How some Sask. weekly newspapers are thriving, despite challenging times in the industry
'From a financial standpoint, our business now is 5 times the business … when I bought it': Moosomin publisher
Ashley Bochek snaps a photo of four employees of Glasser's TV Service in downtown Moosomin.
They stand in front of a not-yet-unboxed flat-screen TV in the shop that will be donated to the southeastern Saskatchewan town's visual arts centre.
Minutes later, Bochek is a few doors down at the town office, conducting an interview with its economic development officer.
Those are just two stories the 19-year-old reporter for the Moosomin World-Spectator will file for the next edition of the nearly 140-year-old weekly paper.
"I really like … going out in the community and talking to familiar faces or new faces," Bochek said of her job.
She and her 15 or so other colleagues at the World-Spectator are part of an anomaly — a small town newspaper that's not just surviving, but thriving in a journalism world devastated by massive cuts, layoffs and closures.
World-Spectator publisher Kevin Weedmark, who took over the paper more than 20 years ago, says business has never been better.
"We've got a solid base of subscribers that continues to grow," along with a growing advertising base, he said.
"From a financial standpoint, our business now is five times the business as when I bought it."
The same can't be said for many other community newspapers in Canada.
Data from the Local News Research Project — a crowd-sourced resource that tracks local news sources Canada —shows that between 2008 and June 1 of this year, 521 local news operations closed across the country, including 400 community newspapers that published less than five times per week.
The Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association says it now represents 57 papers — a far cry from the 160 or so that existed at one time.
Community service 1st, business 2nd
The World-Spectator is not your average small town newspaper. And it never has been.
The paper's original publisher covered the Northwest Resistance from its front lines in 1885, even though it was happening out of the paper's coverage area.
Weedmark himself has travelled to Afghanistan, the Philippines and Vietnam for the paper in recent years.
He views his paper as a community service first, rather than solely as a business.
"You get more and more readers, people are relying on you … you get more and more advertisers because you have more and more readers, so the business end sort of falls into place."
The paper is also independently owned and operated — not part of a chain. Weedmark says that means its bottom line doesn't have to be his first focus.
"If we have a story that needs to be told, we'll take a two-page spread to tell it," said Weedmark.
"[Chains] sometimes come in [saying], 'Well, let's cut coverage, let's cut these things that are so important to the community.'"
But Chris Ashfield believes companies that own more than one paper can offer just as much community connection as independents.
Ashfield is the publisher of Grasslands News, which owns papers in several southeastern Saskatchewan communities.
Grasslands still publishes individual papers, and has reporters, in the communities it serves. But they often include stories from other papers to offer broader regional coverage, he said.
"That's allowed these smaller papers that used to be usually eight to 12 pages a week, they're up to 24 to 36 pages a week — so they're getting a lot more news [than] what they were getting before," said Ashfield.
Although his company owns several papers, Ashfield prefers to see Grasslands as an individual publication, instead of a chain.
"Something might cost us a little more money to do something in a community," said Ashfield. "We're not making cuts, where probably chains would, on staffing. We're trying to keep those people in those communities."
That means advertisers are coming back to his papers, he said, since they can reach audiences in other, nearby communities.
New startups
Kate Winquist was shocked when she heard in February 2020 that the Kindersley Clarion newspaper would be publishing its last edition, after 110 years in business.
Winquist, who is from west-central Saskatchewan and grew up reading the Clarion, heard about its closure while working for another weekly paper in Maple Creek.
"In discussions with my husband, [I] said, 'Jeepers, Kindersley without a paper. Can't get over that,'" said Winquist.
After discussions with people in the community and the weekly newspapers association, she decided to make a career move.
"June 3 [2020], my birthday, I gave my notice to the Maple Creek News and said, 'I'm moving to Kindersley.'"
Winquist set a goal of 300 subscribers to get her new paper — Your West Central Voice — started. She had 500 within just a couple of months.
"I've got a picture of all these letters — handwritten cursive writing [from] the little old ladies that want their paper," she said.
Now, 1,500 copies of Your West Central Voice are printed weekly, about half of which go to subscribers, Winquist estimates. The rest are sent to nearby communities that don't have a local newspaper.
Nearby Kerrobert was one of those communities, but that changed in 2021, when Winquist decided to launch a paper there as well.
A salesperson who worked at Your West Central Voice owned a small publication in the town called the Kerrobert Chronicle, featuring columns, cartoons and horoscopes.
Winquist took it over, believing Kerrobert deserved a local newspaper again after the closure of its previous paper, the Kerrobert Citizen.
"It took a while for it to kind of build up but again, [but] we've got some pretty good regular advertisers," she said.
Around 1,000 copies of the Chronicle go out in Kerrobert and the surrounding area each week.
Winquist says it's important for these communities to have something that keeps an official record of their history.
"I truly believe that newspapers are kind of the glue for a community," she said.
Papers serve many purposes: researcher
Winquist isn't the only person starting a publication.
According to the Local News Research Project, 78 community newspapers launched across Canada between 2008 and June 1 of this year, despite a slew of recent cuts and closures.
April Lindgren, a professor of journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University who leads the research project, says community connection is crucial to the success of such papers.
"It's a way for people to get to know each other vicariously through the pages of the paper," she said.
"You're going to meet people and learn about them, and learn about the challenges they face or their successes."
Quelling rumour and disinformation, along with promoting participation in democracy, are other key parts of a newspaper's function, she added.
Lindgren says successful papers produce content that's interesting and relevant to the people they serve. That builds a base of subscribers and advertisers.
But Steve Nixon, the executive director of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association, says finding local advertisers isn't always possible.
"In most cases, those traditional advertisers are gone," said Nixon. "They can't compete, with the products that they try to sell, against the large companies like Amazon and Google."
He says the papers that are doing well are in places with strong community spirit and business bases.
"They're usually standalone communities," said Nixon. "They're a little bit further away from major centres, so they create their own economic environments, and they do it very, very well."
He also said the province now has more independently owned newspapers than papers owned by chains — and independent ownership is growing.
Meta news provides new challenges
Weekly papers in Saskatchewan could benefit from incoming money from Google, after the tech giant announced last month it signed a deal with the Canadian Journalism Collective to give $100 million annually to news publishers to get around the federal Online News Act.
Small print and digital outlets could each get around $17,000 per journalist as part of the fund.
Nixon is pleased with the announcement, but also expresses concern for Meta's refusal to do the same. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram has blocked links to news in Canada to avoid paying fees to media companies under the act.
Nixon says some of the papers owned by larger chains have felt an impact.
"They had invested a lot of money in providing this news service for those that want to take a digital snapshot of what's going on," said Nixon.
"When someone's providing news or content, I think it's pretty simple. It should be paid for."
The Moosomin World-Spectator's publisher says he's never relied on social media to make money for his paper.
Instead, Weedmark connects in person with the businesses that advertise in his paper — and sometimes make the news — in his dual role as newspaper publisher and president of the local chamber of commerce.
Weedmark believes connections like that are part of what keeps his publication relevant and thriving.
He pointed specifically to a "shop local" section of a recent edition of the paper featuring over 140 businesses.
"[We] let people know all these businesses together employ 3,000 or so of your friends and neighbours," said Weedmark. "They contributed $1.5 million in donations to local community projects.
"We show them what impact that makes."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
