For three weeks over the holidays,The Gazette slipped in and out of bankruptcy protection. Freelancers were informed we won’t be paid for invoices filed between December 15 and early January. Meaning … I own the Gazette. And so do you.
Naturally, my first impulse was to quit writing my monthly page 2 column, Micro Montreal, until Canwest Global Communications Corp coughs up what they owe us – writers such as Heather O’Neill, Albert Nerenberg, Josh Freed, etc., 17 freelancers in all, stiffed by this latest bit of corporate sleaze.
But as the first wave of rage passed, I decided that having quit once 20 years ago, quitting again would be redundant. Given my age and experience, the least I deserve is to be fired. Or “dropped”, in the parlance of freelance.
With time, one does mellow. There’s no blaming the men and women who put out a paper, even though they have regular salaries and (they believe) pensions to ease the pain of making unpleasant phone calls to freelancers. No blaming editor-in-chief Andrew Phillips who was sacked last April and replaced by … well, nobody. According to the masthead, publisher Alan Allnutt is doing whatever it was Mr. Phillips had been doing. No surprise there. Everybody’s doing two or three jobs at The Gazette, all the better to prepare for the freelance life, should they ever be obliged to try.
As Porte Parole’s recent amazing piece of docu-theatre pointed out, the days of personal responsibility and personal outrage are over. When the Concorde overpass collapsed, dozens of people’s lives were ended or permanently altered, but according to those in power, nobody was to blame. Nobody was willing to fight for justice. Similarly, a quick survey of some of my fellow freelancers elicited cuss words and chagrin, but no call to arms.
So, here are a few important historical facts that helped me calm down and offer up my pain for the greater cause of a community newspaper.
You see, it isn’t really theirs – the Powers That Be. The Gazette is a vital community resource with a long history. A public institution, for some time now it has been the victim of a cruel hostage-taking incident. An important democratic institution, fallen into the hands of mediocre minds and slippery suits.
Having accepted this recent insult to my good faith, hard work and experience, I declare I own The Gazette. Why? Because who else cares?
By the way, my ownership is not a sole proprietorship. If you live in Montreal, you own it too, even if you never lay eyes on its blurry pages. My advice to Montrealers is to start reading The Gazette again and speak up about what bothers you. Maybe some intelligent billionaire will listen, buy it cheap, lop off a few more heads, hire talent and turn the long, sad slide around.
Some salient dates leading to my new-found sense of ownership:
1776 – Fleury Mesplet, a printer born in Marseille, France, resident of Philadelphia, sails to Montreal on the advice of his friend Benjamin Franklin, determined to set up his printing press and convince les Canadiens to join the revolutionary cause. He fails, but stays on to found a newspaper, La Gazette littéraire.
1779 – Mesplet and his editor Valentin Jautard fail to toe the line and are imprisoned by British authorities (backed up by the Catholic church) for sedition. Three years later, they get out and, though heavily in debt, Meslpet launches the bilingual Montreal Gazette/La Gazette de Montreal, which turns into an English-language newspaper as soon as francophones get their own newspapers in the early 1800s.
1950 – fledgling writer Mavis Gallant flees a paycheque at Montreal’s Star Weekly for the writer’s life in Paris and never regrets, placing a heavy burden on generations of young acolytes to avoid newspapers like the plague … and other clichés.
1979 – the hugely successful and by all accounts high-quality Montreal Star closes after a protracted strike, leaving the way for its weaker competitor, The Gazette, to scoop up the Star’s talent and enjoy a monopoly in Montreal’s Anglophone market.
1985-87 – I work at The Gazette, earning $58,000 per year. Employees are offered interest-free loans to buy stock in Southam, owners of the paper. Fearing commitment, I resist; the stock soars. Secretaries become wealthy. I quit to found Theatre 1774, writing plays about people such as Fleury Mesplet.
1996 – the Southam chain is bought by Conrad Black’s Hollinger Inc. Then in August, 2000, Hollinger sells the Southam newspapers, including The Gazette, to Canwest Global Communications Corp., controlled by the Winnipeg-based Asper family, who drive it into the ground.
2009 – I return with a monthly column called Micro Montreal, my mandate to profile interesting Montrealers, most of whom say they do not read The Gazette.
2010 – I am asked to forgo my December paycheque because the chain is bankrupt. I agree, because morally speaking, I OWN THE GAZETTE.
