An Honors BA (History) graduate of McMaster University, Jim Anderson worked as a reporter for newspapers in the Hamilton area before coming to Western in 1976. He was named Western News associate editor in 1983, and appointed the publication’s second-ever editor in 2000, following the retirement of founding editor Alan Johnston.
Jim passed away last week. Earlier this year, he shared his thoughts on his time at the Western News for a video celebrating the publication’s history.
These are his words.
* * *
I came to Western with a background in community news, and I think Western News was a natural fit for me. I always viewed the university as a community – a small city within a city with diverse faculties, diverse programs. Basically, our job was to take that and tell the university’s story to its faculty, staff and students, as well as the larger community.
Western News is not an environment a lot of reporters can work successfully in. In an academic environment, you have to adapt, become a bit more diplomatic. You cannot come in as a hard-edged reporter. It just doesn’t work; you end up rubbing people the wrong way.
When I was editor, I’d get jokes from some of the faculty – jokingly referring to it as Western’s Pravda. I don’t really think that was the case. Some had the impression that all our copy was approved by the ‘front office’ folks, and I used to tell them that we’d never get a paper out if that were the case. It would take too long. They read it when everyone else read it and, sometimes, we got negative feedback from administration, too.
There was a case when Paul Davenport was president, and I forget exactly what the story was that I wrote, it came up in Senate and people were questioning him about the story in Western News. I think it might have been about the possible closing of the dental faculty. They wanted to know what was going on and Davenport stood up and said ‘Look, I do not control what Western News writes.’
We were never told not to do a story; we were told to be fair and tell both sides. When I took over after Alan retired, I think a lot of it was testament to Alan and what he built and his leadership, but the reputation of the paper had been established over those years. The greatest compliment I ever got was one faculty member who told me he read the paper faithfully every week, although he didn’t always agree what was in it. He knew what was going on in his own faculty, but not with the rest of the university, so it (Western News) was the only way he could find out. He made a point of reading it every week.
There were times when I wondered, ‘What have I taken on? Am I crazy to be doing this?’ I found my five years as editor, and a bit more than 20 years as a reporter, very rewarding overall. I felt we were doing something important for the university. We couldn’t afford to make too many mistakes, because we had a lot of critics out there. You had to make sure that when it went in the paper, it had to be right. Don’t think I’d want to relive it, though.
– 30 –