Newspaper days were good, blogging is better
I have been writing an editor's retrospective feature column for the past few months, for a swell publication in Ontario, known as "Curious: The Tourist Guide." It's about my days working in the editorial department of a weekly newspaper formerly known as The Herald-Gazette, in Bracebridge, Ontario. I began as a cub reporter at a sister publication known as the Georgian-Bay/Muskoka Lakes Beacon, then published from the community of MacTier, south of Parry Sound. In the early 1980's I moved over to the news editor's position of the Herald-Gazette, and then on to full editorship, which included management positions with The Muskoka Advance, and The Muskoka Sun, a popular summer time publication.
From 1979 to 1989 belonging to Muskoka Publications here in the hinterland was a dream come true. After graduating from York University my girlfriend at the time wanted me to accept a job in the Toronto area. I couldn't do it! I came home to Muskoka, opened up my first antique shop in Bracebridge, known as Old Mill, and as most collectable dealers need, I looked for a supporting job to cover my extravagances.
I worked at these publications until management decided my irreverance and failure to worship them with full heart and soul, meant I was no longer committed to editorial excellence. Well as you may detect sarcasm, it was true that I was irreverent to a fault and I offer no apology. I just didn't agree with their management decisions and I simply couldn't deal with the way I was being minimized as a writer. I was a journeyman writer who could compose a story quickly, efficiently, accurately and responsibly.....and that guaranteed the publisher wasn't going to face a lawsuit because of my reporting shortfalls. As for editiorial excellence, well, very few of us can be excellent about our tasks all the time but whenever I was putting material together for public consumption, I didn't cut corners or offer-up crappy copy. They had changes they wanted to implement and they knew, rightly so, that I wasn't going to be shaped by anyone or any wild and whacky editorial scheme they thought would be the next money maker. I wasn't adverse to negotation but I didn't dance on command.
My years at the helm of The Herald-Gazette was a cherished time.....I loved to go to work and the fact I had some fine colleagues who mentored me constantly with sage advice, it was better than having spent tens of thousands of dollars in a university journalism course......this was immersion at its most precarious. Every word we put out there to the public could have meant a lawsuit, a firing, a reprimand.....and statements from the publisher like, "you'll never work in this business again." Being responsible and honest about the job was manatory if you wanted to stick around. One miscue was all it took to be dumped. I had an amazing ten years in the day to day operation of a community newspaper and for the most part it was a hoot. Even the difficult moments with management non-confidence, and incredibly draining press nights into the wee hours, political run-arounds and smoke and mirror games with news sources, we never hoisted those frosty mugs of draft at the local watering-hole, (after the paper was put to bed), that we didn't feel it was all worth the battlefield of hassle.
When I was unceremoniously forced from the paper with a drastic reduction of hours, which I assume they knew would force me to seek employment elsewhere, I lobbed myself unceremoniously over to the competing publication, which ended badly a half year later. All my mates knew it would and so did I frankly but it was still worth a try for experience's sake. For a number of years I reverted to my old standby, as an antique dealer, and we ran a successful small shop on upper Manitoba Street, in Bracebridge, with my business partner-bride Suzanne. This new antique business was called Birch Hollow which we still operate online today. This is when I began writing a freelance piece (I didn't ask for any remuneration) in the Muskoka Advance, a weekly Sunday paper, called "Sketches of Historic Muskoka." Following this was a huge and prolific period of demand when I was researching and writing features for The Muskoka Sun each winter from first snowfall to first lilac bloom. I wasn't doing it for the money. I just enjoyed writing and selling antiques. Not very complicated. I needed my antique business for profit but writing was for the good of a thriving soul. Eventually however, management decided to impose a few controls on this seasoned, gnarled, curmudgeon of a writer, and I said, well, stuff it! I had no shortage of publications that wanted my contributions but I determined in this universe-reaching new century that it was time to make my antique obsession turn over an occasional profit. It's a problem of all dealers.....we like to spend and that doesn't always balance with what we earn....but we're surrounded by a lot of neat old stuff with potential.
I remember telling a boss once, in a heated debate, that I didn't take the editor's job because of any prestige, or for that matter because it offered a great wage. It sucked. I was in it because of writing, and even as editor, to fill the big hulking white spaces between the ads I composed seven to ten articles and more each week. It was a co-operative newsroom task that by by necessity demanded lots of editorial submissions. The ads were coming and the writing requirements were growing proportionally.... and then there was the fact I simply loved my job, and writing was like a paying hobby. I've had a lot of publishers and managerial overseers snear at this comment, when I'd tell them quite bluntly....."you think I put up with you guys just for the meagre beer money stipend?"
I was thrilled to be able to spend a day writing. Just writing. No distractions, no banging-door meetings, no intrusions.....just writing. It has taken many decades to finally attain a solitude for writing. Back then there were always intrusions, always distractions, and there weren't many days when management could find calm satisfaction without a couple of lively meetings to trim up the troops. I loved it when they tried to motivate us! We were self-motivating period.
