If there was a day in 2016 that could sum up the year for The Citizen, it was Saturday, May 7.
Early that afternoon, just as the Relay For Life was getting underway at Masich Place, we received the tragic news about the death of longtime Citizen photographer David Mah from lung cancer. He was just 54.
That night, as a group of Dave's grieving colleagues gathered at the track for the candlelight vigil in remembrance of those lost to cancer, I was in Vancouver at the B.C. Yukon Community Newspaper Association's Ma Murray Awards, celebrating the success of our news team.
Samantha Wright Allen won the John Collison Memorial Award for Investigative Journalism for her series Living With Brain Injury about the efforts of local residents, one of them a teenage girl, to rebuild their lives after sustaining serious head injuries. Citizen photographer Brent Braaten took silver in the spot news photo award category for his Nancy O's fire picture, while Citizen reporter Frank Peebles took bronze in the Neville Shanks Memorial Award for Historical Writing category for his story City's 100th anniversary built on village's ashes.
And so our year of highs and lows went.
In February, we launched a new weekly free publication, the Citizen Extra, but we closed our mail room and stopped publishing a Monday print edition. Longtime loyal employees saw their jobs eliminated or their hours reduced.
Our home at 150 Brunswick St. for more than 50 years was listed for sale because we need a fraction of the work space that was needed when the paper was pasted together by hand, rather than designed on a computer. We have had several interested parties look at the building and we will either be on the move or operating in a smaller, renovated portion of the building in 2017.
Historically, we celebrated our 100th anniversary in Prince George as the longest continuously-operating locally-founded business. Mayor Lyn Hall stopped by our office on Feb. 12 to mark the day our first edition was published 100 years earlier with a city proclamation celebrating our success. This past summer, we served the community pieces of a huge birthday cake at Summerfest.
The most valuable thing we did to mark our centennial was to complete the digital archives of The Citizen.
Thanks to the leadership of the Prince George Public Library, with generous support from UNBC, CNC, the Friends of the Library and the Irving K. Barber Centre, the entire Citizen archives are available on the library's website.
This invaluable historical record of our city is our gift to present and future generations of Prince George residents.
Along with our success at the Ma Murrays, managing editor Neil Godbout received a National Newspaper Award Citation of Merit for three editorials he wrote in 2015 - Misplaced outrage, White pride and Moving forward - about the reaction to the renaming of Fort George Park to Lheidli T'enneh Memorial Park.
Reporter Christine Hinzmann won the Canadian Community Newspaper Award (CCNA) in the Best Multimedia Feature category for an online feature entitled HIV Is Not A Death Sentence, which focused on 58-year-old Allan Mousseau who is living proof an HIV diagnosis can still offer a full life.
Editor Tyler Sabourin took home the CCNA silver medal for two of his 2015 creations.
One was a photo illustration done during the 2015 Canada Winter Games called Spin Cycle. It showed the various positions of a snowboarder doing a midair spin jump. The other was a collage of Citizen photos that helped illustrate the city's 100th anniversary.
For the second time in the past four years, The Citizen was a CCNA finalist for best newspaper In Canada in our circulation category and this year we took home the bronze medal. We took silver for best front page.
The CCNA's Great Ideas Awards recognized The Citizen numerous times:
First Place, Newspaper Marketing and Promotion, for Northern FanCon
First Place, Promotional Campaign, for Northern FanCon
Second Place, Promotional Campaign, for Cariboo House
First Place, Special Section, for FanCon Forum
Second Place, Special Section, for Canada Games Daily
First Place, Magazine, for Scene PG (third year in a row)
Second Place, Magazine, for Centennial: Prince George Celebrate 100 Years
Third Place, Magazine, for HYPG: Hell Yeah Prince George
Second Place, Young Reader Engagement Initiative, for Cariboo House
Third Place, Young Reader Engagement Initiative, for Northern FanCon
I am so blessed to lead such a talented and committee group of employees committed to serving our readers, our advertisers and all residents.
On behalf of all of us here at the Citizen, Happy New Year!
We'll be with you every step of the way in 2017.
