Winners to be announced virtually June 9 at a free online event. Just the affirmation that ‘independent news media’ is a recognized sector is exciting to us. The Tyee isn’t exactly new. We’ve been publishing continuously since the fall of 2003 — before Facebook existed — and we’ve received nearly 125 million page views since then. But for the longest time we were a bit of an oddity because of our lack of connection to the big media chains and their ad-driven bottom lines. It felt like we swam nearly alone, with just a few other counterparts across this vast country of ours.