http://www.eagle.ca/caj/mediamag/summer2001/lastword.html
The Last Word
Media Magazine, Canadian Association
of Journalists (CAJ). Summer 2001.
The Canadian newspaper as a “Bible
for the 21st century”
Stanley Tromp takes us inside the lecture hall in which controversial
Vancouver Sun editor, Neil Reynolds, holds court on the state of
newspapers
"Newspapers are not a medium of
information delivery. If you want Hansard, you can buy that. Statistics are
superfluous to our fundamental mission, which is to provide a daily journal of
moral conduct." Neil Reynolds — who had taken over as Vancouver Sun
editor-in-chief in May 2000 after a long, multi-awarded career at Eastern
Canadian newspapers — was speaking to a sometimes baffled
audience at the UBC School of Journalism last fall.
Reynold's speech was entitled 'How
Conrad Black Saved Journalism in Canada.' "I never should never have
written that headline," he said wryly, but the school's director Donna
Logan interjected "I thought it was great!" The charming, avuncular
editor spoke slowly and fully, candidly answering each question.
In the early 1990s, papers were in a
funk and business was dismal, he began. "Conrad Black and David Radler brought revolutionary changes. They loved and
believed in newspapers. These owners loved newspapers so much that they
actually read them. Some don't."
In contrast to a commonly-held view
that people read newspapers to make sense of their world, Reynolds said,
"Newspapers want chaos. They don't want a totally ordered universe,
because chaos is the excitement. Every day you start with a hundred blank
pages, you start all over again. Yesterday is pre-history. Newspapers are not a
perfect record of life. They're a very selective view. It's redemption every
day … It's chaos theory.
"Newspapers should not be
elitist or pseudo-intellectual. Our fundamental mission is to provide a daily
journal of moral conduct. And that's what the Bible is. The Bible is just a few
front pages jammed together. Murder, Sex, Greed, Love, Redemption! The people
change but the stories remain always the same. We're just putting together the
Bible for the 21st century. And we don't know, at this point, who all the good
guys and bad guys are. It's very difficult. But we are not the moral arbiters.
We just put the issues out there for debate …Columnists purport to explain
things, but can become excuse makers. So my general
approach is never explain but apologize often.
"People know all newspapers
have biases. Some people read us because they don't agree with our bias. They
get a provocative charge out of being told they're wrong … I worked at the Toronto
Star for eight years, and they were the biggest spinners of all. They had a
written policy that 'everything [Liberal finance minister] Walter Gordon does
is front page news.' I didn't agree with Gordon, but I followed the policy
anyways, with a clear conscience. Everyone knew it was a left-wing rag, and we
called it PRAVDA, affectionately. But it was a great crusader, and the
best-selling daily in the country."
The Sun's new owner Izzy Asper
urged readers to vote Liberal in last year's federal election, but when asked
why a Sun editorial endorsed the Canadian Alliance instead, Reynolds
replied, "Fifty percent of our readers vote Alliance, and I think for no
other reason than it was their turn. But it wasn't to sell more papers, because
we're subscription based. What we put on the front page hardly makes a difference,
unlike in Britain … I'm different people at different times. Two elections ago,
the Sun endorsed the NDP provincially.
"I don't care for the social
conservatism of Alliance," said Reynolds, former leader of the Canadian
Libertarian party. When asked what the Vancouver Sun "believes
in," he replied, "Low taxes, lower taxes, very low taxes. The Vancouver
Sun believes in limited government, and in the innate moral right to
globally trade. Making the world become one through commerce. Environmental
concerns too."
On the Sun's lengthy series
on the Downtown Eastside drug problem, he said, "A lot of people told me
people are tired to death of reading about the Downtown Eastside. I'm speaking
as a newcomer and I don't want to sound judgmental, but I had the sense the
community was pretty accepting of that drug problem. We needed a crusade to
move this community to action. This is the editor as moralist. If something is
broken, it's his job to fix it … I'm a Methodist minister's son. That's where I
get my moral purpose. I quit school at age 16, and became a Communist.
Everybody was that or a socialist back then, and I'm not ashamed of that."
One questioner asked about the
article of a former Vancouver Sun reporter, which had suggested that Reynold's
predecessor had quashed news stories on the budding leaky condo disaster in
response to pressure from real estate advertisers.
"I don't want to comment on
that matter, because I wasn't here then," Reynolds said. "I'm very sceptical about it. But there is, from time to time,
between editorial and advertising some conflict. It is the role of the
publisher to come down on the side of the angels. The publisher's job may be
the most difficult one on earth, because he presides over the commercial
enterprise as well as the editorial operation. I've never had a problem of that
sort [leaky condo stories]. I will tell you that when I was at a small town paper, we published a silly little story on how
to sell your own home without a realtor. Just because we gave it a whole page,
somebody got upset. The real estate industry boycotted the paper for a year. It
cost the little paper a million bucks. But the publisher did not say a single
nasty word to me … In my 40 years in the business, no owner or publisher has
ever told me to print or not print a story. The editorial pages are different.
Owners since time immemorial have appointed editors who reflect their own
opinions."
Only once did Reynolds display
anger, when a man suggested the content was controlled by the paper's owners.
"The content is controlled by me, dammit," he replied. "I resent
it when people say I'm controlled by a large corporation. I've worked for many
large corporations. I've been fired by large corporations, and I don't give a
damn. It's as simple as that. An editor has to have some principles. I don't
control everything that gets into the Sun. I don't even know everything
that gets into the Sun."
A content study by the UBC School of Journalism found a
20-fold increase in fluff — "bikinis, models and muscles" — in the
A-section of the Sun since Reynolds arrived. In response to a complaint
that he was dumbing down the news pages, Reynolds replied, "Pop culture is
a metaphor for moral issues. If I can trick readers into looking at a serious
story, if they wouldn't otherwise unless there was a gun put to their heads,
that's a triumph for me … You could craft something that is, in theory, a
perfect newspaper, but who would read it?" He added that the New York
Times is read by just six percent of New Yorkers, but with such a large
population base it can afford to be elitist. "For us, going down to six
percent would be suicidal."
One student noted that Reynolds'
remake of the Ottawa Citizen, with its new mix of scantily-clad women
and political commentary, had been derided as "tits and analysis."
Reynolds replied (probably metaphorically) that "The tits are in the eyes
of the beholder. I have never selected a picture because of big breasts in my
life." He added, "I appointed four women columnists at the Sun.
I didn't like opening up the op-ed page every day and there were five
middle-aged guys talking to me. We still have a lot of work to do before I feel
we can have a conversation with our women readers."
As the afternoon wound down,
Reynolds concluded, "The worst thing you can do is to go into the business
and, after two or three years, you think you've done it all and it's easy now.
People start off in life choosing a difficult and challenging career. They
invest the mental time and energy to get there. I see this in other professions
too.
"The enthusiastic young person
discovers after three years there's an easy way to do everything. 'You can make
that phone call, have it written by 2:30 and be home by 4.' We lose our zest
because we simplify our work. Make it hard! Don't look at an assignment as
'what's the least I can do?' but 'what's the most I can do?' Push, push, push …
That one extra phone call, that one other unexpected source. A professional
hazard is the jaded writer. This is a psychological principle set forth by
Abraham Maslow — we lose our zest because we mentally simplify our work instead
of making it challenging. It's a wonderful challenging profession, and it never
loses its magic."
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