Dark days for newspapers in Atlantic Canada

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/08/2024 (407 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A century ago, the Evening Telegram in St. John’s was a feisty young thing at age 45.

One-hundred years to this day, on Aug. 21, 1924, the newspaper’s editorialist was all agog about the impending visit to the St. John’s area of the Special Service Squadron — a fleet of battlecruisers and light cruisers on an “Empire Tour” around the world, visiting allied countries that had seen action together in the First World War.

The Telegram editorial starts off lamenting the fact that while the squadron has been receiving a hero’s welcome elsewhere, it cannot actually be greeted in St. John’s, due to the sheer size of the ships and the snug harbour.

The editorial then slyly suggests that while the squadron is berthed in nearby Conception Bay South, members of the Navy could put their “expert knowledge of explosives” to work and blast certain offending rocks out of the St. John’s Narrows, thus making the harbour deeper and more accessible to larger ships.

“They would not only be doing us a great favour, but would help to make the harbour of considerable greater importance from an imperial standpoint,” the editorial breezily concludes, as if there was nothing impertinent whatsoever about trying to extract free labour from your distinguished visitors.

That century-old editorial — though cheeky as can be — was carrying on the fine tradition of newspaper editorials everywhere: it reflected the preoccupations of the community it was rooted in and made a call to action for progress and improvements, in this case acknowledging the crucial role shipping played in Newfoundland’s survival.

As I write this, the Telegram’s future is precarious.

The newspaper where I spent 26 years of my career is one of several publications in the soon-to-be-defunct SaltWire Network whose futures lie in the hands of Postmedia Network Inc.

I started at the Telegram in the 1990s as a green-as-grass twenty-something and worked there alongside many other journalists my own age. At a time when we were navigating marriage, divorce, loss, parenthood, juggling our meagre finances and struggling for home ownership, the venerable Telegram was solid and enduring; its viability and stability unquestioned. A Telegram business card earned instant respect and opened all sorts of doors for eager young reporters intent on getting scoops and making contacts.

Thirty years later, having changed hands five or six times since those (by comparison) halcyon days, the Telegram’s days may truly be numbered. Its sale to Postmedia — along with the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the Cape Breton Post, the Charlottetown Guardian and a dozen or so weeklies in Atlantic Canada — is pending, with an outside closing date of Aug. 26.

The sale, as you can imagine, has caused turmoil on the East Coast, both for readers who depend on those publications (and their digital equivalents) and the people who bring them to life each day.

The number of employees has been greatly diminished, even during SaltWire’s short tenure, with more than 100 employees permanently laid off during the pandemic.

The 363 staff who remain in the region have spent the latter part of the summer waiting to hear their fate, dread hanging over their communities like heavy-bellied rain clouds.

Will Postmedia hire them all? Will the ranks of SaltWire journalists be thinned even further? Will the identities of Nova Scotia’s, Newfoundland and Labrador’s and P.E.I.’s flagship newspapers live on or be subsumed into some Postmedia website?

Given that Postmedia was not interested in buying the Telegram’s building or its press — the last remaining newspaper press in Newfoundland and Labrador — its future as “The People’s Paper” looks bleak.

I write this with great sadness.

In reading the origin story of the Free Press on its website last week, I smiled through tears as I read that this newspaper “has been around as long as the community itself, faithfully recording the growth and development of a muddy Prairie settlement at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers into one of Canada’s leading cities and the capital of a thriving province of more than one million people.”

The Telegram could never make that claim — St. John’s is much older than the newspaper. Still, it faithfully recorded Newfoundland’s growth and development, from being a far-flung fishing colony of the British empire to standing as an independent dominion in the early 1900s, to eventually joining Canada as its youngest province.

And like this respected and well-loved newspaper, the Telegram and its sister papers chronicled the lives of the communities they served, recorded the pinnacles and valleys of the provinces’ fortunes, held governments accountable and celebrated triumphs large and small.

If those Atlantic Canadian publications disappear, it will be a loss to their communities, but also to the country, with traditions ended, unique voices silenced; our rich culture diminished.

Pam Frampton is a freelance writer and editor who lives in St. John’s and is also a columnist for SaltWire Network.

Email: pamelajframpton@gmail.com

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