Above the Fold: A Personal History of The Toronto Star

By John Honderich

Penguin Random House Canada/November 2022

Reviewed by Bill Fox

November 17, 2022

John Allen Honderich lived life “above the fold”. With his signature bow tie, Honderich could command the attention of a room by the simple act of walking in. He loved buzz – hearing it, spreading it, creating it, analyzing it for significance.

And Honderich loved the Toronto Star.

Above the Fold: A Personal History of the Toronto Star is Honderich’s story of Canada’s largest circulation newspaper in Canada’s largest city. A story of significance, worthy of “black line” treatment on the top of a front page, as the phrase coined back in the days when newspapers were only a print product suggests. A story that is intensely personal, shaped in no small measure by the complex relationship between Honderich and his father Beland, who between them led the paper for 50 years. A story of how each – in decidedly different ways – became the face — the essence — of the paper.

The use of the word “history” in the title suggests a story told from a rearview mirror, to an era that is no more and that maybe only ever existed in the retelling.

Completed just weeks before Honderich’s death, the work speaks to a time when newspapers were dominant, before technology changed our perceptions of community, altered public discourse, and, by extension, journalism.

That said, in looking back over the Star’s 130-year history as “a paper for the people” it is striking just how many of the challenges Honderich and his predecessors had to face continue to bedevil the news industry to this day in a world where public discourse is buffeted by misinformation, even disinformation: A world grappling with a growing mistrust on the part of the public as to the integrity of the editorial product on offer; a world where a once and would-be president denounces the media as an enemy of the people; a world where a federal party leader campaigns on a promise to defund Canada’s public broadcaster.

In the interest of full disclosure, this reviewer makes no claim to objectivity when it comes to John Honderich. Honderich recruited me to join the Star’s Ottawa bureau. In time, I succeeded him as Ottawa, then Washington bureau chief. We did have a sharp disagreement at one point. We got past it, but because of our respective personalities, not quickly. In recent years, we enjoyed regular lunches at his corner table at Biff’s Bistro, sharing gossip, talking journalism, and, increasingly, the business side of the business – everything from the prospect of federal support for media to the challenges inherent in running family-controlled businesses with dual classes of shares. I was honoured to be John’s guest when the Canadian Journalism Foundation awarded him the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award.

Honderich’s history evokes an image of the Chicago Cubs famous 1910 double play combination — Tinker to Evers to Chance — a feat of such elegant efficiency it was immortalized in the Franklin Pierce Adams poem Baseball’s Sad Lexicon, penned from the point of view of a despondent New York Giants fan. In the Star’s case, it was Joseph Atkinson to the Honderichs — first Beland, then John.

What was common to all three eras is that no one ever wondered who was in charge.

The Atkinson was Joseph Atkinson, who as Honderich records, was “Indisputably the driving force of the paper.” Known in the newsroom as “Holy Joe”, Atkinson was entirely comfortable supporting “radical liberal causes” that found expression in the Atkinson Principles. Atkinson wanted his paper run by those “familiar with my doctrines and beliefs.” Beland Honderich, a life-long supporter of unions and the right of workers to be treated fairly, was completely at ease with Atkinson’s philosophy. As was John, his father’s successor.

Completed just weeks before Honderich’s death, the work speaks to a time when newspapers were dominant, before technology changed our perceptions of community, altered public discourse, and, by extension, journalism.

Over the years, the Star’s embrace of these liberal causes resulted in a belief in political circles that the paper’s loyalty to the large-L Liberal Party was a given. Honderich makes specific mention of the fact it was common parlance to describe the Star as a “Liberal rag.”

The Star’s institutional adherence to the Atkinson Principles triggered questions as to the objectivity of the content carried in the news pages. For differing reasons, this same debate about objectivity is being carried on today out in newsrooms across North America, with marginalized and minority voices insisting objectivity is an affectation at best, and an expression of systemic racism at worst.

Beland Honderich didn’t put much stock in the notion of journalistic objectivity, dismissing it as fiction. “This is a nice theory but it is not only fake, it also discourages full and frank public discussion,” Bee reportedly said. “Even on its best days, a newspaper is a very imperfect institution.”

