The paNOW family expands!
February 2, 2016
Karl Johnston, Publisher
We have some good news to share with you, our valued readers and advertisers! Today, the paNOW family launched sister sites in the Battlefords and Meadow Lake. These community information portals have taken a page out of the paNOW playbook and can be found online at battlefordsNOW.com and meadowlakeNOW.com. We invite you to share the news with your friends and family on social media. The good news doesn’t stop there. Having noted the success of paNOW, our new owner, The Jim Pattison Broadcast Group, is taking the format to selected cities across western Canada. Today you will find similar sites in Kamloops and Lethbridge.
All this is happening against a backdrop of bad news for the media industry. Last week, two daily community newspapers closed in Canada. The week before that, Postmedia and Rogers slashed hundreds of jobs nationwide. We’re not immune from this trend here at home. Only a few months ago the newspaper in La Ronge suddenly closed. The local CTV station has quietly eliminated more jobs and moved production of the noon news cast from Prince Albert to Saskatoon. PA’s daily print paper hangs on – a shell of its former self, with fewer staff and even fewer pages. If that wasn’t bad enough, the community newspaper in North Battleford recently ran a front page headline stating there was no news worth reporting that week, so ran nothing!