The tagline for National Newspaper Week (Oct. 6-12) could not be more apropos: Newspapers matter; now more than ever.
It’s a coincidence that the week falls this year as the run-up to the federal election heats up as it heads into its final weeks. Without your local newspaper, like the Citizen, you probably still would have heard a few things about Justin Trudeau, Andrew Scheer, Jagmeet Singh and Elizabeth May. But you likely wouldn’t have heard much if anything about your local candidates, unless they were embroiled in some big scandal.
Letting you know about who you will be voting for is just one of the many things that the local newspaper informs you about that you would have little chance of hearing about if we didn’t exist. While the occasional viral story from Cowichan might hit the nightly television news, you’d likely have no idea that the City of Duncan was looking to change to two-hour parking on many downtown streets, or that Duncan’s overdose prevention site was once again looking for a new home. You most assuredly wouldn’t know about the woman who bought a horse for $1 and has turned him into a champion, or that the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group, after 26 years of work, is finally moving to Stage 5 of negotiations with the federal and provincial governments.
Our readers can sit down and find out how the local soccer and hockey teams did last weekend, and what’s coming up at the Cowichan Performing Arts Centre. You can read what other people in the community are saying on a variety of topics in our letters section.
In this age of rumours and even malicious lies that spread at light speed across social platforms, the Citizen is somewhere you can go to find verified facts.
Newspapers strive not just to tell you what’s happened, but to help us understand one another. Newspapers both reflect and challenge a community, and we’re better off for them.