Some Personal Reflections on Manitoba Political Journalism
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DRAFT Some Personal Reflections on Manitoba Political Journalism By Frances Russell Prepared for the Roblin Professorship Conference, St. John’s College, University of Manitoba, Nov. 20‐22, 2008 Manitoba political journalism As a veteran of 46 years in journalism, I’ve witnessed one of the most profound and dramatic revolutions in the news business since Gutenberg invented the printing press. I began my career at the Winnipeg Tribune in May, 1962 after graduating with a BA in history and political science. Back then, Winnipeg was a fiercely competitive newspaper market, boasting two broadsheet dailies representing the nation’s two major newspaper chains: Southam, owned by the family of the same name and FP Publications, owned by the Siftons. Both the Trib and its bigger rival, the Winnipeg Free Press, put out a morning and up to three afternoon editions daily, re-plating the front page as necessary to carry breaking news. This was the era before computers, before tape recorders, before the internet, before the blackberry. Reporters scribbled their notes on copy paper using thick yellow newsprinter pencils. They pounded out their stories on blank sheets of newsprint wadded, along with carbon paper, into heavy black Underwood typewriters. Sometimes as many as four or five copies were required, the first for the all-important Canadian Press wire and the remainder for various editors. If they were on deadline, reporters would rip each page out as soon as they had completed a paragraph, shout “Copy” and hand it to a “copy boy” who would rush one page to the city editor, another to his assistant and literally skewer a third on CP’s long, very sharp metal spike resting on the city editor’s desk. Its contents would be scooped up every hour or so throughout the day by a telegraph boy who would take the stories to the CP office in the Winnipeg Free Press building at 300 Carlton Street. From there, Winnipeg’s and Manitoba’s news would be tapped out to the nation and the world. With four deadlines every day, a newspaper office was a noisy, frantic and exciting place to work. You could hear, touch and literally, smell the news. I can still remember my first visit to the composing room on the floor above. The aroma of hot lead hung heavy in the air from the pots of molten metal hanging beside each huge, clanking linotype machine. Linotype operators took the words written by the reporters in the newsroom below and hammered them out into individual lead “slugs” that were then fitted into heavy metal- columned frames to create the “dummy” for each page of the newspaper. Immediately afterward, the lead slugs would be re-melted and readied for the next edition. My first “beat” at the Trib was education. My Free Press counterpart and I covered the Winnipeg School Board. And I mean covered. Back at our respective newsrooms, we often stayed up all night writing as many as 12 or 15 stories from every meeting. All or nearly all, would run. After two years, I won what to me was the lottery grand prize - the chance to cover the Manitoba Legislature. 2 It was the 1964 winter session. Duff Roblin’s Conservatives were in power. I will never forget the short and succinct lecture I was given by my city editor and on-the-job journalism professor, Harry Mardon. A war correspondent with British United Press, Harry, as we all called him, was a proud Brit and an avowed Conservative. But here were his words to me: “Your job at the legislature is to level the playing field. The government of the day has all kinds of ways to get its message across to the public. We‘re there to make sure the opposition parties have an equal voice.” Researching my book on Manitoba’s French language crisis, I had occasion to read some of Manitoba’s earliest newspapers. From the 1870s to the 1970s, there really wasn’t much difference in the way Manitoba newspapers- and indeed, newspapers everywhere in Canada - covered parliament and legislatures. The coverage was wall-to-wall, from the daily opening prayer to the adjournment hour. In Manitoba’s case - and in the case of the B.C. and Ontario legislatures, which I also covered for The Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail respectively - the adjournment hour could be extended into the wee small hours of the next day in the drive to wrap up all business to break for summer. Unlike today, when all media attention is focused solely on Question Period, political journalism in Manitoba until well into the 1970s involved writing stories not just out of Question Period, but on everything else debated in the House that day: estimates, bills, committee hearings, matters of privilege, private members’ business, etc. etc. And all MLAs who spoke knew that at least a sentence or two of their comments would appear in the newspaper. It was gruelling work and the Free Press and the Tribune both maintained bureaus at the legislature numbering four or five journalists who would work in shifts. By the time I started in the press gallery, however, the newspapers had abandoned their earlier practice of reporting debates as though they were court stenographers and were applying news judgement to their coverage. Still, Winnipeg’s two daily newspapers - and, by this time, CBC Radio and TV, CKY Radio and TV and CJOB Radio staffed the legislature full time when it was sitting. In those days, the media, as it was by then being called, respected the fact that the legislature was Manitoba democracy at work. Its members were the representatives of the people and the people who had elected those 57 MLAs had a right to know what they were saying and doing every day they were tending to the public’s business. In keeping with the noisy, rough and ready nature of their craft in that era, journalists were a far cry from the well-paid, well-dressed, well-behaved, button-down professionals and TV stars of today. Winnipeg’s newspapers and all of its television and radio outlets with the exception of the CBC were non-unionized and pay was, to put it mildly, poor. The “ink-stained wretches” as they were proud to call themselves, didn’t all go home to family and dinner at night, but more often than not, collected at the Winnipeg Press Club to raise more than a few prior to retiring for the day. The St. Regis Hotel, favoured by rural MLAs during sessions, was another major watering-hole. To this day among oldtimers, there are many stories of well-lubricated 3 evening sittings of the House when some MLAs were too drunk to speak and some reporters too drunk to write. There is even one famous yarn about a scion of the Tribune bureau being so inebriated one evening that he climbed up onto the gallery desk in the House to unleash a torrent of foul-mouthed criticism at the honourable member speaking below. That dirty laundry aside, the era of spin was still a few years away. The government had an information office that drafted press releases and that was about it. There were no ministerial press aides, nor were there departmental communicators let alone communication branches. In fact, the premier himself didn’t even have a full-time press secretary. Individual journalists were on their own when it came to digging up news. It was tough sledding - and very competitive. Press gallery veterans had a distinct advantage over newcomers. They had had years to establish not just contacts, but in many cases, close friendships, with politicians and senior bureaucrats. As in most walks of life, who you know is all-important. Sometimes, an MLA or minister would shun you simply because of the news organization you worked for. But most of the time it was just reality that the better you were known, the more information you were able to get. The civil service was especially important to reporters and columnists back in the days before cabinet communications and press secretaries. They often knew a lot more about what was really going on regarding a certain issue than ministers themselves. There used to be a saying in the gallery, especially in the Roblin era: “The civil servant knows but can’t say while the minister can say but often doesn’t know.” Manitoba was – and still is - a small enough province that government tends to be a one-man show. All roads led – and lead – to the premier’s office. If the premier is open and professional with the gallery, the entire government tends to be the same. If not, the ship on Broadway can be very leak-proof indeed. Back in the competitive era, if you were beaten on a story, you heard about it around 6 a.m. the next day from your irate city editor. Oblivious to the fact you may have been up half the night completing your assignments, he would be yelling down the phone at you, reading out the opposition’s front page story you had missed and berating you to get on it, post haste. A far cry from today when media outlets often simply ignore opponents’ “beats”, thus denying the public important information. Perhaps not so surprisingly, Manitoba entered the modern era of politically-polarized journalism with the stunning leap from third to first place by Ed Schreyer’s New Democrats in the 1969 provincial election. The lead on the Trib’s front page the next day, written by veteran legislative reporter Chuck Thompson, said it all: “Nobody was more surprised than everyone…” The Tribune, nominally a Conservative paper, took the arrival of the socialist hordes with some equanimity.