BACK TO THE FUTURE.

In the age of convergence, where fearsome local editors have taken a back seat to faceless corporate managers from out of town, the romantic good old days at the [Montreal Gazette[ are slipping fast into nostalgia, alongside the three-martini lunch, felt fedoras thrown on the ice at the Forum, and the let-them-deny-it approach to sensational copy. The paper became part of a megadeal that saw the Asper family's CanWest Global Communications Corp. of Winnipeg gain control of the Southam newspapers from media mogul Conrad Black. The Gazette was a building block of the fabled Montreal Anglo establishment which controlled much of Canada's economy, to say nothing of national politics, through most of the last two centuries. Journalists complain about the Aspers' bottom-line-driven style of management. The Gazette has been a special place since its inception. One of its backers was an American, Benjamin Franklin, and its first publisher was a Voltairean freethinker from France.