Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all the BCYCNA members! This year promises to be a good one. The Ma Murray Awards are coming up and we already received quite a lot of entries. If you haven’t submitted your entries just yet, please do so and please keep in mind that the deadline is this Friday, January 13th. The event will be on April 14th, 2012 and we hope you are getting excited – we sure are looking forward! Furthermore, we will be once again handing out some exciting scholarships this year. Make sure to check out the scholarships page here. Last but not least, a new year means new interesting webinars offered by Newspapers Canada.

Sessions cover a variety of subjects for editorial, circulation, sales, and design departments. Newspapers Canada is offering two free webinars this 2012 season – all others costing $25 for CNA and CCNA members.

Participating in a webinar means you don’t even have to leave your desk. The training comes to you – online!

Webinar Schedule:

Editorial: Business Law Basics for Reporters Tuesday, January 10
Learn how to report on public companies and events such as bankruptcy and corporate takeovers.

Design: Beyond Ad Designs: Forum Tuesday, January 24
Creating great ads that work starts with gathering the right information from clients.

Editorial: Covering Local Politics Tuesday, February 7
Reporters from large and small market newspapers talk about getting the scoop from city hall.

Circ: Paywall Success Stories Tuesday, February 21
Experts from the Dow Jones regional newspaper group as well as Canadian newspapers will share their findings on what works for paywalls.

Editorial: The Art of the Obituary Tuesday, March 2
A well-written obituary can be a riveting read, offering writers a chance to refine their profile skills. Globe and Mail feature writer Sandra Martin offers some examples of compelling stories.

Sales: Online Sales Tuesday, March 6
Online sales are becoming part of the sales repertoire. Selling online means understanding how the medium fits the customers’ marketing goals and knowing what metrics to use to show the power of newspaper sites.

Design: Multimedia NNA Finalists Tuesday, April 17 (FREE)
For the third year in a row, we are inviting the three finalists in the multimedia category of the National Newspaper Awards to take us through their projects to see how they all came together and what resources they used to create them. Very inspiring!

Editorial: Better Beat Reporting Tuesday, April 24
Two newspaper reporters will share their approaches to great beat coverage.

Sales: Newspaper Innovation Tuesday, July 10 (FREE)
Hear why newspapers are great options for your advertisers in this upbeat presentation by Newspapers Canada VP Suzanne Raitt.

For more information, check out the website of Newspapers Canada or contact:

Susan Down at sdown@newspaperscanada.ca.

Reminder to submit your entries for the 2012 Ma Murray Awards!

Award Entry Deadline:

Friday January 13^th, 2012

It’s that time of year again! The contest entry period for the Ma Murray Community Newspaper Awards opened in December and we have already received many entries. We are once again using a web-based entry program, which is so quick and easy, it makes entering the Ma Murray Awards a breeze. If you haven’t entered yet, time’s a-wasting! The deadline is only a week away, so start uploading your entries at www.betterbnc.com.

Getting started with your online submission:

1.     Go to www.betterbnc.com.

2.     Under “Are you a contestant?” click Newspaper Login or Journalist Login (either is fine)

3.     Select 2012 BCYCNA Ma Murray Community Newspaper Awards

4.     Select your newspaper from the drop down list

5.     Enter your temporary password: bnc (lower case), and click Login. When you first login, the system will prompt you to create a secure password (one per news organization). If you set the new password for your organization, please make sure to share it with others who may be making entries. If “bnc” is rejected as your password, please ask around your office; someone has probably already logged in and changed it.

TIP: Find each award’s description and criteria by submitting entries and selecting a specific award. Or you can find PDFs of all the awards in the contest information or instructions tab at the top of the page.

If you have questions, please contact:

Kerry Slater at 1-866-669-9222 ext.4 or Kerry@bccommunitynews.com or

Naomi Zwier at 1-866-669-9222 ext.4 or Naomi@bccommunitynews.com

IMPORTANT: Please make sure to use a recent version of Mozilla Firefox (3.0 or higher) or Internet Explorer, and that you have an updated Adobe Flash Player for the browser you will use to make entries.

Be sure to submit your entries by January 13^th, 2012 and get in the race to become a finalist at the Ma Murray Community Newspaper Award held on April 14^th, 2012.

Good luck and we look forward to seeing your entries!

The BC & Yukon Community Newspapers Association Moved Offices

The sharp-eyed ones among you may have noticed it already on our website but if you haven’t noticed it just yet… The BC & Yukon Community Newspapers Association has a new home!

The new address where you can find us is: 9 West Broadway, Vancouver BC V5Y 1P1. Click here to view it in Google Maps.

We are here now since about a month and we must say we quite enjoy it! It’s a beautiful office space on the second floor and on a clear day we get a great view over the local mountains.

Please make sure to update your records so if you send any mail or newspapers, please direct it to our new address.

The phone and fax number stayed the same so you can still reach us at 604-669-9222 or toll free at 1-866-669-9222 and the fax number is still: 604-684-4713.

New Office View - Left Side

New Office View - Right Side

Acquisition completed between Glacier Media Inc. and Postmedia Network Inc.

