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Asper's Blindingly White Election Team

Every member of CanWest's election reporting team is white. CEO Leonard Asper was in B.C. speechifying to newspaper execs, so we asked why.

Charles Campbell 6 Jun 2004TheTyee.ca

Charles Campbell has worked as a writer and editor with the Georgia Straight, the Vancouver Sun and The Tyee, and teaches at Capilano University.

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When I worked at the Vancouver Sun, not so very long ago, a reporter with a passion for civic history had a promotional ad for the paper tacked to the wall of his cubicle. "Meet the Vancouver Sun's All Canadian staff of local writers" it declared. Zero "born outside the Empire." It also trumpeted such international contributors as Mussolini. The ad was a reflection of those in power at the time -- Monday, January 26, 1931.

Just the other day the editor of The Tyee directed my attention to a letter on the website Straight Goods, a lefty national political forum. It complained that in an ad promoting CanWest Global's current election reporting team, every photo is of a white person.

I rooted through my stack of Suns mouldering in the recycling bin and found a version of the offending ad. There were 32 photos and I was unable to dispute their whiteness. Nor am I able to think of today's Vancouver Sun, owned by CanWest Global, as a multicultural environment. When I left the paper last summer, the all-white hierarchy of editors ran something like this: Reynolds, Graham, Munro, Muir, Ryan, Scott, Casselton. Fralic and Bucci, maybe Cayo, were the concessions to the world beyond the Empire.

On Thursday, CanWest president and CEO Leonard Asper came to town to speak to the Canadian Newspaper Association's annual assembly. He's a proud member of the Jewish minority, and I thought I should ask him about the issue. So I trundled down to the conference at the Hyatt.

Native drumming, then down to business

It was an expense-account crowd of white folks in suits, and many former Sun colleagues were there. Curiously, there was barely a reporter in sight -- the one I recognized was the Sun scribe with the thankless task of reporting on his own boss's conference-opening speech.

I couldn't help but think of the cleavage that existed between this conference and the Canadian Association of Journalists gathering at the same hotel only a month ago. New Sun managing editor Kirk LaPointe is the only face I recall seeing in both crowds. There was hardly a suit in sight during the three days of professional development workshops (which were virtually boycotted by Sun and Province management), although the delegates were also troublingly white.

Ethnic colour came to this week's CNA conference in the form of six Squamish nation aboriginals with a drum and two rattles. They sang, said welcome, and then went away.

CNA chairman and Globe and Mail publisher Phillip Crawley greeted the crowd and talked about the weather.

Pacific Newspaper Group president and publisher Dennis Skulsky greeted the crowd, talked about the weather, and urged people to "grow their networks" and "spend a lot of money." He then introduced Premier Gordon Campbell, noting two of his major accomplishments -- bringing the 2010 Winter Olympics and the 2006 World Junior Hockey Championship to Vancouver.

Gordon Campbell talked about the weather. "Our newspapers help reflect the world that we live in," he said, then joked about the day's Province headline, "My bed exploded." He thanked Skulsky for the Raise-a-Reader literacy campaign (which not incidentally boosts circulation and gets Sun and Province newspapers into the school system). He thanked him for promoting charity during last summer's forest fires. And he thanked him for devoting a page each and every week to the Olympics.

"The key to success in B.C. is to own your own newspaper," Campbell declared. "I wouldn't mind owning a couple, and Leonard has agreed to give me two." Some would argue, Vaughn Palmer notwithstanding, that Skulsky has already done that work on Leonard's behalf.

'Our connection to the customer.'

Then it was Leonard Asper's turn. He began with an obtuse reference to Playboy, which reminded me that he once told a reporter that his brother David's penis isn't that big. Then he got to his meandering speech on the state of the industry.

"There's a lot of skulduggery and connivery [sic] and thievery and nefarious behaviour, mendacity, conspiracy ... and that's just on your team." Scattered laughter. "That's a joke by the way."

He declared that "we value our newspapers like no other thing that is in our lives ... I think." He admitted that "we're only now figuring out how to use the trust that Canadians have invested in us."

Asper talked about convergence and customer relations: "We must charge; that's our connection to our customer." He was explaining the recent shift to making people pay for internet access to his papers.

He talked about government efforts to obstruct media access to information, an important subject covered extensively on page three of Friday's Sun.

He talked about the need to raise journalism's standards, yet he also claimed great progress. "If you pick up a paper from 20 years ago, and compare it to today's, there is no comparison." He drew particular attention to special sections -- Driving and Homes, did he mean? -- and the range of their coverage.

However, Asper noted that the newspaper industry needs to "focus on the 60 percent of the homes we are not reaching."

Blames unions for lack of diversity

Many of those homes belong to recent immigrants and their families. At the Sun, efforts to reach those readers come and go. Six or seven years ago, under editor John Cruickshank, the issue was a priority. Its importance waned under Neil Reynolds. Now it's waxing under Patricia Graham.

The new editorial page editor is Fazil Mihlar. Two editorial interns are Ai Lin Choo and Ayesha Bhatty. Stories about multiculturalism abound. But despite the Sun's best intentions, those stories still have a whiff of "us writing about them." Building a newspaper that reflects the world we live in requires savvy, relentless effort to overcome institutional inertia, and that effort has often been wanting.

When the conference broke for coffee, Leonard Asper idly and unwittingly approached me. I have a question, I said. "Does it bother you that every member of your 32-member election team appears to be white?"

"Ah, yes it does," he replied. But that doesn't mean that many of the journalists who stand behind them aren't members of visible minorities, he said, noting Global TV's diversity program. He said seniority issues are partly to blame. Unions, he said, make it hard to give young, culturally diverse reporters the best assignments. He did acknowledge, when asked, that his company's own staff cuts make the issue more difficult to address.

Asper said the problem is reflective of the industry, which lags behind society in general. Although I am often struck by the diversity of names I hear on CBC, I looked around the room and could not disagree.

Newspapers reflect the world in which their owners live.

Charles Campbell, child of the Empire, was the Vancouver Sun's entertainment editor for two years and a member of its editorial board for another two.  [Tyee]

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