Kamloops This Week (KTW) will be closing down its newspaper and website later this month. “We face a bunch of issues that are outside of our control,” said KTW parent company Aberdeen Publishing President Robert Doull in a Tuesday statement. “Our paper costs have increased.”Doull said KTW's printer went out of business with 10 days notice, and the sole available replacement was only able to give it a smaller page size at a higher price. After 35 years of publishing in Kamloops, KTW said next week’s edition on Wednesday will be the final newspaper to be delivered to homes and drop boxes. Due to a variety of challenges, including market conditions and rising costs, it will close, leaving Kamloops without a newspaper for the first time since 1884. It said website views have fallen by half because of Meta and Google blocking news links because of Bill C-18, and lease rates for the office space have doubled. To operate this business, Doull said it needs “a stable revenue base and controllable costs so that we can commit to providing forward advertising contracts with certainty.” Since its birth in 1988, KTW has been the recipient of numerous awards, including being named a finalist for Canada’s highest journalism honour the Michener Award in 2022. It won British Columbia’s highest journalism honour the Webster Award five times and has been a finalist numerous times. Additionally, it has taken home dozens of BC/Yukon Community Newsmedia and Canadian Community Newspaper Association awards. In 2014, it was named best community newspaper in Canada and in 2014 and in 2015, it was named the best in BC/Yukon. Its newsroom is planning a final edition, which it aims to fill with memories and thoughts from staff, readers and advertisers. In the meantime, it will continue to report the news on the website through this month. He said the cost half of its equation “no longer makes sense, and we don’t see any way to solve it.” In response, it has come to the end of its business life. Doull concluded by saying he had hoped it might be possible for KTW 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,” he said. Toronto Star publisher Nordstar Capital LP put its Metroland weekly newspaper group into bankruptcy and fired 605 workers — 60% of its workforce — without severance on September 15. READ MORE: TorStar puts regional newspaper division into bankruptcy; eliminates 605 jobsNordstar shuttered its flyer distribution network and will convert 70 publications into online versions. It will continue to publish print versions of six regional dailies: the Hamilton Spectator, Peterborough Examiner, St. Catharines Standard, Niagara Falls Review, Welland Tribune, and the Waterloo Region Record.The Toronto Star is not covered under the restructuring.
