I wanted to take a moment to briefly comment on Renfrew’s media landscape.
A moment is all I’ll need since Renfrew has no media landscape.
The newspaper that once was, the Renfrew Mercury, is gone, initially taken over by Metroland then chopped from the roster of their media holdings. The once/week advertising rag they published also hit the dust, meaning that people lining the bottom of their litter boxes no longer had access to these two august publications.
There is still a sniff of them online, that being the notable Inside Ottawa Valley, which is absolutely awesome if you want to know what’s going down in Smiths Falls, or rather, if you want to know what happened in Smiths Falls two weeks ago.
And then there’s the radio station masquerading as a platform for legitimate journalism, with their blink-of-an-eye coverage of anything and nothing at the same time, but every hour on the hour, so that we don’t have to hold our breath long before being disappointed by the dearth of coverage this place provides.
This same radio station has really leaned into news gathering and reporting by having an online presence, where stories rarely make it to a second paragraph and the website that hosts the stories has the look of something designed and created by a committee of retired crayon executives.
I will say, though, that if you’re looking for photos of OPP police cruisers from various angles, these two organizations have you covered. Also, if one were to seek out examples of really poor photography, these would be your go-to platforms to find that. Fill the frame, rule of thirds, owning the background, head-room, lead-room, etc., all basic and fundamental aspects of photography, are completely ignored or were never known about in the first place. Just pictures of eleven people standing in front of a garbage can in some room at Ma-Te-Way (—call it by its name!—), taken from thirty yards away so that you can see all the different types of winter boots everyone is wearing. Plus, the pictures are horribly tiny, with no opportunity to expand or open them. No informational graphics, no video reportage, although, to be fair, some simple audio reportage from the radio station site.
Decidedly amateurish in appearance. And Renfrew’s okay with that, lapping up what’s not there to be lapped-up.
Nope, if you want local news of any sort, that would be the Eganville Leader, a newspaper headquartered in a village roughly one-quarter the size of Renfrew. That publication has a coverage mandate much wider than just the village itself, so Renfrew coverage, while present, is not nearly as prominent as we might expect from a local paper of our own. Or any form of local media of our own. We should be thankful that one of the Leader’s key journalists, Bruce McIntyre, lives right here in Renfrew. Had this not been the case these past couple of years, the Renfrew content in that paper would likely be even less. The Leader has a reporting area that they cover well, and honestly, that publication has been an absolute jewel of a paper for decades, still standing strong despite the demise of small-town newspapers everywhere. That said, they’re busy covering their own stuff, and should not be expected to attempt to cover things happening in Renfrew with any depth greater than the good job they’ve been doing already.
And the people of Renfrew just accept this. As in, this is all that can be expected.
There’s the old maxim “you get what you deserve,” but I don’t think that should apply here in Renfrew. I believe Renfrew deserves top-shelf journalism with a degree of depth as part of it. There are myriad of stories to be told, and not just the same old self-congratulatory slop about the same old people, those small-town elites who figure that they should be dominating the news coverage in town the way they’ve been allowed to dominate everything else. People who like to spend money to slap their names on stuff they don’t own.
Will the good people of Renfrew demand more? Torches and pitchforks in the night?
Likely not. If you don’t know what you’re missing, then you probably don’t know that you’re missing it, either. Which is a shame, really. A nice town populated by great people, kept in the dark about their own community, either intentionally, negligently, or indifferently.
It would be cool if they were to demand better.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 