Norman Webster: a half century in the newsrooms of the world
This coming Thursday Massey College in Toronto is hosting a virtual book launch event for a new publication by veteran journalist Norman Webster entitled Newspapering: 50 Years of Reporting from Canada and Around the World.
Speaking with The Record from his home just outside North Hatley, Webster explained that the book is a collection of some of his favourite and most significant pieces of writing from his years spent working as a reporter, editorialist, and foreign correspondent for papers like The Globe and Mail, The
Montreal Gazette, and The Sherbrooke Record.
While Webster traced the origins of his career back to a summer job with The Globe and Mail in 1958, he shared that his early goals lay much closer to home.
“Originally my ambition was to become sports editor at The Sherbrooke Record,” he said, sharing that he was in awe of then-editor Len O’donnell and his “Sport Shots and Pot Shots” column. “That was the greatest thing I could aspire to.”
Webster fondly remembered his early work under editors John Cranford and Hugh Doherty, the latter of whom he said was, “A great editor but not very generous.”
“I would take a Gaiters football game and cover it from beginning to end that would earn me about a buck fifty,” he said, recalling that his rate was ten cents per column inch.
From his days writing the “All around the campus” column for The Record and editing The Campus, Bishop’s student paper (“I actually did more journalism than course work,” he chuckled,) Webster went on to cover events and affairs of all sorts across the globe over the course of his career.
As a foreign correspondent in China from 1969-1971 he had a front row seat to that nation’s cultural revolution. He reflected in brief on visits across Europe and the Middle-east, to Apartheid South Africa and Margaret Thatcher’s England.
“She was tremendously forceful and not loveable at all,” he noted while adding that the former Birtish prime minister was admirable at the same time, for what she was able to accomplish.
Thatcher is far from the only giant on Webster’s list of subjects. Looking back the journalist also dropped names like Nelson Mandela and The Dalai Lama, as well as a few closer to home like Bourassa, Mulroney, and Trudeau.
“I covered a lot of major stories at home and abroad,” he said, explaining that when it came to putting the book together he, “just picked the ones (he) liked,” based on significant events, interesting people, or other, more personal reasons.
With regard to the book launch, Webster’s Wife, Pat said that the night will be one of good times and good stories.
“It’s going to be a really fun evening,” she said. “We’ve taped some segments with Norman talking about some of these memories.”
Beyond reflection on the pieces selected for the collection, Webster will reflect on day-to-day things like life in newsrooms over the years, his world travels, and how journalism has changed, or not, since he got started.
“There are many, many friends and colleagues chiming in to talk about journalism, how it was and how it is,” Pat added.
Michael Goldbloom, principal and vice-chancellor of Bishop’s University, will introduce recollections of Webster’s friends and colleagues, including Roy Macgregor, Joan Fraser, Doug Gibson, Geoff Stevens and Jeff Simpson as a part of the evening’s events.
The launch will be free to attend, and it will begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday on the Massey College website: www. masseycollege. ca/ event/ virtual- booklaunch-newspapering-norman-webster/