Blacked out

Last week, media blogger Bill Doskoch marked the 10th anniversary of the massacre at the Regina Leader-Post. Not surprisingly, the mass firing came in the wake of Conrad Black's Hollinger Inc. taking over the paper.

I've always been a reasonably attentive observer of my industry, and from what I could see, wherever Hollinger acquired, layoffs were sure to follow. Black's chief henchman, David Radler, has said he could always find 12 per cent fat in a Southam paper and four per cent in a Thomson one. By that, he usually doesn't mean overspending on paper clips.

However, the 'L' word didn't appear in any of the glowing L-P coverage about the sale, which mentioned things like the "opportunities" that could be available to employees by being part of a larger organization.

Personally, I put a lockdown on any discretionary spending.

At least two co-workers in the newsroom bought homes in this period, working on the theory that what will happen, will happen and life will go on.

From early January through to the end of Febuary 1996, we saw a steady stream of hard-looking men in dark, corporate suits carrying big, rectangular lawyers' briefcases, walking through our newsroom. They never looked at us or smiled. We didn't exist to them. But then again, to what extent do beef cattle exist to slaughterhouse operators?

"Apparently they're asking a lot of questions like, 'why doesn't this make more profit?'" said one middle manager at the time (he's still there), putting a snarling, chilly inflection on the p-word.

Eventually, the hard men finished their due diligence. At about 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 29, 1996,  an index-card-sized note was put on company bulletin boards around the plant, saying the sale of the company to Hollinger had been closed.

Doskoch's tale is a gripping take on a terrible time in Canadian journalism.

I remember when he, along with scores of his colleagues, got axed. I had interviewed him several times in the preceding years, because of his work with Project Censored and the Canadian Association of Journalists. At the time, he called me to tell me what had happened and also to ask me for leads on jobs.

He writes now that he was targeted for termination because he was an unmarried male, the assumption being that he'd have a better chance of finding a new gig. Indeed, all the fired reporters were single men.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that Doskoch would have been hit no matter what: He was the L-P's environment columnist. A troublemaker then - and still.

Comments

[Bill Doskoch]

Hi Antonia:

A quibble: I don't say I got targeted because I was a single male. That was a widely-held opinion as people tried to explain something that seemed quite random.

I gave up the environment column way before the downsizing, in part because they didn't want me reporting on environment issues. I thought that made the column untenable.

As to the trouble-maker part, it could have played a role, but who knows?

I bumped into Al Rosseker, my one-time city editor, in downtown Regina about six weeks after Black Saturday. He posited the theory that "trouble-makers" were targeted in some departments.

He then told me: "You asked questions."

My response was yeah, but I also said I didn't think I was being a pain in the ass just because; I spoke on issues I thought were ethically important and stood up for what I thought was right.

He agreed with that assessment.

OTOH, maybe that is career-limiting.

I attended the 1999 CAJ conference in Vancouver. My old friend David Radler, then-president of Hollinger, was on one panel.

When he started to blow a little too much smoke, I stepped forward, IDed myself as a Black Saturday dismissado, politely made some observations and asked him some tough questions.

At a later session, one panelist -- a very senior editor at a very large newspaper -- looked at me and said: "Boy, if you're going to take on Radler ..."

He didn't finish the sentence. He just shook his head.

Unfortunately, I never got the memo that journalists aren't supposed to ask tough questions about industry executives.

I should also say that if the L-P targeted trouble-makers in the downsizing, they did a piss-poor job.

The newsroom became unionized a few years later and there was a byline strike in 2002 (when CanWest owned it) and the paper's editors tried to twist the words of The Star's Haroon Siddiqui, speaking as the James L. Minifie lecturer, to support the corporate line on the owner's right to see his views dominate.

Siddiqui reportedly donated his speaking fee to the people who were suspended over that to minimize any financial hardship they might have suffered. If true, that makes him a very cool guy in my books.

It's good to see there's still a few trouble-makers and fellow-travellers out there. :)

Bill D.

[sooey]

i'm not pointing any fingers but there's a scene in "citizen black" showing a room full of shoes... ... ... ... if my theory as to where all the money went holds, they'll all prove to be size "lady black"...

[sheena]

pfffttt. Sooey, you're just jealous.