Posted by John Borst on Sep 10, 2019
With the demise of our community newspaper, The Observer, Dryden Rotary News will this fall expand by adding We the Northwest News and Views. 
 
As the editor of this medium the dilemma of this website has always been how to attract readers. I have always maintained that our speakers are our news topics. Sharing their stories and the stories of our members with you, the public, is how we can get the story of Rotary out. 
 
For the past two years, this approach has been vindicated by the frequent presence of reporters from The Observer, CKDR and Shaw Cable attending our meetings and writing stories on the speaker’s topic.  
 
To date, in response to the demise of The Observer our two radio stations, CKDR and Q104 have expanded their coverage of news in our area. We will be attempting to find a niche within the news field which expands on their coverage.  One possibility will be to have columnists, perhaps those who wrote for The Observer. Another is to write commentaries or opinion pieces from time to time. In effect such commentaries will act as editorials. These will be the opinions of the author not the club as The Club Bylaws prevent it from taking political positions. Hence each commentary will have a clear disclaimer that it is the opinion of the author and not The Club.  
 
Sometimes the line between advocating for a political position and advocating for a cause or providing advice to a government entity is somewhat blurry. At some point everything can become politicised. Strong democracies, however thrive best when its citizens are engaged in the process of making a community better. This is our goal. As our mission states we are "...individuals who bring our talents and energy to improve the quality of life in the Dryden area..."  
 
Of course, we will still have material to entice you to look at what we do as Rotarians and how you can join us elsewhere on our site.  
 
You will note too that our site has room for comments at the bottom of the page. As of now, the platform we use only permits Club Rotarians to respond. I have asked the designers at ClubRunner to expand this service. You can of course write to me as editor-at-large and I will post your reply on your behalf.