Why is the mainstream media not covering this story? Why have The Globe and Mail, CBC, The National Post, Maclean’s et al. seemingly missed out on the fact that Hollinger Publishing — Conrad Black’s former newspaper holdings company — has been forced into bankruptcy protection? Why have these national news organizations not reported that more than 3,000 retired newspaper workers — former employees of the Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen and other papers now owned by Canwest — were advised by letter just before Christmas that their pension and benefit plans could be in jeopardy?

There are many more questions that demand immediate answers:

· What happened to the $3.5 billion that Hollinger received for the sale of its newspapers to Canwest in 2000? In a court filing (Hollinger Canadian Publishing Holdings Co., File No. 09-8503-00CL. Ontario Superior Court of Justice — Toronto), the company says it has no assets and about $24.5 CAD million in cash. We do know what may have happened to about $6.1 million of it (currently the subject of a US Supreme Court appeal) but what about the rest?

· Why was not some of this money set aside to take care of Hollinger’s existing liabilities when the sale took place?

· What happened to the money that the Southam and Hollinger retirees paid into the pension fund in good faith over a period of many years (in my case, 27)? We were told the money was being held in trust and would not be affected by any future financial problems of the employer. Was this a lie?

· Why did Canwest not assume continuing responsibility for Hollinger’s pension obligations when it bought the company in 2000?

· How did Hollinger expect to continue meeting its pension obligations when, as the letter to retirees now says, it had no “ongoing business activity” to bring new revenue into the company?

· Why did Hollinger tell the retirees in 2007 that the “events” affecting the financial status of the company (i.e. the indictment of certain directors for defrauding shareholders) should not have any impact on the pension and benefit programs administered by the company?

· Why did a Hollinger employee subsequently tell me that my pension plan was fully funded and protected when, in fact, it is “not insured or prefunded”?

· Why is the Sun-Times Media Group, the parent company of Hollinger, not assuming responsibility for the debts of its subsidiary?

Somebody knows the answers. The mainstream media has the resources — and surely as much interest as those of us who used to work for the Southam and Hollinger newspapers — to find out what they are. Canwest is also in what it euphemistically calls “creditor protection.” Could its retirees find themselves in the same situation a few years hence? It’s in their interest to start seeking answers now.

“Scribe of the stars” means that during the past 20 years in particular (not 50 years, as suggested in the headline) Portman has earned his living primarily by doing deferential pieces on the celebrities of stage and screen. A quick database search reveals that in recent months his subjects have included David Strathairn (The Bourne Ultimatum), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad), Chris Tucker (Rush Hour 3), Alan Alda, Claire Danes (Stardust) and Josh Hartnett (Resurrecting the Champ). The prolific 71-year-old has also covered the seasonal theatrical offerings at the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, as he has done annually since the 1960s, and caught up with the latest must-see shows on Broadway and in the West End. But he hasn’t written a word about cultural sovereignty, government arts policy, the function of public broadcasting in Canada, or the travails of former Heritage Minister Bev Oda. In fact, it has been more than 10 years since Portman wrote regularly about the role of the arts in Canadian life. More’s the pity.

Portman has a long history of involvement with the arts in Canada. He fell into theatre criticism at age 23 in 1959, while working as an editorial writer at the Calgary Herald, when the paper’s regular reviewer went on vacation. Portman volunteered to fill in, and took over the arts beat shortly afterwards when the regular reviewer left the paper. Portman combined reviewing with writing about politics and other non-arts-related subjects until his Herald bosses decided he should focus exclusively on entertainment coverage.

During the 1960s, Portman played an important role in Calgary arts journalism, documenting the evolution of the amateur Workshop 14 theatre company into the professional Theatre Calgary. A man of eclectic cultural tastes, he also wrote about opera, ballet, classical music, films, and books. In his weekly opinion column, he wrote about issues of interest to the local arts community. When the Herald started adding writers to its entertainment section in 1971, Portman became the section’s first editor. Four years after that, he replaced Dave Billington as national arts correspondent for Southam News (the predecessor of CanWest). Portman continued to write from Calgary, but he travelled extensively and his pieces now appeared in newspapers from Montreal to Vancouver.

As national arts correspondent, Portman functioned simultaneously as a reviewer of Canadian theatre, music and dance, and as a cultural watchdog keeping an eye on how the federal government was doing in terms of funding for the arts. He played this dual role for about 10 years until he decided he would fulfil his mandate better by functioning more as a cultural analyst and advocate than as an arts reviewer. In 1987, his Southam bosses moved him to Ottawa, explaining that it no longer made sense for him to be writing about government arts policy while based in Calgary. At the same time, they wanted him to make movies the central focus of his entertainment coverage. The entertainment editors of the Southam newspapers had indicated they were more interested in the latest news from Hollywood than in Portman’s coverage of the Blyth and Lennoxville theatre festivals.

