ALMONTE – The Town of Almonte
now officially has its own press club, which welcomes all current and former members
of the media to reminisce about old times, and talk up – or down – where the
industry is headed.
The club will now meet every third Saturday of the month at
The Barley Mow in Almonte.
Former foreign correspondent Val Sears was elected president
of the club.
“Just for now, anyway,” he joked, before outlining his hopes
for what the club could become in the future.
“My ambition (is) for this assembly was to have our own
room, with big leather chairs and a bar overlooking the river,” said Sears,
likely upstairs at The Barley Mow.
The first meeting attracted six founding members.
Bruce Kingsley, a former producer for CBC Television,
suggested the press club stretch its geographical boundaries to include the
rest of Lanark County.
“There’s still a lot of people in Almonte to tap,” said
Noreen Young.
Sears was the former Washington,
D.C. correspondent for the Toronto Star, but his life in journalism
included tours with the Canadian Press in Vancouver,
and working for the now-defunct Toronto
Telegram.
“There are no more press clubs left in Canada,” lamented Sears. “I miss
the Ottawa
press club. You picked up all of the gossip (there).”
The meeting attracted a mix of younger and older journalists
and writers, the younger of whom were interested to know if the legends about
the olden days of journalism were true.
“How did you physically survive journalism? Journalism was a
unique oasis of vice,” said Nathan Rudyk, an author and former CBC Radio host.
“I did drink quite a bit, but never when I had to write,”
admitted Sears. His method of operating was to do his work in the morning,
since the Star was an afternoon
newspaper at that time, file his stories, and then have three or four martinis
over lunch.
“I can’t help but think that it was a lot more fun writing
for newspapers back in those days,” said Sears, of days living on the company
expense account.
“The good solutions came out of the bottom of a bottle of
Scotch,” agreed John Fowler, a former advertising copy writer. He took the hit
drama Mad Men, about advertising men
in the early 1960s, to task for incorrectly portraying the industry in which he
worked during the same time period.
“That’s not the way it was. (It has) no relation to
reality,” said Fowler.
An unlikely hero amongst the club was CBC talk show host
George Stroumboulopoulos.
“I like it,” said Rudyk of his late night show. “I don’t
think I’m supposed to…It doesn’t matter who he’s talking to, it’s interesting.”
Rudyk also commended “Strombo,” for making points of
reference in news stories accessible for younger people, and added that he lets
his teenage son stay up late to watch him.
One thing that never changes in the media is the ongoing
battle between the newsroom and the advertising department.
When he was a very young reporter, Sears worked for a
suburban community newspaper in Vancouver.
He found out that a local merchant was buying rotten chickens, cutting out the
bad meat, and re-selling the remains. He wrote up a story about it for his
paper.
“The next day, I got fired. My first lesson in ethics,” said
Sears. Turns out that the merchant was a big advertiser in his paper.
Rudyk recalled that, in the old days, writer June Callwood
would be given a month or more to investigate a story. Writers are seldom given
that amount of time these days.
“It’s pretty hard to run a democracy without information,”
said Sears.