By Nigel Maxwell

Century old Saskatchewan newspaper announces merger

Mar 23, 2018 | 5:00 PM

Faced with industry pressures, the publisher of a small town Saskatchewan newspaper has announced plans to change.

Come April, the Tisdale Recorder, first published in 1906, will merge with the Parkland Review.

Publisher Valerie Durnin said over the past six months she’s had a chance to review some of the challenges the paper was facing.

“I’ve also had a chance to talk to some people in the community and in doing so I identified some things I thought may be improved and the plan to merge the papers was, to me, the best way to address some of the issues we were facing,” she said.

The announcement of the merger comes less than five months after the president of Star News Publishing announced he would be either selling or closing his interests in Saskatchewan. The Moose Jaw Times Herald published its last edition in December after 128 years, and the future of the Prince Albert Daily Herald was also put in doubt until a group of employees announced they had made an offer to buy the paper. The deal has not yet been finalized. Durnin said shutting down the Tisdale Recorder was never a consideration.

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“As a publisher and someone who’s been in the newspaper business for many, many years, I am also saddened when newspapers close and I am in this business to make sure that doesn’t happen for the ones that I work for,” she said.

When asked what the secret was to saving small town newspapers, Durbin said she wished she had the answer.

“I do know that staying with it day-to-day and keeping in touch with our readers and our advertisers, and telling local stories are at the heart of it,” she said.

The weekly paper, to be named the Recorder, will be published on Thursdays and will have its first edition hit newspaper stands on April 5.

“I feel that with the merger of the paper, the two papers into one, I think we are going to have one really strong communication and we’re going to have all the news for Tisdale and area in one place,” she said.

nigel.maxwell@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @nigelmaxwell