Description

A remarkable memoir and journalistic history of the Toronto Star the newspaper that has shaped and continues to shape the issues most important to Canadians

Dont let them ruin the newspaper These were the dying words of Beland Honderich to his son John The newspaper was the Toronto Star founded in 1892 by Joseph E Holy Joe Atkinson and to this day one of the worlds leading and most respected socially liberal broadsheets For the second half of its legendaryand sometimes controversialhistory both John and his father as successive editors publishers and family owners made it into the newspaper we know today The Star has been at different times home base to the likes of Ernest Hemingway Morley Callaghan Pierre Berton June Callwood Peter C Newman Gary Lautens Robert Fulford Richard Gwyn Christie Blatchford Michele Landsberg Chantal Hbert Joey Slinger and many more It also brandishes a corporate history unlike any other In an extraordinary exercise of arbitrary power the Ontario government held veto power over all of the Stars operations until the paper eventually evolved to the five families of the Torstar Voting Trust one of which were the Honderichs And in that process those families committed in court to observe and promote the intellectual and spiritual basis on which the Star has always operated

Completed just weeks before the authors untimely death Above the Fold gives us an ontheground account of how the Star once known primarily for its tabloid sensationalism and screaming headlines transformed into a bastion of journalistic quality that routinely wins the industrys highest honours and accolades Honderich writes about the paper he loved and the challenges it faced over the years including crippling strikes boardroom battles soaring egos the vicious newspaper wars with various competitors and most recently the shift away from print He also delves deeply into his relationship with his father who could be remarkably cold and unfeeling toward his son and others earning the nickname The Beast There was great love between the two men but it came at a cost both professionally and of course personally Always worried about accusations of nepotism as he rose to the top job at the paper John felt he needed to prove himself that much more which he didand then some

Honest frank generous and highly informative Above the Fold is a personal history of one of the most storied and successful newspapers of our time told through the lives of the father and son who ran it for close to halfacentury