Not Extinct Yet: A Memoir of My Forty-Four Years in the Newspaper Business

By Rick T. Rae

Former newspaper executive publishes new book Not Extinct Yet.

In his memoir of 44 years in publishing, Rick Rae talks about the ups and downs of the newspaper business from his unique vantage point. In a career spanning almost twenty locations in the United States and Canada, Rick has worked for, or managed over fifty newspapers. In this book he shares some of his experiences, such as butting heads with unions, dealing with employees who embezzle, contacts with celebrities, law suits, advertising sales techniques, competitive market situations and many other details about this fascinating industry.

He has worn several hats during his years in the business.... from ad sales, editor, production manager, circulation manager, publisher, vice president and president of publishing companies ranging in size from small local weeklies to suburban dailies in the 100,000-200,000 circulation range. He talks about buying his own company at age 68 and how he is growing his company as he enters his 73rd year.

Produced in hard and soft cover as well as an electronic version, Not Extinct Yet is available through
Bookstore.authorhouse.com, Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com

ISBN number is 978146783507-7 for soft cover, 978146783508-4 hardcover and 978146783509-1 for the electronic version.

For more information contact [e-mail]

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467835091

Rick T. Rae

A Collection of Columns is Rick Rae’s second book. His first book, titled Not Extinct Yet covered his 44 years managing newspapers in Canada and the United States. Now, ten years later he offers a Collection of Columns, he wrote that were published in those newspapers. Born in Canada, Rick managed operations for newspapers in twelve locations before settling in the Atlanta area where he published seven newspapers before retiring in 2006. After that, he and his wife bought a company producing colored comic sections for Sunday newspapers in the southern USA before he retired for a second time in 2018. Rick and his wife, Penny now enjoy their permanent retirement in Loganville, Georgia.

Book preview

Not Extinct Yet

A memoir of my forty-four years in the newspaper business

Rick T. Rae

US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

The events in the story are true to the best of my recollection. The names of some firms and individuals have been omitted or altered at my discretion. These include: Rollie Skies, Homer Jones, Skip Jones, Bucky Cortland, Lennie Drake, and Frank Davis.

© 2012 Rick T. Rae. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 8/23/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4678-3507-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-3508-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-3509-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011919735

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover Art by Kit Rae, Kit Rae

Design Studios

Contents

Chapter One Coming Back To Hamilton

Chapter Two Succeeding In Sales

Chapter Three A Promotion

Chapter Four Another Move Up The Ladder

Chapter Five Moving Westward

Chapter Six Nine Months Of Winter And Three Months Of Poor Sledding

Chapter Seven Learning To Be A Classified Expert

Chapter Eight Worn Out On Winnipeg’s Winter

Chapter Nine Leaving Our Country

Chapter Ten A Hard Decision, Made Easy

Chapter Eleven Your Visas Are At The Border

Chapter Twelve Increasing Sales In A Recession

Chapter Thirteen Unions Again!

Chapter Fourteen Making It Big In Hamilton

Chapter Fifteen Becoming A Publisher

Chapter Sixteen Baptism Of Fire.

Chapter Seventeen Building A New Daily Newspaper…. A Big Fish In A Little Pond

Chapter Eighteen Accreditation Now

Chapter Nineteen Industrial Espionage Involving Kmart

Chapter Twenty Dolly Parton And The Hospital Foundation

Chapter Twenty-One Breaking A Good Story At The Cost Of An Advertiser

Chapter Twenty-Two A Change In Ownership

Chapter Twenty-Three New Owners, New Challenges, New State

Chapter Twenty-Four Lajolla, A Nice Place To Visit

Chapter Twenty-Five Buying Supplies From Mexico

Chapter Twenty-Six Unrealistic Expectations

Chapter Twenty-Seven Reuniting With Chuck In New Mexico

Chapter Twenty-Eight Running Yet Another Ex-Harte-Hanks Operation

Chapter Twenty-Nine Another Crooked Business Manager

Chapter Thirty Turning Things Around

Chapter Thirty-One The Australians

Chapter Thirty-Two West Virginia Calls

Chapter Thirty-Three A New Career

Chapter Thirty-Four Marketing The Shopping Center

Chapter Thirty-Five Back To Newspapers

Chapter Thirty-Six A Week Of Golf, An Urgent Phone Call And A Little History.

