Remembering dark days at The Leader Post

In a previous life, I was a reporter for The Saskatoon Star Phoenix, covering the legislature in Regina. Our sister paper was The Regina Leader Post, and before my newspaper career was over, I ended up working for both of them, through a shared legislature bureau called Leader Star news.

I left the newspaper business in October, 1995, to join the Corporate Communications world with SaskTel. My timing was great. Three months later, Conrad Black bought both papers and a few short months later engineered one of the largest mass firings in Canadian media history.

One of my colleagues from those days was Bill Doskoch, who is now a blogger and works as an editor for CTV.ca. In a recent post, he describes the carnage 10 years ago when he and a lot of his colleagues at the Leader Post and Star Phoenix were fired.

It's quite a story, and I can't help but think of how lucky I was to have gotten out of there in the nick of time. Some of my friends survived those days and are still with the papers. But I don't think things have ever been the same. Of course, things have gone downhill for Conrad Black as well, but that's still small consolation for all those he so ruthlessly tossed out into the street.

Thanks to Eric at Mutually Inclusive for the link.

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