Richmond Councillors Upset With Limited Newspaper Delivery in Rural Areas

ARICHAT - Municipal councillors in Richmond County will contact the largest newspaper company in Atlantic Canada, Saltwire Media, to request a reversal of a recent decision to end delivery of two of its biggest daily newspapers to customers in rural communities, including several parts of Richmond County. 

Saltwire officials confirmed in November that subscribers to several of its dailies in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island would be switched to these newspapers' online editions. These include The Chronicle-Herald, Nova Scotia's only remaining daily provincial newspaper, and The Cape Breton Post, the only daily newspaper focusing specifically on the island. 

Residents in St. George's Channel, on the Bras d'Or Lake coastline in northern Richmond County, were among the first to go public with concerns that neither daily newspaper would arrive on local doorsteps for the foreseeable future. Monday night's council meeting in Arichat saw Richmond County's Deputy Warden, Brent Sampson, announcing that he had heard similar complaints in his own District Five, which takes in Potlotek First Nation and several of the county's most northeasterly communities. 

"We all know a lot of people - and, especially, we have a lot of seniors in our districts - that aren't at all comfortable with using online versions of newspapers," Sampson suggested. "I think this came as a shock to a lot of people, as well as a big disappointment."

While Sampson and District Three councillor Melanie Sampson - no relation - both agree with the concept that Saltwire's move was a "private business decision" based on shrinking circulation for the company's main newspapers, the Deputy Warden stressed that "it may be in the best interest of our residents" to press Saltwire for a reversal of its rural-delivery decision.

The move comes on the heels of Saltwire Media's announcement earlier this fall that its daily newspapers would stop publishing on Mondays, leaving subscribers with new editions for only five of the week's seven days.