On The Face Of It

Marie Watson has left a new comment on your post "An Event in Our Town's Business":

“After the Banner was sold it continued and actually improved as a newspaper for a while. Then when all other competition vanished, it hardly even pretended.”

Sorry, Evelyn, but the Auroran, with its clashing typeface sizes, sycophantic photo captions and limited “news” has been “pretending” for years as well.

Printing photos of local politicians and letters to the editor is not journalism --- it’s a hard-copy blog.


I don't find this event sad at all

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The comment re-calls what a local newpaper means to many. It's always a bit of a shock when I hear the force of outrage about what someone has seen or not seen in the paper. Where it comes from I don't know but people do have a sense of proprietary ownership of their local newspaper.

It means so much to see a son or daughter's name appear, even if it's just in a team listing. A clipping becomes a keepsake.

Marie looks at The Auroran with a professional eye.No doubt if Marie was the owner,publisher and editor, it would have a completely different look.It might even have a wider readership. But we can't know that for sure.

I do know, in lineage of news and Aurora commentary,The Auroran far exceeds anything offered by the competition. And it does reach every home in Aurora.

Something else we know is whatever it is, it has a market value solely due to the energy and creativity of it's erswhile owner and his team.

It may be just a hard-copy blog. It may be that's all it could be.But if it made people pause for however long it took, to read what it had to offer,that's a lot more than publications ten times it's size have accomplished since they decided world news is more important that what is actually happening in our own immediate neighbourhood and within our own sphere of influence.

It's not going to happen soon. But when the changeover takes place, no doubt the little hard-copy blog will change to reflect the ideas and priorities of its next editor.

Like it or not.... we will become..... accustomed to her face.