Current Publisher and Editor
The Revelstoke Current’s story about about our busy, busy November 8-29 weekend was the 7,015th story it has published since its first one appeared on July 1, 2009. Most of those have been written by me — 3,034 bear my byline — but hundreds of others like the news briefs or many, many stand-alone photos don’t.
Laura Stovel wrote 195 stories, Leslie Savage wrote 179 articles about food, John Devitt penned 121 columns and the mysterious Ms. Anne Throap has now contributed seven columns. We look forward to many more contributions from these writers and others, like newcomer Victoria Strange who is covering the arts scene, in the months and years to come. The Current has also published 382 obituaries about local people, most of them provided by Chrissie and Gary Sulz. Thanks for those, Chrissie and Gary! As well, The Current has been fortunate to receive stories and photos from students at all of our elementary schools. Supervised by dedicated educators like Allison Just at Arrow Heights, Eleanor Wilson at Begbie View and Ariel McDowell ay Columbia Park the boys and girls who act as The Current’s Student Reporter-Photographers have done a marvellous job telling the general population about the activities enjoyed by the kids enrolled in SD 19 schools.
And then there are the lovely photos that have graced our virtual pages — all 16,947 of them. That’s a mind-boggling number, isn’t it? Again most of those have been taken by me but I gratefully acknowledge the contributios of Jason Portras who has covered many community events for The Current this year. Leslie Savage, Rob Buchanan, Laura Stovel, Bruno Long and other individual amateur and professional photographers have contributed hundreds of photos over the years. Your visual takes on life in our little mountain town are unforgettable, people. Thank you!
The Current remains a free publication for all readers and I should note that everything ever published on the site can be accessed by any reader by using the search field on the right-hand side of the front age or by clicking The Archives button near the bottom of that are page. Then there are the short videos The Current has produced. Okay, they are not professional quality but I think they nonetheless capture some of Revelstoke’s spirit. Since 2009 I have made 312 videos that have been viewed 95,065 times. They cover just about everything from City Council and school board meetings (those are completely un-abridged recordings) to annual promotions of the Community Choir’s Christmas concerts, performances by local musicians, videos of people’s memories of growing up in Arrowhead and even a video of me publicly burning my BC Liberal Party membership to protest Premier Gordon Campbell’s decision to cut arts funding. All of those videos are stored on my YouTube channel. I should also thank RCTV/YourLink for broadcasting my videos of City Council, school board and many of my video interviews with MLA Norm Macdonald, former MP David Wilks and other notable individuals.
I’d, especially like to acknowledge and thank Shane McCallum of RevSoftware for designing and building The Current. Shane provides remarkable service and I thank him for his help and advice over the last six and a half years. The site he constructed remains Revelstoke’s most robust and easily navigated news site. According to Google Analytics it has since July 1, 2009, been visited by more than 721,571 people who have looked at 6,798,744 pages during 2,615,612 sessions. Just this past week The Current was visited directly by 6,370 readers while a complete separate population of 6,090 readers were reached via The Current’s Facebook page. Those are pretty damned good numbers if I say so myself.
Finally, I’d like to observe that we live in a remarkable community and I realize that I am very fortunate to ply my craft here. Thanks to all of my contributors — no, collaborators — and story, and photo subjects, and our thousands of weekly readers for being part of The Current’s chronicle of Revelstoke’s life.
Please click here to view The Revelstoke Current’s audience overview page from its Google Analytics account.
