One of the many tasks I find rewarding in my job as editor is getting to judge journalism awards in other provinces.
Over the Christmas holidays, I judged the editorial category—staff opinion pieces—entered in the Ontario Community Newspapers Association Better Newspapers Competition.
It is a provincial competition akin to our BC & Yukon Community NewsMedia Association Ma Murray Awards , for which journalists, including us, are currently entering our best pieces from 2023. (Winners will be announced this spring.)
For the Ontario awards I am judging, the pieces were published in 2023, in community newspapers with a circulation size that is about the same as The Squamish Chief; thus, it is like judging our sister papers.
It is inspiring to see the brave work being written by our colleagues. I always come away with ideas for my own opinion pieces.
Reading this batch, I also thought about how lucky Squamish is not to have had the problems described in some other communities. There was one piece about the 1959 Listowel Memorial Arena collapse that killed two adults and seven boys playing hockey. That is quite a history to overcome. Then there are the more current problems some face, such as the closure of factories, hospital emergency rooms, and community centres.
Glad we aren’t facing those issues.
Mostly, though, it is fascinating to see that so many other towns face the same challenges as Squamish.
Reporters at hyper-local publications like ours can become myopic. The gripes and joys start to feel very unique to us.
Some characteristics indeed make Squamish distinctive, like our intense climbing scene, windsport highs and woes, and our ever-popular biking network.
But most local complaints are repeated in towns of our size throughout Ontario.
There were editorials about traffic and speeding concerns, others about growing communities feeling the strain of more people, worry about the Meta ban on news, and pontification over the homelessness epidemic.
There were also commendable pieces that took on the lack of transparency from school boards and the RCMP, and others that called out the behaviour of some on council.
There were great pieces calling out policy that is trying to be so woke it is wrong, and others hoping for more acceptance in the face of anti-trans rhetoric.
These are all things we can relate to in Squamish.
As I turned in my final scores, I vowed to aim in 2024, as we do here each year, for our writing to be brave, to give voice to the voiceless, to call a spade a spade, to offer solutions and celebrate wins, and to work through our stories to make readers in Squamish feel less alone in their problems. Hopefully, we will sometimes entertain or make you laugh, too.
I don’t need to ask you to hold us to account, because I know our readers do—and we love you for it.
Happy New Year from our newsroom to your smartphone, laptop or iPad.
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