Small Alberta towns losing local newspapers

The Nanton News plans to shut down its office in Nanton and run a consolidated operation in the neighbouring town of High River.(CBC)

A Montreal-based media conglomerate has stopped printing two small Alberta newspapers, and the office of another paper has been closed.

The front-page headline on this week's Nanton News is "What recession?" and the story explains that the town of 2,200 south of Calgary is dodging economic problems elsewhere.

But the paper itself has not. It's still going to be printed, but the paper's Nanton office is going to be shut down and operations consolidated in the neighbouring town of High River, home of the High River Times.

"The News has been your community newspaper, sharing the highs and lows of life in this little corner of Alberta, for more than a century," reads an editorial explaining the move. "It is an honour to be invited into your homes, and we hope to continue to serve the readers and advertisers of Nanton and area for many years in the future."

'We want to be able to converse with our neighbours'

Nanton Mayor John Blake said he is concerned about the change.

"Can they sustain the level of service that it takes to operate a paper, is it a spiral downward? We don't know," he said.

"We want to be able to converse with our neighbours, read the Nanton News, and discuss what happened in the paper, find out what council did, find out what sports teams are doing locally, and get the local interest, which we won't get anywhere else."

In the last few months, locally run papers in the Rocky Mountain towns of Jasper and Morinville, north of Edmonton, have both shut down.

"It's an economic decision that's being made elsewhere," said Blake.

All three are owned by Montreal-based Quebecor, which in December announced it was cutting costs and 600 jobs in the Sun Media chain due to fewer advertising dollars and fewer readers.

"The business model for newspapers is undergoing change, shall we say, you could say it's flawed, but it's probably more accurate to say it has just run its course," said Terry Field, chair of the journalism program at Mount Royal College.

No one from Quebecor was available to speak to CBC News about the decisions.