One of northern Manitoba’s few remaining local papers will soon stop its presses.
The Snow Lake-based Underground Press will be published for the last time on Dec. 14, according to a statement sent out by the publisher of the paper.
The paper, which was independently owned and operated by community members, has struggled due in part to declining advertising rates.
“It’s not something that we wanted to see happen, but I understand the reasons why. In our community, it just got to the point where not enough people were advertising anymore,” said Gerard Lamontagne, president of the Snow Lake Chamber of Commerce and owner of the Snow Lake Motor Inn.
“We have a strong little economy, but our business community isn’t anywhere close to what other communities have. Your advertisements come from the business community. You get some support from local charitable organizations, the church groups, the chambers, but those aren’t ads that run every paper.”
The Press had recently changed formats, going from a free paper published every week to publishing once every two weeks and charging $1 per paper. Online subscriptions were also introduced.
The closure of the Press leaves only a handful of local newspapers in northern Manitoba, including the Thompson Citizen, the Opasquia Times in The Pas and The Reminder.
Lamontagne believes part of the reason for the Press ceasing publication is due to Snow Lake’s changing culture. Workers at area mines are increasingly unlikely to stay in the community permanently or outside of work, choosing to spend their money in other communities. Lamontagne said it’s a phenomenon that has had a negative impact on some local businesses.
“A large part of our community is built with contractors and people from outside of town. They come to Snow Lake for their work days and they leave Snow Lake. For the mine itself, they’re a great deal of help. For supporting things like a local paper and bringing in new businesses, they’re not going to do their shopping here,” he said.
“Those same people who come in from out of town to work, they aren’t buying the paper typically.”
“Whenever any events came up, we tried to make sure there was advertising within the paper itself. It seems to have fallen out of favour here now,” said Press contributor Peter Purves.
Purves, a Snow Lake resident, has written a science and technology column for the Press for the past two years.
“It’s really too bad. I enjoyed writing for the Underground Press … I felt it was a part of the community and something that I wanted to do. It seemed to be well-received.”
Underground Press editor and publisher Marc Jackson was the driving force behind the paper.
“I learned a lot in the last couple of years working for him and got lots of advice from him on how to write,” said Purves.
“Marc’s the best guy a community could ever have for putting out a paper. He has passion for the community, he cares about the community. He had a nice, long run, too,” said Lamontagne.
Jackson declined an interview with The Reminder.
“As long as we can keep giving support to other papers, hopefully they’ll keep going. The struggle’s going across the world when it comes to papers,” said Lamontagne.
“The paper does more than just talk about events or things that are for sale. It was interesting reading things about what Hudbay was doing in our community. These are things you just can’t get from Facebook. I’ll miss that,” said Purves.
