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Tonight, let’s begin with a nostalgic trip down memory lane that takes us back to the old Free Press building at 300 Carlton St.
It’s the late 1980s, and I’m still a cub reporter in a newsroom starting to tilt towards journalists who prefer the gym clubs over the press club. Drinking is no longer tolerated, although I haven’t bothered to check the bottom drawer of every desk. But smoking is still very much in vogue, as evidenced by the haze that permeates a newsroom straight out of a scene from Citizen Kane.
The younger cohort of reporters — tired of ash in the shared keyboards, the burn marks left on the desks as almost-spent cigarettes are stood on end until they eventually flicker out beyond the filter — want the newsroom to go smoke-free. Management, most of whom are heavy smokers, want to keep lighting up.
A video still of the former Free Press office on Carlton Street. (Ken Gigliotti / Free Press)
The solution to this standoff is to bring in an air quality monitor and let its vibrating needle tracking across a rolling paper readout settle the dispute. I was convinced the fix was in as soon as I stared at the contraption.
To no one’s surprise, the test results were positive for the smokers and negative for the non-smokers. There would be no ban on smoking in the newsroom.
That is, until a few weeks later…
One of the late-night smokers was engaging in the long-standing Free Press practice of flicking ashes into the nearby waste basket. As it turns out, sparks meeting combustible materials can be problematic, and in short order, there was a fire raging in the metal basket that was suddenly too hot to handle. Worried that the sprinkler system was about to be engaged, frying the computers and any chance of making deadline, the smokers managed to kick the flaming basket into the washroom where the flush of a urinal saved the day.
And the very next day, the Free Press newsroom was officially declared a non-smoking zone.
I mention that long-forgotten story because it came up Friday night as I helped play host to a reunion of Free Press staff from the last smoking decade in our newsroom. Almost 60 strong, they came from far and wide to reminisce, to share laughs and to have a tour of today’s newsroom. They also delighted in watching a video from those last days on Carlton Street, which had a certain cinema vérité quality to it.
Staff gather on the Free Press sign on last day of the Winnipeg Free Press building at 300 Carlton St. before moving to 1355 Mountain Ave. (Free Press files)
Aside from the fact that I enjoyed seeing images of me with a full head of hair, I was struck by how often staff described the old newsroom as a “dump” while also noting it was the place where “history” was made. Looking at that cramped clutter amid pneumatic tubes and Underwood typewriters, it’s easy to see how “dump” was an apt description. But so, too, was the recognition of the “history” we made there and the history that continues to be made today at what remains the oldest newspaper in Western Canada.
The 1980s began with the end of the Winnipeg Tribune and the start of growing worries about the long-term future of newspapers. The 1990s were the decade that ushered in the rise of Interweb and the digital disruption that would break the business models that had long made newspapers profitable.
And yet, the Free Press is still standing, still publishing, still making history, still a perfect venue to welcome a reunion of newsroom staff from the 1980s.
I told the crowd of former Freeps that what’s important today is not whether newspapers can be saved but whether journalism will be saved. I thanked them for the foundation they helped build decades ago that is so essential to the fight the Free Press is waging.
And I expressed my appreciation for their impeccable sense of timing by holding a reunion on the eve of World News Day, a global awareness campaign celebrating the value of fact-based journalism.
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