The decision to create Cowichan Post, a new news voice in the Cowichan Valley, has turned into an experiment in combining a digital publishing platform with a traditional hands-on newspaper.
The first edition of Cowichan Post was widely welcomed as a fresh approach to providing news to Valley readers, many of whom wrote us to say they read it cover-to-cover and found it interesting and informative.
Advertisers, on the other hand, have not been as enthusiastic and have been slow at putting much of their advertising dollars into support of the Cowichan Post.
That’s their decision and we respect that, but this reaction makes it hard for a grassroots volunteer non-profit news co-operative to sustain the cost of printing and distribution into almost 22,500 homes and businesses via Canada Post.
We have decided to move forward combining both a monthly digital edition that will be laid out in traditional newspaper format, and a hard paper copy published periodically and distributed via Canada Post when there is sufficient advertising support to do so.
Very soon we will be offering advertising opportunities in the digital edition, with page locations being offered on a first-come-first-served basis. The costs for advertising in the digital edition will be modest compared to the print edition and will be able to be ordered and paid for online.
We will also be launching a crowd funding opportunity in the very near future to see if the community is interested in supporting our alternate news voice for Cowichan.
There is a buttom on this page that will enable readers to actively request being put on the list to receive the link to the latest digital edition of the Cowichan Post.