The one-person bureau NNSL had sustained in Inuvik will end with the closure of the Drum newspaper, the company has confirmed.
On Thursday, NNSL – which has been owned by the US-based Carpenter Media Group since the spring – said the January 9, 2025 edition of the Inuvik Drum will be the last, 59 years after it was first published.
The company, which prints the territory’s only English-language newspapers, said reporting would instead appear online and in its weekly territory-wide edition, News/North.
From the NWT Archives: Read pages from a 1967 edition of the Drum
Later on Thursday, publisher Mike Bryant confirmed the closure of the Inuvik Drum in print will also mean the end of NNSL’s on-the-ground presence in the town.
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The Drum had been put together weekly by one journalist resident in the community – since 2019, Eric Bowling.
“The NNSL team will report on Inuvik and the surrounding area from Yellowknife. The team remains committed to reporting on the community online and in dedicated pages of News/North,” Bryant said by email.
The bureau’s closure means the majority of newsrooms in the Northwest Territories will now be operated solely from Yellowknife.
Of the territory’s daily news organizations, only the CBC now has reporters based outside the territorial capital – one in Inuvik and one in Fort Smith.
Until 2017, NNSL had reporters in Inuvik, Fort Simpson and Hay River as well as Yellowknife.
