Rhino’s Ramblings - Wrapping Up

By Robert Thomas Opinion/Commentary

As readers of this column may know MJ Independent is in its final stages of wrapping up this publication.

The idea had been to wrap it all up by June 30th but as you can guess that isn’t about to happen.

There are more than a few stories which remain open plus we made some commitments to a few organizations to finish up this season’s coverage.

I have a bunch of FOIs in the queue and I’m hopefully going to be able to tie up all those loose ends.

But what it does mean is that after the Moose Jaw Hometown Fair this publication is no longer chasing stories and events we have not promised to cover or look into before the deadline.

The deadline is now over.

As far as events go we have promised to finish up the baseball teams we now cover and some events coming to the Moose Jaw Exhibition.

If all goes as planned in physical rehab this summer and the health is there I have another season of Moose Jaw Minor Football left to cover.

We won’t be out at the high school game though.

There is nothing wrong with high school athletics it’s just due to time, health and other interests constraints there won’t be the time to do a decent job of it.

If we cannot or rather if I personally cannot do a good and decent job of it I’m simply not interested.

We won’t be here for the American, civic or provincial elections and actually I feel really great about not having to have any thing about those upcoming shows.

I do plan to perhaps do some limited basketball coverage of the Gravelbourg Hawks but that is a side deal I have with the editor of the Gravelbourg Tribune.

After that I am tentatively scheduled to be abroad a lot. I mean a lot. I do have some business to attend to.

But that will most likely be after MJ Independent is shuttered and let’s face it yesterday’s news.

For the readers we are likely to lose as we downgrade our coverage back to just wrapping things up I want to say thank you for following along over these past six years.

When I first got involved with MJ Independent six long years ago I had only been planning to stick around for a year to get Nick and Garrett going.

But it just didn’t turn out that way.

Nick and Garrett left and I just manned the ship the best way I was able to.

Throughout my tenure at the helm I tried to cover the news that may not receive thousands of readers but were important to the community.

Stories and events that just weren’t receiving decent coverage - if any coverage at all.

I can remember covering female hockey and how when we started out with the Mavericks we had maybe 35 readers for four hours of work.

By the time we finished the Mavericks beat we hit into the thousands during the playoffs.

That in a nutshell is the story of the MJ Independent.

Once again thank you for following along I hope we put out a good read.

Robert