This past week was National Newspaper Week and today is National Carrier Appreciation Day. For home subscribers of the print edition, please take the opportunity to thank your carrier for getting you your newspaper each morning before 7 a.m., rain or shine.
Think about that for a moment.
Other than the mail in most city neighbourhoods, what other tangible product is regularly home delivered? It is a rare and special thing as we now live in a time where most everything else has been deconstructed into bits and bytes of ones and zeroes, and delivered to us electronically, through wires, into our homes.
The digital world is one of convenience but it's also impersonal, temporary and even involuntary. Both the print and daily edition of The Citizen arrive each morning because residents asked for it and we take that invitation into the homes of our readers and customers seriously. A trust has been placed in us and we try our best each day to reward that trust with a quality newspaper.
For all the talk about how newspapers and print media are dead, everybody - even millenials - loves the permanence of news in a physical form. There's no putting a radio or a TV story in a scrapbook or attached to the door of the fridge but a newspaper story and photograph, that's forever.
We're told we're yesterdays news all the time by people who, in the very next breath, either want the newspaper to do something about their pet peeve or are upset about stories that have appeared in The Citizen. The irony seems lost on those who complain bitterly about a story or opinion piece they don't approve and then insist nobody reads the local rag anyway.
So if nobody reads us, why care? And if you don't read us, how did you get upset in the first place? If nobody read us, people wouldn't write letters to the editor or visit our website to post comments about stories and columns and editors.
People do read our work and we appreciate that. With it being Thanksgiving, we want to give thanks.
Thank you to our readers, particularly to the subscribers of our print and digital edition. Thank you for caring about local journalism and about what happens in your community so much that you're willing to make an ongoing financial commitment to support our efforts to keep the community informed.
Thank you to our advertisers, for continuing to realize that your investment in print and digital marketing with The Citizen connects you to customers who, as stated above, care about their community and have the disposable income necessary to maintain their subscription. The return on your investment in The Citizen is connecting with engaged residents who support local business and jobs with their spending choices.
Thank you, subscribers and advertisers, for supporting a business that provides well-paying union jobs to highly-skilled workers, for helping us be a solid corporate citizen that provides hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cash and in-kind support to numerous local non-profits and charities each year, for subsidizing our provincially and nationally-recognized local journalism, and for being able to connect residents to each other and hold a mirror up to the community.
We are thankful so many businesses, service organizations, non-profit groups and charities have chosen to partner with us to help Prince George grow and prosper. We deeply appreciate the financial and moral support you have given us, placing your money and your trust in us to help your business grow and to engage residents to support your projects.
We are particularly grateful to Canadian Tire, Downtown Prince George, the Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation, the Prince George Community Foundation, the Prince George Spruce Kings, Rotary, Kiwanis, UNBC, Northern Health, the Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society, the local auto dealers, the Prince George United Way and the City of Prince George.
We're thankful for their support and the support of many others because they, like us, realize how fortunate we all are to live in such a wonderful city with such giving people.
Please take the time this weekend to thank those who have helped make you and your community better in the last year.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
