Citizen at 40: A decade into the Sholdice era

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

The woman at the top, Publisher Deb Sholdice, is quickly approaching 10 years in the position, stepping into the impossible-to-fill shoes of Citizen co-founder Keith Roulston. And yet, in recent years, she’s made a career of it. Not only did she serve as the Blyth Festival’s general manager after Roulston, but here she is now shepherding his beloved North Huron Publishing as he enjoys a well-deserved retirement.

 

Sholdice is an Aylmer native who has lived in many communities before making her way to Blyth. She’s also worn many hats before the one she wears today as the organization’s publisher, and all of them have come in handy in one way or another.
Her father took a job at McKinley Farm and Hatchery in Zurich, where he drove truck for them, as their introduction to Huron County. Deb’s mother was working at Champion Road Machinery Limited of Goderich and, frustrated with the long runs to Atlantic Canada that her husband had to make, she convinced him to work at Champion as well in the factory. 

 

He didn’t last long there, however, as he was laid off before returning to trucking with Radford’s in Blyth, followed by Sparling’s Propane, where he would go on to work for years. Shortly after getting the Sparling’s job, he was happy to tell Champion to take him off the call-back list, as he hadn’t liked the job and had no intention of returning to it, as he liked trucking too much.
That firmly planted the Sholdice family in Huron County, though Deb and her own family - husband Mark and children Sam and Sarrah - would move around a bit before settling in Clinton and now Blyth.

 

Deb worked for New Orleans Pizza, first in Mitchell and then in a manager’s role in Kitchener, before moving into more office-oriented positions. However, even when she was in an office setting, she would keep a spot at New Orleans for some extra cash on the side.

 

She then worked at Windsor Salt in Goderich and the Seaforth Creamery before taking on the general manager’s position at the Blyth Festival, which came after years on the Festival’s board of directors, including a term as its president.

 

When Deb and the Festival parted ways, Roulston had been searching for a successor for a number of years. In the world of community newspapers, they are often treated like family businesses with interested sons or daughters taking up their parents’ mantle. That was not the case in the Roulston house with The Citizen, so he had to think outside of the box if he wanted the North Huron Publishing project to continue without selling it to an outside interest.

 

When Deb became available, he jumped at the chance to hire her, despite her relative lack of newspaper experience. (Deb points out that she did work for a summer at the Goderich Signal Star creating databases with computers - a tool one of her coworkers was sure wouldn’t catch on.) Keith had a tremendous amount of respect for her and knew what a good job she had done with his beloved Blyth Festival.

 

Deb, however, was unsure. Despite her summer at the Signal Star, she didn’t know much about the industry, but admits she was very honoured to even be asked by Keith, someone she admired immensely.

 

She did, however, decide to take a few weeks to think about it. She spoke to some of her friends who were surprised she would consider a career move in the direction of print media, whose days, they insisted, were numbered. Well, that only strengthened her resolve and she wanted to take on the challenge to enshrine the newspaper’s place in the community’s history.

 

Her time with The Citizen began in December of 2016 when long-time employee Dianne Josling needed some time off, so Deb joined the team not as a publisher just yet, but as someone who was filling in. That time went a long way towards her deciding to take the job. She could see that the team in place was cohesive and competent, comprised of people who knew how to do their jobs and who got along with one another.

 

Come the new year, Deb then joined as a publisher-in-training, working under Roulston to learn the ropes. Little did she know that it would be one of the busiest (and most successful) years in The Citizen’s history. In addition to the traditional slate of special issues, there were others for town anniversaries in Blyth and Belgrave, as well as special sections for some local Lions Clubs, and then, of course, the year-long lead-up to the 2017 International Plowing Match, for which The Citizen produced its biggest-ever special issue, both in terms of issue size as well as distribution.

 

After her first full year, during which she dropped the “in-training” moniker from her publisher title, she said it felt as though she had been tossed into the deep end, but made it to the end of the year by learning how to swim.

 

In her early years in the position, Deb said she was consciously careful about not doing too much too soon. The Citizen was (and is) a beloved part of the community, she didn’t want to come in and turn everything upside down. However, as the years have gone on, she had put her stamp on the work being done, adding special issues and expanding coverage in a grassroots, organic way that just kind of happened. The way she puts it is that she’s upholding Keith and Jill’s ideals, traditions and values, but bringing them into the modern age.

 

And, as those improvements have been implemented, she’s seen how her previous jobs prepared her for being the publisher of The Citizen more than she may have first thought. Whether it was accounting software upgrades, planning delivery routes or just about anything else, she found she had similar experience in her working life before arriving at North Huron Publishing. 

 

To that point, Deb is a very hands-on publisher who isn’t afraid to do just about any job in the office. If you call, there is a good chance she’ll answer the phone. If you pop in, there is a good chance her face will greet you at the front desk. There’s a pointed bit in the movie Spotlight in which the newly-appointed editor-in-chief navigates The Boston Globe’s labyrinthian building looking for the publisher’s office and no one can direct him there. Deb is not that person.

 

She stepped into the roles of two people - Keith as the visionary and Jill as the organizer - and has made it work, all while The Citizen has won awards along the way. (And while we’re celebrating The Citizen in this section, Deb is also the publisher of The Rural Voice and Stops Along The Way, which she has taken on as her own personal creative project, aiming to show Huron County residents the fun little nooks and crannies of their own community they might not have even known existed.)

 

And while she’s been busy doing that, she and the team have been bringing The Citizen into the modern age with its website, e-dition, social media and more to come with a Patreon engagement plan in the works. And yet, it’s the printed word that continues to be the focus of the work being done here.

 

In recent years, Deb and many in Blyth have been hard at work on a history book chronicling the last 50 years of the village to be published in 2027. That process has been a real eye-opener in regards to the importance of the community newspaper. For the vast majority of the research being done, be it local churches, municipal councils, sports, service clubs or more, it has been to The Citizen that the researchers have turned. Week by week, year by year, The Citizen has been chronicling the lives and deaths, successes and failures, wins and losses, openings and closures of the community - that’s a service that has to continue. Deb knows that and she’s working hard to make that a reality.