Boycott the National Post

• Introduction
• When good newspapers go bad
• Herald readership drops -- support for strikers grows
• Dignity on the line
• Ownership has its privileges
• Media Ownership Charts
• Why Does Media Concentration Matter?
• Beaten black and blue -- Hollinger's small-market papers take it on the chin
• What can YOU do?

Introduction

Workers at the Calgary Herald are on strike for their first contract. For those on the picket line, this strike is about restoring quality, locally-controlled and balanced news coverage.

Profit-driven cuts and editorial interference are limiting Herald news coverage. To give the public more information about the dispute, supporters of the strikers have produced this National Post parody.

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When good newspapers go bad

Perhaps Walter Lippmann put it best. As the eminent US newspaper columnist saw it, the mission of journalism is to act as "the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about bringing one episode and then another out of the darkness into vision."

At the Calgary Herald, from the 1970s through the early 1990s, the beam of Lippmann's restless searchlight shone through the windows of car dealerships to reveal sales staff gouging their customers. It shone through the windows of stereo shops to show examples of the old bait-and-switch scam. And it shone through the hoopla surrounding the 1988 Winter Olympics to uncover cost overruns and a major fraud involving ticket sales.

The searchlight shone brightly because the Herald then was committed to the practice of quality journalism -- journalism practised selflessly in the public interest. Yes, the newspaper's owners, the family-run Southam Inc., also regarded the Herald as a business. Success in the marketplace was the key to the paper's editorial independence. But it was a business like no other. It was a business that told the truth when truth-telling was neither popular nor profitable.

The Herald publisher might be upset at having to mollify a group of angry home developers who threatened to pull their advertising over a series of articles unflattering to their industry. But he never told his journalists to stop doing those stories.

That's not to suggest the Herald's stories were all about crooks and scam artists. Some of the paper's best work was done in support of initiatives aimed at making Calgary a better place to live.

In the early 1980s, a front-page series on the shortage of adequate performing spaces in the city resulted in Calgary receiving massive government funding for a performing arts centre subsequently rated by the New York Times as one of the finest in North America.

In 1996, Conrad Black's Hollinger Inc. -- owner of London's Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, Jerusalem Post, and the National Post -- took control of Southam. A new bottom-line, Bay Street-oriented management style then took hold of the Herald. A visiting Hollinger executive told a gathering of Herald editorial employees that his company expected to achieve a greater return from its investment in Southam than if the company invested its money in GICs.

At the Herald, the new drive for bigger corporate profits resulted in compromised journalistic integrity. Investigative journalism -- especially the kind that would embarrass government or big business -- was out and front-page promotions for Herald-sponsored events were in.

The paper engaged in a succession of marketing partnerships with various sports teams and entertainment organizations, which severely impaired the ability of reporters covering those organizations to do their jobs properly. In the mid-1980s, the Herald's publisher used to say that a good newspaper had no friends. In the mid-1990s, it seemed that everyone in town was the publisher's friend.

Journalists who wanted to shine Lippmann's searchlight on episodes in darkness that needed illuminating were discouraged from pursuing such stories. The new stars of the newsroom were the writers who covered crime (as long as they wrote nice things about the cops), sports (as long as they didn't call for the coach to be fired), and the corporate activities of the publisher's friends (as long as such activities were always seen to be praiseworthy).

There was no longer any place in the paper for consumer-oriented articles about shoddy business practices. In the Herald of the mid-1990s, everyone who made money was a good guy.

Occasionally, as in the case of the Bre-X gold scandal, the Herald journalists were given an opportunity to do a story that would have made Joseph Pulitzer proud. But mostly they were involved in reporting government propaganda and promotional material of doubtful journalistic value. It was a far cry from the days when the newspaper cared more about news than about profits.

The dispute between Herald staff and Hollinger managers is a cautionary tale. The strike isn't about money. It's about fighting for a work environment where journalists can produce fair and balanced news coverage -- a struggle that matters to all of those who care about maintaining a healthy democracy.

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Herald readership drops -- support for strikers grows

"As people hear about our struggle, they realize that media workers who are bullied by owners like Conrad Black are not free to report the news in a fair, unbiased manner," says Andy Marshall, a Herald reporter and president of the Communications, Energy and Paper-workers Union Local 115A.

"We're so grateful that Canadians who care about freedom of the press are refusing to read the Calgary Herald and the National Post until we sign a contract that gives us protection from management intimidation and lets us do our jobs without fear of harassment."

Since Herald newsroom and distribution workers began their strike on Nov. 8, heartfelt messages of support have flooded strike headquarters from journalists and workers across Canada, and from as far away as Lithuania, Botswana, Azerbaijan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Australia and Russia.

Alberta labour rulings have limited the strikers' freedom to delay vehicles and distribute information on the picket line, but the unions have successfully taken their cause to cyberspace. Some 1,700 supporters have joined an innovative cyber picket line, and the unions' information-packed web site has been receiving 800 to 1,000 hits per day.

More than $125,000 in donations has poured in for the strike effort. "We have received funds from almost every labour organization across the country," says John Webster, Herald pressman and president of the Graphic Communications International Union Local 34M.

Fellow newspaper workers in particular are backing the strikers, keenly aware that the outcome of the Herald dispute will have implications for contract showdowns at other Conrad Black-owned papers.

The Southern Ontario Newspaper Guild, CEP Local 2000 (representing workers in BC newsrooms) and several other media unions are contributing a combined $60,000 per month and have vowed to continue their support until a settlement is reached. Organizations such as the United Nurses of Alberta, the Calgary and District Labour Council and the Alberta Federation of Labour have called on their thousands of members to cancel subscriptions to the scab-produced Herald. Calgarians are not only "Blacking out" their subscriptions, but are donating their refund cheques to the striking unions.

"Calgarians in general -- not just union members -- are endorsing this strike," says Webster. "They understand the issues. They want an accurate, balanced, fair paper."

Four weeks into the strike, the unions commissioned a survey by an independent polling firm. It showed the Herald has lost almost one quarter of its readers since last spring, with daily readership plummeting from 319,000 to 241,000. Since that survey, the striking workers have blitzed the city with a door-to-door leaflet campaign, resulting in a flood of additional readers terminating their subscriptions.

While management tries to insist that it's "business as usual" inside its red-brick fortress guarded by menacing security goons, it's clear that the community is shunning the Herald's shoddy product. The 1999 Boxing Day edition, for instance, had a reduced press run of 116,000 copies, compared with more than 140,000 papers on Boxing Day, 1998.

Calgary charities supported by the 1999 Herald Christmas Fund suffered a blow when readers' donations dropped substantially from 1998, with totals down by 30 per cent as of Dec. 29.

The Herald has become so desperate for readers that it has tried to woo subscribers with perks such as free dinners and coupon books worth $40. It's even dumping free papers on the doorsteps of readers who have cancelled their subscriptions.

As readership continues to slide, the company has been forced to provide deep discounts and free ads to disgruntled advertisers.

"Some advertisers have pulled their ads in support of us," said a member of the unions' advertiser-outreach committee. "Others have cut the amount of advertising they're putting in the paper in support of us. Many have asked for and received discounts (from the Herald) to reflect the fact that readership has fallen."

The prolonged labour dispute is hurting more than the Herald's ad and circulation revenues. The fact that the strike is harming the city was publicly acknowledged by city council on Jan. 10.

Council passed a motion urging the company and unions to return to the bargaining table. Ald. Diane Danielson, who brought forward the motion, said the strike has had an impact on the city's reputation and boosted policing costs. It has also hurt striking employees, deprived citizens of information on local issues and damaged the Herald's reputation in the community, she said.

Trudy Govier, spokesperson for the lobby group Friends of the Herald, agreed. "In our view, the strike is damaging not only to the company and its employees, but to the very social fabric of the city itself."

The striking Herald staffers are determined to return to their jobs with a just contract. By refusing to buy, read or advertise in Conrad Black's newspapers until a fair collective agreement is signed, all Canadians can participate in their fight.

"The readers' boycott is going across this country," said Webster. "Not just the Calgary Herald and National Post, but all Southam, Hollinger and Sterling papers are receiving subscription cancellations. Momentum is building. It's not just Calgarians who are fed up with Conrad Black's style of journalism, it's Canadians in general." While Herald staff pound the Calgary pavement in sub-zero temperatures for their $200 per week strike pay, Hollinger has flown in strikebreaking reporters, copy editors and photographers from British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. Scab workers have been housed in Calgary hotels, supplied rental cars, and paid salaries of up to $300 a day by Hollinger.

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Dignity on the line

Some reminded me of the line from the James Taylor song, Fire and Rain: "I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end." Others were terrorist-style juntas -- so bad that on Sunday afternoons, my stomach would knot up at the thought of going back to work Monday morning.

