I like to tell people that Sudbury.com is the best newsroom I have ever worked in. And I am not blowing smoke you know where. Seriously, though, even while I do miss having a printed newspaper, the public is now being better served by local news than ever before. And the people here are passionate about getting fresh stories out to you quickly every day.
Getting the news within hours or even minutes of things happening means the public is getting its news almost as soon as things happen. It wasn't always like this. People reading their newspapers would learn about things that happened yesterday. Television news reports used to focus on what happened last night or this morning. Radio reports would give you the barest details of things that were just happening if they could get the details.
When I began in this business back in the day, reporters had the privilege of "being in the know" up to 24 hours before everyone else. It was common for some government offices or corporate PR firms to give newsrooms a heads-up the day before a major announcement so that newspapers could "sit on the story" and get the presses ready until it was time to officially release the details.
It also gave us time to get reaction stories to follow up to the major announcements. It also gave us time to check out the facts and background information provided on those announcements.
Sometimes that doesn't happen anymore.
I remember the earliest days of journalism school at Canadore College where the professors would stress the importance of getting the facts checked out before reporting the story.
"If you're in doubt, throw the story out," was one of the axioms. Another one was "Get it first, but first, get it right."
That hammered home the other key foundation of reporting the news. Reporters don't tell stories, your sources tell stories. That means every sentence that reports information must be attributed to the source of the information.
The mayor said the city hall project is over budget. The police chief said four gunshots were fired. The coroner said the victim died quickly.
Never ever write a story unless you have a source who has the facts.
As a grumpy editor who has worked with scores of young reporters over the years, they know I am "old school" when it comes to checking out their stories and insisting that all information is backed up by sources. I want information, not opinions.
If a reporter writes it was a beautiful day for a parade, my first question is "Says who?"
Much better to report that sunshine, mild temperatures and gentle breezes happened on parade day.
My journalism career began when I was a student reporter at the North Bay Nugget in 1973. There was a small desk with a clanky old Olivetti typewriter located in a dark corner of the newsroom. I say dark corner because the desk was tucked in beneath the staircase that went up to administrative and sales offices. One did not stand up too quickly for fear of banging one's head on the underside of the staircase.
My first stories were obituaries, where I called up people who knew the deceased to get comments on why that person would be missed and what contributions they had made to the community. Some obits were read more often than front-page stories.
I will never forget the day I heard steps clumping down the stairs from above me. A short elderly man came around from the staircase and shook my hand. It was the esteemed publisher, Mort Feldman.
It seems I had written an obit about a friend of his. Feldman liked it. "Nice work," he said. That made my day.
It was a fun time to work in a daily newsroom. Just on the other side of the brick wall was the pressroom. I loved it every day when the big presses would start spinning, the building would shake and you could smell the ink.
A year later I was in Timmins as a beat reporter for The Daily Press, covering crime, courts, some education meetings and mining developments. It was the best training because you were expected to cover every sort of story from violence on picket lines to visits from the premier. Within two years, I was asked by Sudbury's CKSO Radio and Television to be their northern reporter, based in Timmins, but covering everything north of Sudbury. It was the best of times. There was no cable TV, there was no satellite TV. We were all local news and had the best ratings.
Things change in the news game. You show up for work one day to find your company has been sold. People get laid off. Salaries get slashed. Hello 1980. With a new wife, a new house and a new baby, one has to make choices. I quit the news biz and got a job as a miner's helper at the Kidd Mine in Timmins.
It was a culture shock, but the pay was excellent. Over the next four a half years, I learned all I could about working underground. I was lucky to get training from some of the best miners at a time when the industry was transitioning from old techniques to new modern mining methods. I even spent time as the helper in a timber raise — something that allowed me to say I had truly become a miner. I was also pleased to become a certified mine rescuer.
As much as the work was satisfying, the shift work was always a challenge.
I was pleased one day when the phone rang and it was a former broadcast boss offering me a job. I told him I didn't think he could afford me. It took a few days, but we settled on a fair salary.
It was fun to be back in television, where the switch had been made from 16MM film to videotape. We were the only TV station in Timmins and we covered most of Northeastern Ontario and even parts of Northwestern Quebec. Then, as now, there were many bright young people who worked so hard to keep us successful.
The phone rang again a few years later and it was a job offer to work in live radio, covering Northeastern Ontario with CBC. I was pleased to move to Sudbury and to work with some of the best reporters, announcers, technicians and producers I had ever met. We covered so many big stories back then, one of them being the Temagami logging dispute. I liked the idea of working at Morning North, a live current affairs program where we reported on breaking news events as they were happening. It was five years of intense, sometimes exhausting work.
Another phone call and it was another job offer. This time Baton Broadcasting was luring me back to Timmins to run the MCTV newsroom there. It was the best time for Northern Ontario television in the early 1990s. Amazing people, amazing talent and a company that was committed to giving Northerners the best possible news coverage at the time.
But things were changing. Cable TV had arrived, so had satellite television. And then the Internet. After 10 years, MCTV decided to restructure. Jobs were cut. Even the managers and news directors were shown the door.
Freelancing is the term journalists use when they flog stories to various news companies that don't have the budget to hire you, but they can still dispense some generous dollars. That sustained me for a few years in the early 2000s, until I took a job writing a tourism magazine for a northern travel association.
That was fun because it was easier than the cut-and-thrust of daily news. But the job was too political for my taste. It was dependent on provincial funding. Our tourism board had to suck up to several bosses.
Luckily, one day the small local weekly Timmins Times had a job posting for editor to write up local news and take photos. I knew I was overqualified, but I literally begged for the chance. I was smiling when I quit my job as tourism guy and went back to being newspaper guy.
It was too good to be true. Within months our successful little paper was snapped by Sun Media and then a few years later by Postmedia. The work was pretty much the same except we were now being controlled by corporate bean counters in Toronto.
Then one day, the corporation decided to merge our operation with The Daily Press newspaper in Timmins. I can't say I didn't enjoy the work. Being in a busy newsroom was always satisfying.
It's where I figured I could retire after a few years.
The phone rang again. This time it was Norm Tollinksy at the Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal. He and company president Michael Atkins were looking for a new editor to take over the mining journal. They were both very convincing. It didn't hurt that my daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons were living in Sudbury. And so it was that I moved back to Sudbury and settled down in the newsroom upstairs on Elgin Street.
All was good until March of 2020 when I returned to the office after attending the annual Prospectors and Developers Convention in Toronto. I felt fine, but another Sudbury fellow who had attended the convention was positive for COVID-19. The boss was careful. He sent me home to self isolate for two weeks.
And then the phone rang. It was the boss inviting me back to a staff meeting just two weeks later. I was surprised as everyone else to learn the company had been sold to a digital news company, one that had no print products at all. No more mining journal, no more medical journal, no more weekly newspaper.
I cleaned out my desk and headed home to tough out the worst part of the pandemic at that point. My daughter was happy that we got to have a few more lunch dates, but I was wondering when things would change. I was too bored to imagine and sorely missing the news game.
Rrrrring. Now it was my cell phone. Two months had passed. It was my old boss calling. Things had changed. The new company had applied for a federal journalism initiative grant and would I be interested in getting back to work.
It was good to be back at the newsroom upstairs on Elgin.
