Provincial NDP leader John Horgan, along with opposition finance critic Carole James, were in Prince George Monday night for a community roundtable session about the recent provincial budget.
Their visit was announced early Monday, which merited an online story published Monday morning and no mention in Tuesday's print edition since the meeting had already passed.
Due to the short notice of the evening event, we were unable to send a reporter to cover the public input session and interview Horgan and James.
We also received notice Monday morning about Premier Christy Clark's visit to Prince George on Tuesday to make an announcement about the Ancient Forest. That notice also came with a phone call, asking if we'd be interested in an exclusive sit-down interview with the premier.
That's the context behind the minimal coverage of Horgan's visit Monday and the extensive coverage in today's print and online edition of The Citizen for Clark's visit.
Timing, availability and advance notice, not political bias, dictated our coverage, not just this time but previously as well.
Horgan received front-page coverage when he sat down for his own exclusive interview with The Citizen on Dec. 1, 2014, during his first visit to Prince George after winning the party leadership.
During the 2013 provincial election, Horgan's predecessor, Adrian Dix, was given what we call a "poster front" - a magazine-style photgraph of Dix that took the entire front page - along with a main story and two shorter sidebars from an exclusive wide-ranging interview with Dix that was more than an hour long. Clark received precisely the same treatment, both online and in print, during her election stop at The Citizen 10 days earlier.
Switching from the coverage of Clark's visit to the content, this is a significant week for her. Today, she becomes the longest-serving female premier in Canadian history, two days after her fifth anniversary of taking the top political job in the province.
The premier who visited The Citizen for nearly half-an-hour Tuesday afternoon was much different from the one who came by nearly three years ago.
Back then, she was the premier but she had never won a general election, so there was a bit of a chip on her shoulder, that she had something to prove to herself, to the doubters within her own party, to the NDP and to the voters.
With a month left before the election, she and the B.C. Liberals were well behind in the polls to Dix's NDP. Clark knew her odds of coming back were long but she was undaunted.
She was fierce and energetic, both in the tone and in the content of her words.
If she was going to lose, it would not be for lack of desire or effort.
On Tuesday, the chip on the shoulder was nowhere in sight because it's been long since replaced by the champion's swagger.
If calmness is the cradle of power, as the old saying goes, Clark seems positively Zen in her demeanour.
She is proud of herself, she is proud of her accomplishments, including her longevity in an office that chewed up and spit out lesser men, and she is proud of her team.
Shirley Bond accompanied Clark to her Citizen interview three years ago and she was with her again Tuesday. Back in 2011, Bond thought Kevin Falcon was the better choice for Liberal leader, not Clark.
In 2013, Bond didn't leave her leader's side and was prepared to go down with her in defeat if that's what the voters decided. Today, the connection these two skilled and experienced political warriors have with each other seems to transcend party loyalty, admiration, friendship and gender.
They both carry themselves with the certainty that they have made history together, they have made their province a better place by doing so, they have plans for more and those plans extend beyond the general election next May.
They pack a formidable one-two punch that will not be easy for Horgan and his NDP team to defeat but Horgan is no slouch and he can be counted on to make a determined effort. We look forward to asking him about those efforts - as well as his views on softwood lumber, aboriginal relations, resource development and other important issues in the months leading up to next May - and sharing the content of those interviews with our readers.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