I once saw a manager order a single mom to go out of town to cover an event for five days, and threaten to fire her if she couldn't find anyone to look after her children for the duration. I've had a manager who threw a chair at an employee, another who swore and raged at his newsroom staff, and even one who verbally abused reporters if their wastebaskets were beneath their desks on the right side instead of on the left side.

Other managers were a joy to work with. They inspired, encouraged and were staunchly loyal to their staff. But like James Taylor, I learned that the sunny days do come to an end. When a good manager leaves and a bad one comes in, the workplace can be poisoned almost overnight. And protection from bad management is the reason employees need unions.

Collective agreements are the only way to ensure that workers will be treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. Unions provide the checks and balances so necessary to stop the otherwise unfettered abuse of power by bad managers.

Dignity and respect. When I see my colleagues on the picket line, bundled up against the cold, their "on strike" placards blowing in the stiff wind, my heart goes out to them. I am so angry that people have to resort to this to reclaim the dignity and respect in the workplace that ought to be their inviolable right.

I am angry, too, at Herald management's callous and dismissive attitude towards its own people during this strike. One of the things our striking GCIU colleagues want is a work schedule that allows them two consecutive days off. Two days off in a row! And they have not been allowed that. How little progress has been made since the Industrial Revolution, despite humanity's supposed enlightenment at the dawn of the new millennium!

We are not asking the company for much -- just a bare-bones contract with basic language that is universal to the collective agreements at other Southam newspapers and in the Herald's own pressroom. Management's intransigent and utterly illogical behaviour throughout this has only served to deepen the strikers' convictions that we are indeed doing the right thing.

What is it like to be on strike for so long? There are ups and downs, mood swings from deepest depression to wildest optimism, a sense of missing the job that you love and underneath it, always, a steely resolve to see this through to the end. There's camaraderie on the picket line and at strike headquarters, jokes, stories, tea and sympathy, and the bond forged by people working together in a just cause.

Oh, I have learned a lot of things from being on the picket line. Labour disputes are ugly. I've seen the anger, the injustice and the hostilities that are an integral part of such affairs. But I've also seen beautiful things. It's like finding roses hidden here and there in a garden overrun by weeds. I've seen extraordinary strength of character and conviction, and witnessed the most touching acts of sharing and caring on the part of my fellow union members.

I doubt very much that the scabs inside and the managers who keep their windows rolled up and their gazes fixed straight ahead as they cross the picket line will ever experience anything like that.

Those acts range from the tenacity with which strikers sat down in front of the trucks loaded with scab-produced newspapers to the tenderness one union member showed as he helped a sick colleague off with his coat and made sure he was seated comfortably at a union meeting.

The caring shows in the members of the assistance committee who ensure nobody suffers financially and who phone strikers regularly to check on their emotional well-being.

I saw it in the generosity of one striker who turned over gift certificates for groceries to a colleague because the latter had children to feed. And I've seen it demonstrated by other unions who've sent us money, dropped off food at the picket line, and even walked that line with us in the cold to show their support.

Do you remember the TV news photos back in the 1980s of Lech Walesa and the shipyard workers in Gdansk? They waved those banners proclaiming "solidarnosc" -- solidarity in Polish. Back then, those were just photos. Today I know what solidarnosc means.

We came out of the Herald, each of us alone. When we go back in at the end of this strike, none of us need ever be alone again.

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Ownership has its privileges

Almost two decades ago, when the Kent Commission raised the alarm about the concentration of media in the hands of the few, Canadians were deaf to the sirens and blind to the beacons.

The federal government had sent Tom Kent's Royal Commission to investigate whether the press could remain free and accountable to the public when a handful of large companies had a monopoly on newspaper editorial content.

In 1981, the commission found a few powerful barons were controlling the news. What's more, they were already shaping it, too. To reverse this trend, Kent recommended media empires sell assets and the federal government limit ownership.

While the report collected dust, the concerns it pointed out continued to materialize and deepen. In 2000, the evidence is undeniable.

While independent newspapers have withered to 1.7 per cent of the total daily circulation, corporate concentration of the media has dramatically escalated. In 1969, the four largest media corporations controlled 53 per cent of newspaper circulation. In 1999, 88 per cent of daily newspaper circulation was controlled by four corporate groups.

Through the Hollinger/Southam companies, National Post and Calgary Herald owner Conrad Black is the biggest publisher, commanding 44 per cent of the country's daily circulation

"We're very concerned about the concentration of ownership in this country... and the fact that one man now controls so many of the newspapers," says Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians. "No other country in the industrialized world allows this."

