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Two years ago, Giles Gherson landed a very plum job: the editor-in-chief's post at the Toronto Star, the country's largest daily newspaper. Now he's out, a victim of Byzantine corporate politics at Torstar Corp., the Star's parent. According to news reports, the five families who hold almost all of Torstar's voting shares demanded the departures of Gherson, 49, and Star publisher Michael Goldbloom, both hired from outside the company. All this comes against the backdrop of a profit squeeze at Torstar. We caught up with Gherson as he was leaving.

DID SENIOR MANAGEMENT NOT LIKE WHAT YOU WERE DOING?
All I can say is my leaving of the Star had nothing to do with the performance of the paper. Of that I was absolutely assured. It was really a series of issues at the corporate level.

Were you upholding the principles of social justice laid down by legendary editor Joe Atkinson?
The paper under my editorship was pursuing the Atkinson principles in a fairly aggressive way. We were doing socially progressive journalism.

Yet some people in the organization felt you weren't?
I think that was a canard. It was said by some people, but if you look at the record, they would be very, very hard-pressed to make the case. If you look at stuff we did on the working poor, the health care system, the education system for natives, and others, it was vigorous and effective.

So what should you have done differently?
In terms of substance, nothing. We moved pretty fast; I thought we had a lot of momentum. But if you want to talk about politics—which I can't get into—yes, some things could have been done differently. But that was not my battle. These were discussions in the upper reaches of the company.

What would be your advice to your successor, Fred Kuntz?
Stay the course. Fred has a longer tradition at the Star. I was a change agent from the outside. I found the newsroom extremely welcoming, but I know in the organization as a whole, I was not deemed to be a Star person. It's no accident that my successor, and Michael's successor [Jagoda Pike], are both from within the company. The Star has a very strong sense of itself, its culture and tradition. The question is whether that can lead to the kinds of changes necessary at a time of huge upheavals in the newspaper industry.

What are you going to do now?
I haven't a clue. This was a big surprise. When I arrived, they said this is a big job and turning things around is going to take a while. It was going well.

Is there a job market for newspaper managers in their 40s and 50s?
I think there is. Every newspaper is going through turmoil, but what newspapers have, first and foremost, are their newsrooms, along with other elements to transform themselves from within. That takes experience and creativity. We were looking at the newsroom as a platform for multiple distribution channels. With the Toronto Star, you have a million readers a day. If you add the Metro free paper, which [runs] Star copy, and the internet, where we were growing fast, we had 2.4 million. If you consider Star PM [a downloadable afternoon newspaper] or future Net products to be more customized to people's needs, you can use your newsroom to serve the rapidly changing market.

But the big scorecard is circulation and financial results, and you weren't doing so well.
Among the big mass-readership North American newspapers, most are doing somewhat worse than the Star. But the problem is that the NADbank [circulation survey] only measures newspaper circulation, and we are losing readers with $30,000 in family income and below. [They] are shedding newspapers as a habit and an expense. If you look out over four to five years and if we can convert lower-income and younger readers to other products—whether the internet or Star PM-type products—we could bolster our audience and attract advertising revenue. But we're looking at a transition period as we move from a broadsheet newspaper to a multiplatform news organization.

So you'd like to go at this again?
Yeah, there is still huge scope in this business and I'd love a chance to get back into it.