Sarah Gillingwater: A New Generation at the Review Mirror

Apr 09, 2025

By Jemma Dooreleyers

Readers of the Review Mirror, Westport and Surrounding area’s local newspaper, may have noticed the paper’s facelift in recent months. That's because, since January of this year, the Review Mirror has been in the hands of a new kid in town, 27-year-old, Sarah Gillingwater, a Graphic Designer who has been breathing new life into the paper while working to maintain it’s traditional charm.

Gillingwater, who graduated from a Bachelor's of Graphic Design from a program shared between Sheridan and York in 2019, started a small design business in 2018 called Sweet Prints Design where she started doing commission design work. In 2020, she shifted to making stickers and other art to sell at markets. In 2023, after graduating from a condensed graphic design and Adobe skills course in 2022 at Algonquin college, she began working at Images Inter Alia in Perth. This is where she met John Fenick, the previous owner of the Review and began doing commissioned layout work for the paper. In 2024, she put her hat in the ring for ownership of the paper, and as soon as 2025 began, she hit the ground running.

Without a journalism background and as a relative newcomer to the Westport community, Gillingwater works hard to maintain the professionalism and the local community aspect of the paper, because she recognizes the struggling industry of local print journalism and the need for hyper-local reporting in rural areas. She believes that while social media and township announcements are beneficial to a community, the local newspaper provides a service that big city news corporations  miss in their reporting.

“I see a small community such as Westport and the Rideau lakes area still needs a print source like this,” she said. “Of course they have Facebook and other ways to notify the public about things, but to have something delivered to your door is really important for a community that’s small because the internet is so wide and vast that anything that happens gets drowned out.

Gillingwater, who grew up in Toronto, makes it a priority to integrate herself into the community and says she is grateful for the friendly faces she has met along the way.

 “I’ve been trying to have a presence in the community since I’ve started here. People have been very welcoming and a lot of friendly faces have come over and introduced themselves to me and I have made a lot of wonderful connections.”

Gillingwater finds the toughest part of the job deciding what to include in the paper each week.

“It’s been tough at the beginning to get everything settled in but I do want to make sure I put emphasis on the fact that this is a community paper again with content that the readers here actually care about. People in the Rideau Lakes region and in Westport want to hear what’s happening locally, they don’t want to hear what’s happening in Ottawa so much. My focus is honing in on the community aspect,” she said.

As a young person and a woman, Gillingwater has been pleasantly surprised with the response from the community to the new life she is breathing into the newspaper and hopes that her work will inspire young people in her community.

“I think there is something to be said about giving young women new opportunities like this. I think it’s empowering for young women for girls to see role models. I’m not saying I’m a role model right now, but it’s definitely new for a young woman, especially in our community, to be owning a print newspaper.”

In order to keep costs low while also ensuring the quality of the newspaper, Gillingwater wears many different hats including Editor-in -Chief, designer, office manager and delivery driver (along with her partner, David) but her favourite part of the week is watching all of the stories come in and turning those stories into a final product.

“I really like to see all of the news come in when my freelancers start submitting. I love reading through it and putting it all together. Seeing the final outcome every week is really cool to see. I put a lot of effort into making the paper look a certain way, keeping what it used to be originally while also breathing new life into it has been really fun and I think a lot of people have recognized that and I’ve gotten a lot of compliments.”

“To anyone who does read the Review Mirror, thank you for your patience. I am grateful that people have been so supportive. People don’t like change and I know it can be tricky to see a new face come over to the paper but at the end of the day I’m not some big company. I am still a young woman who’s trying to get involved in the community and trying to experience new opportunities.

“I think this is a great way for everyone to get what they want. Everyone still gets a newspaper and I get to experience new opportunities.“