It’s the end of an era for the Moose Jaw Times Herald, as the final edition of the newspaper hit the streets Wednesday after 128 years.
“It just got to the point where as our subscriptions dropped and our revenue dropped,” Doug Lix, director of reader sales and distribution said. “It just didn’t make a viable business anymore.”
The decision to close the doors of the Times Herald came in early November. The first paper was published as a weekly in 1889 and later became a daily publication in 1906.
“If your look at the newsroom across Canada, they’re tiny compared to what we had,” Lix said. “Ten years ago we had four people just in our sports department. We only have a team of four or five people in our newsroom now.”
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Lix adds the closure is part of a trend facing print media across the country, but it also means the loss of 25 jobs, including Rick Smith who has been delivering newspapers for the Times Herald for the past 19 years.
“It’s sad that it’s going to be going,” he said. “I liked going out and delivering the paper and the customers were very nice to me.”
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Over the years, the Herald Times has also been a training ground for many journalists fresh out of school.
“We’ve always been a small daily,” Lix said. “But this is where everyone kind of cut their teeth, they come out of journalism school and got their first job in a daily newspaper and they’ve moved on. So there’s people in newsrooms all across Canada if not in North America that have worked here.”
Sarah Ladik has been working in print for the past five years; she started at the Times Herald only eight months ago.
“There will always be stories to tell, people will always want to hear stories about themselves, about their community, about their family and about their friends,” she said.
“I am willing to bet a fair bit amount of money that you can walk into nearly any house in this town and see a Times Herald article pinned to the fridge.”
While she’s already found a new job, others like Rick Smith are saying goodbye and looking forward to what comes next.
The building officially closes its doors to the public on Friday.
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