When Terresa and I bought the Citizen last month, we promised that although there wouldn’t be immediate changes, there would be changes coming.
Today it starts with a shift, both in our paper’s visual identity and in our editorial direction.
We have a new banner colour and a new tagline.
That tagline tells you everything you need to know about what the future holds for the Prince George Citizen:
Locally owned - community focused.
It’s a clear mantra of the shift in focus that starts today.
That means a shift in our paper’s editorial edition. Moving forward, the Citizen will be unapologetically Pro-Prince George.
We will celebrate the business, industry, and hard work that have built this city and we’ll celebrate the important role that Prince George plays in our province and our country.
We will also hold truth to power. That means ensuring voters have transparency into those who spend our tax dollars.
I want to share again the key statement I made when we purchased the Prince George Citizen last month.
The Citizen is here to stay.
Each week, 17,500 papers are distributed through neighbourhood boxes where our readers choose to pick up their copy. According to Google analytics, our average number of page views per month last year was 1.49 million. That’s more than every other news site in our city combined.
Terresa and I are investing in the resources needed to secure the Citizen’s long-term growth.
The future of the Prince George Citizen will be built on the strength that has made it an institution in this city for over a century.
That means focusing on the things that make this paper great and restoring pieces that have been lost throughout the years.
From my personal perspective, the print edition of our paper has been too thin and too empty.
The print media portion of the Citizen is a business like any other. It needs to offer value to its customers and its advertisers. It needs to be more than just a wrapper to deliver flyers.
Print media dies when it fails to be relevant to the audiences it serves. Our print edition can and must have value for our readers. When we purchased the Citizen, it was publishing just 24 pages. We have made the commitment to increase that page count to 40 pages each week.
We are a firm believer that there is value in a print edition that you can’t get from an online publication. There is something deeply meaningful about being able to pick up a local paper and read fact-based stories about what’s happening in our community, that focus on the places we live, work, and play.
As Prince George’s newspaper of record, the Citizen holds the stories and archives of our city’s history. That incredible responsibility is something that is not lost on me nor any of the staff at the Citizen.
Additionally, as part of our “locally owned – community focused” mandate, we will be dedicating advertising and promotion support towards various local community organizations, both in our print edition and online.
It also means finding ways for the Citizen to invest and participate in more community activities.
But none of that will be possible without delivering quality in-depth journalism.
We have the chance to set the bar and exemplify a new gold standard for local journalism.
In an age of social media, we can’t rely solely on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X/Twitter to inform us about the important goings on in our neighbourhoods.
We need good, comprehensive, investigative journalism written by those who are familiar with our city and members of the community. That’s exactly what we are going to deliver.
I am incredibly excited for what this next stage holds, both for the Citizen and for the City of Prince George.
Today is not the end but rather the start of a new beginning. We have a lot of work ahead of us and even more exciting announcements ahead.
As we embark on this next chapter, Terresa and I ask you all to join us.
Stay tuned.
The best is yet to come.
Cameron Stolz is the owner of the Prince George Citizen
