The end of an era: my science column leaves the newspaper

Roughly two decades of writing a science column that appeared in print in Regina came to an end today when I received a letter from the Regina LeaderPost that said:

It is with regret that I inform you today that effective March 11, 2009, we will no longer be in a position to publish your Science column.

Because of new financial and space restrictions imposed by our parent company, Canwest Publishing, we have been forced to readjust our freelance copy for the daily Leader-Post. Unfortunately, your column is one of the items our editor-in-chief has chosen to give up.
I first began writing the column late in 1990, I believe, when I was still communications officer of the Saskatchewan Science Centre. It originally ran over 1,000 words and appeared in the Regina Sun, the free-circulation weekly that is owned by the LeaderPost. Initially I offered it for free, because I wrote it at work and used it to promote Science Centre activities and exhibits from time to time.
When I left the Science Centre in 1993 and became a freelancer I took the column with me. I don’t remember exactly when it moved to the LeaderPost proper, but I’m sure it’s been appearing in the daily paper for well over a decade now.
During most of those years the science column was also heard weekly on CBC Radio’s Afternoon Edition with Colin Grewar; that came to an end a couple of years ago.
The column has also appeared in a few other papers. It ran in St. John’s, Newfoundland, for a while, for instance. A few weekly papers in Saskatchewan took it when it was free, but they dropped it when I went freelance and asked them to pay for it. And the Red Deer Advocate has been carrying it for several years now.
It’s been, so far as I can tell, very popular for the LeaderPost, but of course it’s a chain newspaper now (it didn’t used to be) and the chain it belongs, CanWest, is in serious financial trouble. And so I my column has been lopped away, which saves the newspaper a whopping $25 a week. (As you can see, I’ve been essentially giving it away to them for years: that’s only the equivalent of about four cents a word).
I also write freelance entertainment articles for the paper, and hope to continue to do so: but there, two, things have been pruned. The entertainment editor can only assign four freelance-written previews a week, and the length has been cut from around 580 words to a hundred words less.
This makes no sense to me. I believe that to thrive, newspapers should be focusing on becoming more aggressively local. National news and celebrity “news” and the big sports stories are readily avaialble through any number of other sources: TV, radio, and, of course, the Internet. Local news–what local entertainers are doing, the decisions of local governing bodies, the accomplishments of local people, the sports rivalries among local high schools–these are the things you can’t get anywhere else.
Instead, the bean-counters at CanWest have spoken, and a 20-year-old, popular local column gets cut, saving them a grand total of $675 a year–less than one good-sized ad brings in in a single newspaper. I don’t know that cutting my column will cost them any subscribers. It might. But cut enough local content, and you can bet the subscribers will bleed away, too.
Well. Not to worry, blog-readers: I’ll still be writing the column each week and posting it here and sending it out to my email subscribers (there are more than 500). It will still be in the Red Deer Advocate. And I’ll probably give weekly newspapers another shot at it, now that it’s free from the clutches of CanWest. So you can still enjoy it. But the newspaper readers of Regina are out of luck.
In, I suspect, more ways than one.

Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2009/03/the-end-of-an-era-my-science-column-leaves-the-newspaper/

3 comments

    • Wayne on March 7, 2009 at 7:12 pm
    • Reply

    Hi Ed,
    Your regular column was one of the few things worth reading in the Leader Post. I’m sorry to hear that it will not continue!

    I just sent your website link to my daughter-in-law, Amie, a freelance journalist working in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

    I admire your varied, interesting topics and your originality. I will plan to check for future articles on-line.

    Wayne G.

    • Michael Kruse on March 4, 2009 at 7:37 pm
    • Reply

    I can believe you , sadly, that this was one of the many cost-cutting measures. This sounds like more short shrift for in-depth science and arts programming – two things that are sadly lacking from a lot of newspapers these days. Oh well, I would not subscribe to a Canwest publication any way. Keep up the great work Ed!!

    • Robert on March 4, 2009 at 7:01 pm
    • Reply

    what a shame, though consistent with what we’ve been seeing across the country. Just today another author mentioned that their local paper had stopped subscribing to wire services, and simply reprinted material from the chain, or prepackaged American material. It’s embarrassing. And ultimately suicidal — what’s the point of a newspaper without local news or wire services? That’s not a newspaper, it’s a “shopper” flyer. I’ve given up my subscription and I’ve stopped demanding that my students read the paper daily because there is no worthwhile news or analysis to be found in them any more. And if teachers stop reading papers… Well, end of an era for sure…

    Greatly relieved to hear we will still be getting the column via email and blog. I read them all — except the ones I hear on podcast….

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