Saturday 31 July 2010

Vets forgotten?

Former Toronto Sun newsroom vet Sean McCann writes:

"Reading about Greg Weston's ouster reminded me of something. It was a Bono column way back when.

As only Bonokoski can do, he wrote about the photos on the Toronto Press Club wall. All great journalists, but where are they remembered now asked Bono?

It was a great question and made me think.

The new generations will never remember the names of the people who brought "freedom of the press" to their doors, to their lives. The battles that they fought.

It's a sad passing actually. All folks have today is the spin.

The so-called citizen journalism reminds me of a bunch of guys in a bar expressing their opinions over numerous beers, their uninformed, not-vetted opinions.

Sad, actually, that all of us don't know the men and women whose pix graced the walls of the now-defunct Toronto Press Club. Having said that, mind you, not sure if there were may women's pix there. So we have come a ways.

Anyway, the world goes around. Change happens. But as Bono said is his column, they were the pioneers. Sadly though, who remembers them now?"

Know what you mean, Sean.

It takes story tellers like Bono to refresh the memory and recall tales of newsroom giants and how they mentored many a young reporter in need of plaudits when warranted and criticism when needed.

We have a lot of Canadian news legends in mind and all were newspaper people to the core, not ex politicians, ad salesmen and corporate shills.

These legends were to print media what Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Richard Widmark and Robert Ryan were to the big screen - tall in the saddle.

Pity the j-student who will never be mentored by the likes of Doug MacFarlane, Clark Davey, Gwyn "Jocko" Thomas, Jim Vipond, George Gross, Bob Vezina, Mike Burke-Gaffney, Robert Turnbull, Doug Creighton, Les Pyette, Ed Monteith and many others from the past decades.

It would be interesting to hear from TSF readers who have their own news legends in mind.

1 comment:

  1. Quebecor's thought process: Why have one veteran and his/her salary when we can fire him and get 3 students for the same price for bare minimum.

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