After less than a year, Up Here magazine is NWT-owned once more

“It’s like the Days of Our Lives of the North. To be a part of that history and to keep that going is pretty amazing.”

Sherry Rioux is one half of the duo bringing Up Here back here.

The magazine, which covers Canada’s North, was Yellowknife-based for decades under the management of Marion LaVigne and Ronne Heming.

Earlier this year, that changed. North of Ordinary Media, based in the Yukon, bought Up Here from LaVigne and Heming.

Now, just months later, the magazine is under new ownership yet again.

Rioux, who has led Up Here’s ad sales for five years, and art director Brianna Freitag have pulled off what amounts to an employee buyout.

“We’re bringing it back to the NWT,” Rioux told Cabin Radio.

The paperwork finalizing the sale was agreed late last week. Up Here and sister publication Up Here Business will continue, as will the range of visitors’ guides the company produces for northern communities.

“I’m just so excited to be able to keep working for Up Here and let everyone get to enjoy and read these amazing stories,” said Freitag.

Rioux said she and Freitag were first approached by LaVigne and Heming about taking over the magazine before its sale to North of Ordinary Media, but didn’t feel ready to take on the job at the time.

North of Ordinary Media’s publisher, Greg Karais, had suggested the door was still open if things changed, Rioux added.

“Brianna and I were talking about other projects and it snowballed into, ‘Well, why don’t we just see if he’s willing? Let’s see if we could buy this back.’ We got to a point where we felt that, you know what? Maybe it’s not such a big undertaking and maybe it is something that we’re capable of,” she said.

Up Here just celebrated its 40th year. Rioux, who is from Inuvik, said the magazine has been a presence throughout her life.

Freitag has a similar relationship with magazines as a whole.

“I have grown up working in magazines. Since I left college, it’s been 20 years of magazine design. That’s what I know – seeing an issue start, having all the stories and all the editorial production meetings, having it all come together and seeing it at the end all printed,” Freitag said.

“That’s just amazing. It’s what I’ve been doing for so long that I can’t see myself doing anything else but magazines.”

However, in a world where media companies face all kinds of threats to their existence, the future of many magazines isn’t clear.

Rioux said the new owners will work to add more interactivity to their magazine among other ideas to revitalize Up Here, but she adds that print advertising revenue is staging a comeback amid the “onslaught of ads” people face on social media.

“There is a place for print,” she said.

“With the legacy and the reputation that Up Here has – and we have a lot of very amazing supporters in all three territories, we have a lot of advertisers that have been with us for so long – that’s really what will see us through and take us into the future.

“We’re going to see the same great magazine and some fun surprises that hopefully will be coming in the next few years, that will take us into a new age of print that I think people are really going to enjoy.”