June 2nd, 2016 — Today the last remnants of the Vancouver Province newspaper, 20 or so reporters and editors, move in with the last remnants of the Vancouver Sun to form a combined newsroom. I hope the Sun survives the invasion. It’s not generally known but Sun reporters and deskers have always been kind of meek, or in the least, fearful of authority, especially of their editors, except of course, Kim Bolan. Province reporters and deskers treated editors with a certain amount of contempt and didn’t take the trouble to hide it. Take, for example, the desk of reporter Jack Keating, above. Not only was it a slovenly disgrace to the newsroom it was in full view of management’s offices and probably a fire hazard, but no editor got Jack to clean it up. A small item I know but a symbol. I recall when Michael Cooke arrived from the Edmonton Journal to be editor in chief. Neil Graham the managing editor, who had hoped to get the job himself, told me that management would humour Michael for a few months then give him to Wendy Fitzgibbons to play with. That one didn’t quite work out as planned but it did show that editors at the Province knew we weren’t to be pushed around. For those who don’t know who Wendy Fitzgibbons is I could tell you that she was a shop steward, or that she once got into a nose to nose screaming match on deadline with another desker about the merits of Province style versus CP style, but it wouldn’t really convey the essence of Wendy. She was just, Wendy. But I digress from the point I wanted to make about the above picture in that it is, as I said earlier, a symbol of what the Province newsroom and its people were like, messy, chaotic, and cantankerous, and I hope the Province staffers carry that with them to the Sun.
John's most recent blog post was on the time he spent an hour in an Edmonton (he was working for the Edmonton Journal at the time) hotel room with Mohammed Ali along with other press and people associated with the upcoming fight. Now, nothing about what Ali was like. So, Carol, the meek desker, perhaps you could use your journalism skills to weasel out what that experience was like.
My blog readers await with interest I'm sure.
