Media and business lessons learned

There were many moist eyes in early February 1991, when the recession of that time together with inadequate working capital forced Warren and his colleagues to shut the doors of The Weekly Herald, two months short of two years of producing a high-quality publication, week in and week out.

In addition to writing his own stories, Warren edited and wrote headlines for each article which appeared in the newspaper, which averaged between 32 and 48 pages on most weeks. It was a labor of love, working closely with staffers and freelance journalists to produce a quality publication.

As Jack Todd wrote in his Gazette column of June 6, 1991: “Staffers who worked for Perley were heartbroken when The Weekly Herald went under, at least partly because they felt they were losing an excellent teacher. ‘When you had a problem with a story, Warren always had time to speak with you,’ former Herald reporter Katherine Wilton said. ‘When the paper closed, I cried for two weeks.’” Katherine Wilton has worked at The Gazette since The Weekly Herald folded.

Warren cried for a lot longer than two weeks — his media dream shattered and his life savings sucked away in a futile effort to keep the paper going against all odds. But about a month after The Weekly Herald folded, a former colleague of his at The Gazette gave him a copy of a letter that lifted his spirits and made him aware of the immense impact of The Weekly Herald.

A Cote St. Luc resident by the name of Eva-Maria Wallner had written a Letter to the Editor of The Gazette on her McGill University stationery bemoaning the loss of The Weekly Herald and its interesting mix of stories. “In times of war and political instability, people are comforted by ‘ordinary’ news….,” she wrote. “Is there no chance that this fine little paper can be revived?”

Ms. Wallner added a P.S. “You will print this, won’t you? The Herald was never a competitor. (Besides, I am a Gazette fan too.)”

Of course, The Gazette did not publish her letter, but her inspirational message reached Warren, who with the encouragement of Rodney decided to stay in Montreal and start a related business — marketing and graphics. Quite a challenge, considering that Warren did not have a cent left to his name and still owed the bank $24,000 in Herald debt.

But a couple of events convinced Warren that it was his destiny to stay in Montreal and start over. The first was the reality that the job market in daily journalism was tight and the list of quality newspapers where he might want to work was small. The Washington Post was one such prestigious aspiration of his, and Warren was mightily impressed when he received a personal note from Publisher Don Graham on March 13, 1991 in response to a CV which Warren had sent to that newspaper.

Mr. Graham’s letter, with a cc to Jacqui Marshall, read in part: “You are obviously a well-qualified guy but we are not at the moment hiring anyone from outside the paper….If you are still looking, you might want to write to Jacqui Marshall, our director of personnel, in a couple of months.”