By Robert Todd
Ottawa’s National Press Club, once a vibrant part of a city bustling with news media, is operating under bankruptcy protection due in part to a decline in membership, club officials say.
The club’s financial woes leading to the July 19 announcement wouldn’t have been thought possible just a few decades ago. At that time, the club hosted events like Pierre Trudeau’s 1968 announcement to run for the federal Liberal leadership.
But after reaching a peak of about 1,000 in the l980s, club president Tom MacGregor says membership has dwindled to about 400 this year, its 75th.
“There really aren’t as many journalists on the Hill anymore,” he says, pointing to media concentration as one cause for the decline.
Another has been a lifestyle change, says MacGregor, also the assistant editor of Legion Magazine.
“Journalists used to have a fair reputation for late nights and drinking. But not just journalists, the whole society has changed,” he says.
“People don’t hang around late and drink and drive, they tend to go home earlier.”
Press Club treasurer and finance committee chair, Ian Perkins, estimates the debt at about $300,000.
That includes back taxes to the provincial and municipal governments and rent charges to its landlord, Public Works and Government Services Canada.
Bankruptcy protection buys the club time to assess its financial situation and appease its creditors.
The club has also asked current members for donations, is holding a fundraising auction Oct. 28 and is recruiting eligible people who have not traditionally sought membership, such as employees from foreign embassies.
Changing its target market may be its only hope for survival, suggests one press gallery member who does not belong to the club.
“It’s not really a point of discussion for anyone that I’ve met in the press gallery. I don’t hear anyone bemoaning the fact that it’s going down the tubes,” says Kenneth Williams, a reporter for Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.
Williams has made contacts where politicians gather, at conferences or at bars while covering the Hill for the last two years. He says the Press Club is, “just a smoking room as far as I’m concerned.”
The club has been given a 45-day extension by the courts and has until Oct. 2 to ask for another reprieve or settle with creditors, says Marc Rouleau, a bankruptcy trustee handling the case. He says his firm, Ginsberg Gingras, thinks the club can get out of the financial hole.
“We can’t accept clients if things are going down the drain, we would just (advise them to) file for bankruptcy.”