NNSL, the Carpenter Media Group-owned company that prints the NWT’s only English-language newspapers, is closing down the Inuvik Drum.
The Drum, published weekly, serves the town of 3,000 people and the wider Beaufort Delta region, home to just under 7,000 residents.
It was first published in 1966 and was acquired by NNSL in 1988, the company said in a Thursday statement announcing its closure.
No reason for the closure was given. Newspapers more generally have faced significant loss of advertising revenue to digital and social media in recent years.
“Residents of Inuvik who rely on local news coverage in print will continue to find pertinent details about the region in a renewed publication of News/North,” the company said, referring to another weekly NNSL newspaper circulated across the NWT that contains reporting from around the territory.
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“Effective January 13, News/North will include dedicated stories about [the] Beaufort Delta, while the Inuvik Drum will cease publishing as a standalone print product. Since 1988, both print publications have had overlapping circulation,” the company stated.
“Digital storytelling about Inuvik will continue to be available on NNSL.com.”
Mike Bryant, NNSL’s publisher, was quoted as saying the company “will always report on what’s going on in Inuvik and the Beaufort Delta area.”
“Back before all the internet stuff, people would pick up the paper to see what was going on, plus it had all the job ads and things like that,” Mayor of Inuvik Peter Clarkson told Cabin Radio. “Now, of course, that changed as we entered more of a digital world, but I think people still enjoyed actually picking up the paper copy.”
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“It’s just one more thing that isn’t offered,” Clarkson said.
“The fact that there will still be a digital copy certainly is good news, but it’s one less option out there.”
The Inuvik Drum’s last print edition will be January 9, 2025 – almost 59 years to the day after it was first published.
The Deh Cho Drum, which was established by NNSL to serve the NWT’s Dehcho region in 1994, was shuttered in 2017. At the time, NNSL said “declining advertising revenue and shipping costs in a small market have made the publication of the Deh Cho Drum untenable.”
NNSL was taken over by Black Press in 2021, which in turn was bought out by Alabama-based Carpenter Media Group earlier this year.
