The death of the Carleton FreePress part 5

Is this it?

“When we launched our Friday paper I thought it was going to be a fun weekend edition,” Coughlin said. “I started thinking of fun things we could incorporate in it that would drive community members that maybe don’t feel connected like artists, writers…that was my idea. He also made it very clear that it wasn’t an arts paper. He felt like we were pushing the arts too much.”

In the early autumn the Bugle-Observer announced extended cuts in advertising rates for the next year. Due to the reduced rates along with reputation the FreePress had garnered as a radical, anti-establishment paper due to the injunction the year before, advertisers started choosing the Bugle-Observer over the FreePress.

“Advertisers are going to buy where there are the most readers for the fewest dollars,” Bob said. “We did a very good job in editorial and circulation and I don’t think we could have done better considering our resources.”

Because of the high standard Rupert kept in the editorial section of the paper, people bought it.

“You want some heat. If you don’t piss a few people off you’re probably not any good. People didn’t always like us but they wanted to see what would happen next.”

It wasn’t boring so it reached an audience. Stirring the pot, while it enticed readers it pushed away advertisers.

“Our circulation was close to the Bugle’s. That wasn’t the problem,” Cooper said. “When your circulation is 4000 and someone buys a paper for a dollar 50 cents goes to the retailer. So that’s $2000 a week? That wouldn’t even cover our salaries.”

For the first time since I started, work felt stressful. Jody and Allison poked fun at my hair that had grown long with wings at the tips. I was looking more like Anthony only without his reserved good humour.

“I wonder if by setting itself up as a radical protest paper did it in too though. That’s not something advertisers want. When we started running the big Irving ‘Greed’ ads it started giving me second thoughts. That was something you’d see in a radical alt-weekly.”

The paper was losing money. Langdon tried to put together a flier distribution business and it didn’t fly. It was a disaster and was abandoned.

In October the company that printed the paper refused to print our Tuesday edition because of an outstanding balance on the bill.

“There were a lot of tough days but the toughest day was an hour before sending out one of the final papers we didn’t have a printer. I was shocked at how much we owed. The bill got to be too big,” Rupert said.

“Guys, we’re in trouble,” Rupert told us in the Civic Centre parking lot.

How much trouble wasn’t apparent until that Friday, October 24.

Langdon called a staff meeting and told the staff that the Friday edition would be taken out of circulation and the flier business was done for good. He asked to have the weekend to work things out.

Three days later, we put together what would become the final edition of the Carleton FreePress.

Rupert had an editorial ready for the front page explaining to the readers how our demise came about. He was going to mention the Irving Corporation specifically along with the declining economy.

“As long as people like that are in charge they’ll dump millions of dollars in Woodstock for 10 years to protect other markets. You can’t beat them. The market crashed then it happened. I kept the editorial staff in the know. Until four or five weeks prior I thought we were okay. You really need two to five years.”

The paper went to print and it seemed like a go. That night Langdon called Rupert at home and told him his editorial was pulled by Dwight Fraser the owner and financial backer of the paper.

“The loss of dignity hurt. I had a story explaining the end. I put the story in and it was pulled. No one told me until later,” he said. “It’s my biggest professional embarrassment.”

The Carleton FreePress nearly made it a year. It never became the difference maker Langdon set it out to be despite winning the 2007 President’s Award from the Canadian Association of Journalists, a first for a community newspaper in Canada.
For those of us who worked there it’s hard to call it a failure but that’s the realistic assessment.

“I think it will be viewed as that because we only made it a year. A newspaper has to have longevity,” Cooper said. “We may have had some great stories but it’s such a transient medium that no one really remembers that. It’s too bad though. We had some very great talent.”

Coughlin was just coming into her own as a reporter and columnist. She started illustrating her columns, the first picture being a woman reporter with tape over her mouth as a comment on the state of freedom of speech and expression.

Despite her initial apprehensive nature, she had grown into a writer and had developed conviction. In one of her final pieces, published in the October 24 edition, she wrote about the hypocrisy she saw at a dinner celebrating small businesses success in the community. The head of the Woodstock chamber of commerce at the time was Jeanne Watson who was also the publisher of the Bugle-Observer.

“She said that if there is anything the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce can do to help new businesses succeed, to let her know,” Coughlin wrote in her column. “Uh, hello? Did anyone else hear her say that? Am I still on planet earth?

“Of course, this probably sounded like just the thing to say to a crowd of business owners who have worked their butts off to get where they are today.

“But, that statement didn’t sit too well with me. Here at the FreePress we have been fighting like soldiers in a war zone to keep our paper alive and there are forces at work trying to snuff us out like a candle in a hurricane.”

The picture accompanying the piece was the same Lady Free Press from before only without the tape. She had been freed from her restrictions of speaking her mind.

Jody Coughlin, Anthony Cooper, Bob Rupert, myself and everyone involved at the FreePress believed or said they believed in the ideals freedom of expression, speech and the press represented. While it will forever be viewed as the little paper that couldn’t it represented so much more. It gave us the confidence to do what we believed in.

Coughlin was insecure and was told by family members that she wasn’t qualified for the job. It was a ‘did you know what this person said?’ situation but it hurt her.

“[Bob] looked me in the eye and said ‘You are a reporter. That’s who you are. You’re not this person or that person. You are a reporter.’

“It made me feel so important. I felt like I broke through the glass ceiling. He then told me ‘if someone tells you you’re not qualified send them to me. I’ll tell them you’re qualified. I have graduated people from the Masters degree and you are qualified.’”

And now it’s all over.

***

Bob Rupert sits in his kitchen looking out the window over the frozen water. It’s cold in Baine Harbour in January. He enjoyed his time in Newfoundland so much last summer he decided to make it his permanent base of operations.

It’s his third ‘retirement’ but it’s different from the others.

“For the first time in my life I feel like I can sit back and just let things come.”

The FreePress took a lot out of him. He worked hours most people would scoff at and refuse to do. Rupert cares about the truth, the most fundamental principle of journalism, above all things. To him the truth is New Brunswick is dominated by a media monopoly and it needs news outlets like the Carleton FreePress but they need to find longevity.

He says he would need to think long and hard about jumping back into the game again and he would need to be kept in the know regarding the financial situation from day one, something he doesn’t feel happened at the FreePress.

He’s a warrior, a member of the old guard. Journalism is in his blood so he can never write it off entirely even if Langdon’s upstart paper didn’t live up to the possibility he thought it had.

“A minority of people in journalism have passion. A cadre, a core of people who care and never stop caring does exist. If I wanted to stop caring, I couldn’t.”

And while I didn’t know it when I took the job in May, I know now that I couldn’t either.