Thank Your Local Columnist

Jeff Green | May 29, 2024

A few weeks ago, Linda Rush and Marily Seitz – who have shared the columnist duties in Ompah, decided to withdraw from the column.

This week’s paper features the final column for Wanda Harrison in Arden. In all three cases, the decision was made for a very good reason. The columnists decided that the energy they gave each week to the column needed to be redirected.

Like most of our columnists, writing the column has been only one aspect of a larger commitment to the local community for all three of them. 

I like to say that the columnists’ relationship with the paper is one of mutual exploitation. The columnists use the paper to promote all of the good things that are going on in their communities, and the paper uses the columnists to make the paper more relevant for readers, helping to gather information in the column and in Northern Happenings about what is going on  in a very wide and diverse set of communities. 

The biggest source of stress in this relationship of mutual benefit, comes when space is tight in the paper, and the columns need to be squeezed into a fixed space, page 4 and 5, and perhaps very little more. We use a kind of formula to decide which items to cut, usually those that are mentioned in other columns and those that are taking place further out in the future. For the columnists it is frustrating because they have put their time into the entire column, not just part of it, and they are the ones who have to answer to the people in their community who sent them the information and wonder why they did not include it in the column.

There is often no way around it for us at the paper, we try to make those weeks happen as rarely as possible and when they do, to limit the cuts as much as we can.

We like to say that the columns are the core of the paper, and for many readers the first thing they do is to check their own community’s column and the ones nearest to them before reading on. 

The initial impetus for the Frontenac News, back in 1971, was to foster community by letting people know what their neighbours were doing, and local columns were the first thing that was set up when the paper was established, to tie together communities in the old North Frontenac, which was what the townships north of Verona were called back then. It was the same with the old Triangle in Storrington, Loughborough and Portland, and when the Frontenac News expanded to those communities, the first thing we did was to put the word out for local columnists to introduce the paper to the community and the community to the paper.

Over the years, columnists inevitably come and go and we have been very lucky that people have stepped forward to fill the gap, more often than not.

That was the case a few weeks ago when Leanne Bailey jumped into the Ompah column with enthusiasm and skill, and we are hoping that someone will do the same in Arden, just as Wanda Harrison did when Sarah Hale decided to move on to shift her focus a number of years’ ago.

For now, we join with our readers to thank the columnists who have left, for getting the word out for as long as they have, and welcome them to enjoy their weekends without having to stress about putting the column together week after week.