SUNBURNED COLUMNIST

THE BULLY PULPIT REVISITED


This may seem a tad egocentric but I'm weary of explaining. Besides, I'm a columnist and we're used to poking at our own entrails to see if there's a message for anyone, even the dog.

And while I'm at it,  Merry Christmas! And may all your New Year's resolutions come true! 

Mary and I aren't trying to save on postage but there hasn't been much time to deal with cards in between medical visits. And Mary is about to go to hospital for more carpentry work.

In the Queen's words of the famous Christmas message, this has been an annus horribilis for the Downings. Before I departed in a huff from my Grade 12 class in Latin after a mean SOB Wes Christie accused me of cheating on the Easter exam, I learned that meant horrible year.

Things were so bad  that if I had written friends one of those chatty year-end state of the family newsletters, it would have been banned from most homes.

But back to mopping up!

The other day, Doug Holyday, Toronto's stalwart deputy mayor, lamented he hadn't seen me in the Sun the week before, and he really did like reading my columns.

There are cottagers near me at Burnt Point who tell me regularly that they never miss my column in the Sun.

At a Christmas party, a senior writer retired from the Toronto Star asked whether I'm still writing for the Sun.

Even my relatives have asked.

I tell them to read my blog because the 

answer is humbling, especially for a columnist who feels that he was one of the peacocks, like all the other columnists and pundits think when they're being honest.

Our tail feathers become bedraggled when it turns out readers really don't know whether you're still strutting your views or whether you have vanished into the long night.

 I haven't been a regular columnist for any newspaper for several years, although I do pontificate regularly here.

I only returned from formal media death when the Sunday Sun ran six columns this summer on my experiences during three months in hospital, dubbed "hospital hell", and three columns on the Ex, the provincial Tories and Toronto traffic. (Only the CNE was successful in that triumvirate of opinion.)

So I'm not writing for the Sun but people still think I am. After 50 years in journalism, I actually understand why.

Columnists may be stars in the firmament of their own paper but anonymous to those who read other newspapers. If  any.

Rosie DiManno may appear some days to write half the Star but Sun readers may think the name is a species of flower. Christie Blatchford in the Post and Margaret Wente in the Globe may also be among the finest columnists in North America but if you don't read their papers, they're just some one who may have a vaguely familiar name.  Maybe TV actors?

When I'm interviewed, I scramble to remind everyone I'm no longer a Sun columnist. Yet John Tory on CFRB kept calling me that out of old habits.

 I'm still involved in several boards and organizations and find myself listed as columnist or even Editor of the Sun, a post I retired from in 1997.

Of course some of this is the nice residue of writing and editing in the Sun for 36 years after 14 years at the late and lamented Tely.

From 1971 to 1985, I wrote the first column in the paper on Page 4 five or six times a week, and filled in for Editor Worthington when he took a break from saving the world for democracy.  Even then I scrambled daily to produce columns that were longer than the present versions.

Then I became the Editor, who in those days reported directly to the Publisher, but still wrote two columns weekly, which I continued for a decade after I sort of retired.

Still, readers think I'm still there. It can get amusing. I was dropping off a son in the confusion at the airport and had to squeeze by a bus with an open door. I grumbled loudly at the driver who retorted "Why don't you write a column about it?"

I was as surprised as the day I was standing in a queue and grousing to Mary when a man asked if I was Downing. He was a faithful CBC listener and knew my voice from a decade of a weekly radio commentary. and another five years on a political panel show.

There are those, including Sun staffers, who asked why I didn't continue after nine Sun columns this year.  Well, the editor of the opinion section disappeared, leaving an interregnum between the coronations. During the search I asked about payment. Associate Editor Lorrie Goldstein said in future I would get the amount I used to pay columnists I was trying to ditch, which is less than half of my old column rate. Oh yes, because the "hospital hell" columns had been modified from what had appeared on my blog, I would get only half of even that, and nothing for my pictures. (Even the tight-fisted Star pays $50 a picture to writers.)

And if I wanted to submit more columns, Goldstein, who was filling in for the fired editor, told me rudely, I would have to audition my ideas. After all, I've only written more than 5,000 columns, several thousand editorials and hundreds of blogs and articles, so maybe I hadn't got the hang of it yet.

Gee, I thought, back when we Day Oners started the little paper that grew, I owned half of one percent. How the pioneers have dwindled along with my financial position.
 Finally, SIX MONTHS after my burst of columns, my bank got a deposit for the minimum rate for every column, even a small payment for the pictures. So a new and more sensible editor had scuttled the argument that a paper didn't have to pay even the minimum if much of the material had also been on a blog. 

In evangelical circles, ministers were said to be preaching for a call when they gave guest sermons.  There is also the expression about whether there's a light in the window.

Nope, there was no call here. As for a light in the window, not even a reflection from the Sun.