Moose Jaw Times-Herald to close next month

Owner cites economic challenges for closure that will leave 25 staff out of work

After almost 13 decades of delivering the news of the day, The Moose Jaw Times-Herald will give readers its parting words next month, when it closes.

“It’s a sad day,” said Roger Holmes, president of Star News Publishing and owner of the Times-Herald and Prince Albert Daily Herald. He broke the news to senior employees at 2 p.m. Wednesday. The closure will leave 25 staff out of work.

The newspaper first rolled off the presses on April 2, 1889, and will stop publishing in print and online Dec. 7. It began as a weekly and moved to a daily in 1906.

Holmes, who bought the paper in June 2016, blamed economic reasons for the closure. “The world has changed — there are things that we can control and things that we cannot control.”

Holmes suspects staff weren’t surprised by Wednesday’s news.

“We want to go out with a positive note and honour the contribution that the newspaper has made over that period of time for the development of the province and Western Canada,” he said.

He declined to comment on the fate of his other holding, the Prince Albert Daily Herald.

Rob Clark, Times-Herald publisher between 2001 and 2014, was gutted to hear it will be no more.

“You put your heart and soul into it. I feel that something has been ripped away from me. Not only for the community, but I’ve had a personal attachment to it,” he said.

He knows many of the employees. “They’ve been dismantled over the last two or three years. I guess one of their first thoughts was sadness and next they thought, ‘What am I going to do now?’ ”

Now CEO of the Moose Jaw and District Chamber of Commerce, Clark expects the community will be devastated by the loss of daily local news and sports coverage.

“People are going to be pretty sad because it covered a lot of the community and supported a lot of the community — in sponsorship or in following stories.”

Moose Jaw Mayor Fraser Tolmie said his heart goes out to the people who lost their jobs.

“I know a lot of the people that work there, and they’re hardworking, and they want to provide a service for this community,” he said.

“They’ve been a daily newspaper, and I know they’ve had challenges with cutting down to taking away the Monday (paper), but their purpose is to be a voice of the community.”

Leader-Post entertainment co-ordinator Jeff DeDekker worked at the Times-Herald as a sports reporter and editor for five years during the 1980s.

He knew nothing of Moose Jaw or its paper when he took a “leap of faith” and moved 3,000 kilometres from Ontario to take the job.

“The world of newspapers has changed dramatically,” Dedekker said, “but I never expected to outlive the Times-Herald.”

People are going to be pretty sad because it covered a lot of the community and supported a lot of the community.