Printer’s ink ran in the veins of newsman Jake Doherty
Jake Doherty served as the 14th publisher of The Hamilton Spectator during another period of challenge for the newspaper industry.
Doherty, who died Nov. 17 in Ottawa at the age of 82, served as publisher between 1994-1995 when The Spec went from being an evening newspaper to a morning delivery format.
The Spectator, founded in 1846, had been a morning paper between 1852 and 1871.
But this change on April 24, 1995, was part of a trend to fight off the impact of TV and help boost circulation. The Spec’s circulation had declined by 17 per cent over the previous decade.
“It’s no secret that the newspaper industry has suffered death in the afternoon,” Doherty told The Spec. “We need to bring people a newspaper with fresher information and a larger window over the day when they can read it.”
Doherty also in February 1994 removed Hamilton from The Spec’s front page in an attempt to broaden the paper’s market (Hamilton is now back on the front page) and put the paper out earlier on the street.
He did away with the standalone Burlington Spectator edition — launched in 1986 — though retained a section devoted to Halton news. The change coincided with staff reductions.
The paper was then owned by Southam Inc. and is now part of Torstar.
Doherty’s tenure as publisher began on Jan. 1, 1994. He left the job in September 1995 when he was appointed vice-president, corporate relations, for the Southam Newspaper Group in Toronto.
Doherty first came to The Spectator from The Financial Times in 1975. He was hired as the editor of the editorial page.
He told The Spec in 1996 how then-publisher John Muir — he considered him a mentor — gave him $40 to take a taxi around the city and look for a place to live.
“As a business writer, I was always fascinated with Hamilton,” he said. “Things were really built here. It wasn’t a plastic city ... It actually made things.”
He was promoted to executive editor in 1976 and became editor in 1982. He was appointed publisher of the Owen Sound Sun Times in 1983. In 1990, he was named publisher of the Kingston Whig-Standard.
Born in Moncton, N.B., Doherty obtained a business degree from St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., and a masters in journalism from Columbia in New York.
Doherty had a stutter, but learned to live with it and in a 2015 blog posting characterized his way of coping with it as “Jake’s Speech.”
He began his newspaper career with the Saint John TelegraphJournal as a sports reporter in 1955. “I was so green I bought my own pencils and scrap paper,” Doherty told The Spec.
He moved to business reporting in 1959 when he joined the Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, serving in both the Montreal and Vancouver bureaus.
He also worked for the Globe and Mail and then served as executive editor of the Financial Times.
In 1996, Doherty was named president of Renaissance Economic Initiatives, a non-profit community-based project striving to revitalize the economy of Hamilton-Wentworth.
He was the author of three books. In 1971, he co-authored “Bulls, Bears and Sheep.” He later became a mystery writer and his first novel “The Rankin Files” came out in 2002. His second novel, “Bearwalker Alibi,” came out in 2014.
His pastimes included skiing and running and he competed in three marathons and one triathlon. Doherty served on the Ontario Press Council, the Canadian Daily Newspaper Association and St. Joseph’s Hospital Board.
Daughter Denise Doherty described her father as a man who was “very gracious” and inquisitive all his life.
“He was always asking people where they were from,” said the Ottawa resident. “To the last, he was always asking questions. He was up on current affairs, always reading newspapers. He felt bad newspapers didn’t have the prominence they once had.”
Doherty lived all across Canada. He believed this made his children resilient, but he told The Spec if he could do anything over again, it would be to spend more time with his family. “I was in love with my job,” he said.
Doherty leaves four children and 12 grandchildren. His wife, Monique, died in 2008.