A Note from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

This is to inform all of you – our many subscribers and those who go frequently to this site, or have just discovered it for the first time – that Niagara At Large will be out of service until Wednesday, August 19^th.

I can never go back to those days when newspapers could be king, but we can try to do something here for our region of the world and those of us who have a common determination to make life good for our friends and neighbours and for our children. A too old file photo of Doug Draper, working for a once-proud Niagara, Ontario newspaper

That means that we will not be posting any news or commentary, or be able to post comments from readers until that date, all due to the fact that our hard drives and other systems will be down for updating and repair.

An online news site (note that I have always refused to call Niagara At Large a blog, with all the baggage that carries) going down for any length of time is risky and potentially suicidal since there is, at the end of the day, no loyalty to any one site in the internet sphere. Over-riding wisdom has it that if you are not “feeding the beast,” as in posting engaging content on a site every day, you are dead, due to all the other online competition out there.

This may be true. And it will be truer than true for Niagara At Large if we re-launch on August 19^th and there is no one on the other end of cyber space who cares.

But this NAL publisher needs to fix computer issues that have been neglected too long through the last brutally cold winter, and one that had me dealing with some tragic sickness and family too.

I know, also, that some may ask why do this at the start of possibly the most important federal election we Canadians face in more than 50 years.

I asked myself that question too but I get down to this. Harper decided to call the election early, making it one of the longest elections in Canadian history. But he has done it in August – the dog days of summer and one of the worst periods of time to get people, vacationing and/or otherwise doing the best they can to enjoy the last weeks of summer.

I’ve been a professional journalist going back to 1979 and one thing I can say for sure is this. If you have an important story or message you want to get out, don’t do it in August because very few people are in a groove where they want to pay attention.

That’s why I would say to members of the NDP, Liberals and Green parties who feel this early election call gives Harper’s Tories, with their large war chest choked up by the upper one per cent, that they shouldn’t sweat it through August. Let Harper and his minion’s blast away through August when few are paying attention, and wait until after the September Labour Day weekend to fire back.

There are plenty of examples in history of armies with lesser resources letting a more well-armed force blow away at them until they are just about exhausted, and then using what little resources they have to fire back with precision and take down the fat cats. Let Harper blast away in August and that could happen here.

Finally, it has been six years this coming September since Niagara At Large was launched and thanks to those who have stuck with us through some pretty tough times where it has sometimes been hard to keep in focus and remember that this site, first and foremost, should feature news and commentary on this Greater Niagara Region, including our friends and neighbours in Erie and Niagara Counties, New York.

Despite the closing of a key Canadian Consulate Office in Buffalo, New York by the Harper government, including Niagara Falls, Ontario MP and now foreign affairs minister Rob Nicholson – an office that served as a gateway for cross-border business, heritage and environmental relations for the busiest cross-border crossing areas in North America – we all need to remember that citizens on both sides of the river share a common present and future. And we can all work together to build a healthier, more prosperous life for present and future generations who make this greater region our home.

In that spirit, I am reprising below Niagara At Large’s original mission statement, posted in September of 2009.

I can only hope that Niagara At Large connects with you on the flip side of August 19^th.as we all hope to enjoy the final weeks of this summer.

About Niagara At Large

About Niagara At Large – Our Mission Statement

“Democracy cannot function without a well-informed electorate.” – the late news broadcaster Walter Cronkite

Welcome to Niagara At Large – an independent, online source of news and commentary for the greater Niagara region.

Niagara At Large is dedicated to providing news and the most in-depth analysis possible – without fear or favour and always with the goal of getting to the guts of a matter or whatever constitutes the truth – on issues of interest and concern to those of us living and working in a binational region of communities including and neighbouring the region of Niagara, Ontario and the counties of Erie and Niagara in Western New York.

This online site has been launched with the support of long-time journalists and others in our region who share the following beliefs and principles:

• That journalism is a public trust that plays a vital role in providing citizens with the information they need to participate effectively in discussions and decisions that shape the future of their community.
• That journalists can only fulfill their potential as honest brokers of information and watchdogs for their community if their work is not compromised by the pecuniary interests of corporate chains that too often replace the “editorial policies” of newsrooms with “business plans” that define news as a “product” and readers of news as “customers” who might just as well be out at the mall shopping for shoes or laundry detergent.
• That independent sources of news, owned and operated by people who have roots in our communities and therefore share a greater stake in their well-being, are truer guardians of the public trust than distant corporate owners and their shareholders whose first mission is to siphon as much revenue as possible out of our communities, even if that means gutting the resources needed to provide the residents of those communities with quality news.
• That residents of the greater Niagara region would welcome a news source with an eye to covering events and issues of interest and concern to the entire region over newspapers that continue to assume that those of us who live in the south end of the region aren’t interested in news from the north end, let alone news from one side of the Niagara River or the other.

With these principles in mind, Niagara At Large is working to build a diverse network of contributors of news and commentary from across our binational region and beyond with the aim to be the most go-to and engaging forum for information and debate on issues of information and concern to the whole region.

In working toward that goal, Niagara At Large welcomes diverse points of view from all of those who post news, analysis and comments here and will not discriminate against anyone who holds views differing from those of the publisher.

Niagara At Large has no interest and sees no benefit for the region at large and the challenges we face as individuals and communities in simply creating one more blog in cyberspace that becomes an echo chamber for people who share the same view. Nor will this be another one of those sites that post anonymous rants of a vitriolic or potentially libelous nature. All material submitted to this site must be linked to the authors real name and will be moderated through editors before it is posted.

For further information on our ‘Comments Policy” and on how you can “Be a Contributor” to Niagara At Large, please return to our home page and click on those headings above the site’s masthead. All questions or concerns about this sites editorial policies can emailed to Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper at drapers@vaxxine.com.

In the meantime, we encourage you to engage in this site with your comments and contributions. Add niagaraatlarge.com to your Address Book and circulate it to your network of online friends and associates.

With your active participation as a reader, commenter and/or contributor, we may very well succeed in building a fearlessly independent and dynamic source of news and commentary, and the very best forum for reporting and debating the key quality-of-life issues facing our communities facing all of us in our communities across the greater Niagara region.

Doug Draper, Publisher

About The Publisher

A native of the Niagara, Doug Draper began his journalism career at The St. Catharines Standard in 1979 and spent most of the next 19 years covering environmental issues before leaving the newspaper in 1998.
He went on to write for several other publications, including News, Niagara This Week, Pulse Niagara and the former Downtowner. His articles have also appeared in The Buffalo News, Hamilton Spectator.
Through his career, Doug Draper has received several provincial, national and international awards for his reporting and has been invited to participate as a panelist and keynote speaker at numerous conference and workshops on journalism and environmental issues.
Doug Draper now begins a new journey as a founder of Niagara At Large, an online newspaper for news and commentary on issues of interest and concern to residents in a Greater Niagara Region that encompasses communities on both sides of the Niagara River and Canada/U.S. border.

(Niagara At Large invites all individuals who share their first and last names to also share their comments on this or any other post on our news and commentary site. Thank you for respecting our policy of ensuring transparency and accountability for all news and views posted on this site.)