The importance of community - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

Last week’s Citizen contained a large article about the Clinton Horticultural Society’s garden tour, written by a friend of Jill’s and mine. It was a sign of how much things have changed in the newspaper business since The Citizen was first published in the fall of 1985.

 

A. Y. Maclean had purchased The Brussels Post and the Blyth Standard in the 1970s when he dreamt of building a small empire for his family. When he realized that none of his children were interested in owning the publications, he sold The Huron Expositor, The Post and The Standard to Signal-Star Publishing in Goderich. Signal-Star wanted The Expositor, but not the Brussels and Blyth papers, which it closed down, instead opting to include just one page of Brussels news in The Expositor and one page of Blyth news in the Clinton News-Record.

 

In the summer of 1985, after several years of this arrangement, I received a call from my friend Sheila Richards who was disgusted with Brussels news coverage and wondered how we could have a Brussels newspaper again. I suggested it was unlikely Brussels could support a newspaper all by itself, but that a newspaper that served both Brussels and Blyth could be successful.

 

Finding the money to publish it was the challenge, since I’d blown all my savings in a  touring theatre venture. We decided we needed community ownership. Sheila approached possible Brussels investors. I approached those in Blyth. We raised enough money to produce the first issue of The Citizen in the fall of 1985.

 

We were successful, despite the fact we came from two small villages. Perhaps because we were owned by community shareholders, advertisers were happy to support us.

 

Still, from two small villages we were something of a joke to larger publishers like the Signal-Star empire, which ran from northerly Bruce to Grand Bend. But the health of Signal-Star publisher Bob Shrier was not good and he eventually sold out to another large publisher, who, in turn, sold to an even bigger publisher.

 

We had been printed at the Signal-Star plant in Goderich, but received a call in 2014 that the printing plant was closing. We were fortunate to find a new printer.

 

Over the years, the newspapers originally owned by the Signal-Star were starved for news. The offices in Seaforth and Clinton were closed. The printing plant was rented to a company that renovates and sells donated household equipment. The front office in Goderich remained open for a while, but the other day I drove by and saw it was now headquarters for an engineering firm.

 

Since Jill and I retired in 2017, Deb Sholdice has gradually included news from other communities in The Citizen. Seaforth and Clinton were included first, then she hired Scott Stephenson who lives in Lucknow and he covered news from Lucknow and Dungannon, as well as Blyth and Brussels. Bob Montgomery has included news from Goderich. The one part of northern Huron not so intensely covered is Wingham, where there is a somewhat locally-owned newspaper.

 

It’s becoming harder to publish a community newspaper. Many younger residents don’t subscribe. They feel they can get enough news from free online services like Facebook. But the only people going out and collecting news - covering council meetings and community groups - are people like The Citizen’s editorial staff: Shawn Loughlin and Scott Stephenson. You can’t get all the news if you just depend on people to report what they see around them.

 

I imagine municipal and county councils also appreciate that local reporters cover councils and report the news, otherwise the work of our municipalities would not be known to the people who pay the taxes that keep services going.

 

When we began The Citizen 41 years ago, people knew it was important that the activities of the community, including councils, were covered. That’s why local residents were willing to invest money to cover news. Partly through distant publishers who no longer know the value of a newspaper to the community’s activities, partly because of societal changes that mean people think they don’t need to read a newspaper, the century-plus success of community newspapers is now in question.

 

That’s part of the reason The Citizen covers half a county these days, providing a service for people who realize how important it is for us to understand the many things that make a community succeed - the political news, the activities of churches and community groups, the youth activities, the farm news.

 

It’s so essential to our human future that we know about the things that make our communities important.