EVERY DAY A NEW DAY

 

Only one Toronto Sun column hangs on my wall, near this keyboard.

And curiously, it is not my own.

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As the 50th anniversary of The Little Paper That Grew looms and we both approach an iffy twilight, one 2012 column still makes me grin. It connects. It has spunk. It rings old bells.

Is it because Peter Worthington calls the same Toronto Star editor who fired me and tells him to Go Fish?

Is it because the Sun's original rebels concocted a cozy nest for Peter's "free spirits" and "loose cannons?"

Or is it just a solid tale of one kick ass adventure?

A corps of former Sun employees plot on Facebook to celebrate the 50th anniversary.

They can do no better than to memorialize this.

It's Peter Worthington's column of Nov 1, 2012.

Postmedia could delete it from the web with a single click at a bean counter's keyboard.

Might they make it ... un-happen?

That would be wrong.

Worthington column on Sun website  

OR read it right here....

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TORONTO SUN MARKS 41 Years

It was 41 years ago on Halloween weekend that the Toronto Telegram went out of business and the Toronto Sun was born – 1,200 people out of a job, 62 got with new ones.

What brings this to mind is an account of the Tely’s demise on the website torontoist.com, by one Jamie Bradburn which is detailed and about as accurate as anything I’ve read about those turbulent times.

When a newspaper dies (killed?) or one is started, it is intensely personal for those involved. Memories fade, change or flourish as years pass, and those involved have both collective and individual recollections.

A lot has been written about the Sun’s early days, some of it confused.

When the Toronto Star agreed to a handsome wage increase for employees, the union at the Tely wanted a matching increase. Publisher John Bassett balked -- couldn’t afford to match the Star. A union meeting at the King Eddy was raucous and adamant that Bassett was bluffing: Vote for a strike, and he’d settle. Dream on.

I and a handful of others were roundly booed when we argued against a strike on grounds that Bassett didn’t bluff – he warned. After the vote to strike, I remember the union’s Freddy Jones -- a good guy -- assuring me that he knew Bassett, and that Bassett would settle. “Not to worry, Peter.”

Bassett promptly announced that the Tely would fold in a month, and he apologized to readers that he couldn’t keep it afloat. Unbeknownst was that he’d already agreed to sell the Tely’s subscription list to the Star for $10 million if the union vote went as he anticipated.

The scramble was on among employees for jobs.

I phoned Dick Doyle, who ran the Globe and Mail, and asked for a job. He wasn’t interested.

Tely(itls) Managing Editor Doug Creighton felt a tabloid would work. He’d been previously involved in trying to persuade Bassett to start one. He put together a team to investigate and to raise money.

Since I’d recently returned from running the Tely bureau in Moscow and was intensely anti-communist, Doug asked me to approach Steve Roman of Denison Mines for $5 million start-up. Roman was even more anti-communist than I, and might agree.

Roman and I had lunch and I blurted out that a morning tabloid needed $5 million to work. Roman wasn’t interested in a morning paper, but said he might be interested in an afternoon paper because he hated the Toronto Star. To him, a morning paper was a hopeless proposition. Anyway $5 million was too much.

Meanwhile Doug and Don Hunt were negotiating with financier Eddie Hyde. Our financial estimates had shrunk to $1 million in start-up costs.

During this time Gordon Donaldson and Don Cameron, both doing documentaries for the CBC, said they could get me hired at the CBC as a reporter. It was an option I toyed with, until Marty Goodman, Ray Timson and Ray Gardner at the Star summoned me for an interview.

Goodman was uneasy that I might not blend with the Star culture, since I was something of a free spirit (or loose cannon) at the Tely. I said I thought those who fought the Star the hardest at the Tely would fight equally hard for the Star if they were hired. He offered a job, and said to think it over and let him know.

In the meantime -- it was now mid-October, 1971 – negotiations went on with Eddie Hyde. Among those in talks were Doug, Hunt, Andy MacFarlane, Eddie Montieth.

At the last meeting, Andy MacFarlane, prospective editor, pulled out and said he’d accepted a job running the journalism school at the University of Western Ontario.

