Please Advise! Is the Newsroom Going Extinct?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

The Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers are closing their newsrooms. According to a report in the Globe and Mail, editor-in-chief Harold Munro sent out an internal memo last Thursday informing journalists that the papers' newsrooms and office space would shortly be offered to new tenants and staff would continue to work from home.

Say it ain't so, Doctor!

Signed,

Ink-Stained Wretch

Dear Inky,

“Stop the press!” That's what they used to yell when a big story broke. Seems almost redundant now.

Once upon a time the Vancouver Sun and Province had a newsroom each. Then they shared one. Now those institutions have disintegrated, like Dracula dissolving into a swarm of bats. Once, reporters scattered from their shadowy downtown cave to prowl the city's precincts in search of scoops and random dirt. They were creatures of the night. Henceforth, perhaps, they are to be potatoes of the couch. Not so long ago there was a popular TV series called The Newsroom. A reboot would have to be called The Living Room.

The disappearance of newsrooms raises fundamental issues of journalism. Do you truly merit the title of newspaper if you can't hide an escaped convict in a roll-top desk? Did it all started going to hell when fedoras disappeared?

So many great journalistic clichés have fallen by the wayside — for instance, Ink-Stained Wretch, your signature. Now there is a true nom-de-plume. These days though, ink stains are less of an issue than keyboard crumbs. Former Indiana governor Roger Branigin once said, “I never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.” Does anybody sell ink that way anymore, other than Shaq?

The newsroom has often been depicted as a hallowed place, celebrated in films like His Girl Friday, All the President's Men, The Front Page, The Paper, Spotlight and The Post. Although Dr. Steve was never truly a member of the Vancouver newsroom fellowship, he did gain guest entry sometimes. As a Sun and Province freelancer and columnist in the days when work still had to be delivered by hand (hard copy and floppy discs!), Dr. Steve was allowed into these sanctums, and always took advantage to hang around too long.

In particular Dr. Steve used to make a beeline for the desk of the late, great Lloyd Dykk, a sweet-natured soul who could nonetheless eviscerate what he considered to be sub-standard theatrical productions in his Sun reviews (he felt coddling local productions was only a path to continued mediocrity). It was Dykk who green-lit Dr. Steve's first published story in the Sun's Saturday Review section (a jokey review of Jurassic Park), and he remained unfailingly supportive.

Dr. Steve was aware that the newsroom was perhaps more fun for tourists like himself than for residents. Dykk and colleagues (Kerry Gold had a desk close by) used to muse over whether the Pacific Press newsroom suffered from the mysterious malady known as “sick building syndrome,” the theory that a particular location can generate a malaise in its occupants. In hindsight Dr. Steve wonders whether any similar concentration of cynical, habitually suspicious, overworked journalists might not always generate its own dark weather systems.

But it was an exciting environment for a visitor. Dr. Steve would wander from Dykk's desk to bug other people who had real work to do. Most of the deskers had their heads down, working on their separate tasks. But there was a lot of back-and-forth too, kibbitzing, questions yelled, answers yelled back. Veteran journalists shared space and knowledge with young reporters. Jokes were told that often required a deep understanding of civic politics and personalities to grasp. You have to think something valuable is lost without that.

Then there was management, but they had offices with walls and glass. They were separate. After landing a cherished (and as always, doomed) gig as a Province columnist Dr. Steve used to spend pleasant idylls in the office of editorial page editor Jim McNulty. It can now safely be revealed that with the office door closed McNulty did not always express fond regard for his superiors. But he had to deal with disgruntled troops as well. Everybody was disgruntled, it seemed. The paper came out regardless.

Now it's goodbye to all that. Working from home is certainly not a bad thing. Dr. Steve did it long before it was fashionable — as a freelancer, he has had no alternative. What is worrisome is the sense that this Postmedia move is not so much a concession to convenience as another sign of the steady defunding of Canadian journalism.

“Stop the press!” they used to yell. People still do, all the time. Trump has called the press “the enemy of the people.” Pierre Poilievre is picking up the media-bashing theme too. Vladimir Putin has almost certainly had reporters murdered over the years and has now imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

The fifth estate has always had enemies — tyranny, political opportunism, co-option, economics. Nothing has stopped the press so far. Let us hope it survives its latest and greatest threat — the cat that simply must sit on the keyboard. Woodward and Bernstein never faced such obstacles.