Remarks from The Chair

James Bay Newspaper Society
CHAIR'S REPORT
Annual General Meeting
Thursday, April 15, 2010

This past year has been a busy one for us at the Beacon. A new committee of the board, the New Media Committee, was formed to undertake the development of the Beacon blog. Our website was revamped in order to accommodate the blog which was launched in September of last year. Both the website and the blog have been well received with the number of visitors to our website continuing to grow, many of whom are accessing the site from all over the world. However, we are hoping that more local organizations, businesses and individuals will take the opportunity to communicate with the wider community through our blog.
 
Faced with uncertainty in grant funding and increased costs, the board approved raising our advertising rates effective this past March. The rates were very reasonable and had not been increased in many years. We were reluctant to increase them but we felt it the prudent thing to do under the circumstances. We are very grateful to the local businesses and individuals who place their ads with the Beacon and thank them for their ongoing support. We would also like to acknowledge and thank the City of Victoria and the Province of BC Gaming Branch for their continued support.

We are proud to encourage contributions from local community organizations and feature regular columns from the James Bay Community School, the James Bay Community Project, the James Bay Market, and the James Bay Neighbourhood Association. These regular columns certainly keep everyone informed of what's happening in our vibrant community. We are also very pleased, for the last number of years, to have sponsored the James Bay Art Walk by featuring the Art Walk in the September issue of the Beacon. 

The James Bay Newspaper Society has been publishing the Beacon and distributing to over 7,500 residences and businesses in James Bay for 18 years now and we look forward to many more years of successful publication. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize and thank administrator Deborah Antonsen, advertising manager Rosalinde Compton, office assistant Conni Artwell and distributor Stuart Shamansky for their hard work over this past year. Last but not least I would like to thank my fellow board members, our volunteer editors, proofreaders, designers, reporters, columnists, technical wizards, photographers, cartoonists and contributors for their valuable time, talent, energy and ongoing commitment. Without them, and you the readers, the James Bay Beacon would not be the great community newspaper that it is.

Helen Tuele
Chair, Board of Directors
James Bay Newspaper Society