By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 7, 2011 – In one of the Shape Burlington report recommendations there was one on what came to be known as the ‘information deficit’. Under Communication: Empower people by overcoming the communication deficit. The staff report said:
“The wording of this recommendation suggest that the city is responsible for all community news and information and that current methods don’t work. Staff understand that there is an independent information service including a web based community news and information portal being developed. We welcome that type of initiative in the community. Since the Shape Burlington report www.burlingtongazette.ca has also gone live and staff now share information and respond to inquiries related to this site as we would with any other media outlet.”
So there we are, given mention in a staff response, and indeed we are a portal that has produced more than 300 new stories since our inception October 19th of 2009. We attend more council committee meetings that any other news organization.
The “newspaper on a web site” that is known as Our Burlington and reached at www.burlingtongazette.ca, came out of a number of conversations, during the summer of 2010 with John Boich, one of the co-chairs of the Shape report. John and I would walk his dogs and talk about the election that was going to take place in the fall. At the time John was involved with Community Media Burlington, (CMB) an initiative led by David Auger, that had large plans to be the voice of the community with an emphasis on radio.
Auger was the Executive Director serving a Board made up of Boich, Deb Tymstra, Keith Hoey and Rick Burgess. Boich was very frustrated with the pace of development for CMB and he would grumble away as we stood there with plastic bags in our hands while the dogs did their thing.
At one point I told John that putting together a business plan for this kind of venture was no big deal and, because I had said this several times, John turned to me with that look he can give and said: If it’s that easy Pepper, then would you do that. I learned at that moment that I had been “boiched”; a moniker I came to know quite well as my working relationship with John developed.
I put together the business plan John had challenged me to do and then suggested that we merge what I had developed with what Auger had not been able to get off the ground. John went forward with that idea to his Board but that Board didn’t go for the idea and promptly resigned and John was left as the sole officer of Community Media Burlington. In order for John to resign he had to get another officer in place and so worked with David Auger to have him give up the position of Executive Director and become an officer of CMB. Once that was done John resigned and Auger became the sole officer of the non profit organization.
Our Burlington went on to incorporate as a non profit and on October 19th, a week before the municipal election we went live and except for one accidental interrupt, then a second interrupt that a judge somewhere will get to decide who damaged who, Our Burlington has been active as a news source for the citizens of the city of Burlington.
It all started when John Boich and I took his dogs for a walk
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