ROTHENBURGER – Why would anybody in their right mind go into journalism?

STOP ME IF YOU’VE heard this one but, in 1968, I was broke, out of a job, and had a young family to support.

I’d been fired from a Prince George newspaper after it published a photo that showed a case of beer for a brand that competed with a brewery the paper’s owner had recently purchased. Three of us from the newsroom got the blame, and the axe.

So, my family and I packed our belongings into our car and a U-Haul trailer and headed south to Okanagan orchard country, where I made the rounds of newspaper offices.

In one day, I received three job offers. I took one in Vernon (the editor noted that one of the benefits was “free fruit in the summer”).

A year later, an opening came up at The Kamloops News-Advertiser so we made the move.
The point of the story is that, back then, newspaper jobs were plentiful, if not particularly well-paid — I’ve got an old contract somewhere that shows my first weekly paycheque at the News-Advertiser was for $114.

Shortly after I retired from my long-time position as editor of The Kamloops Daily News, Glacier Media shut it down. I like to joke that they just couldn’t survive without me but I felt as if a lifelong friend had died.

So I have some sense of what the folks at Kamloops This Week are feeling — the loss of their paper, the uncertainties that come with unemployment and possibly loss of career.

Why anyone would want to be a journalist these days is a good question. It’s short-term work. But I have an answer.

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Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.