In 2002, we launched our Northernlife.ca news website in an effort to expand our reach and improve our deliverability of local news and information to the Sudbury region. In 2016, we invested in a brand-new software with Village Media Inc. of Sault Ste. Marie and launched Sudbury.com as a separate, powerful Sudbury digital news source.
Sudbury.com has become one of the most successful digital news sites in the country. We have won awards as the best local news website in the province three times and nationally once. We have also won 12 awards for news reporting, editorial writing and video storytelling over the last four years.
Our digital success is gratifying and reaffirms that our delivery of online news is valued by our community. It does not lessen our sadness in announcing the last printed issue of Northern Life will be March 26th, 2020.
We have published this newspaper since the fall of 1973. It has been an extraordinary run and we have loved every minute of it. For 47 years we have reported the news, celebrated our people, expressed our opinions and invited the people of Sudbury to do the same. It has been a joy.
Northern Life has employed tens of thousands of carrier boys and girls over the years. When we travel the country, we invariably run into people from Sudbury who are former carriers who have great memories of walking the streets of Sudbury through rain or sleet or snow to deliver our weekly newspaper. Some, of course, would have preferred something a little less bulky.
We have employed some of the most creative and hard-working writers, designers, salespeople, marketers and circulation pros in the country. We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to our employees who have been our story for all these years. Although our culture and priorities have evolved over the years, our passion for this place has never wavered. Every era has featured a new iteration of our mantra: community, news, and opinion. Our reporting will not be changing. The only difference is that you will get it all at Sudbury.com.
We are pleased to announce Sudbury.com has been bought by our technology partners at Village Media in Sault Ste. Marie. Four years ago, we invested with Village Media to build one of the best digital news infrastructures in the world. That promise has been kept.
Jeff Elgie, the President of Village Media, is a lifelong entrepreneur and resident of Northern Ontario. He is the winner of two Northern Ontario Business Awards and has built Village Media into an international company with more than 33 digital news sites across the country and around the world either wholly-owned or licensees. In selling to Jeff, we maintain the crucial competitive advantage of a Northern Ontario perspective and ownership for our business. In Northern Ontario, Village Media operates news websites in Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins, Elliot Lake, North Bay, Thunder Bay (licensee) and now, Sudbury. It is the most powerful local digital news network in Canada and it all started just down the road. We have loved growing with them.
Mark Gentili and his Sudbury.com/Northern Life editorial team remain in place at Sudbury.com, along with our digital business manager Melanie Junge and her team of advertising professionals.
Abbas Homayed, our publisher and Vice President of Laurentian Publishing Limited, joins Village Media as Vice President of Business Development with continuing responsibility for the Sudbury region.
Michael Atkins, the President of the Laurentian Media Group will remain a member of Village Media’s board.
Today, we announce our transformation into a powerful digital news site (Sudbury.com) and we are having a wake for our proud print history. It is 2020.
Thank you for welcoming us into your home for nearly half a century. We look forward to continuing to bring you our award-winning journalism, our second to none advertising creativity and reach and some of the best live events in Northern Ontario.
These are volatile times. This community needs Sudbury.com to provide breaking news, honest journalism and true facts about what is going on and what you can expect next.
You can count on Village Media to keep our award-winning traditions alive and to improve on them as part of Northern Ontario's most important digital network.
Thank you for your extraordinary support. We cherish it and will strive to continue to earn it.
