Ego and Ink: The Inside Story of Canada's National Newspaper War - Hardcover
In this fast-paced and dramatic book, journalist Chris Cobb serves up a solidly reported business story laced with political intrigue, insider gossip, and inflamed egos.
It looked, at first, like it would be a rout. Conrad Black, supreme commander of the upstart National Post, was jubilant: “We have shattered this cozy little logrolling, backscratching society of the Toronto media cartel!” The Post style was quickly dubbed “tits and analysis,” but the threat was very real. Once the Post was launched, the fight got dirty. For six months a Globe spy faxed them the Post’s front page each day before the Globe went to press. The publisher at the Star warned his top people that the Post’s owners “aren’t restrained by the Marquess of Queensberry rules.” The struggling Globe drafted the foppish, often brutal Fleet Street editor Richard Addis, who put the paper through an agonizing but ultimately successful readjustment.
The short but invigorating war left many casualties in its wake, but it also made newspapers exciting for the first time in this country. And it produced some of the finest, most discussed journalism this country has seen.
Based on solid research and interviews with all the major players – editors, publishers, owners, columnists, advertisers – Ego and Ink is enlivened with colourful dialogue, remarkable characters, eye-opening anecdotes, and the quick pace of popular fiction. This irreverent book also offers newspaper readers fascinating insight into how the business works.
It looked, at first, like it would be a rout. Conrad Black, supreme commander of the upstart National Post, was jubilant: “We have shattered this cozy little logrolling, backscratching society of the Toronto media cartel!” The Post style was quickly dubbed “tits and analysis,” but the threat was very real. Once the Post was launched, the fight got dirty. For six months a Globe spy faxed them the Post’s front page each day before the Globe went to press. The publisher at the Star warned his top people that the Post’s owners “aren’t restrained by the Marquess of Queensberry rules.” The struggling Globe drafted the foppish, often brutal Fleet Street editor Richard Addis, who put the paper through an agonizing but ultimately successful readjustment.
The short but invigorating war left many casualties in its wake, but it also made newspapers exciting for the first time in this country. And it produced some of the finest, most discussed journalism this country has seen.
Based on solid research and interviews with all the major players – editors, publishers, owners, columnists, advertisers – Ego and Ink is enlivened with colourful dialogue, remarkable characters, eye-opening anecdotes, and the quick pace of popular fiction. This irreverent book also offers newspaper readers fascinating insight into how the business works.
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About the Author:
Chris Cobb writes for the Ottawa Citizen-Southam Newspaper Group on media and communications. For three years he was a twice-weekly columnist for the National Post on TV sports, and has received three National Newspaper Award citations. He lives in Ottawa.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
THE END OF THE BEGINNING
“It was the dream job.” – Scott Burnside, reporter
It was September 2001, less than a month since the Asper family of Winnipeg had bought full control of the National Post from its founder, the former Canadian citizen Lord Black of Crossharbour, and just six days since the al-Qaeda attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
Post employees were uneasy about the new owners, and many had seen Conrad Black’s final exit in late August as an act of betrayal, a retreat in the heat of battle. That Black’s leaving so shocked and dismayed his troops spoke not only to their passion for the newspaper but also to the remarkable level of trust and respect the larger-than-life press baron had engendered. Black had built the National Post on the backs of his thriving Southam dailies with a staff of hand-picked journalists. His newspaper hired established names for big money and nurtured reporters of the ilk he once described as “swarming, grunting jackals of investigative journalism.” They thought Black was in for the long haul, which is why some had cried when he said goodbye. Others, angry at being jilted, had fumed. How could they have been stupid enough to imagine Conrad Black would think of anything but his own bottom line?
Columnist Christie Blatchford, who had evolved as the journalistic personification of the National Post, wrote touchingly about Black’s departure:
As I spoke to Mr. Black yesterday, my own face was wet with tears, he murmured a reassurance that things would be fine.
“It won’t be the same,” I said.
So in his immediate vicinity, there were three of us in various stages of girlish ruin, and all around him, a variety of other clearly shattered folks.
