“New year” resolutions

September. Back to school. A new year of sorts. New beginnings. Farewell to a hot and sticky summer. The season of painted leaves, giant pumpkins and giving thanks is near. It seems the right time, too, for us to say thank you—to you our readers, our advertisers and our critics alike. You have made the Times more successful than we could have imagined when the moving van pulled into Wellington in the fall of 2003.

It will be soon be seven years since we arrived in Prince Edward County to raise our young family. Lillian was a brand new baby. Today she takes her seat in Ms. Isles’s Grade 2 class. It has been a wonderful education for us all.

Along the way we have been the recipients of an astonishing amount of encouragement and well wishes—particularly from you, our readers. They continue to this day.

Saturday morning offered a typical example. My son John and I were at the Picton Home Hardware picking up a length of board to fix the back steps. As we walked to the car a lady providing water for dog in a minivan noticed we were heading toward the square blue car bearing the logo on the door. “Are you with the Times?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered guardedly.

“I love that paper,” she said. “Especially the commentary.” This happens a lot. Not a week goes by that someone doesn’t approach one of us to tell us how much they enjoy and appreciate reading the Times. It is immensely gratifying work. But it is also a reminder of the responsibility we have to you our readers.

SERVE YOU BETTER

We strive each week to bring you the stories of the County, the issues and the challenges. We go out and find these stories and ask the questions you want answered. We endeavour to present a range of insight, opinions and ideas through our columnists as well as op ed and letter writers.

We try to reflect the County experience through images of participation, achievement and celebration. These are your friends and neighbours. This, in our view, is the essence of an independent community newspaper. The community must see itself in the pages each week. It must recognize the names, places and faces.

The large newspaper chains have largely forgotten this. In the shortsighted goal of maximizing revenue and profit, these chains have gutted local coverage, breaking their contract with the community. They’ve forgotten the reader is their customer.

The Kingston Whig Standard and Peterborough Examiner are acute examples of once-proud and noble institutions that influenced governments while informing and inspiring their citizenry. Both papers have been laid low by owners who have failed to understand what they possess. Owners unable or unwilling to grasp the role these fine papers have played and can continue to play in enriching their community. For now, regrettably, these papers are indistinguishable from the dozens of other daily newspapers in the Quebecor chain. Thin, bland and cookie cutter.

I believe this will change. I believe the masters at Quebecor will tire of their convergence experiment in Ontario. I suspect an entrepreneurial group will step forward to guide these papers—shed the corporate bureaucracy, find writers and photographers and begin to restore these newspapers as newspapers, rather than a wraparound for a wad of flyers. Further, I believe the market will respond because readers will return. I believe the Whig Standard and Examiner will flourish again.

I believe this because the contract never changed. People still want their local paper to help tell them who they are and who they want to be. We want the shared experience— whether it is victory, defeat, tragedy, injustice, funny or just silly. We want the story and we want to know what it means.

NEW LOOK

In the coming weeks and months you may notice some changes coming to your Times. In some ways the transformation has already begun with the introduction of colour in our pages each week. Many of the changes are designed to make your paper easier to read and easier to navigate to locate your favourite columnist or section.

This is the first real makeover at the Times in seven years. We welcome your comments, suggestions and criticism.

MORE PRECISION

I throw around the term Shire Hall too easily at times. Like last week. I use the term as shorthand for our local government— too often in a critical way. And while I don’t apologize for being critical—it is both incorrect and hurtful to paint everyone who works for, or in, our local government with a single brush.

We are very fortunate in Prince Edward County to have many dedicated, hard-working and talented folks working on our behalf at Shire Hall and scattered about the municipality. It is wrong to suggest otherwise.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca