The office of Kamloops This Week is seen in the Google Street View screenshot.

Image Credit: GOOGLE STREET VIEW

Kamloops This Week, the only print media in Kamloops, is closing by the end of October.

That didn't come as a surprise for former reporter/editor and now Kamloops city councillor Dale Bass.

“Anyone with a functioning brain knew it was in trouble,” Bass said. “They had 150 empty routes. At 50 papers per route, that’s a hell of a lot of flyers that aren’t going out. Then Save-On went online and that was one of their big ones.”

While no formal announcement has been made, Aberdeen Holdings, the owner of the newspaper, did file a Section 54 notice with the union (Unifor Local 2000) and tried to negotiate changes to keep the paper alive, such as possibly turning it into a non-profit. But, those talks have failed.

“This is a horrible day,” Bass told iNFOnews.ca. “This is a council day and I’m trying not to cry.

“I think the loss is greater now because, a few months ago, we had staff being recognized by the Governor General for the Michener awards. That’s the quality of journalism that was being done there.”

The weekly newspaper, led by reporter Jessica Wallace, won a 2021 Michener Award for journalism awarded last year for its exposure of overspending by the former CAO of the Thompson Nicola Regional District.

READ MORE: UPDATE: Former CAO was, by far, TNRD's highest paid staff member last year

“That kind of thoughtful, well researched, not rushed journalism is gone,” Bass said.

It's not just the loss of print that disturbs Bass but the fact that its digital platform will also close so the city may lose what she described as quality journalists in Wallace, Marty Hastings and Mike Potestio.

From the city’s perspective, it also means scrambling to find ways to advertise things like public hearings that, Bass said, were required to run in newspapers if a city had one.

She brought that issue up months ago when she saw the writing on the wall for the paper but nothing was done by City Hall at that time. Bass said she will bring city advertising up again at today’s council meeting.

Some reports say there were about 30 employees working for Kamloops This Week but Bass doubts there were more than two dozen.

“The last time I went in there, there was nobody,” she said.

READ MORE: Two BC community newspapers publish their last editions this week

Glacier Media has announced that its print products in Fort St. John and Dawson Creek are closing this week.

In August, Glacier also shut down the print editions of the Burnaby Now and New Westminster Record.

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