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Casualties of the: Newspaper Wars With its editor-in-chief out the door, will the conservative National Post survive its new bosses?

Article Excerpt
BY RIC DOLPHIN

THE ENGLISH LOVE GOD was taking things in his stride when reached at his comfortable Toronto home a few days after the long knives had been applied. "It was just a bloody job," said Martin Newland, the athletic 41-year-old Londoner whose flash and dash had long been the font of wistful longing from Christie Blatchford and other female staffers at the National Post. "I mean, I cawn't get too f---ing upset when they off me. They own the paper, and they can damn well sack whomever they want to sack. God, I must've fired 150 people since I got here. And it's not like we didn't see this coming...But I had a good run--paid off all my debts, got to drive a great big Ford Expedition. In England, the cars are pissy little things driven by elastic bands. First thing you do when you get to Canada is buy a V8 and drive around watching the gas needle drop. Loved it!"

Mr. Newland's puckish reaction to his and editor-in-chief Ken Whyte's May Day termination came in marked contrast to the hand-wringing and angst that were runnning rampant elsewhere. The firing of the newspaper's two guiding lights--the men who had built what even its political detractors regarded as the country's liveliest paper--was seen by many of those at the Post as something far more dastardly than the actions of owners who no longer had the patience for the kind of gas-guzzling that had attended the Whyte-Newland reign since the paper's inception in October 1998 ($200 million in losses, translating to $854,000 per week). In the week following the firings, a number of Posties were quitting in protest.

Ottawa columnist Paul Wells resigned and delivered what one member of the new management team described as "a whiny letter," and took a job with another publication. (Mr. Wells would not say which, but the rumour is Maclean's magazine.) David Frum, the dry, hard-right, Washington-based columnist, wrote a column in his National Review website entitled "A Death in the Family," taking aim at the Asper family which owns the paper, anticipating the death of the Post's conservative voice and concluding, "On Saturday, with a breaking heart, I resigned my weekly column in the paper." The Post's most popular columnist, the New Hampshire-based Mark Steyn, promptly disappeared from the pages with no word in the paper on his future beyond the recurring assurance on the op-ed page that "Mark Steyn will return." Mr. Steyn was not returning phone messages, and a colleague believed he had "taken off for the Middle East to do some research." By the end of the week following the firings, a handful of other editors and writers had left the paper, most finding immediate work with competitors.

Christie Blatchford, the paper's $150,000-a-year star, left on an extended holiday, turned off her cellphone and was believed to be considering her options. A departing senior editor predicted that she too would be jumping ship. Before leaving on vacation, she wrote a Saturday column in which she celebrated the contributions of Messrs. Whyte and Newland and once more alluded to her (presumably) unrequited passion for the married-with-four-children deputy editor.

"Have I mentioned that Martin is a gorgeous man?" wrote Miss Blatchford, 50, recalling her first breathless meeting with Mr. Newland near the elevators in the Post's suburban Toronto headquarters. "That day was in our first months, when he had not yet started wearing T-shirts and jeans to the office, and so was decked out in a fine suit, and I have a vivid memory of wondering if it would be possible to work with someone so physically beautiful. I shouldn't have worried, because as things happened, I was rarely in the office, and besides, he was soon addressing me as 'Blatchford, you old cow,' which felt like an endearment and...

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