To be continued…
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Unfortunately, many freelance writers cannot afford NOT to be paid for work completed and published.
And to continue, (somehow my comment popped up before I finished typing).
When I first moved to Montreal from NY ten years ago, many “literary and intellectual follk remarked with chins tipped upward that they “never read The Gazette. It’s a terrible rag.”
Well, it is our rag. And I try to do the best writing I can for this hometown paper, when I’ve had the opportunity to write a piece or do a review.
It would sadden me not to have this paper around.
at our home, we get 3 newspapers daily (apparently, soon to be 4!). i’ve published in the gazoo and complain about it endlessly, but the past week’s work by sue montgomery (who spent 12 days in Haiti and said they were the most meaningful of her life) and peggy curran (who wrote a 2-pager on Haiti’s sad exploited past) were WONDERFUL (look them up on line!).
people who think google alerts are any kind of substitute for a newspaper are sadly mistaken. as Chris Hedges says in a discussion on NPR re. his new book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, a newspaper sometimes makes you see what you don’t want to see.
give a listen at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106853619
sorry about your inadvertent “buy-in” at the gazette, Marianne. it would be awful not to have an English daily, but that’s what we’re looking at, isn’t it?
I laud your attitude and share your belief that we are all owners, and as such, have a responsibility to maintain our ‘property.’ When I moved to the lower Laurentians, I ordered the Gazeete online (not as easy as it sounds) and pay just as much as i did when it was delivered to my door. It is a point of honour more than anything although i have found that some streak of stubbornness has me reading more of the paper then ever before.
Are Montrealers such lovers, we have forgotten how to fight for what is important? Bravo, Marianne.
I actually wrote a piece for the Gazette, many years ago about brunch in Montreal.
But I’ve stopped reading the Gazette — it really seems no longer relevant. I know, I know — If I subscribed it would help pay for the freelancers like you and Josh Freed, but it’s obvious that the “good ol’ days” are definitely numbered. I remember when they fired Cairn McGregor after he tried to drum up support with fellow freelancers over a dispute about being paid for posting his articles on the Internet (My God, it seems like a hundred years ago now!)
And Howard Richler — that great columnist who lost his wife in some unimaginable tragedy — they fired him too, for some alleged “plagiarism.” He tried to explain himself but to no avail.
So I have no great love for the Gazette. Let them die on the sword they created . . . let them be bought up by ever-larger media conglomerates.
My parents and I always thought the Star was easily the best of the two.
Now I think I’ll just subscribe to the Suburban.
Too bad . . . good luck! Maybe I’ll just start writing for Rover. Yeah. Good idea. Who’s the boss around here?
That would be “thought”. Where’the hell’s a proofreader when I need one?
It’s VITAL for Montreal to have an English language newspaper.
Yes,it has good & bad, but mainly good. Some really great daily columnists.We need you all !
No, The Suburban can’t ever replace The Gazette.
Hopefully, we’ll soon have seen the back of what we called in this house “Izzy Asper & his son Lizard ” who wanted to control editorials, both written & cartoons.
I do hope you get paid soon.
Thank you for this article.
I never stopped reading the Gazette — I just never read it to begin with, not even when for a while I slipped into writing for it. What newspapers DID I read, before there were websites? I liked the Guardian, but couldn’t afford to buy it. Libération was a paper I actually bought and loved, always wishing Canada could produce that kind of creative and committed journalism that Conrad Black despises
Some people really underestimate the outright hatred many Montrealers have felt for the Gazette.”Evil sociopaths” was how my local newsstand operator described the gang running it. Not surprising since the Gazette seemed. to hate Montreal, and especially Quebec, and imported its journalists from the prairies and Ontario. As a result, it was often out of touch with its targeted readers, and constantly talked down to Montrealers, while manipulating their’ primal fears of Quebec nationalism, and fomenting linguisitc tension wherever possible.
Maybe I”m talking about the “old” Gazette, the one that often seemed like some CIA psy-op aimed at the remnant of Montreal that remembered the Montreal Star, which was a real newspaper.
No, sorry I never owned it and I won”t start buying it now to save its life. I’m quite happy to see it go,
Now there’s nothing to stop us from rebuilding local journalism from the ground up, in cyberspace — other than the lingering curse that hovers over our heads after 30 years of occupation.