The Beat Goes On at the Manitoulin Expositor
As the print product of the Manitoulin Expositor enters its 140th year, the family-owned publication attributes continued success to their loyal readership
Controversy has resurged over whether Manitoulin Island is indeed the largest freshwater island in the world thanks to a clue on a recently aired episode of Jeopardy, reported The Manitoulin Expositor in their February 27, 2019, edition of the paper.
Instead of bestowing the title to the 2700-square kilometer island in the middle of Lake Huron, the trivia show answer referred to the much larger Marajó Island in Brazil as the world’s largest freshwater island.
Alex Trebek, who hails from Sudbury, Ontario, should know better, said The Expositor publisher with a chuckle. It wasn’t the first time he had to defend the title.
McCutcheon explained that Marajó Island, which he confirmed on at least one occasion with an Amazon River conservation authority, is surrounded by both freshwater and saltwater. “It’s brackish!” he exclaimed.
McCutcheon has been publisher of The Expositor for nearly five decades. Some of those years he spent in other parts of the province — he left Little Current to teach a bridging program at Algonquin College for a short time — but the island and its stories always beckoned him back.
The Manitoulin Expositor will celebrate its 140th anniversary this spring. Hailed as Northern Ontario’s oldest newspaper still in publication, The Expositor is a family-run business with a long history of strong community reporting.
In 1982, the paper took home the Michener Award for their reporting on the island’s unusually high suicide rates, which were twice the national average at the time. The paper reported on the crisis for nearly a decade, and its persistent coverage helped connect island residents with a 24-hour suicide prevention helpline based in Sudbury.
Over the last few years, The Expositor website (manitoulin.ca) has consistently been recognized as one of the top three community news sites in the country, and the paper is often among the finalists for their layouts and editorials at the provincial level.
Last year, The Expositor’s coverage of two sexual assault cases, in which the victims waived their right to a publication ban, inspired another woman to share her story with the paper. The stories have been nominated for Best News Series as part of this year’s Ontario Community Newspaper Association’s (OCNA) Better Newspaper Awards.
“I hope it’s empowering for other abuse survivors, or those who are in abusive relationships, to seek help,” said Alicia McCutcheon of the series she worked on, both as a reporter and as the editor of The Expositor.
The younger McCutcheon works closely with her father, Rick, and mother Julia, who works in production and layout.
“I’ve always been a bit bossy, as is my nature, so sometimes that will come out,” said Alicia McCutcheon about working with her father. “But I always know that deep down he’s right, so I have to reel myself in [and remember that] he’s coming from a place of 50 years in the newspaper business.”
The McCutcheons made their first mark on Manitoulin in 1967, shortly after Rick McCutchon’s mother saw a job listing in one of the local Toronto-area papers and suggested to her then 21-year-old son, who was driving a meat delivery truck in Toronto at the time, apply for the job on the island.
Rick McCutcheon said he lied about being able to type and “talked himself into the job” at the Manitoulin West Recorder, then the Gore Bay Recorder.
Less than a year after he began reporting and editing The Recorder, he was offered a job at The Expositor.
McCutcheon bought The Expositor three years later with the help of an unsecured bank loan.
“I really bought the paper with the idea of turning it into something that would support a family — and it has,” said McCutcheon, adding “touch wood.”
He eventually bought The Recorder, too.
When asked what the secret is to piloting a newspaper into its 140th year, the island publisher was reverent.
“We’ve had just the best staff in every department,” he said. “We’ve been blessed with an enormous amount of energy…and an incredible amount of talent from the staff.”
But reporting in a community of 13,000 is not without its challenges.
Manitoulin Island is home to seven First Nations, and nearly half the island’s population is Indigenous.
Especially in “an age of reconciliation,” explained Alicia McCutcheon, it’s important that everyone’s stories are told.
“The island is shared equally and shown equally in the pages of the newspaper,” she said.
Unfortunately, there’s also a “racist element” on the island, she said.
She explained that the paper made the difficult choice to run “a very controversial letter to the editor” in May 2017, in which the letter-writer railed against the new, Woodland art inspired decals on the Chi-Cheemaun ferry.
The letter was viewed as inappropriate and offensive by some readers.
But the editor stands by her decision, saying, “Those [perspectives] are important to remind our readers that things aren’t always as rosy as they seem.”
While the demographics of Manitoulin Island makes the community — and some of its conflicts — unique, the paper still faces the same problem as most weeklies in Canada: reckoning with the decline of print in a digital age.
For a small community publication, The Expositor has been unusually forward-thinking, implementing a metered paywall not long after the New York Times did the same, which allows users to read a limited number of stories before they have to subscribe.
Like many Canadians, the McCutcheons see tremendous value in preserving independent publications in Canada and view digital as a path to maintaining independence on a larger scale.
To this end, the Expositor staff — especially production manager Dave Patterson — have been working with the OCNA to create a digital network composed entirely of independent news outlets.
An OCNA board member, Alicia McCutcheon said the network will help bolster independents’ “buying power.”
Alicia McCutcheon said that she and the staff are working hard to create a digital network with other independent outlets that would give all its members “buying power.”
“Independents need to embrace — and learn how to have — a web presence,” said Rick McCutcheon, echoing his daughter’s sentiments. “The more of us who will do that, the better it will be for us to all of us.”
Meanwhile, the fact that the Expositor’s print product has continued into its 140th year is something to celebrate, and the McCutcheons attribute its success to their loyal readership.
“We like to joke that we have a ‘captive audience’ because they’re stuck on the island,” said Alicia McCutcheon with a laugh. In a more serious tone, she emphasized that the paper has made it this far because it “never takes [its] readers or customers for granted.”
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Cara Sabatini is the NNC’s Research and Academic Co-ordinator.
This story was edited by: Brent Jolly, editor, Acts of Journalism. He can be reached at: bjolly@mediacouncil.ca
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