Saying goodbye: Publisher leaving with memories and a message

By Medicine Hat News Opinion on April 19, 2021.

Twenty-one years ago, I began a new adventure as a journalist ready to take on the world around me. My first day I entered through the front doors of the Medicine Hat News and today I will walk out the back doors one last time, bringing to a close an amazing career.

I have spent these last few weeks since making the decision to move on from Publisher on a road-trip down memory lane. What an adventure it has been. So many stories and people over the years, so many moments in history captured in black ink below the headlines.

I have asked myself what I will miss the most and honestly, it will be you, each and every reader of this newspaper. You see, each time you picked up an edition, I was able to do what I had always dreamed of doing since I was a little girl, that is to tell the stories that needed telling.

So to you the reader, thank you for helping me live my dream.

The Medicine Hat News is more than just a newspaper. Inside that brick building is a family of professionals that come to work each morning, tackle the to-do lists, sell the advertising, write the stories to create pages that will become the news of today and the history of tomorrow.

The talent and creativity within those walls is nothing short of amazing.

Please continue to support local journalism. Try for a moment to imagine a community without a local newspaper. The newspaper is here to provide you with information, to hold individuals and governments accountable, to provide a forum of discourse and to keep the democratic process alive. From its humble beginnings on North Railway Street to today, the Medicine Hat News has been an integral member of this city since 1885. Journalism exists for you, the reader.

This company took a chance on me many years ago, well before the ink was dry on my degree papers. I began as an entertainment and lifestyles reporter and I now sign off two decades later as publisher. I have accomplished many things in my years here but becoming the first female publisher in the News’s 136-year history, is and will always be an honour.

If there is anything this past year has instilled in me is this life can not be taken for granted. There is so much possibility out there if you are open to the idea of it and ready to hitch a ride on a new adventure.

Where this road leads is anyone’s guess, but I am excited to see what is around that corner.

Kerri Sandford was a reporter, City Editor, Managing Editor, Advertising Manager and Publisher at the Medicine Hat News. She can be reached at @K_E_Sandford

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