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Vancouver Courier makes temporary closure permanent after 112 years in print

After 112 years in business, the Vancouver Courier has permanently stopped publishing, according to parent company Glacier Media.

The Courier first announced it was temporarily ceasing publication on April 2, 2020.

"The small, independent businesses in our community that are under economic pressure to shut their doors or reduce services are the same ones that have supported our coverage and made it possible to deliver free, local news to you. Their significant drop in advertising revenue for our publication and lack of quick, available government funding means that we have been forced to make the difficult decision to cease both print and online coverage," said Glacier Media in a post on the Courier's website in April.

The message said the company hoped to return to business as usual following the pandemic, but instead it announced Thursday the paper is closed for good.

Vancouver Courier travel and lifestyle editor Sandra Thomas says employees were notified by phone on Aug. 24 that their temporary layoffs in early April would be made permanent.

A total of six employees were laid off and offered severance packages, Thomas says, while one employee stayed on with Glacier Media.

"It was really tough. It's the end of an era," said Thomas who worked for the Courier for 20 years.

"There's a lot of stories in this city and we always looked for the unusual and quirky. We knew because we weren't daily that we couldn't beat the dailies at that kind of news all the time, so our job was to find whatever story there was and advance it, and to find the people in the stories."

"It was a joy to work there, [...] and it was a pleasure to serve the city."

Two brands, one market

President of Lower Mainland publishing for Glacier Media, Alvin Brouwer, said the closure still leaves the company's other news outlet, Vancouver is Awesome, in the same market with a larger online following.

"Essentially what we had is two publishing brands serving the same market, and then when COVID hit we thought, 'Oh okay, that's going to be difficult to continue doing that.' So then we just went with the one brand in both digital and print," said Brouwer.

Vancouver is Awesome began publishing a print version of their online news content in April, shortly after the Courier first stopped publishing.

"One never likes to see a newspaper go away, but the way we're looking at it it's not really gone away, like we're still covering local news," said Brouwer.

According to Heritage Vancouver, the first issue of the Courier, then called Eburne News was published in March 1908.

Thomas says at one point the paper had a weekly distribution of more than 200,000, but of late that had fallen to 108,000. The paper also used to publish three issues a week, but had scaled back to one.

Glacier media says the Vancouver Courier website and its archive of stories will remain online.