The Hub asked Jake Doherty, former publisher of The Owen Sound Sun Times, Kingston Whig Standard and the Hamilton Spectator, about the changes in newspapers over his career. Find Part 1 of his reply here.
by John (Jake) Doherty
Leap ahead with me to my first jobs at The Spec as editorial page editor and, quite soon, to executive editor, a very exciting time as we were moving into a new plant with three large presses. Our newsroom was longer than a football field where we all learned to work on computers. Gone was the rapid fire clacking of dozens of typewriters as we approached deadlines and the visceral sense that we were literally pounding out our stories.
My boss, at that time, the late John Muir, also believed that the editor of the Spec should be seen as worldly wise against the competition from Toronto, only 40 kms down the QEW. Quite significantly, all sold their morning editions in Hamilton. Often I took a bus into work from Burlington where my family lived, and used the time to read the Globe before I reached the office.
Two important changes came quickly that had an huge impact, both on the paper and myself, changes and standards which no longer exist today as declining advertising and circulation revenue have dropped. The first one was that we began covering far more investigative stories, some of which took months to prepare with a dedicated team of reporters and editors. Most memorable was the weeklong series on organized crime that in the end influenced how our courts sentenced the "bad guys" who hit on small Italian companies, often bakeries. I sat in court when the first time offenders were sentenced as organized crime members, not just misguided youths, and did serious prison time.
The other change affected me, not without its challenges but very exciting. I traveled a lot, every year or so when I became, temporarily, a reporter again, packed my bags, checked my passport and jumped on a plane to France, Brazil, Japan, West Germany, Ireland – north and south, England, South Africa, Namibia and South Korea.
France, of course had the best food, escargots by the plateful and all, but the most memorable stories came in 1980, the spring in Belfast and the fall in South Africa. I remember most vividly being almost shot at late one night, driving across a vacant field littered with old construction materials, and a gang of men in balaclavas pointing shot guns at me, some firing over our heads.
"Tell them I'm Catholic," I yelled at my driver, a retired British Army sergeant.
"Not at all, sir! They want to draw the police in to protect us. Sir!"
"Just hostages, eh" I recall replying, "Comforting!" He ignored me, and spun his little car in a tight circle, bounced off some old tires and found Falls Road again and street lights. But he drove nto another ambush in the making, this time facing several street toughs dragging trash cans set afire with whatever. He avoided the barricades and we quickly encountered two youngsters necking in the crook of a stone wall alongside a cemetery.
Ah, so romantic those Irish!
But for the bigger question, will the Irish ever resolve their religious differences and troubles as they call them? The most telling point came a few days later when I interviewed a man hired to ensure that civil services job would be fairly divided between the Catholics and Protestants. He was an academic with many honorary degrees from large universities on both sides of the Atlantic. Very talkative too, and quite quickly he invited me to a seafood restaurant near his home village.
"So why sir, with all your work, will the troubles ever end?"
"We Irish talk a good game but when I encounter the local IRA man here, I tip my hat because there is a little voice that still tells me that I may need him some day."
