Online news publication NewsKamloops ceases operation

Sep 30, 2016 | 11:14 AM

KAMLOOPS — The local digitial media landscape has suffered a loss with the announcement that NewsKamloops will end operations as of today.

The so-called “online newspaper” launched in the summer of 2015, with former Kamloops Daily News Editor Mel Rothenburger as partner and Vice President of Content.

Rothenburger says NewsKamloops simply couldn’t generate enough revenue to be sustainable.

“It was a tough decision to make, but we got to the point where it just couldn’t be sustained financially any longer,” explained Rothenburger, adding “we tried various things and hoped that we could keep it going, but there just wasn’t enough revenue coming in to do that.”

Rothenburger says the only job lost is that of Reporter/Editor Mike Youds.

“There is one job loss, and that’s Mike Youds who was our Reporter and Editor and did the bulk of our news coverage for us. The rest of us were working out of the love of the project, and are interested in the community.” 

“We felt that if we could have kept things going for a while longer, we could have got over that hump and become a permanent fixture. It was a good experiment in a way, we tried putting various people together such as Gregg Drinnan and bringing in Mike Youds and so on. It’s too bad, but that’s the media business.”