State of affairs with the Bulletin
Readers may be interested to know about the Bulletin’s state of affairs during this COVID-19 crisis. The 24-page newspaper the Bulletin published April 15 is the result of team-work under pressure. The Bulletin family is composed of the local business community, as well as the employees and professional consultants that do the newspaper production. The business community of Aylmer is stunned at the moment. Like anyone – the community organizations, families, civil servants – watching the effect of a pandemic stuns business owners too.
As a result, the Bulletin team is doing everything it can to provide a newspaper that is both helpful and informative. Advertisers in the paper are there because they really want readers to take their message to heart. Advertisers are the reason why this edition is at all possible.
Newspaper closers are on the horizon, temporary shut-downs of entire local newspapers are now happening. The West Island of Montreal lost a weekly, so did one around Hudson. Another in the Outaouais is on temporary shut-down as well. The Bulletin, the Pontiac Journal and the West Quebec Post are certain to publish for the foreseeable future, rest assured. Knowing that these editions are special editions - in the Special Edition kind of way - readers are keeping them. They are being set aside, these COVID-19 editions of weekly newspapers, right across Quebec. Readers keep them because they recognize what unusual times are being lived. The checkpoints between regions are surely to be a vivid marker, along with facemasks, gloves and the transition of newspapers.
Among the remarkable results of this crisis is a governmental return to newspaper advertising. The shift is monumental. Please take a good look at the information campaigns the Quebec government has been running in the Bulletin. There is so much useful information, in both languages. For a level of government that was the first to shelve newspapers, this support has informed the public about how to handle COVID-19; and ensured newspapers publish throughout the crisis.
Despite a few newspaper shut-downs, the financial grace period provided by both the federal financial aid packages and the provincial support, many more newspapers will manage to publish. Newspapers like this edition of the Bulletin, even if it is running with a reduced team because of the COVID-19 crisis, are essential services.
Everyone is gearing up for Aylmer’s renewal when the economic crisis passes. Until then, watch for the next edition of the Bulletin in the PubliSac or on the website. There is now a PDF version of the entire newspaper online, along with an archive of articles.
From the Bulletin family to your family, enjoy this newspaper and each other as we shelter from the COVID storm.
