Lather, rinse, repeat: a print junkie imposter
After 33 years at a tabloid it seems like the right time to admit I don’t know much about newspapering.
I cannot identify any fonts. It escapes me why words such as shirttail or runaround are part of the conversation.
A long time ago I asked my colleague, Bob Thompson, to explain what a pick-up is and he said that after someone is shot or stabbed or run over or killed in some horrible way you go to their house and pick up their photo from the family.
I assume he is making that up.
I write stories about entertainment. Then I get the hell out of the way while hordes of yelling men – mostly men – do all the editing and folding and spindling and bundling required to turn words into a newspaper and drop it right at your door.
Then lather, rinse, repeat: everybody does the same thing all over again the next day.
My God, the daily newspaper. My heart’s desire. Despite being an imposter, I am a print junkie working in a place with all the other print junkies. They chose this profession.
I got lucky and the profession chose me.
I had another job. It was the exact opposite of working for a newspaper, where people put stories out. I was a publicist for a record label, shilling for rock stars, so I was trying to put stories in. I knew every entertainment writer and broadcaster in the country because I spent my days pestering them, asking them to interview the rock stars I was babysitting.
One day while I was doing the usual publicity work (writing; crying; abusing alcohol with reporters) the legendary music writer, Wilder Penfield III, says to me: “Maybe you should be doing that writing on our side of the fence?” And so it began.
I don’t know how to describe the carnival that was the Toronto Sun when I started working there in the late ’80s. It was like going down the rabbit hole. I had nothing much to compare it to, so for all I knew there were other businesses where grown men talked about slashing tires and stealing photographs to foil the competition.
Some things were familiar. Christie Blatchford heaving a phone book across the newsroom did not seem all that different from watching The Eagles toss furniture out a high-floor window at The Four Seasons. I don’t think Joe Walsh ever hit anyone with flying objects, mind you.
A tabloid was a new thing here. Pictures of bloody mob hits and highway carnage and girls in their undies were nothing new elsewhere but they were new enough in Toronto The Good. The Sun was dismissed by some readers that found it shocking. But working there was a completely different proposition. It was as if everyone in the place was in on the joke.
I had to audition to get my job. I wrote a story about Cathy Evelyn Smith, a Canadian in Los Angeles accused of killing John Belushi with drugs. When I opened the newspaper and saw that story in print it was a very strange feeling, like running down Main St. without any clothes on.
I couldn’t wait to do it again.
The cops phoned me to talk about that story. They all liked Cathy Smith and wanted me to know that what happened to her (prison sentence) had been some strange alchemy created out of John Belushi’s celebrity and the district attorney’s political ambition.
Fame, crime, ambition: the thin edge of the wedge in the coming tabloidization of the whole world. I started on the entertainment beat just as celebrity gossip took over the news.
Long before anyone knew who Paris Hilton or the Kardashians were, our entertainment editor, George Anthony, had predicted the whole, sad debacle and everybody’s 15 minutes of fame.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see that in the real world things were blowing up – the Challenger, the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the stock market – but I was busy writing about Crocodile Dundee and Tom Cruise.
The news reporters called us the toy department. Go figure.
Some early assignments: review Peggy Lee at the Imperial Room; get held aloft by Wrestlemania star Rowdy Roddy Piper for a photo; have a drink with actor James Woods. And his mom.
One day I was invited to lunch with our publisher and founder, Douglas Creighton. These lunches were notorious boozefests, but what did I know? Both my editors – George Anthony and Kathy Brooks – were totally laid-back bosses, but on the day of my date with Creighton they insisted I finish whatever I was writing before I left for lunch. I was asked three times if I had finished my story, which was strange. I insisted I could do it that afternoon, after lunch, but that wouldn’t do. So I filed, already.
Creighton and I went off to lunch at the fabled Winston’s. I remember maroon velvet banquettes at the restaurant and I remember Doug asking me if I wanted a martini and then three or 12 martinis later I’m pretty sure we were talking about Barbara Amiel’s love life. Or Barbra Streisand’s. It’s all a blur. I don’t recall how I got back to work that day or how I got home – ambulance?
I never questioned my editors’ judgement again.
The first proper interview I ever did was with the novelist Jackie Collins, younger sister of movie star Dame Joan Collins, and what a lucky break that was. Collins was kind enough to overlook how green I was as a scribe and told me wonderful stories. Later, George Anthony gently took me aside and showed me how an interview was written, quotes and all. The quotes part hadn’t actually occurred to me. In my defense, he only had to show me once.
In those first few idyllic years I spent a lot of time travelling to Los Angeles and New York to see new movies and interview the actors. Print was still important, so that meant interviews with the big movie stars of the day – Meryl Streep, Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson, Meg Ryan, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It’s funny what you remember. River Phoenix spoke at length about his strict vegan lifestyle and took his shoes off with great enthusiasm to show me that they weren’t leather. He was 16.
In its heyday, the Sun was still a reactionary little paper, but back then there seemed to be no issue with the liberal bubble in which entertainment existed.
It was a party at all times. You never knew who might drop in. Dear Abby turned up one day, explaining she tried to visit all the newspapers that carried her work. Ed Asner (in character as newsman Lou Grant) did a stint as managing editor. Sunshine girls were always flouncing through the newsroom, ready for their close-up on Page 3. Someone brought a tame lion to the doors of the King Street offices one day – I can’t remember why – and on another occasion there was a bear in the newsroom.
Turns out it was a man-eating bear.
That’s another story.
There was also plenty of illicit shagging and drunk typing, but that’s standard for newspapers.
We got Christmas bonuses in cash. There was a baseball team. Nobody ever messed with your copy. The only person who ever spoke to me sternly was the late Peter O’Sullivan, an editor famous for the way his voice pitched higher when he was agitated.
“You cannot use a word like verisimilitude in this newspaper,” he squeaked at me one day.
I did anyway.
Things change. Within a few years, the newspaper had different owners, Doug Creighton was gone, George Anthony left to take a big job at the CBC. The decline and fall of the industry was still some years away, but the essential magic was gone.
Never mind. Before it was all over, the little paper that grew was recognized as one of the Top 100 places to work in Canada.
And it was, even for the clueless.
LIZ BRAUN is an award-winning journalist. She knows how to touch-type.