Orillia Matters - Big Time!

I've been a little remiss (well, okay a lot) lately. A bad (personal) summer led to spending a lot more time than usual indoors, so getting out and about to see what's been going on around Orillia wasn't something I had the energy or even interest to do.

As for right now ... I'm in Florida, so seeing updates and/or changes to the city isn't going to happen over the winter either.

A while back I wrote a complaint about TorStar dumping our beloved newspaper off the face the of the earth, and wondered where we were going to get local news.

Not to my surprise, some of the (ex? old?) Packet staff have stepped up to the plate and so far, hitting home runs, left, right and center. They've come up with an online format for reporting Orillia news, and if you read the Packet, you'll recognize some (if not all) of the names associated with the effort. While online isn't my favourite news format, it is local news and information, and I'm am completely thankful to have this at my fingertips, even while I'm in Florida.
This morning I headed on over to OrilliaMatters.com to sign up to offer monthly support. They deserve it, and to keep things running, they need it. News efforts don't come free. The problem is, one needs to support them through Patreon.

Signing up, I offered up my Facebook profile, which frankly I don't share with most sites, so I'm going back to delete it. But then it also asked for my email address. If I had known it would still require that, I wouldn't have bothered signing up with Facebook.

Then when it came time to put in a payment method ... um, why are they asking me to support my local Orillia news site with a payment in US funds? Seriously people ... NO.  I disabled the Patreon account after realizing I wasn't going to make payments that way.

What I'd like to see instead is an online subscription option (okay, personally, I'd prefer a printed newspaper, but ...) instead of Patreon, hands down. In Canadian funds of course. Why would I want to pay a US company to support my local newspaper? I found that more confusing than anything else.

I wrote directly to OrilliaMatters through their facebook page, asking for other ways to financially donate to the cause, so ... I'll let you know when I hear from them.

Stay warm Orillia!

EDIT: so, having only contacted OrilliaMatters this morning, I've already had a response from. They're already looking at a way for locals to offer more direct financial support. I'm excited to hear that and will do my best to be patient until they have something in place!