What is the EXPERIMENT?
The Experiment is a small newspaper (4¼ x 5½ inches) in the small town of Nanton, Alberta (pop. 2,132 ... now 2,133, with the Experiment editor).
Nanton, they say, is on the way to everywhere. This bucolic town sits smack between four lanes of the Pan-American Highway south of Calgary and north of the US border. On one side runs southbound traffic, on the other, northbound. Traffic slows to between 30 and 50 km/h for the 30 to 50 seconds of space Nanton occupies along that route.
The tourism tactic is of the flypaper variety. Little businesses vie independently and collectively to stick the attention of travellers to pull off Hwy 2.
People usually know Nanton for the candy shop or the WW2 Lancaster bomber or the skyline of two perfectly preserved grain elevators, the antiques, the ice cream, the Museum of Miniatures or the Auditorium Hotel, aptly nicknamed the “Odd,” with tons of crazy crap on the walls and live music damn near every night. To this list of numerous claims to fame I'd like to add one more—Canada’s finest miniature newspaper.
It's called the Experiment and it's exactly that, a test.
Years ago I conducted a similar experiment, that as big papers cut their operations, my small paper hoped to grow. Considering hundreds of tonnes of newsprint are used for a single Saturday run of the Toronto Star, the miniature newspaper biz has its pros.
This summer, like a moth to the porch light of Nanton, I am once again drawn to the town's mysterious pull. Some have called the Experiment "news as performance art." This folks, will be reporting as I've always wanted—literally making the news.
This is a story about big media and little ideas, about turning 'newspaper' on its head, and blurring the line between thinking and doing by fictionalizing reality and realizing fiction ... all set in this imaginary-sounding small town.
A New York publisher once asked Alberta novelist Robert Kroetsch if this place called Alberta really existed. In Alberta I’ve been asked the same thing about Nanton; I tell people it really does, and you should come visit.
Let the Experiment(s) begin!
Nanton Experiment Editor-in-Chief ... publisher, reporter and in charge of office morale.