Those who pay attention to bylines will notice Kevin Potvin—who is me, the author of the unsigned View from the Republic columns—has filled up a majority of this issue of The Republic . This has been the case in several of the recent issues of the paper.

The Republic was initially launched for two basic reasons, one altruistic, the other self-indulgent. I wanted to create a newspaper that was produced in Vancouver and that approached what I thought could be a good example of a certain kind of newspaper: a venue for free-thinking, long-length essays visiting upon some of the immediate passing issues of the day with the heavy glare of studied criticism usually reserved for books. I also wanted to write such essays, but failed to find any existing publication that was interested.

Though I had always planned on being the most voluminous writer in my own paper, I struggled hard to seek out and entice other writers to join me, partly so that it more closely looked and read like a more broad-based paper, but also to bring in a wider audience by producing a wider range of approaches to a wider array of subjects than I alone could produce.

The paper was also meant to be part of the answer to the widespread complaint among newspaper readers, especially in monopolized Vancouver, about there being a lack of venues for different voices. It's a common complaint in every city, and one taken seriously by professors of journalism and practitioners of the craft, as well as editors and even publishers. The focus of much hand-wringing as well as much genuine effort has been on understanding what is involved in creating more venues.

But something has been overlooked, and it's a critical oversight. There aren't, as it turns out, that many voices out there clamouring to be heard. Moreover, a lot of those that are clamouring aren't doing it very loudly, and of those that are, few have any worthwhile things to say, or any ability to say those things well enough to be understood.

Now, I am the first to acknowledge that writing is not easy. Most real writers engage with the craft at a very early age and do not master it before they die even at very late ages. In between, in careers that can span seven decades, they typically write everyday, even if pressures on their time and concentration from families and jobs mount to breaking points, and beyond.

And they read, falling asleep in their books only to wake up and read on, stirring dinner with one hand, the other holding the folded newspaper up to their face, at bus stops, while walking to the grocery store, or hunched over the clothes washer awaiting its various signals.

For real writers, the more they read, the more they need to read, and just as debilitating, the more they write, the more they need to write. The big effort to get it all out is quickly understood as counter-productive: twice more always remains to be said for every concluded piece. There is never enough time for it, and there is even less time for it the more time one invests in it.

Writing is slow going and frustrating. Even the best writers in history are not very good at it. While lesser mortals may go over their work twice, the greatest in history might go over every bit of their work fifty or a hundred times, and excruciate for an hour over whether something is better as a clause or a separate sentence.

And it's lonely work. There are examples of collaboration, but they are few and far between, and the claim anyway always seems forced. Where two authors lay claim to a piece of work, you can be sure they produced separate portions in private, and stuck them together later. Writing is a solitary task and needs to be.

For all the intimacy an author thereby develops with their work, there cannot be any other craft so subject to brutal and insensitive treatment by others before the work is turned out for public viewing. The best writers in the world have the harshest editors marking up their pages with the deepest strokes of red ink. At good and large established newspapers, teams of fact checkers correct errors of fact, several editors make their cuts of flesh, and proof readers examine each and every word. The best writers have work sent back to them for re-write.

And then, there are the readers, invited by the publisher to put their criticisms of the work in writing, criticisms which are then published usually without any opportunity for rebuttal by the original author.

What other art or craft subjects its practitioners to this harsh treatment? Do painters allow others to touch up the completed painting, add or take away elements, cut the canvas in half, or correct details, and do galleries invite and celebrate vicious criticisms from viewers?

This lament is not meant to generate sympathies; rather it is offered as an explanation—a theory—for the phenomenon I have observed in four years publishing an open newspaper in a major city. There are many people who say they want to be writers, but there are not very many who truly do want that life. There are many people who say they have important and urgent things to write, but there are few moved enough by that supposed urgency to actually write it. And there are many people who think there are unheard voices out there struggling to be heard, but the fact is, I have cocked my ear to that wide open space, and I am coming back in the house to tell you: it's dead quiet out there.

This newspaper has published in its 103 issues the work of over 150 different writers. Each were encouraged to write again. Less than a handful ever tried. Scarcely few took advantage of the opportunity to write and publish regularly. There are less than the fingers I have on one hand among those who did earn a regular spot who then managed to reliably produce just one single essay just once every two weeks for any significant length of time.

It's not as though this newspaper is not worth the trouble (whatever that means—any opportunity to publish to me is worth the trouble of writing). We can't print enough copies to satisfy the demands of our readership. We print 4,000 copies, and find less than 5% of them leftover at the 50 or so locations it is distributed at. The industry standard for free papers is over 75% left over.

We have received private letters expressing enthusiasm for the paper from very well-known people in the political, artistic, and financial worlds. We receive in the mail almost every week significant donations from readers, strangers to us, who express heartfelt desire that we might manage to keep going. I don't mention this as a boast, but only as the source of my mystification: how can anyone who wants to write and who currently has no outlet for that urge pass up the opportunity this paper represents? And don't tell me it's because we don't pay for work. That's the weakest of excuses—mere cash is the furthest thing from the mind of a real writer who truly understands the power inherent in getting inside many people's heads.

We move 4,000 copies of the paper every two weeks in just a few parts of Vancouver, plus a smattering of locations in Victoria and Toronto. A national bestselling book is considered one that moves 4,000 copies across the entire country through hundreds of bookstores in every city coast to coast over the course of months. Authoring a bestseller is regarded as achieving the ultimate in reaching a readership with one's ideas. This paper does it every two weeks with access to less than ten percent of the national market. If one were interested in a readership, it would be worth the trouble to write for this paper.

I've heard there are readers of this paper who complain it is too much comprised of my own work. To that complaint I answer with this: better that than blank pages. Show me someone who can write well on a regular, reliable basis and who is interested in reaching a sizable and interesting, as well as interested, readership, and I'll show them the space they can earn in this paper. That's been the standing offer since I first launched this paper four years ago.

The only explanation I have for the preponderance of my own work in this paper is that there isn't anyone else besides who you see in this paper already who is ready willing and able to do what it takes to get in it. And since I like to write, and I love the readership available through this paper, and since I am willing to do the work, and there is space available for it in here, I will continue to take the fullest advantage I can of this unique opportunity for as long as it lasts.

No one has ever complained that some author's book is too much written by that one author. Consider this paper, then, a book written by me, broken into 25 chapters and published separately at regular intervals over the course of a year. If you don't want to read my book, don't. Put this paper back where you found it, because it seems there are plenty of others who want it.

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