About Middlesex Banner

Middlesex Banner

Overview

The Middlesex Banner is an independently published community weekly newspaper based in Strathroy, Ontario, serving the County of Middlesex in southwestern Ontario. As its website puts it, the Banner is "Published in Middlesex County, Ontario," and its coverage is deliberately county-wide rather than confined to a single town: its reporters file from Strathroy-Caradoc, Middlesex Centre, Lucan Biddulph, North Middlesex, Southwest Middlesex, Adelaide Metcalfe and Thames Centre, and from communities including Ailsa Craig, Ilderton, Lucan, Mount Brydges, Glencoe, Komoka, Parkhill, Delaware, Melbourne and Kilworth.

The Banner appears in print and online. The print edition sells for $2.25 a copy, and subscribers to the physical paper can also be set up with access to a digital edition carrying full PDF replicas of current and back issues; a digital-only subscription costs $50 a year, as the paper's website states. Its editor is David Gomez, who leads a small newsroom, writes its editorials and much of its council reporting, and has also reported for the paper under the Local Journalism Initiative program.

History

The Banner was established as an independent voice for Middlesex County, a county whose largest town, Strathroy, has had a chain-owned weekly since the nineteenth century — the Strathroy Age Dispatch, today a Postmedia title. A Middlesex County rural guide published in 2014 listed the Middlesex Banner at 380 Albert Street in Strathroy, with the website banner.on.ca, telephone numbers 519-245-6561 and 1-800-586-4614, and a fax line — evidence of an established print operation serving the county a decade ago.

The newspaper's modern era is documented in its own pages. In an October 2024 column, editor David Gomez described a year of significant change at the Banner: the paper expanded its news coverage, increased the frequency of its council meeting reports, transitioned to full-colour pages, improved readability with larger type, introduced new sections and launched a new website at middlesexbanner.ca. Gomez, who wrote in the same column that Peru is his country of origin and that he considers journalism "at its core, a public service," framed the changes as part of a continuing effort to produce a paper that reflects readers' needs. The relaunched website, built on a modern publishing platform, carries the paper's reporting free to read online alongside its subscription digital edition, and the Banner has continued to publish weekly in print and online through 2025 and 2026.

Programming and Content

Municipal government coverage is the Banner's backbone. Its reporters attend council meetings across the county's municipalities, covering road and drainage projects, recreation facilities, development proposals, budgets and bylaws in Strathroy-Caradoc, Middlesex Centre, Lucan Biddulph, North Middlesex, Southwest Middlesex and Adelaide Metcalfe. David Gomez's byline, sometimes credited to the Local Journalism Initiative, appears on council stories, county council coverage and political reporting; Olena Riznyk and Jan Sims also report local news for the paper.

For the October 2026 municipal elections, the Banner produced a special election edition built around interviews with candidates in every riding, ward-by-ward race previews for each Middlesex municipality, school board trustee candidate profiles, and an editorial by Gomez, "Your Vote, Your Voice, Your Community," urging readers to cast an informed ballot on October 26, 2026. Its election package also carried valedictory messages from departing mayors, including the mayors of Lucan Biddulph, Middlesex Centre and Adelaide Metcalfe.

Agriculture runs through the paper, as it does through Middlesex County life. Weekly features include a farming section and market reports listing sheep, pork and cattle prices, alongside stories about fairs — the Glencoe Fair's 150th anniversary and the Ilderton Fair's 175th both received coverage — and rural organizations. Sports coverage includes a Middlesex County hockey roundup following the Mount Brydges Bulldogs, Lucan Irish and North Middlesex Stars, Jeffrey Reed's County Sports Report, Komoka Kings junior hockey and racing at Delaware Speedway.

The Banner also carries a distinctive mix of columns and community features: Alan Good's seniors and travel columns; Alice Gibb's "Ask Alice" local history pieces; John Bradley's "Pause For Thought"; local history features written with the Middlesex Centre Archives, including Carol Small's series on vanished villages and hamlets; "Archive Alley" historical features; serialized fiction by Brad Harness, published in eight-part instalments; obituaries dated to each week's edition; police files drawn from Ontario Provincial Police reports; and messages and columns from local mayors, the county warden, the area's MP and MPP, and the Strathroy & District Chamber of Commerce. Gomez's own opinion columns range across press freedom, federal budgets, book bans, war and Canada's place in the world. The paper's community remit shows in its themed packages: its October 2026 Small Business Week coverage gathered messages from the county warden, the Strathroy & District Chamber of Commerce and the area's federal and provincial representatives alongside its own reporting on the entrepreneurs of the county's main streets and farm communities, and its community reporting that month ranged from the Ilderton Terry Fox Run's return after six years to a new theatre production in Ailsa Craig.

Audience and Reach

The Banner's audience is the population of Middlesex County outside the City of London — farmers, small-town and village residents, and the county's municipal ratepayers — together with the local businesses that advertise in its pages and on its website. Its county-wide remit distinguishes it from single-town papers: a single edition moves between Strathroy-Caradoc council business, a Lucan community fundraiser, a North Middlesex development story and a Southwest Middlesex council decision. Local advertisers visible on its website include pharmacies, farm suppliers, hearing clinics, home improvement firms and community organizations across the county. No audited circulation figure for the Banner is published, and none is claimed here.

Digital Presence

The Banner's website, middlesexbanner.ca, launched in its current form in 2024, publishes the paper's news, opinion, sports, farming and obituary content in dated weekly cycles, with new material appearing each week — its October 14, 2026 posts include the municipal election special edition, farming and obituaries for that week. Members and subscribers can read full PDF digital editions of the print paper through the site. The website carries a local advertising directory and links to the paper's Facebook page, and its archive reaches back through years of weekly publishing, including its earlier incarnation at banner.on.ca.

Ownership and Organisation

The Middlesex Banner is an independently owned community newspaper, published in Strathroy and separate from the national chains that own most Ontario weeklies — including its Strathroy competitor, Postmedia's Strathroy Age Dispatch. David Gomez is the paper's editor: he directs its coverage, writes its editorials, invites reader feedback personally, and reports council and county news, including work supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, a federal program that funds local journalism positions in underserved communities. The newsroom is small — Gomez has described it as "a small team, but we are committed" — and includes reporters Olena Riznyk and Jan Sims and a stable of regular columnists and contributors drawn from the county, among them Alan Good, Jeffrey Reed, Alice Gibb, John Bradley, Carol Small and Brad Harness.

Contact and Availability

The Middlesex Banner's office has been listed in Strathroy, most recently in a 2014 county directory at 380 Albert Street, Strathroy, Ontario, N7G 3J1. The paper's website lists its phone and fax number as (519) 245-6116, and the newsroom can be emailed at editor@banner.on.ca; the editor, David Gomez, invites reader comments at david@middlesexbanner.ca. The print edition is sold at $2.25 a copy and by subscription, with a digital subscription available at $50 a year; current and back issues can be read in the digital edition on the paper's website.