Review: Ego and Ink – June 12, 2004

Review: Ego and Ink – June 12, 2004

People who know me, know I live for newspapers, and have worked for newspapers in Southam, Thompson, Calgary Sun, Georgia Straight, and Vancouver Sun, you will not find it hard to see. In fact newspapers have been at my core since I was 8 years old.

Hence the enjoyment I got out of reading, Ego and Ink: The Inside Story of Canada’s National Newspaper War.

Since the beginning, the newspaper industry in Canada has been political, incestuous, poorly paying, romanticized, and a part of our history.

Figuring that since Chris Cobb works at the Asper-owned Ottawa Citizen, and was a sports columnist for the National Post, I assumed Ego and Ink would be more of a rear end kissing account of a rather risky and daring gamble taken by Conrad Black.

It isn’t.

I will warn you that this book is written by a newspaper person and maybe devoid of the emotional blood and guts that were spilled in the battle to get the National Post launched, but it does show the warts of the people behind the idea, as well as the complacency of the publishers of the Toronto Sun, Toronto Star, and Globe and Mail.

Cobb talks about the giddiness in the run up to the creation of the National Post and its first edition in 1998, as well as the background as to why and how the rest of the Southam newspapers dumbed down to the point they are now, and how this lead to the creation of another voice in Canada from the right of the spectrum.

The book points out that Conrad Black bought the Southam chain of daily newspapers and needed a newspaper in Toronto, thus the beginning of the earthquake of change to shake the placid newspaper industry in Canada.

Cobb shows how people were chosen, who moved from which paper for what, and how they were poached, and then shown the door when the dream came to crashing halt when reality reared its ugly head.

There are the dead, living and those barely surviving in the newspaper wars the Black began with precision of determination in Toronto, and shows how the newspaper industry rose to a pinnacle for all too short of a time showing the excellence of newspaper reporting and producing that Canadians are known around the world for.

Unfortunately the bleeding of the talent from the dailies in the Southam chain to feed the National Post beast, we are still experiencing the anaemia it caused in good and intelligent newspaper reporting here in the provinces.