Glacier Media stands steadily behind their stable of Prairie Newspaper Group (PNG) papers. Since a recent sale of SaskToday.ca and MooseJawToday.ca there has been speculation that Glacier is getting out of the prairie news business, but Group publisher Gord Brewerton says, “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
The Empire-Advance continues to receive support from Glacier Media Group, our parent company, which enables us to provide our weekly print and online papers.
Peter Kvarnstrom, president of community media at Glacier Media Group joined Brewerton last week in a Zoom call with newspaper staff across the Prairies, assuring Glacier’s commitment in publishing the local news carried in local papers like Manitoba’s Virden Empire-Advance. The Thompson Citizen and Flin Flon’s the Reminder are two other Manitoba newspapers within Glacier’s publishing chain.
Brewerton, vice president of PNG, explained the recent decision to sell the digital-only products, SaskToday.com and MooseJawToday.com.
The sale involves an innovative partnership between the two companies that will make more content available to both companies.
These online news outlets were created by Glacier Media when Covid entered the picture. They served a large audience with 1.6 million pageviews per month “in a market that is just around a million people in Saskatchewan so it’s an amazing testament.”
Brewerton said, “We have the audience, but we couldn’t bring our sponsors and advertisers to that platform to reach their audiences.”
Their recent sale to Harvard will allow this digital specialist with a strong sales team to do what they do best.
Kvarnstrom said, “If everybody is trying to do everything, we don’t necessarily become great at anything… so, we’re going to have our folks focussing on local content, local advertising and reaching that local market as their primary goal and yes, that will be in many cases, for print mostly.”
The Glacier Media platforms are known for their comprehensive coverage of local news, sports, community events, and in-depth reporting. Under Harvard Media's leadership, the sites (SaskToday.ca and MooseJawToday.ca) will continue to serve their communities with the same dedication to journalistic integrity, while benefiting from enhanced resources and broader network support.
In recent months some print newspapers, such as Metroland’s many publications in Ontario, have folded and others have come under new ownership, but Glacier’s prairie papers, with publications unique to each community, are well-placed to continue.
Kvarnstrom spoke of the local brand of these publications. “Those brands are super important. And we are, as we have always said, a house of brands, not a branded house.”
A large printing press in Estevan prints PNG papers, the Globe and Mail distributed in the west, and Sun Media papers.
Kvarnstrom spoke of the evolution within newspaper publishing and the need to modernize community offices. Virden Empire-Advance embarked upon that process over a dozen years ago leaving a loved but aged historic building in 2010. In 2016, we further downsized to the tidy office space that we rent at 305, Nelson Street.
Changes over the years from in-house print production and a smaller staff means that Glacier’s offices across the west are also downsizing.
“We are refocusing all of our attention on making sure that our communities are well served with the papers that we have,” says Peter Kvarnstrom.
Our Manitoba newspapers are first and foremost print papers with online subscriptions available with the advertising that your community businesses and organizations list.
You can also find many of our Empire-Advance news stories online at empireadvance.ca. Other Glacier papers in Manitoba also have an online presence: the Thompson Citizen at thompsoncitizen.net and the Flin Flon Reminder at thereminder.ca
