The day I write this column is the day the last issue of the Whitehorse Star rolls off the press way up there far north of my office in southwestern B.C.
I didn’t work for the Whitehorse Star, I worked for its rival, the Yukon News but at the time, the Star occupied a lot of my daily thoughts. That’s because the two papers were rivals. There’s nothing more competitive than two newspapers in a small town. It was the same here when I moved to Campbell River in 1989. The Campbell River Mirror and the Campbell River Courier-Islander were just as competitive as the Star and the News were up in Whitehorse.
But that just adds to the spice of life when you make your living in journalism. Not that a life in journalism needs any more spice.
But despite being sworn enemies, we always respected each other and as is peculiar to this industry, we kind of considered ourselves co-workers because we were always chasing the same stories, showing up at the same scenes and talking to the same people. Lord forbid you get scooped by someone from the Star.
The Star always looked down on the upstart Yukon News. After all, the Star was born at the tail end of the legendary Klondike Gold Rush. The Trail of ‘98 (1898 that is) still passed through Whitehorse in 1900 when the paper opened its doors, first as the Northern Star. That kind of cachet was hard to beat. After all, the Yukon News began merely in 1960.
To get back at the Star, we used to say, “You’re a news reporter at the Star but you’re a star reporter at the News.”
The Star was a daily newspaper when I was there, 1986-1989, and the News was a weekly. At the time, I was a young man returning to the Yukon Territory where I went to highschool and left to get a post-secondary education in the Lower Mainland.
So on Friday, May 17 the Star closed its doors, leaving the Yukon News as the established paper. A CBC article said that former Star employees were going to open their own newspaper. Good luck to them.
You see, the Star was an independently-owned newspaper, a rarity these days. Corporate ownership of media has long been established as the only modus operandi of success and the fact the Star hung on this long is a surprise. I’m not sure why nobody bought it. A daily in a small town is probably even rarer than an independent and profitable dailies may be even rarer.
The Yukon News succumbed to corporate ownership when it was bought in 2013, ironically for me, by the owners of this newspaper, Black Press (which, yes, has only recently come under new ownership itself).
So, the Star’s closure has put me in a nostalgic frame of mind. Jim Butler is the editor of the Star, a position he took up just at the end of my tenure at the News, I believe. He’s been in that position slightly longer than I’ve been editor of this paper. But Jim was the legislative reporter for the Star when I arrived in Whitehorse, a beat that I covered while there. Jim was the dean of Whitehorse reporters, back then, though.
I still remember when we carpooled to cover a conference in Dawson City. It was spring with the snow starting to melt. Not far outside Whitehorse, I wrestled to regain control of my 1980 Toyota Tercel as it fishtailed out of a slippery corner. I lost the battle as my little car slid into the ditch.
Jim and I got out to survey the damage which was nil. A passing 4x4 pickup stopped, hooked up a rope and pulled us out and we continued merrily on our way.
So now the Star is no more. It’s not an uncommon story in newspapers these days. Making a profit with a newspaper is a tough go. Making a profit with a competitor across town is even tougher. It eventually didn’t work here with the Courier-Islander and the Mirror and it probably was inevitable in Whitehorse.
The Star’s motto – adopted in its early years – was “Illegitimus non carborundum” or “don’t let the bastards grind you down.” Jim is quoted by the CBC as saying over the years he gained strength from that slogan. They’re words of wisdom that any editor can gain inspiration from.
“An editor, in many respects, is a punching bag — especially one who stays in that chair for so many years, as I have,” he told the CBC.
I can relate.
So here’s to the Whitehorse Star, it really was a legendary newspaper. Best of luck to the “surviving” and former employees. Who knows where the news business is going? It’s hard to imagine, though, that whatever shape it takes, it’s going to be as legendary, heroic, mythical even, but also hated, as it has been for nearly a century and a quarter, the lifespan of the Whitehorse Star.
It’s hard to imagine the sterile, binary environment of digital publishing will have the cachet of the “ink-stained wretches” of newspapering but there you go.
Alistair Taylor is editor of the Campbell River Mirror.