A Message To Friends And Supporters Of Niagara At Large

From NAL publisher Doug Draper

Before the flood, if I may cop the title of a wonderful old album featuring Bob Dylan and The Band, Niagara At Large was working to reach higher plateaus as an independent, alternative news and commentary voice in the Greater Niagara Region – a region that embraces residents in Niagara, Ontario and our friends and neighbours in Buffalo and the rest of Erie and Niagara counties, New York.

Wish I was back here, in front of the Cape Cod home of the late writer Norman Mailer, instead of doing cleanup in a flooded basement. Not the most flattering photo of yours truly and yes, I know I need to lose weight. I’ll do that while we get Niagara At Large back in service.

Things were progressing and I was feeling optimistic about reaching those plateaus in the days leading up to a violent storm on Friday, July 19 that washed damaging flood waters in to the home where my family lives and the spaces where NAL had its computers and other resources for producing this site. Unfortunately, it will take at least two more weeks to clean up the mess and a couple more to recover and get back on track.

Therefore, Niagara At Large will not be re-launching this site (we deliberately avoid using the baggage-laden word blog) fully until Labour Day, September 2^nd. And when we do, it will be done with a will to reconstitute the original mission of NAL as this region’s most engaging forum for analysis and alternative views on the issues that matter to people in our binational region and countries, and as a virtual town hall for a civil discussion of those issues.

The re-launch of Niagara At Large will also be ushered in with a mind to taking full advantage of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter to attract more readers, especially those younger readers this site would like to involve in discussions about outrageous post-secondary school costs and student debt, jobs, public transit our environmental future and a host of other challenges younger generations face in a world where baby boomers (I among them) got things relatively good and all that are left are crumbs.

Niagara At Large will also be working to turn this site into a revenue-producing operation, since after three years now, I can no longer afford to go on doing it for free. If WordPress, the company that offers me the software to produce this site, sees some value in running ads on NAL for their revenue tank, there is no reason why I should not strive to run some ads here for the sake of keeping this site alive. I will have more to report on any advertising on this site later, but I can assure you that NAL will only run ads by locally owned, independent companies in keeping with our concern about corporate chains sucking the blood out of our local economies and depositing the gains in off-shore banks.

There have been many who have suggested to me over the past two or three years that asking for donations from readers may be the way to go. As much as some have been prepared to write NAL a cheque at the time, I refused to accept it on the grounds that we either ask everyone for this kind of compensation or no one. I also wonder how successful this would be. People go on the internet excepting to get content for free and even if we attempted to persuade people that this is a special project for building a new Niagara news source to fill a major news void left by Sun Media and the other corporate chains in this region, how many would contribute anyway, even if they could afford to?

We may attempt to do some mix of donations and local ads (and I don’t mean those ads that so obnoxiously get in your face when you try to go to a story). Perhaps you may wish to offer us some feedback on where we should go around finding ways to financially supporting this site in the comment area below.

What I do know is this. I keep hearing over and over again from Niagara area residents about how badly the mainstream daily and weekly papers are failing them when it comes to playing a watchdog role on governments, and on covering and investigating issues of concern to our communities. I hear it even more as corporations like Sun Media gut newsroom resources in this region to a point where it is virtually impossible for those reporters left to do much more than bang off a few graphs on a council meeting or rewrite press releases from the police, etc.

What I need to say to you and what I will be saying again when we re-launch Niagara At Large is that if we want to build new independent region for this region, it involves some work and sacrifice. It has to be a community effort and it needs community support. Simply sitting back and complaining about what a “rag” a paper like the St. Catharines Standard has become will not build new media here. We have to do it TOGETHER as a community.

Niagara At Large will therefore be seeking your help as a community in getting back the kind of news coverage and analysis that we deserve and need to participate meaningfully in the life and democracy of our communities and country.

Until then, I will leave you with this. A year ago this August, I was visiting friends in my home away from home on Cape Cod and made a stop in front of the home of the late American Pulitzer Prize winning writer Norman Mailer – a home that is now up for sale, by the way.

Norman Mailer, always the rebel, once wrote; “What’s the use of being a writer if you can’t irritate a great many people.”  I love that line and as provocative as it may be to some people, I take it to mean that writers and journalists should produce pieces that challenge our favourite or conventional thoughts and cause us to engage in discussions and debates that move us forward for the common good.

That is no small part of what Niagara At Large has strived, and will continue to strive to do with the support of the community of communities we seek to serve – without fear or favour.

(Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views below.)