Dear readers,
It’s with a heavy heart that the Fitzhugh is announcing it will be shutting down after two decades of providing news to the town of Jasper.
Local newspapers have been facing unprecedented challenges in recent years, ranging from COVID-19 to the Facebook ban on Canadian news. Despite that, the Fitzhugh managed to hang on thanks to the support of our readers and the local businesses that were able to advertise.
However, the Jasper wildfire has made it untenable to sustain our operation. Because many Jasper businesses were destroyed and the remainder will likely continue to financially struggle for the foreseeable future, there is not enough ad revenue to sustain our newsroom.
We have explored the idea of continuing to provide local news coverage for the community in some other form, but such an operation is currently not financially sustainable in a post-wildfire Jasper.
As such, our website will shut down at the end of August. Recent stories will continue to be available on the Rocky Mountain Outlook’s website.
While we are saddened by this outcome, we take pride in the service that we have provided the community over the past 20 years.
Our origins date back to the summer of 2005, when a group of friends came together with the idea of creating an independent, locally owned newspaper that would represent the needs, issues and ideas of our community.
The name “Fitzhugh” was chosen for many reasons. Jasper was originally known as Fitzhugh, named after a vice-president and general manager of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, and our goal was to connect the past with the future and beyond.
Our goal was to incorporate the years of rail history that have contributed to the physical formation of our town as well as representing the people that worked so hard to expand the west.
In April 2012, the Fitzhugh was sold by The Jasper Media Group to Aberdeen Publishing Limited Partnership. Since 2023, it has been published by Great West Media LP of St. Albert, Alta.
The Fitzhugh is honoured to have documented the recent history of this mountain town, events big and small, stories sad and joyous, great triumphs and great tragedies. We are especially proud of having provided continuous coverage of the Jasper wildfire and the last year of recovery.
We would like to thank all the advertisers—businesses, non-profits, individuals, the Municipality of Jasper, Parks Canada and so many others—who kept our paper sustainable over the years.
We’d also like to give a special thanks to all our past staff in editorial, sales and production, as well as both Aberdeen Publishing and Great West Media for shepherding our publication through thick and thin.
Most of all, we’d like to thank any reader, whether a Jasperite or a visitor, who picked a newspaper off a rack, subscribed to our newsletter or clicked a link going to our website. You are our reason for going to work, and you are what kept us afloat all these years.
So long, Jasper. Our story may be over, but yours is still going strong.
Peter Shokeir,
Editor, Jasper Fitzhugh