The move to Ottawa, as it now turns out, marked the first step in the transformation of Portman from influential cultural commentator into Canada’s answer to Bob Thomas of the Associated Press A respectable change of assignment, no doubt, but one somehow felt that Portman had made a more important contribution when he lobbied for increased funding for the arts than when he started writing about the bee-stung lips of Molly Ringwald.

His CanWest bosses obviously valued Portman’s writing because they kept him on the job for close to seven years beyond the normal retirement age of 65. But one wishes that more of that writing had been about the inability of the Canada Council to meet the needs of younger artists and less about the fact that Esquire magazine named Jessica Biel as the sexiest woman alive.

Brian Brennan is a Calgary author and journalist. His latest title is How the West was Written: The Life and Times of James H. Gray.

Now that the merry pranksters at Frank magazine have been outed as the satirists behind the http://www.supportlordblack.com hoax, it behooves us to ask who does support Conrad Black, and why? The March 12th issue of Maclean’s magazine offers an answer: Mark Steyn, a right-wing columnist described by Peter Preston of the London Observer as an “American-based neo-con ranter.”

Steyn, whose by-line also appears regularly in such conservative publications as the Western Standard and the National Review, writes in Maclean’s that Lord Black and his wife, the columnist Barbara Amiel, have been “good for readers and good for newspapers.” He doesn’t elaborate, but we presume he is referring to the fact that Black gave Canada The National Post — a national daily to compete with The Globe and Mail — and that he ran a media company, Hollinger Inc., which owned most of the country’s other major dailies. Were these papers good for readers when Black was at the helm? Sometimes. Black believed in spending money on journalism, and newspapers often put out a better product when the editorial budget is increased.

But was Black good for the newspapers? More specifically, did he provide good leadership for the people who worked at the newspapers? Let me speak from experience here. I worked as a staff writer at the Calgary Herald for 25 years. For more than 20 of those years, I couldn’t have asked for a better job. We had salaries and benefits comparable to those in big newsrooms across the country. We had bosses who encouraged us to do quality writing and photography and respect the intelligence of our readers. My job as a features writer and columnist took me across Canada and beyond in search of good stories. It was one of the best gigs I ever had.

Our winter of discontent began in 1996, a few months before Hollinger assumed a controlling interest in Southam, the company that owned the Herald. With a workaholic publisher in charge, the newsroom turned into a white-collar sweatshop. Reporters were ordered to produce more and more copy, which was then arbitrarily rewritten by newsroom managers to conform to the publisher’s expectations. Dignity went out the window along with respect. We often opened our newspapers in the morning to find our stories altered beyond recognition. “Drive-by editing,” we called it. Many of these editorial changes, done without consultation with the reporters, resulted in errors, and readers demanding printed corrections, apologies, and retractions.

In October 1998, editorial staffers voted to join the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union (CEP). For the first time in 115 years, the Herald newsroom was certified. But two years of Hollinger ownership had failed to fix the problems caused by the previous management. In fact, things had gotten worse. Aside from the drive-by editing, there had been indiscriminate firings. Senior writers were dismissed for the flimsiest of reasons. We needed protection from the madness. We became CEP Local 115A. We spent a year trying unsuccessfully to negotiate a first contract. Then the company locked us out. We were on the picket line for eight months.

In March 2000, Black came to Calgary to attend a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce shareholders’ meeting. Some of the locked-out workers confronted him in the lobby of the Westin Hotel. He told us the Herald had improved as a paper since the start of the lock-out. The paper’s dwindling circulation said otherwise. Union leader Andy Marshall asked Black why he was insulting his once-valued employees. “We’re not,” responded Black. “We’re amputating gangrenous limbs.”

The lock-out ended on June 30th, 2000 with the union being decertified and most of the 93 workers still on the picket line taking buyouts. I was one of those who took the money. My job as a columnist had been eliminated and many of my friends were looking for employment elsewhere, including a number of national-award winners who had once combined to make the Herald one of the best dailies in Western Canada. With them gone, I could see no reason for going back into the building.

So, was Conrad Black good for the Calgary Herald? When union leader Marshall said in March, 2000 that the Herald needed us back in the building to restore its status as a quality paper, Black replied: “We’ve got one. And it’s getting better all the time.” Seven years later, I still beg to differ.

Brian Brennan is a Calgary author and journalist. His latest title is How the West Was Written: The Life & Times of James H. Gray.