Norm Betts resigns from Sun
Scribe
allegations of sexual misconduct against Sunshine girls became public.
Betts had been at the paper since its inception more than 20 years ago,
hence the tag, Day Oner.
According to the National Post, a former Sunshine girl has launched a $10
million suit against Betts and the Sun, and hopes to make it into a class
action suit involving other Sunshine girls.
Hownow
<hony...@idirect.com> wrote:
FYI: Sun started November, 1971.
More FYI: The SUNshine Girl in its Page 3 form started in about 1977 at
the instigation of Peter O'Sullivan who became managing editor ... then
editor-in-chief of the Houston Post and worked his way back to Toronto
as Executive Editor before getting canned last year.
Prior to O'Sullivan's takeover of the Sun's news department, the
SUNshine Girl sort of moved through the paper and in various sizes and
rarely (if ever) in color - rather demure, actually.
The whole paper was a mishmash. It was O'Sullivan who instituted the
Front Five organization of news and the real tabloidy front page.
I remember one time before O'Sullivan took over that the ME was pissed
off about a story on Page 47 that carried a three-line, 36 point hed
and was at the bottom of the page below another yarn. He was angry only
that the story had not been placed at the top of Page 47. Why? It was
his Front-Page mainline story. He thought it should have been at the
top of Page 47. Jeez!
That's the way the Sun was composed before O'Sullivan took over.
Despite what anyone might say, O'Sullivan is the architect of the Sun's
news package - and played a major role in the paper's success.
I know. I was there.
howard macgregor
Hownow
<tek...@golden.net> wrote:
> Been following this story for some time in Frank. Sounds kinda perverted.
> Back when I was doing university press and knew some friends in
> broadcasting, we used to hear stories about a nameless Sun photographer.
> Apparently lots of code was being used in the Sunshine Girl captions, or so
> we were told, such as, "Hobbies include water-skiing and horse-back riding,"
> or "Fond of horseback riding," even, ahem, if the girls in the pix had never
> been near a horse in their lives. You get the idea. Has anybody else ever
> heard this? I thought it was just urban legend.
> ------------------------------------------------
> DGF PHOTOGRAPHY
> http://home.golden.net/~tekapo
Not so.
I sat on the Sun photo assignment desk for some months in the 1980s so
speak from experience.
First off, the photo cutlines were not written by the photographers -
so if double-entendre crept in, it was done by people on the rim (it's
a universal newsdesk at the Sun, eg: International, National and City).
The hobby info was always supplied by the SunShine Girl but mostly so
briefly that rim folk did have to use their imagination to jazz it up
for print. But nobody on the desk (at that time, anyway) would have
consciously allowed such obvious things as an interest in "watersports"
(what's with water-skiiing?), "leather" etc. to get into the paper.
Most all the sessions occurred quite quickly - the woman would come in,
the photo session held and directly out the door. Many were accompanied
by husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc. Often, the subjects were
lined up for their session.
While some dubious activity seems almost certain to have occurred,
they'd have been isolated incidents. I never saw anything untoward
while I was there - but that's not saying it wasn't going on.
Shooting SunShine Girls was a chore most all the photographers hated
doing. They were (and likely still are) the most vociferous proponents
of the Sun dropping that daily feature.
howard macgregor