RIP, Halifax Daily News
By Francis Moran
The news earlier this week that Transcontinental Media was discontinuing publication of the Halifax Daily News was probably as inevitable as it was unfortunate for the 92 people who worked there. They joined scores of other newsroom and media workers who have been pink-slipped over the past little while in what is probably one of the worst employment periods for the journalism business in decades.
For those of us who worked at the News in what might charitably be called its heyday under cowboy founder and publisher, madcap Fleet Street refugee David Bentley, the news of its demise brought back — shall I say — interesting memories. My good pal Sherri Aikenhead, who was a summer cub reporter on the News the year I started there, recalled for a Globe and Mail story this week the night we ran a sensational scoop under the headline, “Agonies of a princess,” that, contrary to all rules and protocol that prohibited directly quoting one of the British royal family, directly quoted Diana, Princess of Wales, on the pain she felt when the media wrote nasty things about her. You’d think we’d nominated Hitler for sainthood the way the local and international media excoriated us for breaking the so-called rules.
