The Daily News demise
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008The loss of the Halifax Daily News this week is simply incalculable. How can you lose Michael DeAdder’s artful cartoon satire and the insight/incite of columnist David Rodenheiser?
My friend and reporter, Beth Johnston, as well as editor Jack Romaneli, are people that approach their job as a calling. It is important and it matters, and so do they.
Photographer Andrew Forget is also a gem that I will miss.
We not only lost about 100 jobs in Halifax when Transcontinental publishing came in from their ‘Death Star’ in Montreal to suicide bomb the troops and run back. They also killed 100 careers.
I do not sympathize with Transcontinental anymore than I do with Global TV’s “digital decision” to use Toronto studios and let the reporters file from here and mail it in – which they will do in the spring. A “digital decision” can sometimes mean the middle finger for our profession – never for the senior brass.
If only we could so callously digitize the Asper family as well as the decision makers in Montreal I think that the public would be better served.
Life isn’t always about money. Media operators have a public responsibility. That doesn’t mean that they should lose money; it does mean that they should be mandated to care if they don’t know better already.
Time and again I have seen media friends laid off for the incompetence of senior media functionaries, who only get moved around – laterally usually. When vice-presidents and presidents fail, they fail sideways — or actually get promoted!
Not us.
The lack of imagination and outright bungling that erodes the position of viable media entities should not be blamed on those that perform for us, those whom we read and with whom we identify; those we see on TV, those that edit and polish and those that care.