As the 59th production year at The Brock Press wraps up, I recount the many victories for our newspaper this academic year.
In the summer of 2023, The Brock Press Board of Directors voted in favour of a special resolution to change the organization’s structure to a worker cooperative, where one-member one-vote was extended to the entire staff. This was a huge shift from what was essentially a managerial patronage system going back to our company’s incorporation in 2009.
The shift to a co-op meant a change from a hierarchical workplace to one where hierarchy is balanced out with accountability and where the majority’s will is the strongest force in the company. The now mandatory worker-representative majority bloc on our board means that management is outgunned on votes and must consider the entire working staff in every decision they make.
Early into the new year, YouTube phenom and former Yale Professor of Economics, Richard D. Wolff, spoke with us to impart his vast knowledge on worker cooperatives as well as to give his congratulations for the bold shift we made towards workplace democracy.
In early January, The Brock Press had its first work-wide election of directors, where the four board seats making up the worker-rep. majority bloc were filled by four candidates who have served the company with all their being since, and who will take a leading role in hiring next year’s staff.
Though we in management received different forms of pushback to becoming a workplace democracy this year from the powers that be, our commitment to principles of fairness and equality allowed us to persevere and protect what we spent nearly a year building.
Although, our successes this year didn’t stop at internal changes.
In late February of this year, The Brock Press launched a brand-new website with a far more professional design, faster loading times and a video section.
With the new site, The Brock Press is giving CBC and The New York Times a run for their money.
The new site was entirely setup and designed by a special committee consisting of two Brock Press employees, demonstrating that another perk of democratizing our workplace is that far less work — and therefore student money — is outsourced to non-student companies with exorbitant costs reflecting the need to make a profit.
The new site also features advertisements for local and student businesses at no cost; just another way The Brock Press continues to support the St. Catharines and Brock communities beyond our reporting.
Additionally, The Brock Press’ media-coordinator team turned up our presence on campus several notches this year, with editor-highlight booths and other activities, some interactive and some with prizes, held on campus.
In terms of story highlights for the year, it’s hard to pick after a year of such high-quality coverage.
However, some standouts from my perspective include: our exposé of the Chabad at Brock controversy on campus; our forays into gaming journalism with The Game Boys series; the revival of an April Fools edition of the paper called The Brock Crass; our coverage of UFC 297 held in Toronto which some of our writers and photographers got to attend as UFC-recognized media personnel; and an extraordinarily well-written and in-depth feature by Andrew Hawlitzky on the Province’s stimulus and tuition freeze of post-secondary institutions considered alongside Brock’s debt crisis.
All in all, serving as editor-in-chief for such a prolific and transformative year at The Brock Press has made this the most meaningful year of my life. This was only made possible by the 14 staff members who brought the best out of myself and the paper as a whole for the last 12 months.
To my staff, truly thank you.
And to our readers, thank you and stay tuned.