Print media taking it on the chin

The past few weeks have been rough ones for the print media business in B.C. – in particular for the staff of The Surrey Leader, most of whom lost their jobs on Friday, and 54 people at Pacific Newspaper Group (publishers of The Vancouver Sun and The Province), who received layoff notices on March 24.

I had wanted to post some thoughts on this situation sooner, but news of the closure of The Leader hit me in the gut. (It was followed a few days later by hernia surgery, which literally involved my gut, so I guess I have a bit of an excuse).

I was on staff at The Leader for 14 years, seven as editor, from 1979 to 1993. My direct association with The Leader goes back to the early 1970s, and longtime editor and publisher Stan McKinnon was the person who pointed me towards taking journalism training at Langara College. That opened the door to get into a business that I loved in the 1970s and still love today. I continued to do a weekly column in The Leader right up to the final edition, and was privileged to be asked by editor Paula Carlson to do one final one in that edition.

Here it is:

The Surrey Leader ceased to exist as a standalone newspaper with the Friday, March 31 issue. It was in business for just a few months shy of 88 years – a very long time in B.C. community newspaper history.

The Leader was not the first newspaper in Surrey. It was at least the third. It was preceded by the Surrey Times, which published briefly in 1895, and the Surrey Gazette, which began publishing as the Semiahmoo Gazette in 1913, lasted until 1918, and then resumed publication in 1922. It was eventually taken over by The Leader in October, 1929 – two months after the Leader started in business.

It was an inauspicious year to start in business, due to the great stock market crash which deeply affected the North American economy for the next 10 years. Surrey and The Leader were not immune. Many people moved to Surrey from the Prairies during that decade because there was no hope there (my own family was among them). A great many Surrey residents were on relief, as work was very hard to come by.

Leader founder G.W.A. (Bill) Smith made a go of it, but business was often challenging. Some business was done by barter. One of his most important moves was hiring young Stan McKinnon during the 1930s. He was synonymous with the newspaper for the next 50 years – starting as a young man ready to help out where needed, then moving on to becoming a reporter, editor, publisher and owner.

The newspaper could have grown substantially during the Second World War, as Surrey gained many new residents. Many people moved to Surrey because they were able to find housing while working in war industries in New Westminster and on the Surrey waterfront. The opening of the Pattullo Bridge in 1937 was also a significant factor in that growth.

However, wartime newsprint quotas kept the paper small and limited its ability to boost circulation.

Stan McKinnon and George Coupland, who joined the staff after the war to look after the production end of the business, became integral parts of the business after the war, eventually becoming shareholders. They eventually took the newspaper over completely from the Smith family.

My own involvement with the Leader goes back to the early 1970s, when I contributed minor hockey reports. Growing up in Cloverdale, I was very familiar with the newspaper, which had been based there since its founding.

I later sold subscriptions and, after attending journalism school on the recommendation of Stan McKinnon, I was very fortunate to join the staff as reporter and photographer in January, 1979.

The newspaper had just been sold to Hacker Press, based in Abbotsford, which owned three other Fraser Valley community newspapers and had printed The Leader since it converted to offset printing more than a decade earlier.

It was a paid circulation newspaper and had many competitors – most of whom were free distribution. The intense competition, along with a significant recession in the early 1980s, meant challenging times ahead.

A conversion to tabloid format, free distribution and a move into North Delta were very significant moves made by publisher Brian McCristall.  At that time, The Leader had a small staff – two in the front office, doing classifieds, invoicing and accounting, two in advertising, two in editorial, one in circulation and the publisher. Several others helped out part-time in a number of capacities.

It was a great time to be in the newspaper business. Several competitors folded due to economic challenges, and by 1984 The Leader was in good shape on many fronts. Stan McKinnon retired that year, continuing to write his longtime “Keeping Tab” column, and I took over his position as news editor, becoming editor in 1986.

