Type Daily newspaper Owner(s) Black Press Publisher Andrea Rosato-Taylor | Format Broadsheet Founder(s) George Norris Editor Philip Wolf | |
The Nanaimo Daily News was a Canadian daily newspaper published weekdays in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia for 141 years until closing in January 2016.
The paper's final owner was Black Press, which also publishes the Alberni Valley Times and several weekly newspapers on the island.
History
George Norris founded the paper as the semi-weekly Nanaimo Daily Free Press in 1874. It published daily 14 years later.
In the late 1990s, the Daily News was part the Southam chain, which itself was part of Hollinger Inc. This chain was, at the time, the dominant newspaper publisher in British Columbia, and also included the Alberni Valley Times, Times Colonist and several weeklies.
Along with the rest of Southam, ownership of the Vancouver Island newspapers passed to Canwest in 2000, then Postmedia Network in 2010.
Postmedia sold its Vancouver Island properties and Lower Mainland weeklies to Glacier Media in 2011 for $86.5 million.
In 2013, the Daily News attracted controversy and criticism for possible racism for publishing a letter to the editor that opposed First Nations. Over 100 people including the city's mayor protested the publication. The Daily News eventually apologized for publishing the letter, then apologized again later that year for publishing a second letter also critical of First Nations.
In 2015, Glacier Media sold all its island papers except for the Times Colonist to Black Press.
In January 2016, Black Press announced the closing of the Daily News while maintaining its separate newspaper, the Nanaimo Daily Bulletin.
The newspaper is proud of its stubborn insistence on referring to the citizenry of Nanaimo as "Nanaimoites" instead of "Nanaimoans." Local literary lore posits that the early editors of the newspapers presumed that "Nanaimoans" was too difficult for a predominantly blue-collar readership to pronounce. Despite being advised that the people of Chicago are known as Chicagoans, not Chicagoites, and that the people of Orlando are known as Orlandoans, not Orlandoites, and further that the people of Toledo are known as Toledoans, not Toledoites, the newspaper's editors remain unmoved.