The Scoop on Radler ANNE WATSON
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Photo by Jesse Winter Chris Gailus, anchor for Global B.C.’s News Hour, speaking at a Cities Summit conference in Vancouver earlier this year. Shaw Media, Global’s owner, was a sponsor of the summit. sure on newsrooms to provide coverage of a sponsored event. “The line we try to draw and we tell in our partnerships is we will pass on the information to our news people and the news managers when we’re involved in an event. But we don’t make that part of our agreements.” Scarrow notes that Citytv and OMNI sponsorships are generally in line with the interests of their audiences. “Because of the fact they often match with the brands that those shows are, and what they represent, it meets their needs to do editorial pieces on them,” says Scarrow. “The primary viewers that we have to those shows actually care about that information.” Sponsorships do not necessarily have to be commercial. They can be can involve community outreach programs, according to Scarrow. One project that Citytv created was Be There For Schools, which provides support to elementary schools. “Be There For Schools was created at a time when we could see funding for schools
was being reduced,” Scarrow says. “This was an opportunity to engage with them and speak to our viewers. It was a major concern for young families and people with kids.” In this case, Scarrow suggests, news coverage of some sort could be warranted because of the positive community aspect, and without any commercial interest. While sponsorships may be a hot ticket these days, Scarrow believes some outlets view them only as a measurement of how well they are doing. “I believe that there’s an over-perceived value in sponsorship that doesn’t entirely exist,” he says. “A lot of people use the metrics of sponsorship, how often their logo is seen or included, as their reasons for success.” In any case, Krug says full disclosure from news outlets involved in this practice is very important. “I just think it’s a matter of making sure people are aware of what the associations are,” the UBC professor says. “I think that has to be made apparent.” LJR Langara Journalism Review 2012
hat ever happened to David Radler, former friend and business associate of Conrad Black, and second in command of the once mighty Hollinger International Inc. newspaper empire? The story of how Radler fell from grace—pleading guilty to mail fraud, and then testifying against his former partner and other Hollinger executives—is well documented. But since serving 10 months of his 29-month prison sentence he has mostly been out of the corporate limelight. Has he given up on the newspaper game? Not by a long shot. The extent of his holdings is unclear and a search of records indicates the makings of an intricate media web. Radler is a principal in Vancouverbased Alta Newspaper Group, previously known as the Alberta Newspaper Group, once part of Horizon Publications Inc., a company he ran with Black. Alta owns two dailies in Alberta, the Lethbridge Herald and the Medicine Hat News, along with smaller community papers. Alta also owns the Sherbrooke (Quebec) Record, which is where the Radler-Black duo started in the biz more than 40 years ago. About half of Alta was bought by Glacier Media, which also picked up a number of other small papers that had previously been part of Hollinger’s holdings. Radler is listed as CEO of Horizon, which still owns almost 30 newspapers in the U.S., and three small dailies in Canada. Horizon’s chief financial officer is Roland McBride, who served as CFO of American Publishing Co., a subsidiary of Hollinger. McBride is also vice-president and treasurer of Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers, a company whose CEO is Melanie Radler, David Radler’s daughter. Whether Radler aspires to past glories remains to be seen. When contacted for an interview, he said he would provide information to the media only when he was ready to do so. LJR 31