I was shaken. I was very much a MacFarlane person. I announced if Andy was out—so was I. The meeting broke up with the Sun idea dead. Doug had a job offer from Air Canada, Don a syndicate job somewhere, me going to the Star.

I arrived home that Friday night. Yvonne had gone to bed.

“How’d it go?” she asked, when awakened.

“It’s over,” I said. “Andy pulled out, so did I. I guess I’ll go to the Star.”

“You’ll hate the Star,” said Yvonne, with passion. She’d once worked there as a reporter. “They’ll grind you down like they do everyone. Don’t do it. You take Andy’s place.”

“But the deal’s off. Eddie Hyde’s finished. There’s no money to start.”

“Phone Eddie Goodman,” said Yvonne.

Yvonne and I had spent a weekend at the U.S. Open Tennis in New York with the Bassetts and Goodmans. During rain delays, Eddie and I had commiserated about the Tely’s probable demise, and had exchanged views on what a new paper should be like.

I phoned Goodman that night and told him the tale of trying to raise money for a tabloid. Eddie (since deceased) was enthusiastic – a bit misleading because Eddie was enthusiastic about practically everything. “What sort of money do you need?” he asked.

“We’re looking for $1 million,” I said. Gone was the nonsense about $5 million.

“Give me a day,” he said. “I’ll phone you tomorrow.”

Late the next day he called. “Okay,” he shouted. (Goodman was always shouting). “I’ve got it! I’ve got $650,000 pledged, and we’ll soon have $1 million.”

On the Sunday I phone Creighton and Hunt who were at the cottage, and told them I’d called Eddie Goodman who said he’d get the million. I said I’d take over Andy MacFarlane’s role, and that we were back in business.

Doug’s sense of humour kicked in, and he revived the project. We called what was left of the staff we had hoped for. My role was to get the reporters. The only one at the Tely I considered indispensable was the late Bob MacDonald. Bob had an offer from the proposed Montreal Express (now defunct), but opted for the Sun.

I phoned Ray Timson at the Star and told him thanks for the job offer, but I was going to stick to the new paper.

“You’re making a big mistake,” said Timson. “It’ll never work.”

“ Well, it’s worth a try,” I said.

“You’ll regret it, but it’s your life.” He seemed disgusted at such foolishness.

Eddie Goodman never got the $1 million. The Sun started on about $300,000 and never looked back. Memory is uncertain, but we had about a week to prepare for the first edition.

The agonies and ecstasies of the Sun’s early days have been repeatedly documented, but the bottom line is that the Tely’s last edition was a Saturday, and the Sun’s first edition  was on Monday, Nov. 1 – no gap in the three-newspaper city.

Unlike the National Post when it started in 1998, the Sun from day one never lost money. The Post, from all accounts, has never made money. I still find it ironic that a bunch of unemployed newspaper people with no business background started the Sun on a shoestring and high hopes, but understood that to succeed the paper had to be profitable. Unlike the Post, which is an excellent paper but more adept at spending money than earning it.

The Sun started with no union (we all felt victims of union misjudgment), but we had profit sharing. We adopted an irreverent but cheerful tone, were editorially skeptical of the policies and ideology of Pierre Trudeau, were hostile to the subversive menace of the Soviet Union and communism, and were committed to tell readers about our mistakes and foibles. We gave columnists free rein to comment on the publisher’s martinis, the general managers propensity to say “No,” the editors conviction that communism was wicked.

Since 1971 the Sun has had five owners – each one implementing changes, but each one determined to keep the flavor of how we started.

On a personal level, I think everyone at the Sun likes one another, we have few bullies in middle management (unique in the media), and it is a pleasant place to work – even if there’s often a shortage of staff and no back-up.

We sometime grumble – but that’s what journalists are best at.

            --Peter Worthington, Toronto Sun Nov. 1 2012.

 

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It's delightful that Worthington's (itls) instruction to set Tely in italics appears in both web and print versions of his column. Whoops.

How many typewriters, IBM Selectrics, Radio Shack TRS-80s and cranky, bankrupt word processing systems foiled writers over nearly 50 years? Not enough to stop us.

Too much fun.

 

Lead photo credit: Jack Boland/CP