A Newspaper is not a Law School
Robert Prichard is taking an uncharacteristic gamble on his future.“I literally have set no plans. Zero. Not a thing,” he said during an interview Thursday, after he announced he was stepping down as presiident and chief executive officer of Torstar Corp. in May.
The youthful 60-year-old executive, trained lawyer and academic says he is “totally content and at peace” with a succession plan set in motion last August after he informed Torstar’s chairman Frank Iacobucci, that he wanted to step down. financial post
About a million years ago Bob Prichard addressed the incoming as the assistant Dean of his law school, the Dean being away. He said, with all sincerity – he was good at sincere – “You are the very best and the brightest”. And, to a degree, he was right and he was even brighter than us.
A newspaper – not to mention romance novels – is a weird thing. It is not really about being “best” or “bright”; it is about selling crappy little “help wanted” ads and convincing the Bay to stuff a flyer. Oh, and it is about delivering a product people can’t get anywhere else. When I went to Bob’s law school I read the Star and I was amazed at the fact that they published the addresses of everyone they wrote about. “Shooting victim, Tom Stat, of 2390 Simpcoe Place”. Southam papers didn’t do that, the Globe and Mail didn’t…even the Toronto Sun didn’t.
The Star had a point of view. It supported the Liberal Party. That was a given. It had really looney ideas about interest rates, it liked vismins – to the extent that they made more pavilions at multi-cult fests – but, at root, it liked Canadian white, ethnics. And it had a basic sense of how the Portuguese in my neighborhood or the Italians uptown or the Jews actually thought. What they cared about and how nasty their relations with old line WASPS could be.
Where the wheels on the Star’s bus began to fall off was when the “white ethnics” began to notice that their Toronto was changing in ways they were uncomfortable with. Perogies, blinies, raviolli – that we could understand…Dim Sum? Patties? These were the same but harder. Suddenly, the cultural fault lines became chasms.
The Star has soldiered on. Technology is eating its ad revenue; but display still works when you have 2 million people reading. But when that begins to slip; when it is impossible to keep all the audience happy because to support one group is to lose another; when the very definition of Canada is contested – the reality sets in that running a newspaper is hard.
I have always thought that Dean Iacobucci would have (and could still) make a brilliant Prime Minister. But I doubt he would want it. Bob Prichard, on the other hand would make a terrible Prime Minister precisely because he wants it too much. If Iggy goes down – and so long as the Lying Jackal is within a postal code of him he will – Prichard will look rather good.
It makes me root for Iggy.
February 27th, 2009 at 7:34 am
Does Pritchard have the needed approval of the Power corp clique? That is primary to funding a LPC crown bid…John Rae is still the unelected minister of LPC patronage and he wants a horse to run against the expat horse Ian Davey brought into the party. Will it be Bro Bob or another or both?...the more horses Power Corp has in the race the better the odds of their boy winning.
In the overall movement of the gears of the LPC machine Katsmeat is little more than grease for the cogs…and he is blowing even that useful idiot status with his very public vindictive personal pissing matches.
Keep your eyes on the real players and where they put their money and time.
February 27th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Are you saying the City of Eternal Light – the ideal that the rest of Canada should be striving for is not perfect? Who would have thunk it. I thought this was harmony personified and that ethnic differences were superficial. Nobody give it up for the common good. This was a goal of Canadian society in the past and its immigrants for generations. Why was that lost – silly me must be the Trudeau vision of a hypenated Canadian, which the Star boldly promoted as visionary and progressive.
February 27th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Well, a different world out there, most of the old line Wasps (who weren’t very Waspy, more likely to be Scots-Irish Protestants) and the Jewish and Italian immigrants of the 1950’s and 1960’s are either dead or moved away, And lots of them read the Star daily
Their children and grandchildren are different creatures living in various suburbs like Woodbridge, Thornhill and Mississauaga and beyond with a lot less desire to subscribe to a daily newspaper.
Though whether it has ever got the Italian and Portugese comunities is debateable. Certainly, Italian and Portuguese writers were pretty sparse in the newsroom aside from Rosie Dimanno and Dale Brazo.
Forgetting about the politics of the Star, when a big local story, like the chemical explosion, happens, I am amazed at the depth of the coverage that it can provide. It will be hard to replace.
February 27th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
They lived by “Progressivism“. With its children multiculturalism married with political correctness. Now they will be strangled by it till expiration. A fitting epitaph in my opinion. A small justice to atone for all the Policies they championed that have ruined, if not irreparably separated this Nation in half.
JMO