Chapter Thirty-Seven Driving Back To Pennsylvania With A Stop In Georgia

Chapter Thirty-Eight New Challenges In Georgia

Chapter Thirty-Nine A Bit Of Georgia Newspaper History

Chapter Forty Fixing Broken Newspapers

Chapter Forty-One The Olympic Games Come To Atlanta

Chapter Forty-Two Running Under The Atlanta Umbrella

Chapter Forty-Three A Move Up And The Fbi Is Calling

Chapter Forty-Four The Lawsuit

Chapter Forty-Five The Conyers Bio Lab White Out

Chapter Forty-Six Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever

Chapter Forty-Seven Operating In Competitive Markets

Chapter Forty-Eight A New Property

Chapter Forty-Nine The Spin Off

Chapter Fifty Television Rules

Chapter Fifty-One A Big Miscommunication

Chapter Fifty-Two Friends In High Places

Chapter Fifty-Three Not Time For 30 Yet*

To Penny

Twenty-three moves equals a lot of packing and unpacking

But it’s not to stand naked under

unknowin’ eyes

It’s for myself and my friends

My stories are sung

Bob Dylan-‘Restless Farewell’

Overview

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT THE newspaper business seen through the eyes of a newspaper person, who in the forty-four years from 1965 – 2009, worked in all facets of the industry through the tumultuous technological revolution that impacted the business.

This book is more personal memoir than anything else but with observations along the way of how the business changed over the years and why.

In my opinion, two main forces have driven newspapers to their knees.

First it was the unions that crippled newspapers for years in the sixties, seventies and on into the eighties and held them back from fully embracing new technology. Had unions worked with newspaper owners rather than against them, I think that newspapers would have moved their products very seamlessly onto the web because the computer firepower and computer and systems expertise would have already been in place for them to do so.

Second, was the investment community. Hedge funds, venture capitalists and bankers who saw the relatively huge margins newspapers were generating. As second and third generation newspaper owners began to put their properties up for sale (hundreds of newspapers were sold during the seventies to the late eighties), bankers financed deals based on sale prices of twelve to fourteen times annual profit margins that, as it turned out, were impossible to sustain. In order to reach the financial targets specified in these loans, operators had to cut expenses or face huge increases in the interest rates or outright default and bankruptcy.

Companies like Freedom, Media News, Tribune, Journal Register and others all ran in bankruptcy for periods of time running from six months to several years. Other companies like McClatchy, Lee and Gannett did everything in their power to stay out of bankruptcy.

It is difficult enough to stave off competition from web start ups, couponing vehicles, neighborhood news sites, on line classified sites, etc. without having to worry about downsizing, trimming staff, cutting news hole, dropping editions and all the related expense cutting ideas.

Newspapers became so focused on the former that they had no time or energy to devote to combating the latter. In fact, most are still so focused on propping up the bottom line that they continue to allow interlopers to pirate their market share.

CHAPTER ONE

COMING BACK TO HAMILTON

IT WAS CHILLY MARCH DAY in 1965 when I reported for work for the first time at the Spectator Building at 115 King Street west in my hometown of Hamilton, Ontario.

I had been hired as a retail advertising salesperson and as I walked up the marble staircase to the second floor advertising department, the unusual odor of the interworking of a newspaper assailed my senses.

The mid-sixties were a time of tremendous change for newspapers as they moved from the production of pages using the hot metal method to the photocomposition technique. The Hamilton Spectator was in the midst of such a changeover and these were exciting times for some and agonizing times for others, as I would soon discover.

Working for a newspaper was something that was the farthest from my mind a couple of month’s prior. At the time I was a copywriter for Western Tire and Auto Supply in London, Ontario. I was creating advertising flyers for distribution in mail and newspapers, radio and television commercials, and point of purchase materials for in store display in the sixty stores that the company owned in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces.

