Fond memories of the Lindsay Post

I enjoyed reading your piece on the 10th year anniversary of the closing of the Lindsay Daily Post. I can make the unique, I think, claim to have edited every community newspaper (except for the now-defunct North Kawartha Times) in what is now Kawartha Lakes in the course of a 20-year career in community journalism.

The 1980s, when I started, were good times. Papers were making money and had resources; no municipal council or school board meeting was complete without the presence of at least two or three local reporters. I had the good fortune to work for Gord Brooks, publisher of Lindsay This Week, who was a savvy trader and a true gentleman. The Daily Post, after the passing of long-time publisher Leroy Wilson, was overseen by a committee of community stalwarts, most with deep connections to the Progressive Conservative party. It was plenty of fun and very local.

The demise began in the 90s. Large circulation ‘shopper’ newspapers bit into revenue by offering free classified ads, community newspapers came under corporate control and the internet began its media domination. I was given my freedom from the press in the mid-2000s after a mercifully brief stint as the city editor of the Lindsay Post. Circulation numbers were going up, but not quickly enough, and ad revenue declined. Reporters left and weren’t replaced. I laboured to fill an ever-expanding news hole with boiler plate copy of no local relevance. I’m surprised the Post lasted as long as it did.

I occasionally surf the internet and am gratified to see that good people I worked with – among them Jason Bain, interviewed for your piece – have landed on their feet. I am also pleased to see that publications like The Lindsay Advocate manage to survive and, I hope, thrive by understanding that their first priority is service to their communities.

– Norm Wagenaar, Nanaimo, B.C.