Editor Jennifer Thuncher and Publisher Sarah Strother from The Squamish Chief joined us to talk about the challenges facing local news media. Some of the main comments were:• the Squamish Chief has a great team of dedicated and hard-working staff.
• readership is the key; readership drives advertising which is almost 100% of the paper's revenue.
• the paper version Chief went free to expand readership.
• currently 5500-6000 copies are printed weekly and distributed around town.
• most of the readership is now online with 350,000 articles viewed per month.
• the Meta ban on Canadian news has meant even more effort is being made to drive readership to the Squamish Chief website.
• the daily newsletter email has been very successful in keeping people up to date with what's happening in our community.