Former London Free Press editor-in-chief Paul Berton bids farewell to city journalists at the London City Press Club on June 5, 2010. Berton is now editor-in-chief at the Hamilton Spectator and thespec.com.

I can’t say I was surprised by this morning’s story in The London Free Press about the imminent closure of the London City Press Club. Saddened and a bit nostaligic, maybe, but not surprised. Come to think of it, saddened and nostalgic are a bit of a stretch, too, since I was never a member.

I should have been (a member, that is). As one who worked as a journalist in London, Ont., for more than 20 years (two of them at London Magazine and 18+ at the newspaper, the last seven as its editor), I should have been a regular at the club. Maybe even served on its board. So when I read this morning’s story, the inescapable conclusion was that I — and dozens of people like me — was at least partly to blame. More than a few times, I held a membership application in my hand; each time, I set it down.

It was always an entirely hospitable place and I enjoyed each of my visits there over the years, whether it was a special function or just a swing-by visit at the invitation of one of the club’s members. And I might have joined had my commitment to a spouse and responsibilities as a dad to four kids not made a more substantial claim on my time — especially the all-too-precious time away from the office.

The London City Press Club, with its venerable history and a committed core of ardent supporters, also laboured somewhat under the stereotypes of what press clubs were a half-century ago: the early-hour, post-deadline refuge of hard-bitten reporters and editors, who, having let the presses roll or signed off the air, wandered into the club for their nightcaps. They told each other the stories behind the stories of the next day’s front pages (tales that often grew slightly larger with each telling), complained about their bosses or the rookies under their tutelage, and waxed nostalgic about the good old days when journalism was still real journalism.

The arrival of a new generation of journalists in Canadian newsrooms in the early 1990s, many of them women and many among both genders attuned to a different set of personal priorities, began to change the internal landscape of newsroom culture. Life-career balance became an imperative for many. The shrinking size of the city’s newsrooms — newspaper, magazines, radio and television — had an impact too. And those developments were mere precursors to the much more profound effects of more distributed types of community journalism through a much wider variety of delivery platforms, most of them Internet-based.

It would be a thrill to see the London City Press Club reinvented — not as a tenant or lessee that operates an establishment, dominated by a bar, around which rattle the ghosts of journalism past, but as an organization that promotes dialogue and collaboration around important political and journalistic issues within the city and its environs. An entity that looks forward as much as it looks back. Open the doors to journalists, both full- and part-time, who contribute in some manner to the growing diversity of media voices within the city, across all platforms. Sponsor the appearance of important speakers or workshops, seminars or panel discussions on emerging journalistic themes. Hold them in meeting spaces, banquet halls or private rooms in local sponsoring hotels or restaurants. Think meetup in terms of format; think Canadian Club of London in terms of organization.

The closure of the press club’s doors at Dundas and Colborne streets doesn’t need to signal the end of its life as an organization to promote collegiality, professionalism and (dare we think it?) transparency and accountability. The club simply needs a reinvention that will give it new life as London City Press Club 2.0.

The front page of La Presse on March 12 featured coverage of the earthquake in Japan.

Whenever I’ve taught courses in the history of print journalism in Canada, I have invariably made reference to a book that is now more than a quarter century old: Wilfred Kesterton‘s seminal work, A History of Journalism in Canada (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1984, 304 p.). First published in 1967, the book meticulously chronicles the development of Canadian journalism through four distinct press periods and is an authoritative collection of the significant names and dates along that odyssey.

Yesterday, amid reports that the Montreal newspaper La Presse plans to go entirely digital within five years, I wondered whether some future history book on Canadian journalism (would it be published on paper?) might not point to La Presse and yesterday’s date as the harbingers of a new “press” period.

La Presse is beginning the transition immediately. It plans to offer long-term subscribers a free iPad and hopes to trim its print run drastically over the coming years. The newspaper company, a division of Gesca Limitée, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Power Corp., has a printing contract with Transcontinental Inc. that runs through 2018.

J-Source.ca reported yesterday that La Presse has already invested more than $7 million in its “iPad plan” and expects to spend another $25 million to realize it. Postmedia News newspapers, including the Windsor Star, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province and Victoria Times Colonist, have been delivering its products via the iPad since late last year. But the La Presse announcement goes further in that it foresees a complete transition to digital.

As a postsecondary journalism educator, I often get asked about the future of newspapers and, for that matter, the future of journalism. My answers: The future of printed newspapers (“ink on dead trees”) has a finite horizon, as it should. Few of today’s journalists entered the vocation because of a love affair with ink-stained fingers, giant printing presses, metal plates and rolls of newsprint (those romances belonged to an earlier generation). Rather, they entered — and continue to enter — the vocation because of their interest in research, interviewing, an innate curiosity, writing and storytelling across a variety of delivery platforms, and a deep desire to better understand the world, from big-picture issues to esoteric minutiae. That future, I think, remains bright.

