A Message from the Publisher
Local news is more essential than ever As journalists, we tend to see our community in stories. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re more aware than ever that our community has amazing stories worth sharing. There’s the story of our front line health care workers, who are the linchpins of this fight. Their courage is evident day after day as they put others’ needs first. There’s the story of our vulnerable loved ones in long-term care and retirement homes, who hope to once again spend time with their families. There’s the fact that our local politicians are in uncharted waters, navigating an emergency on a scale they’ve never witnessed. Anxious small business owners have stories, too — women and men who thrive on their connection with all of us and who fear for their livelihood and their employees’ well-being. We see parents without work and we see children without school. We know there are seniors in their homes who can’t leave — and that there are ordinary heroes who are checking in on them and helping them get by. We see all of these stories and more but it’s hard to get to everyone. The more resources we have, the more assignments we can give to our amazing writers to do this kind of essential journalism. We don’t want to run the latest press releases — we want to keep reporting, analyzing, and digging deeper. But as you know, it costs money to do good journalism. The Advocate — the community’s New Business of the Year as named by our local Chamber of Commerce — is now a truly multimedia local company.
RODERICK BENNS, PUBLISHER
The Advocate is now three things, all working together: an online platform, a glossy monthly magazine, and The Advocate Podcast: Stories from Kawartha Lakes. (The latter we can do thanks to our podcast sponsor, Wards Lawyers of Lindsay.) In all these ways, we serve our community to the best of our ability. Ever since we launched the Advocate more than two years ago, people have regularly stopped us on the street to say how much they love what we’re doing. I appreciate those moments very much. As a kid growing up in Lindsay in the 70s and 80s, I always knew I wanted to be a writer. To be able to make a meaningful contribution to my community through the best local journalism we can possibly do means a lot to me. We make our magazine freely available because we believe it’s the right and equitable thing to do. We’re able to do that, overall, because of the support of our small businesses. These same people — people like you — have told me they share our values of putting people and their social wellness first. We see this now with the COVID-19 pandemic — people are realizing that it’s our society that matters most. Equity, human connection, and well-being are more important than ever — and certainly more important than tax breaks for corporations.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
We’ve launched something we’re calling Team Advocate. We sometimes use that phrase to talk about what our own team does but we realize now that Team Advocate is really much bigger than that — it’s all of you who have helped us thrive as readers and as community partners. If you find value in what we do, consider joining our local movement today with a small monthly contribution. It doesn’t need to be a lot because every little bit helps. And by a little bit, I mean $3 a month, $10 a month or
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www.lindsayadvocate.ca