There was no shortage of interesting stories – about everything from the teen gang known as the Whalley Burnouts to the ongoing legal troubles of former mayor Ed McKitka. Surrey was often likened by many outside observers to a gangly, fast-growing adolescent, and when Vancouver Sun columnist Denny Boyd wrote a column filled with Surrey jokes, we retorted by asking our readers to pass on their best Vancouver jokes. We were inundated with responses.

In its almost 88 years, The Leader has had just six editors – Smith, McKinnon, McCristall, myself, Andrew Holota and Paula Carlson. This continuity has made it possible for the newspaper to really dig into many issues affecting the fast-growing city, and to keep pace with all the changes.

It has also had a terrific staff in all departments from editorial and advertising to production and circulation. There are far too many to fully name, but in my 14 years as a staff member some of the best whom I got to work with were Maurice Donn, Ian McKinnon, Shelley Nicholl, Vikki Skytte, Elsie Lick, Erc Leung and Jayne Murgatroyd.

Ron West, who was our longtime courier, and also a freelance photographer, was a guy ready to do anything he was asked to. His passing at the young age of 55 in 2013 was a shock, and he is missed by many.

In the digital age, print products of all kinds have many new challenges. A merger of The Now and The Leader, both owned by Black Press, isn’t surprising. Surrey needs to have a print newspaper with a strong digital presence for many years to come, as it eventually grows into B.C.’s largest city.

The Leader has played an important role in helping it to get this far.

Some other thoughts about print media:

How will citizens of the future be able to navigate a world filled with information without reliable news sources? Your friend's Facebook page may lead you towards an interesting article, but will you balance it with another one on the same topic? And what will the sources for each article be?

What local perspectives on a topic will be available? The Sun and Province are still in business, but are now assembled in Hamilton, and even though the production people there get directions about how to assemble the pages, they don't always follow those to the letter. David Beer related a good example in a recent Tyee article: "Presentation of one recent in-depth report published by the Sun and Province was botched when someone in Hamilton accidentally put an important part of the headline not at the top of the piece in large letters, but tacked onto the end of the story in small italics." While this may seem a minor point, headlines lead readers into stories, and headlines that relate to local readers mean a story is more likely to be both noticed and read.

Newspapers are a business and must make money to survive. They pay staff – not always all that well – but enough to keep doing jobs that they love. Google and Facebook and other social media sites, which have become the means through which many people receive news, don't pay the people who actually generate that content, nor do they pay the media websites where the content is originally published. Those two companies are among the most profitable and valuable in the world. They also sell advertising in local markets, which takes away revenue from print media products (and other conventional media, such as radio and television). Who will pay to generate news in the future?

Will people 20 years from now even know what a news report should be? In my journalism training, we were taught to give all sides of the story, even if one side had nothing to say but "no comment" or did not respond to interview requests. We were taught to keep our own biases out of our new reports, and to restrict expressing opinions to clearly-marked editorials or columns. We were taught to do follow-up stories, so that readers who read an initial report would be able to find out what the resolution was. We were taught to think critically about the information we were given, and to check it out thoroughly. It was better to delay publication and check facts than go with erroneous information. We were taught to make corrections promptly and prominently, and not to be afraid to contact someone we had quoted if we had made a mistake to say "I'm sorry."

Surrey will one day be the biggest city in B.C. It still has several media outlets, some of whom publish or broadcast in languages other than English. Can all these outlets survive, and together can they provide the essential information that Surrey residents need?

We live in an information age and it is easier than it has ever been to get information. One role of the media, which has become more essential in recent years, is helping people to navigate that ever-broadening current. What does the future hold?

Globe and Mail columnist Elizabeth Renzetti wrote a thoughtful column, published in Saturday's print edition. She reflected in particular on the role of community newspapers, and the many challenges they are facing. In it, she used an excellent quote from Leader reporter Kevin Diakiw's final column.

"Moving forward, you will likely receive your information from the Internet, or newsrooms pared to the bone. Be sure to read not only information that fits your own narrative, but opposing views as well.

"The weighty responsibility of hunting for balance and accuracy now lands largely on your shoulders."

The Leader's final edition can be viewed in its entirety at http://www.surreyleader.com/eeditions/?iid=i20170331020604419