Sir: It was a great day for me when The Chatham Voice was launched by newspaper veterans Bruce Corcoran and Jim Blake on July 11, 2013. An important day! A wonderful day! And probably an anxious day for the two pioneers. They probably took a deep breath before they took the leap. But I know they are both experienced men who had grown up in the newspaper world.
I have always had a love of newspapers. My love blossomed long before I was ever employed in the business. I’ll never forget when, as a young boy in short pants, I mounted a fire escape with my dad in the city of Leeds, Yorkshire, to catch a glimpse of a room filled with mighty presses, lots of noise and the smell – the beautiful smell – of printer’s ink. I saw the massive rolls of newsprint, which, coincidentally, had been invented by 19th century Canadian inventor Charles Fenerty. In those days, of course, I had no idea I’d later move to Canada and call this country my home.
Well, the Yorkshire Post is still going strong, even though the original building I visited has been been demolished.
The birth of The Chatham Voice reminded me of those exciting days in 1971, when a bunch of former employees of the defunct Toronto Telegram took a deep breath themselves and started their own newspaper. It thrilled me how there was no publishing gap between the end of the Tely and issue No. 1 of the Toronto Sun! Joining the new paper were such notables as Doug Creighton at the helm. There were people like editor Peter Worthington, cartoonist Andy Donato. Writer (and later editor) John Downing and many others whose names I can’t recollect. Paul Rimstead came along later and he passed on in the 1980s. He never appealed to me although he had a large following.
Oh, yes, there was Ben Wicks who passed on in 2000. Ben, with whom I lunched a couple of times in Hamilton, was a true chirper – a British-born Canadian cartoonist, illustrator, journalist and author. He had a self-effacing but charming personality and we got on very well together,
The Sun’s slogan was “The little paper that grew” and grow it did. And so did the newspaper publishing industry in Canada. Most of the smaller chains of newspapers were swallowed up and ingested by the big corporations. There was Postmedia, to which the Sun now belongs, and Quebecor Newspapers and very few independents. The media is BIG BUSINESS now with thousands of corpses scattered on the wayside.
For many years I worked for Brabant Newspapers in Stoney Creek and Hamilton. When I started it was a Mom-and-Pop business consisting of six local newspapers owned by Roger and Blanche Brabant. We didn’t mind working 14-hour days for small salaries because we wanted to succeed and we were loyal to the Brabants, who were known as Mr. B and Mrs. B.
Then Blanche passed on and later Roger sold the company to Southam Inc. and they sold us to Conrad Black’s Hollinger Inc. And later we were bought by CanWest Global Communications, then Osprey Media and then swallowed up by Quebecor and later … oh, I’ve lost track.
The Chatham Voice is one of the independents. Not many of them around these days. It’s not big – a once-weekly publication, full colour, bright ads, delivered free to homes and businesses in Chatham, with a weekly circulation of more than 19,000.
Having about 25 years’ experience in newspapers, I know something of the costs involved. I know, even though it makes me gulp, that ads pay the way. As an editor I was responsible for the words, not the ads. If the ad staff wanted to tease me, they’d refer to the paper as “a flyer wrap.”
I still love newspapers, even though they’re now a world consumed with a love of money. Once, in the 1980s, I was offered a newspaper which was being sold in Iroquois, Ont., but I couldn’t raise the money. Now I’m glad I didn’t.
But I eventually became one of the corpses left on the wayside. I’m not sorry. I know what has happened to me since then has been from my God and I am grateful to be living here in Chatham – even if I don’t get paid for the stuff I write these days.
Stephen Beecroft
Chatham
