One of the best parts of being president of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association was meeting many of the best publishers in the business.
A fellow we have grown to think of as a friend in the business is Gerald Tracey, who runs the Eganville Leader. His family has owned the paper since 1944 and chances are if you’ve attended a Newspaper award banquet, Gerald will show up as a finalist in one of the categories.
Apart from great photography and storytelling, the Leader is one of but a few papers left in Ontario that prints as a broadsheet. And when we say broadsheet we mean a big, two-arms-wide Newspaper that takes up a good part of the kitchen table when spread open to read.
Wellington County is in for such a Newspaper next week.
In commemoration of Canada’s upcoming 150th celebration we are publishing a very special edition. It will feature News, coming events by township, messages from local businesses and a list of 150 things to do in Centre Wellington, plus options for road trips elsewhere in Wellington County. We really hope people will take advantage of the many opportunities and neat things locals are offering up to celebrate the balance of this year.
While we will likely be cursed in the mailroom – and perhaps at the odd household – we decided to take a page from our friend Gerald and publish this paper in a broadsheet format.
Residents today will get an experience from a different time. Although we have incorporated full process colour, Newspapers from the 1867 era when Canada was born, were black and white only. All the type would have been laid by hand and any images in the paper would have been hand crafted. Keep in mind, the Newspaper was really the only source of News, since radio and television weren’t invented at that time.
We hope you enjoy this special edition coming with your Advertiser next week. When asked what on Earth that is – now you know: it’s called a broadsheet.
