This newspaper is different. It may not seem terribly unsimilar to others that you’ve read, but behind the white and black of the printed page, a new kind of community enterprise is trying out its wings.

We are printing a community paper. Who are “We?” We are the Ward Seven Co-operative*, a group of residents of Ward Seven and their supporters outside the ward who have pooled their time, money and prayerful efforts into putting together a newspaper that will be the community’s newspaper.

In order to be a community newspaper, SEVEN NEWS must be relevant. Not relevant to the viewpoint of a small group of people trying to make a fast buck while mouthing the dog-eared language of so-called “community service.” What SEVEN NEWS must do is part of our lives here in Ward Seven.

What is life like here in Ward Seven? It is wide-ranging and varied. It is bumming on Parliament and Queen Streets. It is apartment-perching in a thirty-floor high-rise. It is holding out in your second-floor flat on Sackville or Seaton Streets while bulldozers level the houses all around. It is trying to make small business pay in an era of mega-corporations tight money. It is drying out in the tank. It is waiting for the slow elevator in Regent Park. It is lounging in the basement of the Parliament Street Library House and reading the hand writing on the wall.

The trick that SEVEN NEWS is going to have to perform is getting into all these facets of Ward 7 life. The only way to do this is to rely on the people living in the ward for material and direction.

In keeping with this notion, we have set only one stringent editor policy, and that is to let the community decide our policy, SEVEN NEWS will print what you write. It will be what you make it to be.

Now, how can you take part in directing SEVEN NEWS? You can write an article. You can write a letter to the paper. You can phone in a news tip (our number is 992-9175). You can join the staff. You can buy a share (any amount will get you one) in the Ward Seven Co-operative*. You can tell your friends about what you read in SEVEN NEWS. You can send in ideas for features, column stories, etc.

Most important though, is your first step. Read the paper. If you want it delivered by mail, send us $5 and you’ll get 26 issues guaranteed, plus voting membership in the Ward Seven Co-operative*.

In the mean time we need some things from you:
1) Letters to the paper.
2) recipes for low budget cooking
3) poems
4) time, place and date of your club, group or association meetings so that we can start a regular community calendar.
5) let us know what’s going on so we can send a reporter.
6) subscribe to Seven News; Use handy form below.

* An article in the second issue of Seven News clarified that the publishing body responsible for Seven News is actually the “Ward Seven Newspaper Association,” not, as erroneously stated in the first issue, the “Ward Seven Co-operative.“

This article was published in Seven News, Volume 1, Number 1, May 29, 1970