Sunday, March 08, 2009

Words of disappointment, words of comfort...


Former Mayor (and current provincial Liberal candidate) Herb Pond has put a tentative toe into the percolating waters over recent changes at the Daily News.

Mr. Pond in a letter to the editor published in Friday’s paper outlines his sense of loss at the departure of former Editor Earle Gale, who left the paper two weeks ago in advance of some now well documented changes at the Daily News.

An expression of loss…

Letter to the Editor
Prince Rupert Daily News
Friday, March 6, 2009
Page 4

Dear Editor,

Earle Gale is a terrific newspaper man, sincerely interested in his craft and his community, and operating with uncommon integrity. His departure from the Daily News is a significant community loss. I only hope that Earl finds other ways to employ those skills in Prince Rupert so that we can avoid losing he and his beautiful family from the north coast.

- Herb Pond

Of course it wasn’t all that long ago that Mayor Pond, joined by Dave MacDonald the Mayor of Port Edward, outlined some joint concerns over the state of opinion and reporting at the daily News of the day, reporting and commentary which took place during Earle Gale’s time at the editorial helm.

In that November missive, the key point of their contribution was the declaration that “Your paper’s notable shift to negativity is troubling and serves our communities poorly.”

It seems to be the same kind of tone taken in recent editorials by the newspaper where the new editorial group outlined not once, but twice, why they made the editorial and content decisions that seem to have taken place as the employment status of Mr. Gale changed.

A move which in turn provided for Mr. Pond's latest contribution to the editorial pages.

And such is the cycle of news as it flows through the city these days, where one letter leads to another and unfortunate events seem to have fallen in between the two correspondences.

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