Mr. Black was composed, as always alarmingly articulate, and dry-eyed (though of course, he may have been inwardly sobbing) and I wondered whether this was what F. Scott Fitzgerald meant about the very rich being different from you and me. As it turns out, it was.
And she quoted Fitzgerald: “‘They possess and enjoy early and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful.’”
Working at the Post, Canada’s first new daily newspaper in years, had been a labour of love – less of a job, more of a mission. After a three-year emotional high, and some of the most inffluential, entertaining journalism Canada had experienced, the wheels on the National Post express seemed to be falling off. Black had made reassuring statements a year earlier, in 2000, after he had made his $3.2-billion deal with the Aspers’ CanWest Global Communications Corp. He hadn’t wanted to part with any piece of the Post, but his company was in debt and he needed the money. It wasn’t much more complicated than that.
In exchange, the Aspers got the profitable Southam newspaper chain, 50 per cent share of the Post, which had racked up $200 million in debt, and the chance to move into a new world of convergence, where TV, newspapers, and the Internet intertwine. CanWest insisted on getting the Post, and its national presence, as part of the package.
“It was the dream job.” – Scott Burnside, reporter
It was September 2001, less than a month since the Asper family of Winnipeg had bought full control of the National Post from its founder, the former Canadian citizen Lord Black of Crossharbour, and just six days since the al-Qaeda attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
Post employees were uneasy about the new owners, and many had seen Conrad Black’s final exit in late August as an act of betrayal, a retreat in the heat of battle. That Black’s leaving so shocked and dismayed his troops spoke not only to their passion for the newspaper but also to the remarkable level of trust and respect the larger-than-life press baron had engendered. Black had built the National Post on the backs of his thriving Southam dailies with a staff of hand-picked journalists. His newspaper hired established names for big money and nurtured reporters of the ilk he once described as “swarming, grunting jackals of investigative journalism.” They thought Black was in for the long haul, which is why some had cried when he said goodbye. Others, angry at being jilted, had fumed. How could they have been stupid enough to imagine Conrad Black would think of anything but his own bottom line?
Columnist Christie Blatchford, who had evolved as the journalistic personification of the National Post, wrote touchingly about Black’s departure:
As I spoke to Mr. Black yesterday, my own face was wet with tears, he murmured a reassurance that things would be fine.
“It won’t be the same,” I said.
So in his immediate vicinity, there were three of us in various stages of girlish ruin, and all around him, a variety of other clearly shattered folks.
Mr. Black was composed, as always alarmingly articulate, and dry-eyed (though of course, he may have been inwardly sobbing) and I wondered whether this was what F. Scott Fitzgerald meant about the very rich being different from you and me. As it turns out, it was.
And she quoted Fitzgerald: “‘They possess and enjoy early and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful.’”
Working at the Post, Canada’s first new daily newspaper in years, had been a labour of love – less of a job, more of a mission. After a three-year emotional high, and some of the most inffluential, entertaining journalism Canada had experienced, the wheels on the National Post express seemed to be falling off. Black had made reassuring statements a year earlier, in 2000, after he had made his $3.2-billion deal with the Aspers’ CanWest Global Communications Corp. He hadn’t wanted to part with any piece of the Post, but his company was in debt and he needed the money. It wasn’t much more complicated than that.
In exchange, the Aspers got the profitable Southam newspaper chain, 50 per cent share of the Post, which had racked up $200 million in debt, and the chance to move into a new world of convergence, where TV, newspapers, and the Internet intertwine. CanWest insisted on getting the Post, and its national presence, as part of the package.
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- PublisherMcClelland & Stewart
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0771021739
- ISBN 13 9780771021732
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages368
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Ego and Ink (Signed) The Inside Story of Canada's National Newspaper War
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McClelland & Stewart, Toronto
(2004)
ISBN 10: 0771021739
ISBN 13: 9780771021732
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. First Edition; First Printing. New book in crisp DJ. Signed by author on title page. ; 1.3 x 9.1 x 6.1 Inches; 350 pages; Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # 24744
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