The Stel Salaried Pensioners Organization wishes to thank The Hamilton Spectator for permission to post the following article, written by The Spectator’s Editor-In-Chief, David Estok, published in the September 1, 2007 edition
The Hamilton Spectator
(Sep 1, 2007)
Although I never worked there, much of my life growing up in Hamilton was dominated by Stelco.
The steelmaker and its historic rival Dofasco, it seemed to me, were Hamilton. In the 1960s, they dominated our skyline, our economy and our lives.
I grew up on Martin Road, and half my street worked at Stelco, including father and later son of our next-door-neighbour family, the Adorantis. At one time more than 28,000 people worked at the plant, including my brother, Rick, and my best friend David Baker. Every Hamilton kid attending university hoped for a summer job there.
We were the Steel City and proud of it.
As a kid, I was fascinated by the "bigness" of big steel. There were the massive blast furnaces, the gigantic buildings, the flare of the fire and the deafening noise. The scale of steelmaking was breathtaking.
Times change.
One of the jobs of a good newspaper is to document the historic changes taking place in their communities and to explain the significance of an event. Journalism, it has been said, is "history on the run" -- the recording and interpreting of change as it happens.
In the Internet age of news flowing instantly around the world, discovering information and having it first appear in your daily newspaper is no small feat.
That is why I am so proud of The Spectator this week.
Our reporter on the steel-industry beat, Naomi Powell, has been working for months behind the scenes on the sale of Stelco. She's a native of Campbellville who grew up in Dundas and a graduate of Queen's and Ryerson universities. Naomi has been working at The Spec for two-and-a-half years and in that time she has distinguished herself as a hard-working and talented reporter.
As her story in today's paper shows, the Sunday night showdown that led to the sale of Stelco is a dramatic tale. Last Sunday, Rodney Mott, Stelco's chief executive officer, waited in a Toronto office as a special Stelco committee sorted out offers from two old Cold War rivals, the Americans and the Russians. Through all that hustle, Naomi was at her desk in The Spec newsroom, working two phones as she gathered details for her story.
Business editor Aviva Boxer, then still officially on vacation, and managing editor Jim Poling, who had packed up his family and left the cottage a day early, were huddled with night news editor Carla Ammerata deciding how to play the story.
With less than an hour to go before deadline, we still didn't know if we had a story. Details were thin.
Paul O'Brien, our designer who was constructing Page 1, had two different pages ready to go; our excellent night desk, the heart of any good paper and the people who night after night "put the paper to bed," were ready.
All we needed was a call confirming the deal was sealed.
There is a special kind of anxiety and exhilaration -- OK, and maybe even some fear and panic -- as you watch the clock tick by knowing if you miss the deadline you do not get another chance for 24 hours.
Right on deadline, Naomi got a call.
Stelco was sold, and as you read in her story today, it had gone right down to the wire. Five minutes later, she was interviewing U.S. Steel chief executive John Surma and by just after 11 p.m., her exclusive stories had been filed.
The night desk jumped into action, changing pages, editing and proofreading hastily written copy, double-checking facts and writing headlines. It is a level of professionalism and skill that you have to see up close to truly value.
All this work means nothing if our talented production team of pre-press staff and printers -- as well as our drivers and circulation team -- don't also do their jobs. Without them, it's like putting one through the net in a basketball game after the buzzer. It looks good but it doesn't count. Already late and under pressure, they also did a terrific job.
STELCO SOLD filled most of the front page and Spectator readers were the first to find out not only that a deal had been done but also that their pensions were protected and new investment is on the way for the plants.
No wonder they call it the "daily miracle."
David Estok is The Spectator's Editor-In-Chief.