France and Italy have set strict limits on the level of media concentration. Sweden has a system of providing aid to lower circulation newspapers and provides cheap loans to help lower the economic barriers for establishing new publications.

Even the United States has tougher anti-combines and anti-trust laws than Canada. In 1997, the Toronto-based Thomson Corp. was forced through an anti-trust lawsuit to sell 45 legal periodicals before it could acquire another American legal publications company.

It's time the federal government took another close look at the concentration of newspaper ownership, says David Taras, a University of Calgary communications professor.

"I'm calling for a new Royal Commission," says Taras. "It's a problem in a democracy when one company has too much control."

Governments agree. In Canada, the big banks' dreams of mergers to create super-banks were quashed by government. South of the border, the software colossus Microsoft has been both investigated and prosecuted by the federal government over business practices largely attributed to its size and strength.

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Media Ownership Charts

Newspaper Ownership in Canada – 1969

Newspaper Ownership in Canada – 1999

In 1969, there were 116 newspapers in Canada and 39 were independently owned.

Today, Canada has only 106 daily newspapers and just six of these are independent.

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Why Does Media Concentration Matter?

Through direct and indirect means, corporate ownership of the media puts an unhealthy limit on what is discussed on the pages of Canada's daily newspapers. Ultimately, with greater degrees of media concentration, the public's access to a wide choice of opinions, analyses and facts becomes restricted.

One of the biggest factors affecting what you read is the level of investment in the day-to-day routine of newsgathering. Over the past 20 years, most Canadian outlets have seen drastic cuts to staff and resources in the name of profit-taking by the major media corporations.

In a new book titled The Missing News by Simon Fraser University professors Bob Hackett and Richard Gruneau, the authors note that "the family-owned firms of yesteryear, like the Southam newspaper chain, are being swallowed up by huge multi-media conglomerates owned by stockholders looking to maximize short-term profits."

The consequences of all this downsizing is troubling. With fewer journalists and resources for those remaining, the quality and quantity of newspaper content is often sacrificed. Local "infotainment", wire stories, and press release rewriting too often replaces labour-intensive investigative writing, local news coverage and beat reporting.

According to Hackett and Gruneau, four out of five Canadian journalists they surveyed agreed that cuts had led to the omission of significant news. One reporter noted: "[The] drive for financial profits has led to 'cheap stories' -- [i.e., stories which require] little investigative effort, serious research or travel."

Still another journalist commented that "the willingness of the Canadian news media, particularly print, to critically examine or investigate has virtually disappeared, largely under the guise of budget constraints and the shrinking editorial staff, blamed on a lack of resources."

Another factor influencing the news we read each day is the effect that editorial intervention can play. As media concentration intensifies, overall editorial direction of a chain can be managed by fewer individuals. When those people at the top happen to be Conrad Black or his right-hand man, Hollinger Inc. president David Radler, ideological leadership becomes a very dominant force in the chain.

Radler put it bluntly in a 1992 Macleans interview: "I am ultimately the publisher of all these papers, and if the editors disagree with us, they should disagree with us when they're no longer in our employ. The buck stops with the ownership....I will ultimately determine what the papers say."

Most of the time, however, control over editorial content isn't so rigidly enforced, and nor does it have to be. Policing an entire media empire would be impossible for a small group of owners and senior managers. Moreover, there is a far easier way to ensure the political and social values reflected in the pages of a newspaper mirror the opinion of the corporation's upper echelon. It all comes down to who you employ and who you promote.

To achieve editorial homogeneity, owners hire like-minded people to work at their papers. A publisher hires and promotes managers, who in turn hire and promote editors and journalists. Conrad Black told CBC's Peter Gzowski in 1998 that he looks for editors who are "reasonably compatible" with his views.

Former Ottawa Citizen editor Chris Young, who had his column dropped after publicly butting heads with Black, says the media mogul "likes to say that he doesn't interfere with the editorial policy of his papers. He doesn't have to; policy can change by firing one editor and hiring another."

In their survey of journalists, Hackett and Gruneau found that 52 per cent cited direct owner pressure as a factor in what does or doesn't get printed. The survey also revealed that 45 per cent of journalists self-censored their writing to avoid reprisals from owners.

During her time at Southam's Windsor Star, CBC producer Sandra Precoup saw this activity. "You get people within the newsroom anticipating what they think somebody wants," says Precoup. "That's a decision made in anticipation that the person who made the decision is going to please someone higher up."

