells TSF:

"A multi vehicle crash on Highway 11 this morning brought out the citizen journalists. The Star used a so-so (online) photo of the scene, the Globe has citizen video, but the Toronto Sun wins hands down with a photo by MP Tony Clement."

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2011/01/21/16980081.html

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.