Defenders of the Star note the diversity of opinion reflected in its pages. Former Conservative Party president, candidate, strategist and columnist Dalton Camp is quoted as stating: “What I like about the Star is that the Star lets me say what I want to say.” Ask the same question of political columnist Chantal Hébert today and you’ll get the same answer.

The Star’s philosophy, writes Honderich, was simple enough: Get it first, sew it up, play it big. The Star certainly knew how to trumpet its journalistic successes. Legendary investigative reporter Bob Reguly found union boss Hal Banks in New York when the Liberal government, the RCMP and the FBI all insisted Banks, who skipped bail having been convicted of ordering the near-fatal beating of a rival, couldn’t be found. Reguly was beaten by four thugs for his trouble. But the headline over his exclusive read Star Man Finds Banks.

Despite the paper’s history of such dazzlingly talented writers, from Ernest Hemingway to Pierre Berton to Rosie DiManno, the Star was always an editors’ paper, in John Honderich’s words, “Editing and re-editing were the hallmark and tradition of the Star, then and now.”

All Star story lines were viewed through the prism of a single question: what does it mean to Metro? When former prime minister Pierre Trudeau visited a compound for Bell Canada employees during an official visit to Saudi Arabia in 1981, the key to prominent play in the paper the next day was to find someone from Toronto who was good for a quote or two. Former Star staffer Walter Stewart, writes Honderich, once quipped the perfect Star headline would read: “World’s End Snarls Metro Traffic.” This objective, it should be noted, has been achieved with regular frequency in Metro without the world coming to an end.

As is often the case in the Star’s history, there is method to the “What does it mean to Metro?” mania. Star stories were written for the community in a manner that gave the news relevance to their daily lives. As former US House of Representatives Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill once observed: “All politics is local.”

While this “parochial” approach was the subject of constant ridicule from the paper’s competitors, the Star was always a paper of big ideas and big agendas — economic nationalism, national unity, building a great city.

During the constitutional patriation process of the early 1980s, the Star’s coverage was exhaustive, informing readers of the details and implications of Pierre Trudeau’s transformational constitutional reform initiative. The Canada-US Free Trade Agreement was afforded the same treatment in 1987-88. John Honderich’s weekly “letters” exchange with La Presse editor Alain Dubuc was a central feature of the 1995 Quebec referendum campaign. And the paper’s leadership found common cause with then premier Mike Harris in the push for an amalgamated Toronto.

Beland Honderich, as is widely acknowledged, was exceedingly difficult to work with and for. And as John Honderich states, their father/son relationship was as difficult as it was defining.

Known as “Bee”, or in less flattering terms, as “The Beast”, the senior Honderich was born into deep poverty in a largely Mennonite community near Kitchener, and began his newspaper career as a high-school dropout hired as a wartime “replacement” in the Star newsroom in 1943; John, in more comfortable circumstances, worked his way up in the news business but also obtained a University of Toronto law degree. In his book, John credits Beland with creating “a new Star for a new middle-class Toronto.” In John’s case, the challenge was to pursue the Star’s vision as a caring, crusading newspaper that reflected a megacity and its increasingly diverse population.

The difference carried into the boardroom. Beland, who emerged as the first among equals, could count on the support of the five controlling families who had purchased the paper in 1958 to comply with the Ontario government’s Charitable Gifts Act, which prohibited entities such as the Atkinson Foundation from owning more than 10 percent of the shares in an active business.

The tension between the two was intensely personal on occasion. John Honderich confirms the Shakespearean twist that when his appointment as Star publisher was proposed, Beland voted against it.

In John’s case, he couldn’t even count on the unwavering support of his father, who would keep him in the dark on significant corporate developments. The tension between the two was intensely personal on occasion. John Honderich confirms the Shakespearean twist that when his appointment as Star publisher was proposed, Beland voted against it. And later, when an internal corporate battle provoked a motion to fire John, Bee sat silent. John makes an explicit reference to the “profound sense of betrayal” he felt “at my darkest hour.”

Yet, the last words Beland had for his son were: “Don’t let them ruin the paper.”