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Beaten black and blue -- Hollinger's small-market papers take it on the chin

"Managers at the paper often boast that the Herald is now the most profitable newspaper in the chain. But at what cost to the community? At what cost to employees?"

-- Gillian Steward, former managing editor of the Calgary Herald

In 1998, the Calgary Herald made $38 million for Conrad Black's Hollinger Inc., making it the single most profitable newspaper in the chain. Unfortunately for Calgarians, the profits don't stay in the community to be reinvested in their local newspaper.

According to a 1997 Campaign for Press and Broadcast Freedom (CPBF) study, Hollinger's approach to newspaper management means that smaller newspapers in the chain are milked for whatever profits they can generate.

Cost savings from papers like the Calgary Herald are then applied to a few flagship outlets. As the CPBF report concluded, "this allows Hollinger to point to newspapers such as the Ottawa Citizen or the Vancouver Sun as examples of commitment to journalism."

Black described this approach to small-market paper management in a 1991 Canadian Business Magazine article. For the media baron, "You use the news wire for a lot of news, and then you use piecework for a lot. You use the country correspondents. You don't have to pay them a great deal and, as long as you're the only game in town, which we almost invariably are, you can develop a price structure and a cost structure that in effect guarantees you a margin."

The following examples of Hollinger's management provide a sobering look at the results of this strategy.

The Cambridge Reporter

According to a former Reporter journalist, when it came to local news, "They have people there who are doing nothing but rewriting press releases and tossing these off as local news."

The 1997 CPBF study assessed the changes in quality and diversity of news coverage following Hollinger's 1996 takeover of Southam. For the study, front pages of various Southam papers including the Reporter were compared for corresponding periods. The study of the Reporter found that from 1996 to 1991:

• the number of front-page articles fell by 46%;
• the number of topical news articles on the front page fell by 72%; and
• local staff-written copy for the Reporter's editorial pages fell from 22% of all items to just 5%.

Under Hollinger's guidance, the most frequently covered topic on the Reporter's front page in 1996 was lifestyles -- a category referring to articles about fashion, consumer tips, home improvement, historical trivia, and self-help.

Regina Leader-Post

McKenzie concluded the Leader-Post's "local news had largely been replaced with cheaper wire material...big chain ownership has not improved the quality of journalism and the news readers receive, but has in fact had the opposite effect." He also determined there was virtually no investigative reporting, human-interest photos accounted for 25 per cent of news coverage, and weekend coverage came from one freelancer.

Former Leader-Post reporter Bill Doskoch commented at the time that under Hollinger, "There is no real time for any competent reporting any more, because you are always in a hurry to fill the paper the next day. [T]here are few in-depth stories ...more wire copy, less news relevant to Regina readers, a reliance on AP and CP wire features...and fewer stories about the community."

St. Catharines Standard

While Gaynor was in control, circulation at the Standard dropped from a peak of 43,000 copies during the Burgoyne days to just 35,000 in 1998.

Murray Thomson -- managing editor of the Standard for 14 years during Burgoyne's ownership -- felt that the key to the newspaper's fall from grace with its readership could be traced to the decline in local coverage. Quoted in a 1999 Ryerson Review of Journalism article, Thomson noted, "You can't dodge the quality bullet....Local stories have to be good. When the paper now covers something, it gets cut off at a narrowed level of interest, as if they're pressed for time. If you look at it from an accountant's viewpoint, you're missing it."

The Ryerson Review article went on to quote a number of former reporters at the paper who pointed to other changes that had contributed to the paper's decline. The kind of investigative reporting that had won the newspaper countless awards disappeared. Beat reporters -- knowledgeable in their areas of expertise -- were re-assigned to other writing duties. Less experienced journalists were hired at lower salaries to replace more expensive, veteran reporters who were fired or took early retirement as part of a buyout package.

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Monster Seizes Profits and News Articles from Local Papers

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"What is happening at the Calgary Herald has not much to do with journalism. It has to do with economics. It has to do with bleeding a newspaper to get more profit out of it."

What can YOU do?

DONATE

BOYCOTT

Join the Canadian Labour Congress's boycott of the National Post.

CYBER PICKET

SURF

E-MAIL

Dan Gaynor, publisher: gaynord@theherald.southam.ca

Conrad Black: blackc@telegraph.co.uk

WRITE

David Radler, president Hollinger Inc.
2nd Floor, 1827 West 5th Avenue Vancouver, BC V6J 1P5

Premier Ralph Klein
Legislative Buildings
Edmonton, Alberta