Journalist
Born in Cobourg, Ontario, Hewitt moved to Toronto when he was four years old and later attended Jarvis Collegiate Institute. Hewitt and his three brothers all worked as journalists in their careers. While still in school, he began working for the Toronto News as a copyboy. At age 15 he was made a reporter and left school. In 1895, he became sports editor of the News and later supplemented his income as press agent for the Grand Opera House in Toronto.
In the fall of 1899, he was lured to the Montreal Herald as sports editor by Joseph E. Atkinson, the paper's managing editor, whom Hewitt had known and admired from Atkinson's days as a reporter in Toronto. A year later, Atkinson became editor-in-chief (and, eventually, majority owner) of the Toronto Star, and Hewitt followed him back to Toronto as the paper's sports editor. Hewitt remained in that role for 31 years, before accepting a job in 1931 as the first attractions manager of the new Maple Leaf Gardens. He passed the reins at the Star over to his long-time colleague, Lou Marsh. Over a 36-year career as a journalist, Hewitt never used a typewriter and wrote all his stories by hand.
Read more about this topic: W. A. Hewitt
Famous quotes containing the word journalist:
“The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe.... The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the griefs and shames of others.”
—Janet Malcolm (b. 1934)
“A statesman is an easy man,
He tells his lies by rote;
A journalist makes up his lies
And takes you by the throat;
So stay at home and drink your beer
And let the neighbours vote.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to “a semi-official statement”; if they have fallen into conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as “a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable.” It is only when the journalist is reporting a whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines it as the opinion of “well-informed circles.””
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)