Toronto Telegram
From Free net encyclopedia
The Toronto Telegram (previously the Toronto Evening Telegram) was a conservative, broadsheet afternoon daily newspaper published in Toronto. It was founded in 1876 by John Ross Robertson. The newspaper became the voice of working-class, conservative Orange (Protestant) Toronto. The daily was famous for being printed on pink paper until the 1960s, when the advent of colour photography made it necessary to switch to standard white paper. The Tely strongly supported Canada's Imperial connection with Britain as late as the 1960s.
It was purchased in 1952 by John Bassett. The newspaper had a reputation for supporting the Conservative Party at both the federal and provincial level. In the 1960s, the paper had increasing difficulty competing with the liberal Toronto Star and suffered a strike by its typesetting union in 1964. Bassett finally shut down the money-losing paper in October 1971.
A number of the Telegram's key writers and staff started a new conservative tabloid, The Toronto Sun the Monday following the Telegram's last issue. As there was no time gap between the two papers, the Sun is today generally considered as direct continuation of the Telegram, and is the holder of the Telegram's archives.
In the book The Death of the Toronto Telegram (1971), former Telegram writer Jock Carroll describes the decline of the paper, and provides many anecdotes about the Canadian newspaper business from the 1950s until 1970.
Well-known reporters, editors, columnists and cartoonists at "the Tely" included: