Banner and Press to become one

Details

Published on Wednesday, September 27, 2017

By Ken Waddell
The Neepawa Press

In 2010, the Neepawa Press was purchased by Glacier Corporation out of Vancouver. That meant that after 114 years of local ownership, The Neepawa Press was managed by an out-of-town and out-of province company. In 2015, the Neepawa Press was purchased by the Neepawa Banner and its publishers, Ken and Christine Waddell, which brought the oldest business in Neepawa back into local ownership.

“We kept publishing The Neepawa Press as a separate paper as long as it made economic sense, but now, federal and provincial government advertising is at a low ebb in community papers so it now makes absolute sense to combine the papers,” said Ken Waddell. Since the purchase of the Press in 2015, many readers have asked when the two would become one. Now, that time has arrived. Next week, there will be one paper, the Neepawa Banner and Press

The Banner and Press will publish with a Friday date and be out on the streets Thursday afternoon in Neepawa and everywhere else on Friday. The new combined paper takes over the Banner’s circulation, printing over 8,300 copies each week. Ad and news deadlines will be Tuesday at noon, which has been the Banner deadline for many years.

Neepawa has had a newspaper or two from the earliest days.

The Neepawa Press, although the oldest continuing business in Neepawa today, was not the first newspaper published here. The first newspaper, edited and managed by a Mr. Brongeest, was started in 1885 and was known as the Neepawa Canadian. Mr. Brongeest later severed connections with The Canadian and started his own newspaper, The Neepawa Star. Both papers were later amalgamated into The Neepawa Register. There were apparently several other short lived papers, one of which was The Neepawa Herald, another The Neepawa News.

In May, 1896, The Neepawa Press was born with the following pronouncement: “It is believed there is room in Neepawa for two live, local papers, and it is proposed to make The Press a clean and creditable journal, trusting to success in this respect to establish a profitable and permanent business”. The Neepawa Press thrived and absorbed the Register in the late 1920s.

The Neepawa Press founder, J.A. Dunlop, died in 1930 and left the business to his son, Blake, who published The Press until September 1946. Another son, Wilfred Dunlop, was also associated with the paper during the 1940s. S. James Dempsey took over in 1946 and he was succeeded by W.H. Vopni on July 1, 1948. Editors during the next 20 years included Vic O’Neil, of Edmonton, William Portman of Portage la Prairie, A.F. “Dick” McKenzie, of Neepawa, Jennifer Sladek, of Gladstone, George Smellie, of Russell and Bill Peters, of Binscarth. On November 1, 1968 The Press was purchased by Jack Huxley and John Oslund, who had been co-managers of the business since 1955. In the 1990s, the Press was purchased by Jack Gibson and Ewan Pow. The Press was sold as noted above in 2010 to Glacier and then purchased by The Banner in 2015. Most of the Neepawa Press features will be included in the new, combined paper.