This is my favourite picture of Justin Dunk and me.

It was taken on the way to Grey Cup in 2017 and it sometimes seems like a perfect encapsulation of our working relationship: him on his phone getting scoops and breaking stories, me goofing off while supposedly driving things.

But it’s a partnership that works and that’s why we’re really excited about the changes at 3DownNation.

When the site was launched almost four years ago, it was intended as a way to bring the CFL’s vibrant blogging community and a few seasoned professionals together under one digital roof. It evolved into a news, analysis and opinion site with a substantial and faithful audience, supported by the Hamilton Spectator and its parent company Torstar.

Now we’ve decided to strike out on our own: 3DownNation is now fully owned and operated by Dunk and I. Our main contributors – John Hodge, Darrell Davis, Josh Smith, Joel Gasson, Santino Filoso, Lowell Ullrich, Ryan Ballantine – also have a stake. Most of them have been with us from the very beginning and feel a sense of pride and ownership over the site. We’ve developed quite the little team at 3Down, a group of like-minded souls committed to the game and the craft of writing and talking about it.

So no corporate ownership, no investors, no ties to anyone except each other. That may change but, for now at least, we’re on our own.

We hope that you’ll help make this happen. Our funding model going forward depends on our readership providing economic support we need to survive in the long term. It’s a bold experiment and one we’re excited about.

There’ll be some changes in content as well. We’re going to emphasize our own material, things you can only read on 3Down. We hope to add more video and multimedia components. There are a number of valuable voices and interesting perspectives that we hope to share in the weeks, months and years to come.

Above all, we need to be accountable to our readership, making sure the site serves them and listening to their feedback. Comments, in one form another, will return shortly. I plan to be more engaged. It’s a big audience and there are a lot of different perspectives on what represents good content. But we’ll make the effort to listen, converse and evolve accordingly.

3Down has been a grand experiment from the very start and it’s exceeded my wildest expectations in terms of readership, content and influence. But our future has never seemed brighter or more exciting. We hope you’ll help. Or, at the very least, join us for the ride.

– Drew Edwards

3DownNation