Village Squire, 1977-08, Page 21PRESS
Gil and Ruth Dodier recently established a newspaper in Mitchell with a building circulation across
the province. Called Antiques, it is naturally enough about antiques.
Couple founds
a new paper
about old things
BY DEBBIE RANNEY
When Gil and Ruth Dodier went looking
to buy a weekly newspaper they probably
didn't expect that they would start their
own. But spurred on by somebody who
bought a newspaper they had been looking
at, they did exactly that.
The newspaper they started deals with a
subject created by a sweep of nostalgia and
one which has caused a rash of small shops
to start up. True to its name, "Antiques"
deals with just that. It covers the various
antique shops and dealers around as well
as having regular columns by well-inform-
ed people on the topic of antiques.
The paper and its owners Gil and Ruth
are based in Mitchell but the actually
printing of the paper is done at the
Stratford Beacon Herald.
Although the paper is fairly new --it just
started in April of this year, the
subscription list is surprisingly high.
"Antiques" already has over 300
subscribers who come from all across
Canada and parts of the United States. The
subscribers are usually people who are
interested in buying or selling something.
Writing for the paper is done by Ruth
Dodier who does a couple of feature
stories, David Bradshaw who writes a
story, Roy Nuhn who writes about collector
postcards, Pat Hogan who does a column
about antiques and Mike Griffin who writes
about collector's items. They also get a few
stories that individual people send in and
they also have a few freelancers.
While Ruth Dodier looks after the actual
writing, her husband Gil goes out and gets
the advertising as well as telling Ruth what
pages he would like certain things laid out
on.
Although the Dodiers had just been
looking for any kind of a weekly
newspaper, when they saw a newspaper
that dealt with antiques (the one they
didn't get) they knew that was it for them
and started their own.
In order to start their paper, Mr. and
Mrs. Dodier got in touch with a few antique
dealers and some people in the printing
business to give them pointers on that end
of it.
The Dodiers have many interests as can
be proven by their previous and present
occupations. They're both interested in
antiques of course. They once had a house
in the country that they fixed up and sold,
they once ran a TV store in Mitchell and
VILLLAGE SQUIRE/AUGUST 1977. PG. 19.