CBC’s Don Newman retiring

Longtime CBC Television correspondent and current host of Newsworld’s Politics, Don Newman, has announced he will retire at the end of his show’s season in June.

A recent CBC story stated that Newman has “opted for the voluntary retirement incentive.”

The Globe and Mail reports:

“Newman, who hosts the Newsworld program Politics and is a member of the Order of Canada, has decided to take a voluntary retirement package offered to CBC staff as a way of reducing the number of layoffs at the network, which is facing major budget pressures.”

A CBC spokesman said it is not yet clear what this means for the show.

Newman opened a Washington bureau for CTV in 1972 and later moved to CBC in 1976. In 1981, he began working at the public broadcaster’s parliamentary bureau and has been in Ottawa ever since, covering such stories as Meech Lake, Canada-U.S. free trade and various other political scandals.

Susan Delacourt, Ottawa correspondent for The Toronto Star and a friend of Newman’s, told the Globe.

“Don set the standard for daily politics shows on Canadian all-news channels. I don’t know what I would have done without him, and frankly, I don’t know how the parliamentary press gallery will remotely be the same without Don in it.”