Nanaimo-Info-blog: Nanaimo Daily News Loses 20 Jobs

Black Press Closes Two Island Papers
Cuts Twenty Nanaimo Jobs

CHEK News reports that the purchase of eight Island newspapers by Black Press from Glacier Media is resulting in the closing of the Campbell River Courier-Islander and the Oceanside Star. For the time being the other papers including Comox, Nanaimo and Port Alberni will continue to operate.

The printing and mailing staff at the Daily News will be losing their jobs as production is moved to Black’s Ladysmith printing plant.

How long the Nanaimo Daily News, the Harbour City Star and the Nanaimo News Bulletin will operate in the same market, competing for the same ad dollars will likely be the subject of Black Press boardroom discussions over the coming few months.

Whether Nanaimo can support a daily publication is questionable as the Daily struggles to retain it’s daily subscription base, having less than 5,000 subscribers currently. The big ‘prize’ in the local market is the flyer distribution which has been dominated by the Bulletin, with it’s city-wide coverage for quite sometime.

I predict, it is only a matter of time before whatever papers survive in Nanaimo are produced from one facility employing amalgamated staffing under one roof. Maintaining duplicate overhead, simply doesn’t make any business sense.

How people get the news and stay engaged in their community has become a moving target with the advent of the internet and online publishing. Providing effective advertising which costs big bucks has become more and more challenging for the print media.

On a local level, this little blog (Nanaimo-Info-Blog) has been online since 2007 and has gradually gathered a following of several thousand on a daily basis, and as many as 10,000 on a weekly basis depending on what ‘news’ is the hot item that week.

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