MEDIA – Rising costs cited as cause of Kamloops This Week’s demise
(Image: CFJC Today)
Kamloops will be without a newspaper as of next Wednesday, Oct. 25. That’s when Kamloops This Week will publish its last edition.
Announcement of the closure was made today (Oct. 17, 2023) by Robert Doull, president of Aberdeen Publishing, the newspaper’s owner.
About 30 people, not including carriers, will lose their jobs. The weekly paper got its start as a wrapper for advertising flyers in 1987.
Doull blamed a combination of factors, including the newspaper’s printer going out of business on short notice, a fall in website views, and a doubling of lease rates for office space.
“The cost half of our equation no longer makes sense and we don’t see any way to solve it,” he said.
“The newspaper has simply come to the end of its business life. We had hoped that we might be able to find a way for the paper to continue as a non-profit enterprise. However, in the end, it proved to be too difficult and too lengthy a process for us to be able to make the transition and we simply ran out of time.”
The announcement came after the paper had assured readers a few weeks ago that rumours of its impending closure were inaccurate. A Sept. 7 story headlined, “Kamloops This Week is NOT closing,” said the paper would carry on “for as long as the community — readers and advertisers alike — supports high-quality journalism.”
“The sky is not falling,” it said, explaining that KTW had served notice under Section 54 of the B.C. Labour Act, “which involves a request by the company to revisit some areas of the collective agreement it has with Unifor, the union that represents some KTW employees.
“The Section 54 notice relates to the fact KTW has identified a need to adjust some aspects of operating its business — and any such adjustments require that the company bargain with the union.”
At the time, Doull said talks with the union would begin the following week.
Along with the print edition, KTW’s online edition will also cease.
Reaction from the public has largely been one of dismay and disappointment that Kamloops will no longer have a printed newspaper.
“This is a huge loss for the democratization of knowledge and information in our community,” wrote Lorry-Ann Austin.
“It is very sad that a newspaper cannot survive in the city of this size,” commented Lawrence Beaton.
“A sad day for all and everything… a newspaper keeps a community connected,” said Carman-Anne Schulz.
The Kamloops This Week closure comes nine years after the city’s last daily newspaper, the Kamloops Daily News, closed its doors. The Sentinel, a daily that had published since the 1800s, closed in 1987.
— ArmchairMayor.ca
ArmchairMayor.ca 
It’s sad to see Kamloops’ last print media disappear but not surprising. KTW never really got beyond its news/advertiser roots and its reporting wasn’t particularly unbiased.
KTW also did not keep up with the times regarding opportunities for interaction that social media has created and readers now demand, and which papers like the G&M, Province, etc (and our own Armchair Mayor) have embraced. (KTW’s website did recently allow comments but hid the opportunity in small print some distance from the end of each article so it went unnoticed.)
On the upside, now that the paper’s folded maybe the editor can make public the leaker of confidential information from closed council meetings as there’s no longer a need to protect sources. Wishful thinking, I know . . .
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This is awful news.
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Someone else at home here who read this paper every week is sad about this.
My wonder is if the drop in website views noted, were evident after the recent Facebook and Google refusal to post links to Canadian news?
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The owner confirms that was a factor.
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