Updated: Sun Media shuts down three more community newspapers
Two Manitoba community newspapers and one paper in Saskatchewan published their last editions Thursday. Exactly one week after shutting down a 134-year-old newspaper, Sun Media announced the Lac du Bonnet Leader, the Beausejour Review and the Meadow Lake Progress are finished.
Two Manitoba community newspapers and one paper in Saskatchewan published their last editions Thursday. Exactly one week after shutting down a 134-year-old newspaper, Sun Media announced the Lac du Bonnet Leader, the Beausejour Review and the Meadow Lake Progress are finished.
“Unfortunately, the market has not been able to support continued publication of the newspapers,” said Leader and Review publisher Jenifer Bilsky in an article that ran on the front page of both publications. The southern Manitoba weeklies have served their respective communities in for 68 years. Sun Media purchased them in 1998 and Bilsky said while she “attempted to make these operations sustainable,” the changing media landscape and market led to the decision to shut them down. The move will eliminate one part-time and two full-time jobs.
Progress publisher Mary-Ann Kostiuk gave staff the same reasons — an unviable market — for shutting down the weekly paper. Four full-time jobs will be lost at the Progress, which also had two freelancers.
Along with the Leader, the Review and the Progress, Sun Media has also shut down the Midland Free Press and the Lindsay Post within the past two weeks.
Photo courtesy of Progress editor Omar Mosleh
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- Sun Media shuts down 134-year-old paper Midland Free Press
- Lindsay Post shuts down
- Sun Media shuts down a number of community newspapers
