Happy Christmas to our stalwart readers

Jeff Green | Dec 20, 2023

2023 has been a year of change for many of us, certainly in the newspaper industry. Costs have jumped, most notably in the printing industry with the closing of the Metroland Plant in March. Luckily for us, another small business came though for us after a big media company walked away. Since the end of March, the Raistrick family who own and operate Winchester Printing have provided friendly, reliable printing services for us, and I don’t know what we would have done if they had not taken us on.

Also, throughout the year our readers have been very supportive, as always, and there are times when a kind word is particularly welcome, as it is sometimes a challenge to keep going from week to week.

We have welcomed some new writers this year and plan to keep that up into 2024, which is already shaping up to be a year of major changes.

As I wrote about last week, Canada Post is making some changes to the Neighborhood Mailing designation that we fall under, and once this paper is out this week, we will be talking to some of the local postal outlets to see what it will mean for those of our readers who are on the Canada Post “No Flyer” list.

We will have more information about that in the new year, and if necessary will be looking at establishing alternate distribution locations in communities in addition to our Canada Post delivery. Rest assured, however, that we have no plans to stop using Canada Post for the build of our distribution.

On a positive note, thanks to the efforts of News Media Canada, I am somewhat optimistic that we may receive some support from the money that Google is providing to online media organisations. We have put a lot into developing our frontenacnews.ca website over 20 years, and while it has become a very good way to reach readers in that time, it has never been a great source of revenue, and this new money will make difference if it comes through.

We won’t know for some time if it will translate into meaningful revenue for us, but if it does it will likely be tied to us publishing more original content from our own writers, which is an exciting prospect.

As the year comes to a close I have to thank our small, but dedicated staff, my wife Martina, News Media Canada and Winchester Printing, and our readers for sticking with us for another year.

Finally, the community columnists remain the backbone of the paper week after week, year after year. We sometimes cut their items to make the paper fit, and once in a while we mess their column up entirely, but they continue to submit the news that their neighbours near and far are looking for each week, from peanut butter challenges to birthdays and beyond.

Our first issue of 2024, Volume 24, hits the post office on Thursday, January 11