Former Free Press editor probed press ownership

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This article was published 17/11/2011 (5316 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Tom Kent, who led a 1980 inquiry into newspaper ownership that was known as the Kent Commission, died Tuesday at the age of 89.

Kent worked as a journalist in Britain after the Second World War and moved to Canada in 1954 to become editor of the Winnipeg Free Press.

He was hired by then owner/publisher Victor Sifton. Sifton, Kent wrote in his memoir, A Public Purpose, “offered me a mandate to modernize the paper and I accepted.”

Kent not only changed the content and design of the paper, he was the first editor under Sifton to run editorials without letting Sifton see them first. Kent restored the paper’s reputation to heights it hadn’t enjoyed since legendary editor, John W. Dafoe. Kent left in 1959 to try his hand in business.

He later served as a policy adviser to Liberal leader and later prime minister Lester Pearson and became a deputy minister in the Pearson government of the early 1960s.

The royal commission was established in response to growing concerns over concentration of ownership in the newspaper business. It was set up following the almost simultaneous closing of papers in Ottawa and Winnipeg which left newspaper monopolies in both cities.

A private memorial service is planned.

— The Canadian Press / staff