| Renowned journalist and social activist June Callwood, 79, has been in the media business for over 60 years. The author and former Globe and Mail columnist is speaking at The Banff Centre’s Cultural Journalism lecture series on July 28 at 8 p.m. She spoke with Fast Forward recently from her home in Toronto about the state of the contemporary media, the separate spheres of activism and writing, and how she got her start in the business in 1941.
Fast Forward: You share a passion for journalism and social justice. They are a good pairing, as they are both creative acts with a conscience. How have the two played off against each other?
June Callwood: I’m not sure they do play off against each other. It wasn’t reciprocal, because I argue that being involved in social issues doesn’t mean that you can’t write dispassionately and without bias. I found that being a journalist put me in touch with the community in a way that few people have – as a non-involved observer. Other people who see what’s going on in a community are always there as participants, but a journalist comes and goes. And I used that to raise some questions about "Why isn’t this working a little better?" and found that I enjoyed tinkering, so that’s what I’ve been doing. Even when I did a column, I never wrote about things that I was involved in.
You felt that you had to keep those spheres separate?
Not just because the reader is supposed to be getting writing that is not biased, but because the people I was involved with, at a women’s shelter or teenage mothers’ program, would wonder whether I was there as a voyeur or there to be helpful. If I started writing about it, they would question why I was there.
Can you comment on the state of the newspaper business? The concentration of ownership has changed the business, has it not?
Oh yeah. We get four newspapers a day. We get the National Post and the bias of the ownership at the Post is appalling. I think that whomever owns the Globe and Mail now – I think it is Bell Telephone – does a slightly better job, but it can’t help but influence the reporting on the business section. I think it shapes the paper in ways that are invisible.
I think the newspaper business has always had a commercial element. There’s always been that tension between the sales department and the journalists and that’s why they are on different floors – so that you could have some detachment.
I’m not sure that they need to be on different floors now, because they are subconsciously aware of who (holds) the purse strings.
What was it like when you were freelancing features to Maclean’s Magazine when your children were young?
It was a golden time in many ways, but I think journalists write better today. We didn’t research nearly as much back then as journalists do today.
The profession is advancing despite all of the advertising pressure?
Brighter people are in it. More educated people. And research is easier now because of the Internet.
Has self-censorship ever been an issue for you?
No. But then I have always been above that fray because I got established well before the pressures began. There were separate rules for those of us that were well settled. A younger person who starts out and behaves in a chippy way doesn’t last long. Those of us who were around were kind of grandfathered.
When you were first in the business I am assuming it was pretty male dominated. Were you not told you couldn’t work under your married name?
I started at the Brantford Expositor in ’41. It was a privately owned paper and it was small. It was wartime so they hired a woman because they didn’t have enough men and that’s how a lot of women got started in the news pages. I got a job at the Globe and Mail in ’43 for the same reason. I was a woman and wouldn’t be going off to war. And then when I married my husband, who was also on the Globe, they wouldn’t let me change to his name because they had a rule that married women had to quit. So that’s why I have my single name – not because I was an early feminist. They made me keep my byline so nobody would know I was married.
How has it been being married to another journalist (Trent Frayne)? What are the benefits?
The benefits are that he is a good editor and that I respect his editing. And we understand one another’s dilemma when you are stuck in the writing and are mad at it. No, it has only been a benefit. I don’t think writing is a competitive sport anyway. You are just trying to write better than you did yesterday. |
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