I had worked in London for two years after working in various departments at International Harvester Company in Hamilton, my hometown. Starting as a clerk in the purchasing department I had advanced to engineering where I began as a specification writer for diesel trucks, on to preparing owner’s manuals for farm equipment and then to writing advertising copy. I was making just under a hundred dollars a week after five years at International Harvester and when I spotted an ad for an advertising copywriter for half again as much in wages, I responded to the ad.

Western Tire’s stores throughout the eastern part of Canada sold automotive supplies but they were also expanding the merchandise lines to include outdoor furniture, leisure living items, sporting goods and an assortment of home décor items. Although they had been founded in London, Ontario their expansion took them into Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and they had six major auto centers in Montreal that were focal points of the company. The majority of the advertising budget was directed at the stores in Quebec and most of the time, the commercials I created in English ended up being translated into French for airing in the French-speaking market areas.

It wasn’t a huge surprise therefore when the announcement was made that Western was pulling out of London and moving their headquarters to Lachine, Quebec to be closer to the majority of their stores. Some employees at the corporate headquarters were asked to relocate and some were not. I was among those who were asked but I found out that there were different levels of relocation. Some employees were offered relocation assistance in areas of moving expenses, real estate fees, etc. and some were just asked to begin reporting for work in Quebec, left to their own devices to get there. As a lowly copywriter, I was in the latter group.

As a result I decided to shop around Ontario to see what jobs may be open for a talented advertising copywriter such as myself. It only took four or five rejection letters to realize that I wasn’t as talented as I thought. I had created what I thought was an extremely effective resume that explained my situation, illustrated with cartoon characters throughout. The advertising manager at Woolco Discount stores (a division of Woolworths in Canada) didn’t have a job for me but he did like my resume so much he sent it on to a friend of his who was the retail advertising manager of the Hamilton Spectator, a newspaper of 200,000 circulation in my old hometown.

Hamilton is located at the extreme west end of Lake Ontario about sixty miles north of Niagara Falls. Because of its location at the head of the lake it boasts a good harbor and a large manufacturing presence. The Steel Company of Canada, Dominion Foundries and Steel, International Harvester, Firestone and many other major industries made their home in Hamilton.

I received a call from Ian Russell, the Spec’s retail manager who invited me to come visit and talk about an opening he had in his sales department.

I wasn’t wild about the idea.

Since I wrote many radio and television spots, created regular advertising flyers and placed orders for a large number of point of purchase materials in my work at Western Tire, I had several media representatives who came calling to tout their wares for their respective companies. Probably the least impressive of those who called on me were the newspaper representatives. This was a point I had mentioned to my wife Penny, many times.

When I told her that a newspaper had responded to my resume but I was hesitant to go for the interview, she mentioned that if all those newspaper reps were such idiots, I might do very well in such an environment.

So, it was off for the interview and Ian and I hit it off very well. The newspaper needed someone who could specialize in calling on the major automotive accounts and since I had a bit of a background in that area, along with a creative mind it seemed like a good marriage.

So here I was in the middle of the ad department on the second floor of the Spectator building getting ready for my tour of the facility.

These were the days of hot metal in newspaper production.

The odor that I mentioned earlier was the smell of a mixture of alloy containing lead, tin and antimony (8-10% Tin, 15-20% Antimony) that was used to cast the mats and make the stereo plates that the paper was printed on. Slightly harder than line casting alloys but not as hard as the foundry type used for hand setting of loose letters.

Illust.1ChapterPage11.jpg

This is the front page of the resume that ended up with the retail manager of the Hamilton Spectator and led to Rick’s first newspaper job.

The used type, like the slugs from line casters, was re-melted when no longer needed. Each time remelting caused some loss of tin, through oxidation and created the lingering smell that permeated the building.

Every page was made up in a page form. This was placed on a moveable table with wheels, called a Turtle that the compositors would create the page on and move from station to station. Metal type was set on a Linotype machine in lines equal to the width of the column specified by those who marked up the page for typesetting. News copy was generally set in agate type and the news galleys produced by those in the news department would be marked up for the correct font and size before moving on to the Linotype operators. The news copy was locked in the page form around the advertisements that had already been put in place.

Photos and advertising illustrations were moved to the engraving department where they were exposed and engraved on zinc plates that were