Helwig looks back at 15 years of SooToday. And 150 years of Canada

As the year wound down, we asked our staff to recall their most memorable stories of 2017.

The following selections are from David Helwig, who launched SooToday/Village Media's community news operations in 2002:

When I came to Sault Ste. Marie to start what's now referred to as a hyper-local news site, I secretly suspected it would be a short-term gig.

The dot.com bubble had just burst.

Big web players including Pets.com were dropping like fleas.

Investors were losing billions.

If anyone in the Sault was still putting cash into websites, I figured maybe the news just hadn't reached Northern Ontario yet.

I was so wrong!

SooToday is still very much alive and 2017 was our 15th anniversary as a provider of community news.

From humble beginnings, we're now spreading like giant hogweed, with our Sault-based parent company Village Media Inc. operating news sites in Guelph, Barrie, North Bay, Timmins, Elliot Lake and, of course, Sault Ste, Marie, as well as digital partnerships with leading publishers in Halifax, Thunder Bay, Sudbury and Manitoulin Island.

2017 was a banner year for the company, with some of the brightest minds in the communications sector beating a path to our door at 642 Queen Street East. 

Google ogles our corporate culture

In June, New York City-based anthropologist Thomas Maschio spent a week embedded in the SooToday newsroom.

Dr. Maschio has expertise on everything from the relationship between pets and their owners, American philosophy of money and credit cards, super foods, the cultural meanings of washing machines and home entertainment systems, design of retail spaces, to tribal religious ceremonies in Papua New Guinea.

His clients have included such household brands as Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, Novartis, Merck, Gerber, Ortho McNeil, Bic, Borders Books, Foot Locker, Porsche, General Motors, Compaq, Amtrak, AC Delco, Phillips, Bissell, Dell, Sam¹s Club, Macy¹s, Cossette Advertising and Chiat\Day NY.

Maschio helped global consumer-goods giant Unilever increase sales of Lipton tea by 20 per cent and participated in the revitalization of Nestlé's Hot Pockets brand.

He was sent to Sault Ste. Marie by the U.S. head office of Google LLC to study our newsroom's corporate culture as part of a series of research projects on the culture of digital space and the meanings of mobile devices.

Spanish media, Harvard University

In November, two representatives of Prensa Ibérica, one of Spain's largest regional media companies, came to Canada specifically to check out what's been happening at SooToday and Village Media.

In December, Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab interviewed Jeff Elgie, Village Media's chief executive officer, for an article that proclaimed: "its custom-built platform and infrastructure are so streamlined that Village Media can launch a new site within four hours, and its journalists (and some republished press releases) provide content that’s 97 percent local news."

"Village Media, relying on local advertisers, seems to have found a scalable (and profitable) local news model," the article concluded.

Personally, I always viewed SooToday as an experiment in alternative journalism.

For me, one disturbing recent development has been the emergence of a new generation of news readers who've had access to SooToday all their adult life.

Increasingly, I hear them referring to SooToday as "traditional" or "mainstream" media.

Gaaahh! Please don't ever say that in my presence!

Meanwhile, watch for more developments from Village Media in 2018..

Next Monday, Jan. 8, we'll launch a new addition to our family of Ontario community news websites.

Canada 150 at Algoma University

In 2017, I found myself personally torn over Canada's 150th birthday celebrations.

I vividly remember Canada's Centennial in 1967.

I have fond memories of visiting Expo 67 in Montreal as a teenager with my father and recall many Centennial infrastructure projects being built across the country.

Last year,  an estimated 31 million people participated in Canada 150 events, including more than six million youth.

Twitter Canada's 2017 Year in Review reported that the most-mentioned news story of the year was the Canada 150 celebrations, with more than 1.8 million uses of the #Canada150 hashtag.

At Algoma University, however, enthusiasm was more subdued.

I was on campus for a June 22 meeting of the school's board of governors when I got word that the board of Algoma University Students' Union (AUSU) had just voted unanimously against endorsing or sanctioning any Canada 150-related events on campus or elsewhere in the city.

"We do not want this on our campus," AUSU president Bushra Asghar told me.

"We refuse to celebrate nationalistic attitudes in a space and location that has caused such an immense degree of violence for the indigenous peoples of our communities," Asghar said.

SooToday's coverage of this story prompted further coverage by out-of-town news outlets with strong opinions expressed on social media platforms.

One opinion piece published by the Sault Star described the students' decision as being "born of hateful and muddy thinking."

However, as Asghar pointed out, Algoma U is different from other postsecondary institutions because of its past as a residential school, with a formal mission to "cultivate cross-cultural learning between aboriginal communities and other communities."

Watch for lots of news from the university in 2018.

With a new president, board chair and academic dean, change can be expected. 

Some other 2017 stories that I worked on and that linger in my thoughts:

• Essar Steel's slow climb out of insolvency, The steel mill remains under protection from its creditors but is increasingly acting like a going concern
• the splash pad controversy
• Shaun Rootenberg faces criminal charges
• big expectations from cruise ships
• a new solar farm proposed
• Sunday-night bus service likely to be restored
• Civic Centre to get a facelift
• new Ward 6 councillor drawn from fishbowl
• Councillor Shoemaker's Amazon bid
• construction starts on national chiefs library
• we might be getting an ice-skating trail
• Stephan Bourgond retires at age 31
• Batchewana chief disappointed by decision in logging case
• how to spot fake science news