About one and a half month ago, Glacier Media Inc. announced that they’ve entered into definitive agreements about Glacier acquiring Postmedia Network Inc.’s community newspapers in British Columbia, the Times Colonist, related digital media assets, and certain real estate assets for a purchase price of $86.5 million. Read our previous blog post here.

Last week -on December 1, 2011- Glacier announced that it has completed the acquisition. You can read the full article on Glacier’s website here.

BCYCNA members that are involved in this acquisition are:

• North Shore News
• Vancouver Courier
• Burnaby Now
• New Westminster Record/Royal City Record
• Richmond News
• Delta Optimist
• Surrey Now
• Coquitlam Now
• Maple Ridge Times
• Langley Advance
• Abbotsford Mission Times
• Chilliwack Times
• Nanaimo Daily News
• Alberni Valley Times
• Harbour City Star
• Cowichan Valley Citizen
• Oceanside Star
• Westerly News
• Campbell River Courier Islander/Campbell River Courier North Islander

Report Released on Digital Corrections

The ethics committee of the Canadian Association of Journalists released last week a report on digital corrections, an always very debatable topic among journalists today. It’s accompanied by a column by one of the report’s authors.

The report provides useful and interesting background on the challenges of online accuracy and corrections, and a look at what leading news organizations are doing. It offers much needed clarity for newsrooms when it comes to online accuracy and corrections.

Click here for more information and click here to view the report.

Jim Ainsley of Black Press Passes

The former Black Press VP of Finance and Operations – Jim Ainsley – passed last Sunday at the age of 64.

Ainsley was a long-time employee of Black Press and retired in February 2011 after being for 39 years with the newspaper company. Ainsley was not only active in the newspaper industry but also in his community.

From the Abbotsford News:

“Ainsley’s community involvement included the Rotary Club of Abbotsford; the Fraser Valley Health Foundation’s Run for Mom committee; the Abbotsford Community Services’ Christmas Bureau, which he helped establish; the United Way; and the Abbotsford International Airshow.”

Click here to read the full article in the Abbotsford News.

Election Gag Law Ruling is Unconstitutional

There was some good news yesterday relevant to newspapers and advertisers regarding the next provincial election.

The BC Court of Appeal has ruled the “gag law” limiting 3rd party advertising during a provincial election campaign is unconstitutional.  The BCYCNA opposed the law and supported its partners in media to have it reversed.

“This is great news for newspapers and for democracy,” said George Affleck, General Manager of the BCYCNA.

The ruling released past Wednesday agrees with the 2009 B.C. Supreme Court judgment that found the B.C. Liberal government’s “gag law” on third-party advertising in the 60 days before a 28-day election campaign was unconstitutional because it limited freedom of expression.

Click here to read the full article of CBC news and click here for article of the Vancouver Sun.

Glacier Acquires Postmedia’s BC Daily and Community Newspapers

Glacier Media Inc. and Postmedia Network Inc. announced that they’ve entered into definitive agreements about Glacier acquiring 21 of Postmedia’s BC-based community and daily newspapers along with related digital media assets and certain real estate assets. Postmedia accepted Glacier’s offer of $86.5 million.

There are 19 BCYCNA members out of the 21 newly acquired newspapers (Pennyworth and the Victoria Times Colonist are not BCYCNA members):

• North Shore News
• Vancouver Courier
• Burnaby Now
• New Westminster Record/Royal City Record
• Richmond News
• Delta Optimist
• Surrey Now
• Coquitlam Now
• Maple Ridge Times
• Langley Advance
• Abbotsford Mission Times
• Chilliwack Times
• Nanaimo Daily News
• Alberni Valley Times
• Harbour City Star
• Cowichan Valley Citizen
• Oceanside Star
• Westerly News
• Campbell River Courier Islander/Campbell River Courier North Islander

The deal does not include Postmedia’s Vancouver daily newspapers The Vancouver Sun and The Province or the company’s Windsor-Essex community newspapers.

The transaction is expected to close on or about November 30, 2011 and is conditional upon regulatory and other customary approvals.

Click here to read the full article on Market Watch and click here to read another article on Glacier’s website.

Week of the Newspapers

Oct. 2-8 is National Newspaper Week and it is a time to celebrate the role of community newspapers.

One of the BCYCNA members – the 100 Mile House Free Press – wrote an interesting article about how community newspapers provide comprehensive local coverage.

Ken Alexander of the 100 Mile House Free Press states: “Community newspapers are the authoritative source of news around the province and, indeed, across the country. Community newspapers do two simple but very important things for the residents of their communities. They chronicle the history of the community in a fair an accurate manner, so people can go back in time to pull up historical information. Community newspapers also supply the “fridge art” for the community – the photos we cut out of the Free Press and put on the refrigerator door for a while. Then we place them in a special box that will that will play an integral role in a graduation or wedding album years down the road. Simply stated community newspapers print all of the important news of their residents, including the births, deaths, crime, good news, as well as trials and tribulations.”

And we couldn’t agree more!

Click here to read the full article.

Municipal Elections Rules

With the Municipal Elections coming up on November 19, 2011, we just wanted to provide our members with some extra information. According to the Municipal Act,  click here to download the only rules that pertain to the upcoming municipal elections regarding advertising.