Tom Says: “I hope they learn…”
There are lessons to be learned from the latest municipal election in Saint John, particularly by some of the losers.
Perhaps the largest lesson needs to be learned by those who operate the daily newspaper. I have no idea how often they conduct “focus groups” or even if they do. It would be interesting to know who gets invited to them and what questions are asked of the participants.
My advice to the powers that be, would be for the newspaper to return to what newspapers do best — report the news.
For years, the quality of the local paper could at best be described as less than ideal. Less than five years ago, the owners, (the Irvings) turned the paper over to a fourth generation member of the family. He was a bright, well educated, very keen, energetic newspaper man and in the beginning made lots of the right moves. He had the local paper reporting the news. However, over the last few months, the paper appears to have lost it’s way. Instead of reporting the news, a decision appears to have been made that the paper would “make the news” and then “be the news.”
For some reason, it established itself as a city hall watch dog and has been prepared, fair or foul, to take on both elected civic officials and the city employees who operate in various city departments. There has been no secret that both the paper, along with an unknown number of people, have been grooming the city’s deputy mayor for a move into the mayor’s chair. In their eyes, she has done nothing wrong and virtually no one else at city hall has done anything right.
For the first time that I can ever remember, (and I’ve lived here for about 35 years) the paper endorsed a full slate of candidates. It is interesting to note how many of them will occupy council seats under new mayor Ivan Court when he takes over. For the betterment of this city, one can only hope that the mayor-elect and the hatchet men at the Telegraph Journal can somehow develop a “let’s get along” relationship.
There are so many good things on the horizon and the paper can be an integral part of allowing the good things to happen — if that’s the root they choose to take. If not, the paper will join the long growing list of papers from both Canada and the United States who complain about both declining readership and advertising revenue.
Hopefully the course that was charted a few short years ago can somehow take over once again.
I’m Tom Young.