The front page of Al-Ahram, Cairo, Egypt, Feb. 12, 2011

It was Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post from 1946 until his death in 1963, who coined the phrase that has since almost become cliché in the world of journalism and beyond. In a speech to Newsweek’s correspondents in London on April 29, 1963, he urged them, “Let us today drudge on about our inescapably impossible task of providing, every week, a first rough draft of a history that will never be completed about a world we can never really understand.”

Yesterday was one of those days when it was easy for journalists in Egypt and around the world to feel as if they were, indeed, writing the first rough draft of history. And today is one of those rare days where one story dominates headlines around the world: Egypt. The resignation of president Hosni Mubarak inspired front-page designers on five continents to mark the day in unusual and special ways.

That makes it a perfect day to check out the website maintained by Washington-based Newseum. Sort through the world’s front pages by region, compare visual treatments of the story from continent to continent and notice the headlines, including their emphases and nuances. The Newseum’s newspaper front-page index is here.

The Canadian Press has a long and distinguished history in the annals of Canadian journalism. The news cooperative was formed in 1917 by Canada’s newspaper industry as a means of sharing news across the broad expanses of an emerging country which, only a dozen years earlier, had grown to stretch from sea to sea to sea. The real catalyst for its creation, however, was the First World War and the growing appetite among Canadians for news from the front. Information was relayed via telegraph wires.

Over the ensuing decades, CP, as it became known, became the mainstay of print journalism in Canada. It was maintained by member newspapers, which also contributed stories to the service to supplement CP’s own national staff and news agenda. A photo desk was added as transmission of pictures over great distances became feasible, and broadcast news services were added as television took hold in the early 1950s.

As might be expected in an enterprise where the public interest and corporate interests frequently conflict, The Canadian Press has been close to collapse several times in its history. Canwest pulled out of the cooperative on July 1, 2004, to form its own news service to feed stories to both its newspapers and Global Television outlets. Quebecor Media Inc. formed QMI Agency last year for similar purposes; its participation in The Canadian Press ended on July 1 of this year. The agency’s pension plan continues to be hugely underfunded and needs urgent attention.

If the three-way deal gets Ottawa’s approval, it will be interesting to see how the new owners (currently, the three largest members) integrate the news service into their operations and what impact that integration will have on jobs at all four entities. Of national concern should be the extent to which the Canadian Press news service will make its content available to other subscribers — and at what price. Will small, independent or start-up news operations in small communities be able to afford the news services offered up by Canwest, QMI or The Canadian Press? How will information flow across the country be affected? Will competition between the three major companies improve national news coverage or will a narrowed focus by the three corporate news-service owners, as they seek to service the needs of their own properties and divisions, constrict that flow? If, as playwright Arthur Miller said, “a good newspaper is a nation talking to itself,” is a robust news service, or a series of them, vital to the conversations of a nation?

Far less important, but esoterically interesting among those who teach journalism, will be the question of how The Canadian Press’s new owners deal with the question of style at their operations. The Canadian Press Stylebook differs in many respects from The Globe and Mail’s Style Book, which is different again from Toronto Star style. In classrooms and labs, the importance of learning to adapt one’s news writing to some style standard — whether it be The Canadian Press (the standard at most Canadian schools) or some other — is the bane of many a j-school student’s existence. Some additional consistency here might actually be a good thing, though there are strong arguments for the differences between the news organizations on niggling points. And the style purists won’t be easily persuaded.

Lieutenant William Calley Jr. became the central figure of the My Lai massacre

Anyone old enough to remember the Vietnam War will recall the infamous My Lai massacre. It was a seminal event in the history of that war because of its effect on public support for U.S. involvement there. Millions of Americans who, until My Lai, had supported or wavered in their support for the war turned against it — so stunned were they by the atrocities committed by American troops.

The destruction of the village and the massacre of its Vietnamese inhabitants occurred on March 16, 1968. Although the official U.S. tally puts number of dead at 347, other estimates of the death toll exceed 500. Most were women, children and elderly people. Many were raped, tortured and mutilated. The soldier in charge of the U.S. Army platoon that invaded the village was Lieutenant William Calley Jr.

