The owner of the city’s two newspapers has announced publication of the Red Deer Express will cease after Wednesday’s edition.
Black Press Media will invest its energies into the Red Deer Advocate, which has served the region since 1907.
“When we first bought the Red Deer Express seven years ago, we felt there was enough of a market to run both the Express and the Advocate as competitors in the Red Deer market,” Black Press Media president and CEO Rick O’Connor said this week.
“However, as readers have migrated towards a number of different platforms, including print and the web, it’s become clear we really need to focus our energies on one brand.
“For reasons that should be obvious, we chose the Red Deer Advocate because the brand has a lot of value for readers in the Red Deer market.”
“The decision to focus on a single, high-quality and trusted brand allows us to concentrate our efforts on continuing to deliver the best newspaper across all platforms,” says Mary Kemmis, publisher of the Red Deer Advocate and president of Black Press Media’s Prairie division.
The Advocate, which produces a robust print edition and popular website with more than 6.5 million page views annually, will continue to inform and entertain central Alberta readers, said Kemmis.
“We’ll also continue to support the many community initiatives that have made Red Deer and central Alberta such a great place to live and work.”