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The mailbox gets crowded
?Unless the publisher's plans have changed dramatically in recent days, residents of Uxbridge Township will be receiving a third weekly newspaper, beginning this week. It's called the “Uxbridge Standard.” Let us give you a short history of our connection to it.
Back in the early summer of 2005, we wanted to be like the Scugog Standard. It was owned by a number of shareholders from the community, and had taken an independent stand against Metroland after the last remaining independent in the area, the Port Perry Star, had been sold to Metroland (publisher of Port Perry This Week and the Uxbridge Times-Journal) in the summer of 2004. They proudly had “Your Community-Owned Newspaper” at the top of their front page.
A number of us in Uxbridge thought our town deserved a more community-oriented newspaper, and we asked the people at the Standard if they'd be interested in starting a paper like theirs over here. Less than a year into their own operation, they said no. They changed their minds a couple of years later, but by then, the Cosmos was well-established, so we decided to go our separate, independent ways.
Fast forward several years. Earlier this summer, the Standard confirmed that the majority of its shares had been sold to a Toronto publisher. Soon afterward, the phrase “Your Community-Owned Newspaper” disappeared from its masthead. And within days of the ownership change, the Standard announced its intention to move into Uxbridge.
Of course, the Standard had no wish to compete with the Cosmos if it could be avoided. So they suggested we might yield the weekly market to them, perhaps by becoming a monthly magazine, even distributing within the “Uxbridge Standard.” We thought about it seriously but said no, thank you.
So this week, you will receive three weekly newspapers. Two of them are owned by Toronto interests, and managed from elsewhere in Durham Region. Those two newspapers have a considerable amount of material in them with little relevance to this community.
The third newspaper is the Uxbridge Cosmos, which continues to be owned by more than 30 members of the Uxbridge community, and operated from an office on Toronto Street. Its editorial content is exclusively about Uxbridge and Uxbridge people, its advertisers are 95 per cent from this and immediately surrounding communities.
We hope you continue to patronize them, and to urge them to continue to shop locally as you do, by supporting Uxbridge's only true community newspaper. We hope you continue to enjoy our more than 30 local writers, photographers and cartoonists, and will do so for years to come.
And we continue to welcome your feedback on everything you see and read within these pages.
