What we got right and wrong in 2024

Despite touting itself as an “award-winning” journalism organization, the Fraser Valley Current botched a major pre-election preview, scrambled to meet human resource targets, and failed to meet all its goals in 2024.

That’s the eye-catching lede* we could write for today’s self-review of The Current’s past year. (So we did.) But that doesn’t make it fair. Because, as we look back at 2024, it turns out the last year was pretty darn good for our little news outlet.

The end of a year is a good time to look back at one’s own successes—and failures. So that’s what we’re doing today. Let’s take a look at what The Current got right and wrong in 2024.

*For the spelling cops out there, “lede” is the accepted journalist-spelling for the first line or two of an article.

Successes

We’ll start with the good stuff.

Every year a news outlet can struggle through to December is a mark of success. And we’re thankful to have had the support we needed to make it there this year.

In 2023, we introduced our membership program, and saw more than 1,000 people sign up and support our publication. Without them, our finances would be in dire shape. As we entered our second year of memberships, the question was whether we could retain those critical Insiders.

And we have, somehow. Our membership list has been remarkably steady throughout 2024, with the open rate for our weekend members-only newsletter suggesting that Insiders feel that they are getting their journalistic-money’s worth. (More than 80% of members open the email each weekend). Our challenge has been growing our membership list, and that will be a renewed focus in 2025. That may mean increasing the rate of pleas for people to become members, and bolstering other offerings for Insiders to increase the allure. It will also hopefully mean more stories that convince free subscribers of the value of local journalism.

We launched our membership program with the warning that, without community support, we wouldn’t be able to continue to operate. The danger is that, as each year goes by with us still reporting, the sense of urgency will diminish. But our existence is still tenuous and, unfortunately, we need to keep reminding people of that fact.

Without our members, there would be no Current. Our continued existence is a success that we don’t take for granted and which we owe to those who support journalism with their money.

Awards

The Current took home some hardware this year.

The Current won an NNA—albeit for a story we wrote in 2023. A year after being named a finalist only to lose, we became (as far as we know) the first Fraser Valley news organization to win a National Newspaper Award. We won for our 2023 coverage of Lytton’s rebuilding challenges, which you can read here. As far as we know, our NNA is the first won by a local Fraser Valley newspaper. It was also gratifying to win a year after being named a finalist—but not a winner—for our explanatory coverage of the Nooksack River’s flooding challenges.

But, we also won a Jack Webster Award for something we actually wrote in 2024. (The NNAs are based on work in a calendar year, while the Websters have an awkward June-to-May submission window.) Our coverage of Black Press’s economic troubles was recognized as the best business coverage in the province last year, and you can read that story here.

Transitions and funding

Every outlet is only as good as its journalists, and we were able to increase our staff, despite financial precarity.

Grace Kennedy returned following her parental leave, and Grace Giesbrecht, who had capably filled in for Kennedy, departed to travel in Europe.

In the fall, we received news that we would get funding through the Local Journalism Initiative for more reporting on rural and Indigenous issues. As a result, we were able to bring back both Giesbrecht and ex-FVC intern Josh Kozelj on part-time contracts to bolster our reporting. The funding for those contracts runs out in the spring, but we hope to be able to renew them.

Both Kozelj and Giesbrecht have produced excellent work since returning to the Current through the Local Journalism Initiative. Kozelj’s story on a rural Mission-area monastery’s denied ALC application and Grace’s profile of the Hope Mountain Centre were particularly well-read.

Provincial Election

Every election is a trial-and-error process. The 2024 provincial election was no exception.

This year, we tried to focus on a handful of specific issues, while delivering basic-but-vital candidate information to readers. Elections for us are always a challenge given the sprawling nature of our coverage area. This one was no exception, with 10 different ridings to monitor and explore. Some of our coverage and questionnaires worked better than others, but we saw our readership grow significantly during the campaign, suggesting we were making a positive impact on delivering information to people looking to learn more about their local candidates.

Our election night coverage was another form of experiment, with Insiders getting to enjoy a video chat with Tyler as the polls closed and Grace rapidly updating our charts as results came in. Both of those things had hiccups in the beginning, but we were able to smooth out the challenges—which bodes well for the federal election coming up in 2025.

Impactful stories

We think that every story we produce is important. But a variety of stories stood apart from the rest when it came to the reader—and, sometimes, political—feedback they generated.

The single story with the greatest impact may have been our article on Lexis de Meyer, the Abbotsford student whose innocuous school presentation on disability challenges in her school was censored by her principal. The story sparked several articles in other publications, and the coverage and Lexis’s eloquence and bravery eventually led to a wide-ranging apology from the Abbotsford School District. Read the story.

Our coverage of Black Press’s creditor protection process was intended to fill a gap in coverage about a company that provides critical journalism to BC’s small and mid-sized communities. We also wanted to help our ex-colleagues at Black Press’ papers figure out what the heck was going on with their employer. We were gratified to hear both from community members who rely on their paper and employees who found answers they weren’t getting from their own company. Read the first story here.

In June, we published a mammoth two-part series about the challenges that would accompany the restoration of Sumas Lake. With commentary about the lake frequently discounting the ramifications of that potential change, we wanted to fully catalogue the benefits, opportunities, and costs that restoring the lake would bring. The story may have been too long, but that was partly the point—any real discussion on bringing back Sumas Lake requires acknowledging the huge potential ramifications of such a move. Read the story here.

