About the Sarnia Journal
A good local newspaper helps you understand what is happening where you live, introduces you to your neighbours and asks questions you might struggle to get answered on your own.
The Sarnia Journal is an independent local publication serving Sarnia–Lambton. Its newsroom works as an editorial collective, with the people doing the work shaping its coverage and direction together.
We report on public decisions, neighbourhoods, businesses, arts and everyday life across Sarnia–Lambton. We follow how public money is spent, what happens to promised services and how decisions affect the people living with them. We also introduce readers to the people making things, helping others and bringing us together.
Some stories uncover a problem. Others help you find a concert, understand a council decision or discover someone doing something remarkable down the street. Both belong here.
We want our reporting to help people understand the place they share, hold power accountable and see more possibilities for its future.
Discover the people and changes that shaped the publication in our history.
The Sarnia Journal is made by people who report, write, photograph, edit, organise and keep the publication running. Residents contribute stories, knowledge, photographs, letters and tips that make the coverage stronger.
You can find writers’ contributions through their linked bylines, and meet our columnists on the Columns page.
Much of what makes a place worth living in happens through people’s everyday efforts: rehearsing a play, coaching a team, opening a shop, organising a meal or helping a neighbour.
Those efforts deserve attention. Coverage can bring people through a door, introduce future collaborators and give someone an idea for their own neighbourhood.
Paying attention also means returning to a story. An announcement is a beginning. We want to know whether the project opened, the service arrived or the people involved saw the change they were promised.
Public decisions should be understandable to the people affected by them.
When an institution asks for more money, we ask what it will fund and how the need was established. When a company makes an environmental claim, we examine the evidence. When a housing or service decision changes someone’s life, we seek out the people living with its consequences.
We read records, ask follow-up questions and explain how decisions were made. We look at who benefits, who carries the costs and what alternatives were considered.
The same scrutiny applies to people and organisations we know, work with or receive support from. Those relationships do not remove our responsibility to ask questions.
A tenant can explain what happens inside a building. A worker can describe conditions on the job. Someone trying to get help can show where a service works and where people fall through.
Their knowledge belongs in the story alongside the accounts of people making decisions.
We seek those perspectives directly. We also welcome letters, columns and other contributions that let residents speak in their own voices. You do not need a public title, professional writing experience or a communications department to have something worth sharing.
Readers should be able to understand where our information comes from and what remains uncertain.
We check facts, identify sources wherever possible and distinguish reporting from opinion and paid promotion. We give people a fair opportunity to respond to material criticism. When we make a mistake, we correct it openly.
We welcome questions about our coverage, including whose experience we missed or what we should examine further. Trust depends on how we respond as well as what we publish.
The editorial collective is responsible for what the Journal publishes: choosing stories, checking information, editing, responding to concerns and correcting mistakes.
Sarnia Media Group Inc., owned by Nathan Colquhoun, provides business and technical support. That support is separate from the collective’s editorial decisions. Readers can help sustain the publication through our Support page.
We are developing clearer ways for people to join the work and take part in decisions. Contributing a story, making a donation or buying an advertisement does not automatically confer ownership or a place in the collective.
Our aim is a publication that can endure as the people carrying the work change, with its independence and purpose intact.
The next story may begin with something you noticed, a question you have been asking or an experience you think others should understand.
Tell us what is happening in your neighbourhood. Share a document, suggest someone we should speak with or let us know about an event. Write a letter or ask about contributing your skills.
You can also help sustain the work through financial support, advertising and introducing other people to the Sarnia Journal.
Reporting on Sarnia–Lambton takes time: reading public documents, asking questions and following up. Your contribution helps the Sarnia Journal keep doing that work and sharing it freely.
Support the Sarnia Journal