The events of My Lai may have escaped media and public attention entirely if not for the fact that several U.S. soldiers were so shocked and disturbed by the conduct of their own troops that they wrote letters to President Richard Nixon, the joint chiefs of staff, officials at the Pentagon and others about the incident. The horrors of the My Lai massacre surfaced publicly more than a year later, when, despite official secrecy about the letters, independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story on Nov. 12, 1969. In the months that followed, My Lai remained a major story in newspapers, radio and TV. Calley and more than two dozen of his men were charged, but only the lieutenant was eventually convicted. He was sentenced to life in prison, but served only three and a half years under house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning, Ga.

Since then, Calley had remained silent about My Lai. Until yesterday.

At a Kiwanis Club in Columbus, Ga., he offered an apology. Read the Associated Press story here; the Telegraph story is here.

A footnote: The My Lai massacre occurred one month after Associated Press correspondent Peter Arnett filed a story, on Feb. 7, 1968, in which Arnett reported, “‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,’ a U.S. major says.” The town in question that day was a Vietnamese provincial capital, Ben Tre. Since then, this type of statement has become known as “Ben Tre logic.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

A screen shot from the Globe and Mail's interactive graphic

It’s nearly impossible to escape mention today of the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s historic first step onto the lunar surface. Television, radio, newspapers and online portals are overflowing with anniversary stories and tributes to the men and women with the “right stuff” who made it possible — on Earth and in the skies. (By the way, one of the most magnificent media postings today on the anniversary is on the Globe and Mail website, assembled by the talented Tonia Cowan (she of the recent Emmy Award nomination; see adjacent partial screen shot).

As a boy and well into my teens, I was an unapologetic space geek. My own thoughts on America’s push to land a human being on the moon appeared in a column in the London Free Press last Saturday. The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions were noble efforts and demonstrated what could be done when a critical mass of human knowledge and invention is applied to a specific problem.

Accompanying today’s anniversary fanfare in many media is a lot of talk about what’s next for space exploration. More moon missions? A multi-year voyage to the surface of Mars?

Despite my continuing fascination with human endeavour in space, I’m not a big fan of either of the aforementioned projects. Given the reality of climate change and the fact that Earth is already in a state of warmth that scientists, only a few years ago, predicted would take a decade, we’ve got a substantial project much closer to home.

The lunar landing reminds me that it is possible — when knowledge, ingenuity, invention and determination are combined into a potent mix — to solve problems that might otherwise be considered unsolvable. The moon and Mars aren’t going anywhere. They can wait. Ensuring our earthly home is in good condition is the next “giant leap for mankind.”

CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite hosts coverage of a Gemini space mission in the mid-1960s.

There were many influences on my choice of journalism as a career, but one of them was surely Walter Cronkite.

Cronkite was the avuncular, articulate and dispassionate TV news anchor who, for an entire generation of North Americans, acted as narrator and guide through the most momentous events of their time. During an era when television networks held enormous sway over how Americans understood the world and their own republic, Cronkite was literally the face of CBS News. He personified — and helped define — the term “anchorman.” He was there behind the anchor desk through both Kennedy assassinations, America’s manned space missions, Martin Luther King’s March of Washington and his death years later, the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon, Watergate, the Vietnam War and many other seminal stories, his tenure spanning almost two decades (1962-81).

Always the consummate professional, Cronkite only occasionally allowed glimpses of his personal feelings about the stories he covered. The most memorable were his anguish over the death of U.S. President John F. Kennedy (see the clip below, at about the 5:18 mark), his exhilaration at the success of America’s first attempt to land an astronaut on the moon, and his famous editorial on the Vietnam War.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In terms of his influence on history, Cronkite will probably be best remembered for the series of reports he personally filed from Vietnam in 1968, and the editorial that followed on the heels of those reports, in which he declared that war essentially unwinnable (see the clip below). After hearing of Cronkite’s editorial, President Lyndon Johnson reportedly said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” In later years, Cronkite modestly played down his influence on Johnson, saying that his stories and the conclusions he broadcast were probably only one straw in an already heavy load the president was bearing, and that Johnson had probably already reached the same conclusion himself.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With the arrival of cable television, VCRs and audience fragmentation in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, the reach and influence of venerable news anchors such as Cronkite steadily diminished. The simultaneous rise of the “shock jock,” news-talk radio and television, and the cult of personality in journalism has rendered figures such as Cronkite as anachronisms. For me, however, his work characterized precisely what good journalism should be: informed, knowledgeable, trustworthy, courageous, considered, balanced and, ultimately as a result of all these, influential.

Cronkite was the gold standard.

Fortunately, he was also a philanthropist. A number of important causes and institutions will carry on thanks to his inspiration and generosity. Among them is the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I didn’t know then that I’d spend most of my career in print. Sigh.