Glacier Media Group announces closure of Richmond Review

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      Glacier Media Group has decided to close the 83-year-old Richmond Review community newspaper.

      It was announced over the publication's Twitter account this morning.

      "We're sad to report that Friday will be the last edition of the Richmond Review. Thank you #RichmondBC for all your support over the years."

      Bhreandain Clugston has been the paper's editor since 2000. Martin van den Hemel has been a reporter since 1994. Other editorial staff include reporter Matthew Hoekstra and sports editor Don Fennell.

      Glacier is a publicly traded company based in Vancouver. It also owns the Richmond News

      Earlier, the company announced that it would be cutting the Vancouver Courier's print run from two days to one day a week. Yesterday, Courier editorial staffers Cheryl Rossi and Andrew Fleming were laid off.

      Last December in a swap of several community papers, Glacier obtained the Richmond Review, Tri-City News, Burnaby NewsLeader, and New Westminster NewsLeader from Black Press.

      In return, the privately owned Black Press took ownership of the Surrey Now, Langley Advance, and Maple Ridge Times.

      The deal lessened competition by giving Glacier a community-newspaper monopoly over the western part of the Lower Mainland and Black Press a monopoly in eastern suburbs of Vancouver.

      That exchange followed an earlier swap in October 2013 giving Glacier a monopoly over community newspapers on the North Shore and Vancouver and Black Press a monopoly in Chilliwack and Abbotsford.

      In 2013, the Media Union of B.C. announced that Glacier was contracting out advertising production to a company that does this work in the Philippines and India. According to the union, it resulted in the loss of more than 15 of its members' jobs.

      Glacier remains profitable, recording $4.55 million in net income on revenues of $56.07 million in the first quarter of 2015.

      Comments

      13 Comments

      AKG

      Jul 22, 2015 at 11:18am

      Yeah, that's about what I expected. Glacier's bleeding money on the community paper side, so cost-cutting is going to kill at least several of the duplicate papers. Sad to hear, the Review is a fantastic paper. Hopefully the excellent reporters and staff can find new spots quickly.

      Brenda Collett

      Jul 22, 2015 at 1:51pm

      This is so sad. I worked for the Richmond Review from 1989 to 2002. I was so excited when I got the job of Advertising Controller. I had been reading the Review since I was 12 years old. I put babysitting ads in it, started my adult job searching from it, read about my peers and neighbours in it, followed our school sports in it, watched Richmond turn into a city with it, and followed politics (scandals and all!) through it. I made wonderful, long time friends from working there, had a little piece I wrote published in it, read about my son playing football by Don Fennell, had a piece written about my son by Carlin Yandle, publisher at the time, telling about the emotions of a first-time summer camp experience, and got my 15 minutes of fame with an article written about my experience during the bombing of the nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia. The Richmond Review was classy, smart, fun, and well read by the whole community. I guess that was back in the day, though, since Richmond has changed its demographics immensely in the past 10 years. It's now official; the Richmond we once knew is no longer.

      Martin Dunphy

      Jul 22, 2015 at 4:18pm

      It's always sad to see a regional newspaper with a long history fall to the bean counter's sword, especially when it seemed to have been reduced to the role of a pawn in a monopolistic territorial game of chess between parties that clearly do not have community news interests uppermost in mind.

      Long-time Review reporter Martin van den Hemel was, literally, the only British Columbia journalist (by my reckoning) outside of the Georgia Straight to question the hysterical Vancouver Police Department version of the events around the May 2004 "terrorist attack" on the Coast Mountain transit bus. You remember, the "attack" that never happened.

      Every media outlet in the province—TV, print, and radio—regurgitated top cops Jamie Graham, Chris Beach, and Const. Anne Drennan's britches-wetting pronouncements. Except Van den Hemel.

      Best wishes to all at the Review in their searches for future employment. And a big raspberry to Glacier Media.

      Cilla Bachop

      Jul 22, 2015 at 5:44pm

      The fact that Richmond's demographics are changing is no excuse for this decision. The Review has grown with the community and changed it's look, coverage and involvement many times to reflect the Richmond of the day. It has been a reflection of the community it serves and often done with panache and guts. Countless Richmond generations have had this paper as their voice and no matter, what their ethnicity, it would continue to do that job. NOT a good day for the City of Richmond and shame on the decision makers.

      Harold

      Jul 22, 2015 at 5:51pm

      Glacier Media cares only about its bottom line. It places no value on people.

      Abby Chow

      Jul 22, 2015 at 11:52pm

      Don't blame the changing demographics of Richmond for the demise of a city's "print publication" in our digital era. You are inherently blaming the "Chinese Canadians" and new immigrants for the changing landscape of your city. There has always been an influx of new population: be it europeans to the first nations populations, or new immigrants to your european landscape. The landscape is changing from population to technology and any industry --- (print) media to everything must adapt.

      Glacier and not immigrates to blame

      Jul 23, 2015 at 8:59am

      Just because Glacier was profitable doesn't mean the Richmond Review was. Three reporters plus an editor is a lot of mouths to feed for a paper that size today. The Review put out a superior print product but what did that mean in the end? Advertising pays the bills. It has an online product, but until Glacier figures out how to make up for the plummeting advertising on it then we're going to see more papers fall. And I don' t blame immigrants. I blame Glacier.

      Sign of the times

      Jul 23, 2015 at 12:40pm

      I stumbled upon this news paper by accident while at a restaurant in Richmond, where I work. I found it full of great, well-written articles that gave me a much better appreciation of Richmond and I always looked forward to whenever the new edition came out. This is very sad news. Lunch won't be the same.

      Bye

      Jul 23, 2015 at 3:46pm

      As a long time resident of Richmond, I can truly say Thank You Glacier Media for closing this so called "newspaper". Almost everyone in my apt. building is tired of having these guys throw their "newspaper" in our lobby every week. Most of those copies wound up in the garbage. A true newspaper doesn't claim to have readers based on how many papers they print, but rather by how many subscribers they actually have. "Newspapers" like this fool advertisers by inflating their publication numbers. They tell advertisers how many papers they print, not how many papers are actually read. Good riddance to the whole so called "newspapers" trend that throw their papers out for free because nobody would actually pay for them.

      Cariboo Dan

      Jul 23, 2015 at 8:08pm

      Black Press is definitely the better local media company.