Re: John Arnett, former Mirror publisher, dies (News, July 30)
It was kind of the Sooke News Mirror to pay full-page tribute to the late John Arnett, who I met only once in my life. That was in the early 1990s when I was the community relations manager for ICBC and came to speak to the Sooke Rotary Club.
The thing I had in common with John Arnett was that we both, at one time or another, worked for the St. Catharines Standard in St. Catharines, Ont.
I missed his era there by a few years but enjoyed a feature that John had created there called Column 9. It was the right-hand column on the main daily local news page each day.
John created it to give reporters at the Standard a chance to voice an editorial opinion in addition to writing hard news.
The point is super ironic in this day and age of journalism when opinion and fact are allowed to blur together in the most blatant fashion in all forms of news outlets. Indeed, it would seem to be encouraged in 90 per cent of North American news outlets today!
John, as all good editors still in the 1970s and 1980s, stepped hard on reporters trying to sneak in personal “spin” as being “fact.” That Column 9 Standard is sorely missed by us old-geezer reporters of that era.
God Bless and -30- John.
Andy Neimers
Sooke
editor@sookenewsmirror.com
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