When we closed our antique shop in Bracebridge in the mid 1990's, moving it to our Gravenhurst home, and I began a different approach to writing, having a much higher standard of who I'd work with and for, my home office with computer became a nurturing, resource laden, inspiration oozing paradise. I could write for hours on end and never have one urgent request for my attendance at a disciplinary meeting. I was able to run my antique business on-line and world wide, and my writing enterprise, geez, I was free at last. I could write at any time of the day or night and not have calls and frequent, annoying raps on my door intrude upon the story-line. Sure there was the household din sometimes, because I was a Mister Mum to my two lads Andrew and Robert (looked after them while my wife went back to her teaching job), yet surprisingly, I seemed to write more and better with the voices of the lads playing in the other rooms. They play guitars now and have a music store here in Gravenhurst......their replacement noise being the play of three cats and a dog, snoring, growling, shreiking with the timely interuption. maybe an occasional nuzzle, when they've determined its feeding time at the zoo. I miss the boys but these critters are good company. It's sort of a passive news room.....they don't bark commands and get in my face, or bloody hell, ask me to take a used car photo for the advertising department.
I don't think I could ever go back to that time in my life, where I had to listen to my fetters, tell me how to write. Since I began writing in the mid 1970's as a struggling poet at York University, I have never had a period when I couldn't find a willing publication or media outlet interested in a freelance piece, and to this point in my life, it's pretty much the same although everyone around here notes I'm spending a lot more time in the antique field than with writing. With the opportunity to "blog-at-will" it has opened up a lot of doors, not just for me but for many other proficient and talented writers wishing to express themselves without the whining and nattering of publishers....worried about losing ads and readers because of a controversial stand.....the side taken on a political debate.....the impact it might have in social situations. I got pretty sick of the "good time was had by all" approach to journalism, and it pretty much created the conditions for my diminished position at the paper. I haven't been fired yet from this blog site. I'm pretty buzzed about that!
You know it goes back to childhood, this problem with bullies as bosses. Shortly after we arrived in town, moving north from Burlington, Ontario, I was just delighted to receive a warm and welcoming invitation to join the rank and file of the Bracebridge Cubs, and I was working on my first badges of accomplishment. I didn't have my uniform yet but for this one evening get-together, my mother insisted on buying me a brand new dress shirt and church pants as we used to call them....just to look mildly dapper and respective of club standards. We weren't rich folks and I didn't get a lot of new clothes so I was pretty proud of my attire. Mid way through the evening it was recreation time, and we were told the group would be playing British Bulldog....which was pretty dumb considering the number of kids and the small size of the Scout Hall. We'd run back and forth and attempt to avoid being tagged. Some of the touches were a tad heavy I noticed, to the point a few kids were falling into the wall. I was pretty good at the game and lasted until there were only several players left. I made my foray across and a kid grabbed me by the collar and ripped the whole back out of the shirt. There was even a lengthy red, multi finger claw mark, down about six or seven inches on my shoulder. Some of the other lads had similar wounds that needed tending, and outfits showing the rigors of rough play.
I went to the leader and said, "Hey, look what that guy did to my shirt?" "So?," was the limit of his sympathy. "Well, he's going to buy me another shirt," I retorted with a half Irish-Dutch demeanour, dragon-like by any other description. "Buzz off kid," said the leader. What happened next would have impressed that white attired, gun slinging cowboy, "Shane"....although I never hit anyone or pulled a gun.....well sir, I told him about his "skunky" attitude (it was the 1960's), and suggested that he was a pretty poor excuse for a leader......and that yes, he would be dipping into his retirement funds to buy me a new shirt. This isn't intended to discount the good work of the Cub Scout movement, just to suggest that at this time, the leader was a jerk.
My father later let the chap know he should have had more sense that to promote rugby rules in a game of indoor British Bulldog....but I don't think I ever got money for a new shirt. My mother just fixed it the best she could and life went on pretty much as it had before the incident. The Cub leader tried to be my good buddy for the next thirty odd years, especially when he'd try to sell me on writing a promo for his failing business...... but I never forgot that shabby treatment he bestowed on a trusting kid.
Guess it sums up my attitude today. There are still certain names from the former publishing business that are not to be spoken in our homestead..... and that's my right. But I don't let it become an entanglement.....in fact, if I do inadvertently think about some of these folks at all, it's because I always write better when I'm madly gnashing my teeth.....I'm a beggar for punishment but it works, it works! You wouldn't believe the huge volume of manuscripts penned in anger. Surprisingly, they don't read as angry and vengeful as I felt at time of penning!
We all have our markers from the past that make us cringe, send fear and trembling through our hearts, and yet make us appreciate how far we've come, to become so pleasantly, successfully independent.
When my son Robert, who helps me polish and then publish this blog, asked me bluntly how I feel about blogging versus writing for a publication.....I said "Well, that's easy......liberated." It does take a while to get used to, so for comfort's sake I often write while imagining a former boss hovering over my shoulder, trying to read my copy......to make helpful, "I know better than you," additions and deletions...."to make the story more suitable to our readers." It's kind of like hitting your hand with a hammer because it feels damn good when you stop.
Thanks for joining me on this most recent blog submission.