I would like to echo Karen’s excellent observations and insight into the printed newspaper world. In the 1990s the local papers in the Niagara Peninsula, where I was born and lived until retiring to the County in 2019, were being swallowed up by Conrad Black’s Hollinger Inc. His strategy was to buy the small independent local papers and immediately shut them down.

In our small town of Fonthill the local weekly paper was facing this fate when I as a Town Councillor and 49 other investors made a preemptive move and purchased the assets before he could close it.

Keeping the existing Editor and staff, we changed the name to The Voice of Pelham, to include the smaller villages around Fonthill. The importance of local news and advertising with photos of the people you meet and see in your own neighbourhood everyday can not be overlooked.

I believe Hollinger Inc. filed for bankruptcy in 2007, but The Voice was still in print when I retired.