Our beloved paper is sailing transformational seas and now is the opportune time to step aboard. As we anticipate Volume 15 of the Community Edition, we are reflecting on the journey we have taken alongside our community and re-evaluating our procedures and our approach.
Because of this you’ll notice over the coming months that we are hard launching some big changes. Namely, that our team is smaller and specifically that we no longer have an editorial assistant on staff. Moving forward, Adrian Quijano will be our editor-in-chief. He is beyond excited to work with our volunteers and to open our doors to the community.
You might have questions about what is happening behind the scenes, and so we’d like to be as transparent as we can. The unfortunate reality of our situation is that our operating costs were untenable. The Community Edition was never meant to be the flagship paper at WLUSP—an organization funded by students at Wilfrid Laurier University—but regardless, its budget inflated to the point of financial concern, pulling focus and funds away from our student publications.
It’s not a surprise to see this happen. In brief, our operating costs were reduced during the pandemic because we could not safely print and distribute the paper. This meant that for a couple of years we had a surplus. We used that surplus to expand our team—which was great—but it also contributed directly to an organizational deficit that can no longer be carried forward.
Having made such drastic changes means that we are safe for now. But realistically, these changes are not drastic enough on their own to cement our future.
Just shy of 15 years ago, the Community Edition spun out of a student newspaper on campus at Laurier and ended up in a position where it is one of the last locally produced publications in Waterloo Region. That is something worth preserving.
And that is why we are turning to you, the person reading this: a fellow community member. For whatever reason that is true to you, you picked up this paper and you care about local media. Even just a little bit, don’t lie.
Moving forward, we would like to enlist your help. We are committed to nurturing a culture of collaboration and community engagement and so we want more feedback, more friends and more people following along. This also means fundraising and events, but more on that later.
For now, don’t be shy, don’t be a stranger. Our contact info is right over there on page 2.
We’ll see you around.
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