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Two of my earliest jobs in journalism resulted from crises in the newspaper business.

The first followed the closing of the Ottawa Journal by the Thomson chain in August 1980, on the same day the rival Southam organization shut down the Winnipeg Tribune. Dark rumours of collusion swirled, prompting the creation of a royal commission on newspapers. Southam, perhaps sensing the optics did not look too good, decided to hire a bunch of bright young things to demonstrate its commitment to journalism. Somehow I got to be one of them.

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The second derived a couple of years later from the accepted wisdom that afternoon newspapers were dying (which they were.) The Toronto Star, preparatory to shuttering its afternoon paper, launched a new morning edition, which required new staff. As in, me.

It’s noteworthy that neither the Thomson or Southam chains exist any more. Thomson once owned 250 newspapers; now it owns none (although the Thomson family’s personal holding company continues to run the Globe and Mail as a kind of pet project). As far as I can recall, the business has been in crisis since the moment I entered it. If there was a golden era of responsible journalism divorced from the need to make a profit, I slept through it. Now we are in another existential moment. Newspapers are closing, jobs are being lost in large numbers. It’s such a serious matter that one respected senior national columnist has suggested another public inquiry, like the one that got me my job 35 years ago.