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OUT ON A LIMB: Another year over, a new one’s just begun

Having survived Y2K and previous predictions of oblivion, forgive me if I continue to make plans for 2013

And so, this is New Year’s (to paraphrase John Lennon) and what have we done? Another year over, a new one’s just begun.

I hope you, your family and friends all had a Merry Christmas. Or a Happy Holiday, if that’s how you want to say it.

The Christmas season once again passes with an orgy of consumption, spending, travelling, imbibing, exulting, for many – singing, playing and otherwise enjoying yourselves. It’s also a period of community largesse as we donate to many local charitable causes. The “grip and grin” photo dominated the local papers as local businesses and organizations donate to the various local causes.

But that’s over with for now as we look ahead to 2012. An ominous year, of course, if you believe in the Mayan prophesies. Having survived Y2K and previous predictions of oblivion, forgive me if I continue to make plans for 2013 and beyond.

For me personally, this year will be one of getting in shape, beginning that writing project and being more dedicated to practising my music. I will. Definitely this time. For sure.

Career-wise, I expect I’ll still be sitting in this chair continuing to pump out the news on these pages. The new part of my job, of course, is the increasing importance “social media” will play in my duties. I do expect that there will eventually be a generational change that will diminish the role newsprint plays as a medium for information. It isn’t going to happen any time soon but given how popular the Internet and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook play in the lives of younger people (and increasingly, us older people too), it will happen.

I don’t have a major problem with that. I like the Internet as a medium. It’s immediate, multi-format and interactive. I can write stories, take pictures and produce videos all with the intent of informing the community about what’s going on.

But newspapers will still be around for a while. People still want that package of news and advertising dropped onto their doorstep. And there’s nobody else who does it as extensively or puts as many resources into it as your community paper.

And what will we be writing about in the coming year? If you said hospitals, you’d be right. The non-story that dominated the municipal election campaign will get hotter in 2012. So will plans for the Elk Falls pulp mill site. It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out. Will it be a lucrative and innovative enterprise that will transform Campbell River or will it wallow in bickering and uselessness like the former five-acre site the city owns on the Campbell River waterfront? If that can’t be made use of, how could a huge industrial site, you may ask? Because it’s owned by a private corporation who have to get something out of it, that’s how.

Meanwhile, the usual suspects of crime, courts, accidents, developments, municipal spending and the like will make their way onto our pages – and websites.