In September, we also wrote about a suggestion from BC’s former Inspector of Dikes that local officials should consider an alternative to their preferred concept for flood protection on Sumas Prairie. Although Neil Peters’ concept hasn’t yet been closely studied, it has the potential to save Canadian taxpayers billions. But it’s unclear if anything will come of it. Read the story here.

This year we went all-in on train coverage. Our very train-y year started with a series of stories based on our readers’ questions about rail in the valley. Those mailbag stories were some of the most-read pieces we published all year, and the response underscored the centrality of trains to life across much of our region. This fall, Grace published an in-depth, two-part investigation into train fatalities in the Fraser Valley. The story also considered what train companies and governments can do to improve safety along the rails that run through our communities. We heard from many readers who had themselves been impacted by train-associated deaths in the region. Read the stories here: Local | National.

We continue to closely watch health care issues in our region. This year, we broke the news that Fraser Health’s appointed board members had given themselves a huge raise without public discussion. The story prompted reporters to ask Premier David Eby about the matter. Eby said his government would review the pay. Read the story here. We’ll continue to monitor and investigate the issue.

In May we published an interview with Bowinn Ma, BC’s minister of emergency management and climate readiness at the time, about the third anniversary of the Lytton fire and her government’s response. Ma disclosed that she briefly considered disbanding the Village of Lytton to try to speed rebuilding. That came as news to the Mayor of Lytton (whose election in 2022 was one reason Ma said she decided against such a move). Read our story here.

This year, we published a series of reader-inspired stories about great teachers in our region. They included a profile of legendary Abbotsford shop teacher Bill Henderson. Read our story on 25 teachers who left a mark on FVC readers here and here. Read that story here.

Finally, our spring profile of A’aliya Warbus gave readers an early look at a different kind of Conservative candidate and someone who now, as her party’s house leader, may help shape the future of politics in BC. Read that here.

Failures

Like we said, we had a good year. But every organization has flaws, and The Current is no exception and deserves some self-accountability and consideration. So without further ado, here’s where we failed in 2024.

Our early election preview

Near the start of 2024, we published three separate stories previewing the election to come. Given how things turned out, the stories were probably a waste of everyone’s time. (Though one reason we published three stories was because they were fairly quick to write and helped us find the time for longer stories that took more time to produce. One of those stories was a year-in-the making look at how technology is changing how male dairy calves are handled. You can read that here.)

The stories had plenty of caveats that our predictions could prove moot if there was a merger between the BC Conservatives and BC United. But we still clearly misjudged the likelihood of co-operation. If we had thought it likely or inevitable, we probably would have held off on publishing the stories in the first place.

As election day arrived, we also heard from readers still confused about some of the very basic facts of the provincial election—including just who was the leader of the NDP. As we look to the federal election, we’ll be looking to put together a very basic primer on the differences between a federal and provincial election, and exactly who is in charge of what. (If you have any questions—no matter how dumb—we’d love to hear them to help inform that Election 101 story.)

Inevitably, these weren’t the only stories that missed something, or didn’t completely work. Journalism is always an imperfect exercise. Sometimes you can only learn how to avoid a mistake by making it in the first place. Other mistakes are avoidable and to be regretted, but serve as a reminder of the need to be vigilant and constantly pursuing more facts and insight.

First Nation coverage

There are plenty of trickle-down effects of running flat-out all the time, as The Current is wont to do. But one of them is that some of the things that take deliberate effort can suffer.

We want to be doing more stories about First Nations, both as communities and local governments. Many are playing an increasingly foundational role in the evolution and development of our region, both culturally and economically. But covering those issues, and finding the resources to do so, takes a lot of time. They require building in-person relationships and making regular contact with people in ways that we haven’t yet achieved. To do this, we need to pull back in some other areas. It’s complicated, but something we haven’t yet achieved, which, given our goals, keeps this in the “failure” category.

Inside the newsroom

This is very inside baseball, but our capacity as a journalistic organization has been stressed in the latter part of 2024 because we didn’t plan our vacation time properly at the start of the year. With our company wanting us to take all the vacation time we are owed, we’ve been shorthanded on occasion in November and December. That manifests itself in both story choice and in typos that would have been caught by more eyes on each newsletter. This is something

Speaking of newsroom management, we can and should be sending out more freedom of information requests. Doing so requires a level of organization and planning that has been a bit lacking the last year. That requires us to build more flexibility into our day-to-day schedules, so we can spend time doing things that don’t result in a story the following day.

More stories based on freedom of information requests aren’t just valuable on their own. They also serve as a proxy for how we are functioning as an organization that values investigative journalism. Luckily we’ve smoothed our expense-filing process that has previously deterred my paperwork-hating self from filing FOIs now that doing so usually costs money. We’ll need to do a better job of managing in the future.

On the technical side, our website looks OK, but is not as well organized as it could be. It’s harder to find old stories than we would like, and some of the interfaces are clunkier than we would hope. We can do a better job of connecting our readers to information—both in the present and in the past—that exists but which they may miss, and we hope to find ways to improve that in the new year.

The future

That’s enough self-flagellation and accountability.

In general, we continue to do a pretty good job, and as 2024 closes, I again want to thank all our readers for making this all possible. Local journalism can survive politicians that don’t think they need to talk to reporters; it can even survive the rise of social media companies that siphon away our attention and advertisers. But it can’t survive without people just like you. In the coming years, I think we have the opportunity to grow and further prove our worth to more of our community and more readers who haven’t encountered us yet. That’s our challenge, but it’s also our chance to build something lasting for the future. Thanks for taking this journey with us.