There’s a part of the Courier that I haven’t yet addressed. As you read through the News, Arts, and Opinions sections of the Courier (or the Caboose and Sports sections if you read the paper in reverse) you’ll come to the most consistent area of the paper: the columns. For the past five years, this section of the paper has made some vast improvements, and this year we have one of the strongest column sections this paper has ever published. We try to cover as wide a range of column topics as we can, and this year we’re going from politics to sex, ergonomics to marijuana, and so on.
Shining among these columns is the work by long-term columnist JJ Brewis. This week’s column is probably one of the best he’s written for us. Brewis writes for us weekly on the many gauche dates he has encountered. Last semester, he focused on the awkwardness of the dates, and this semester he has focused on a more intimate side of gay dating. With each column, Brewis has managed to collect a following of readers. His fans write us in or comment online and engage with Brewis. Fans even suggested we set up a dating contest between our readers and JJ. We obliged and set up a contest for him and decided that we should open up the contest to our sex columnist as well, Sarah Vitet. Potential date candidates have been applying and it looks like we’ll have interesting updates to provide readers on how the dates work out.
Our other columnists are newer, but with that, they bring an appropriate freshness. With every issue, like Brewis, they too are accumulating fans. Their topics are explored more in depth and the boundaries are pushed further. Take, for example, Natalie Corbo. Her initial columns moved from the urban landscape but soon she’ll dig deeper as she moves into the tunnels burrowed below our public space. The same can easily be said about our other fresh columnists.
So keep an eye out for the progression, pay a bit more attention to our dear columnists, and join the discussion online. Why? Because it’s fun to live vicariously through journalists willing to experiment and explore Vancouver’s city and society... Yeah, I said it.
//Alamir Novin, editor-in-chief
|
