The CRTC remains shrouded in mystery
Many years ago, after a particularly chaotic day in a newsroom, a couple of colleagues and I shared a deep breath, a relieved laugh and shook our heads in dismay.
“If only they knew,” one of us said of the readers we sought to serve, “… if only they knew.”
I decided then that If Only They Knew would be the title of my first book, a sort of Tales from the Crypt regarding the inner workings of those, at the time, large and chaotic newsrooms. The aim was not so much to debunk the romantic mythology of journalism as depicted in recent movies such as Spotlight and The Post but to explain that at the times we failed, it had a lot more to do with our competence than it did with any conspiracy. The fact is, most of us just weren’t smart enough, evil enough or equipped with the time required to pull off the latter.
But alas, I appear to have outlived the newsroom to which I refer. My son tells me he looks forward to trying to explain to his children what a newspaper was.