The death of the Carleton FreePress
On an unusually warm and sunny morning in late October of last year, I drove into the Carleton Civic Center parking lot. I could feel the frown settle on my face.
I received an email earlier that morning from my boss, Bob Rupert, the editor of the Carleton FreePress. He asked to meet at the parking lot and not to tell anyone else about it. I couldn’t do any work, I was too preoccupied with what seemed like the beginning of the end.
Jody Coughlin drove up and parked beside me. She started at the paper a month or so before I was hired as a full time staffer.
“What’s with the cloak and dagger?” I asked her.
She shrugged. She knew something was rotten in Woodstock and it had something to do with our jobs. She wasn’t smiling, and Jody was almost always smiling.
I expected the worst and I got it.
Bob Rupert and our court reporter Anthony Cooper came in a burgundy sports utility vehicle. Rupert, an old school newspaper man from Ottawa who had come to Woodstock to support the fledgling new paper, got out of the car with his shoulders slumped. He was dressed neatly in a sports coat and light blue sweater-vest. He shielded his eyes from the sun and confirmed our suspicions.
“Guys, we’re in trouble.”