Nepotism is a recurring theme in this personal history. Through his early years, John Honderich did not intend to follow in his father’s footsteps. When he did decide on a career in journalism, Honderich was determined to be “the son who did the job.”

“My strategy was simple,” he writes, “get on with the job and let the results speak for themselves.”

He started on the very bottom rung of a newsroom, as a copy boy on the overnight shift at the Ottawa Citizen. The job? Clear the wire machines, distribute the copy to the various “desks” and run for coffee. His legal training stood Honderich in good stead. Before long, his byline was appearing on the Citizen’s front pages as he built a reputation as an investigative reporter.

Convinced to come to the Star by then managing editor Ray Timson, Honderich proved himself at every step, as Ottawa bureau chief, White House correspondent, finance editor, deputy city editor, editorial page editor, editor in chief and, ultimately, publisher.

Honderich’s history reflects the full range of his professional experience — working reporter, newsroom executive, owner. Above the Fold includes extensive detail on the Star’s complex ownership and leadership structure, truly a Canadian version of Succession.

The saga of how a provincial government passed legislation – the Charitable Gifts Act – with the single purpose of frustrating Joseph Atkinson’s ownership aspirations, is unique. And the Ontario government’s appointment of a trustee to ensure the government could stick its nose in the Star’s business at will is alarming.

Honderich’s account of how five families ended up as the Star’s owners is of interest. But in the end, the Star, like media companies generally, evolved to a dual share, publicly traded company model. And therein lay the challenge.

John Honderich, like his father before him, was a newspaperman and not a bean counter. Both believed passionately in the centrality of a free press to a healthy democracy. Both considered a superior editorial product at the expense of some profit a price worth paying, an imbalance easier to defend and maintain when there are plenty of beans to count.

Former Washington Post publisher/owner Katharine Graham famously said the best guarantee of good journalism is a strong balance sheet. But the business model that carried a free press for the better part of 200 years collapsed with the emergence of the internet and social media, a collapse predicted by University of Toronto communications scholar Marshall McLuhan fully 50 years ago.

The Star was no exception. Honderich’s history provides extensive detail of his conflicts with TorStar CEOs David Galloway and Rob Pritchard. Galloway, Honderich states, believed the newspaper industry was in long-term decline. Honderich fought vigorously against proposed budget cuts, including editorial staff. But with a collapsing share price, it is hard to see how Galloway or Pritchard could meet their fiduciary responsibility to the broader pool of shareholders without addressing cost issues. And it would be equally surprisingly if these CEOs did not seek company directors who shared their view of the responsibility to all shareholders. As publisher, Honderich was never going to espouse former GE CEO Jack Welsh’s view of how to run a business. Honderich does admit he was caught off guard by some of the corporate manoeuvring.

Honderich knew Pritchard and board chair John Evans were gunning for him. He quotes Dr. Evans as saying, “In Rob Pritchard, we have finally found someone to take on the Honderichs.”

The Star needed an editorial leader. The paper also needed a boardroom champion. Asking one person to do both jobs raises questions as to whether that person had one job too many. In the end, Evans was mistaken. It took more than a new CEO to take on the Honderichs, it took a technology driven media revolution.

The media in general, and newspapers in particular, have lost much of their appeal to the hedge fund owners who have adopted a “harvest strategy”. A “bauble for billionaires” ownership model has limited appeal. Not everyone is David Thomson.

In the end John Honderich understood the time had come to sell the company. And to the end, he worked to generate the best return he could for shareholders. The sale did not resolve ownership issues at the Star. New owners Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett are locked in a bitter court battle for control. Newsroom buzz portrays Bitove as a believer in journalism’s mission; Rivett more focused on the bottom line.

It would have been great fun to discuss the intricacies of the case with John, over lunch at Biff’s.

Bill Fox was Ottawa and Washington bureau chief for The Toronto Star, and later became press secretary and director of communications for Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. He is currently a fellow in the Riddell Graduate Program in Political Management at Carleton University. His latest book, “Trump, Trudeau, Tweets, Truth: A Conversation” is now available from McGill-Queen’s University Press.