Kathy Rowe browses some of the 100 issues of Centennial News at the Scarborough Archives & Research Centre.
By Kathryn Stocks
We don’t usually toot our own horn here at Centennial News, but we wanted to share the news that the tabloid format of our paper is now in its 10th year and the March paper was our 100th issue! Here’s a little history about it.
For a long time, all Centennial residents received a green newsletter called CCRA News that was put out by the community association. That changed in December 2015 when then-editor Janice Bennink presented a report to the CCRA executive about the economic and editorial advantages of publishing a tabloid newspaper instead.
The first issue of the new paper, now called CCRA Centennial News, came out in April 2016. It was black and white with a little green on the front, back and middle pages as a salute to the newsletter it had replaced. In her editorial in that issue, Janice wrote: “We also wanted to freshen the look and content of our new publication to include more of Centennial’s own stories.” I took over from her as editor in December 2016, and telling people’s stories has been the goal ever since.
At first, the articles came mainly from the CCRA and local politicians. I soon realized that the paper needed more writers, so I asked for help at an executive meeting and a number of people joined our newspaper committee. We meet almost every month to suggest ideas for the next issue, then these awesome volunteers head out to do interviews, take photos and write stories. Once the stories are edited, our graphic designer Don Lawrence brings life to the pages with photos, graphics and appealing layouts. As you can see from the front pages pictured above, we’ve covered a lot of ground over the past 10 years.
We only had one month when the paper wasn’t printed and that was May 2020. We were in a Covid lockdown and although we completed the issue after an editorial meeting on Zoom, we worried about the health of our distributors and decided to put that paper online only. We found out later that most distributors were happy to deliver the papers during the pandemic and every issue after that has been printed.
We’ve been incredibly fortunate over the decade to have reliable advertisers supporting our paper. At a time when dozens of newspapers have closed due to ad loss, we thank them for their commitment to community news. And we thank you for reading CCRA Centennial News. We hope you continue to do so. Remember, we’re perpetually on the lookout for your Centennial stories, so share your news with us — it may be our next cover story!