The ballad of Conrad Black.

Somewhere out there is a book called Why Smart People Do Dumb Things. I remember trying to skim it in a bookstore many years ago after a particularly annoying run of dumb decisions. Of course, I flattered myself by thinking the book might have some modest application to myself. I didn't buy it.

It wasn't a book I really wanted to have in my bookcase, but like a headline in a newspaper, it caught my attention.

Thinking of headlines, it would be hard to find a better archetype for this book than Conrad Black. He tops the scale for smart and dumb. Who do you know who squandered away a billion-dollar international publishing company the same week he launched a brilliant international best seller on the life and times of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The answer is no one.

For the record, Conrad used to own most of the daily newspapers in Northern Ontario, and still owns a piece of the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal, which he holds through the controversial Horizon Publishing Company. It is unlikely he will own it for long.

Few of us in these parts have met Conrad. I doubt he ever made it north of Lake Muskoka where he and his brother had a cottage for many years. He certainly wouldn't have visited any of his papers up here - not worth his time. He left all that to David Radler, his sidekick who is also smart and dumb, but in a very different way.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

David did show up at least once on his private jet to harass employees of the Sudbury Star to put us (our community newspaper in Sudbury) out of business, but generally he would call from Chicago where he had bigger fish to fry.

Why would a man, desperate for the attention of the chattering classes, a man who would give up his citizenship to be called a Lord in someone else's country throw it all away?

I went back to his well-written and entertaining autobiography of a decade ago, for a clue.

Conrad was thrown out of a variety of schools in his time. His most spectacular prank was to steal both the academic records and most of the final exams at Upper Canada College. He says most candidly "As I had already, for my own curiosity and amusement, taken a copy of the academic records of every student in the upper school, I could easily identify those who would be prepared to pay most dearly for them. A brisk, high-margin commerce ensued (a margin of 100 per cent, as I had no cost of sales).

Basically, Conrad is a diamond thief. Always has been, always will be. If you read his book, he tells you as much.

He's been caught raiding pension funds of workers, (Dominion Stores in Ontario) and some years ago signed a consent decree with the Security and Exchange Commission in the United States where you promise never to be a bad boy again. Those days are over. A few weeks ago, before that same commission, Conrad pleaded the fifth.

Generally diamond thieves are interesting people. Interesting of course, until they find themselves behind bars and find their style cramped.

So what's important about Conrad? Well, his greed and brilliance has contributed much to the demise of the current pathetic concentration of the newspaper business in Canada. First, he sold most of our best newspapers to a television company (Global) in Winnipeg about which, the less said the better. The fear of that transaction conjured up Bell Globe Media, which tossed the Globe and Mail into the hands of a telephone company, and in Ontario, the emerging owner of most everything is Osprey Media, owned primarily by the Ontario Teacher's pension fund and Scotia Bank. His imprint is everywhere.

The oddity of course, is that if Conrad could have just sworn off the diamonds he would have been an agreeable publisher. The same hubris and ego that leads him to believe he could launch another national newspaper ($200 million in losses and counting) leads him to value words and ideas.

The crime is that Conrad has let us down. Not just the investors, whom, had they had the whit to read his autobiography would never have invested money in him in the first place, but more broadly to those of us who believe in the fourth estate.

We are left in the hands of accountants and lawyers and merger and acquisition artists, and the diamond thieves are going to jail or its moral equivalent.

Michael Atkins is president of Northern Ontario Business. He can be reached by e-mail to [e-mail].