By Tim Querengesser-- Unlike their southern counterparts, newspapers in the territories are doing just fine. If a newspaper were a house, the words would be the wallpaper and the advertisements the walls. The more ads a newspaper gets, the bigger the house, and the more wallpaper needed. So, to take a paper’s heartbeat, just count the pages.

Once upon a time in Canada, it was easy to separate the healthy papers from the infirm: Big-city dailies like the Toronto Star and Edmonton Journal were the chubby First Worlders; community papers were the simple, quaint, oh-so-hungry Third Worlders. But this divide has blurred during the economic free fall. Canada’s newspaper heavyweights – judged by profitability – are no longer based in Toronto or Vancouver or Edmonton, but rather in Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Iqaluit.

This past year has been a bad one for daily newspapers. As the recession hit, many writers lucky enough to have a job seemed singularly interested in reporting how they’d eventually lose it. Gloom ruled and not without reason. Newspaper readers continued to abandon newsprint for the Internet, and falling ad revenues and the credit crunch caused giants like the New York Times and Canwest Global Communications – owners of the Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald and Ottawa Citizen, among others – to be compromised by billions in debt.

Compared to 2007, advertising revenues in newspapers in the United States have fallen by almost 25 per cent, and nearly one out of five journalists working for a paper in that country in 2001 no longer does today. Two big dailies – Denver’s Rocky Mountain News and Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer – closed this year, while San Francisco, Cleveland, Miami, and Minneapolis may still lose their dailies. The Los Angeles Times has filed for bankruptcy protection, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News have cut back on home delivery, the National Post has cancelled its Monday edition, Halifax’s Chronicle Herald has laid off 25 per cent of its newsroom staff and the Globe and Mail has frozen salaries. Worse, Fitch Ratings service, an American organization that monitors media companies in that country, predicted more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009, and several cities “could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010.”

All of this saw the year tinged with a bit of paranoia. As we read media accounts of General Motors and Lehman Brothers toppling in 2009, we worried we were reading from another pillar of society that was made from sand. “Publishers and journalists have become their own worst enemy,” said media scholar Robert Picard to USA Today. “They are running around arguing that the sky is falling. And they’re making the situation appear worse than it is.”

He has a point. While newspapers folded, shed staff or contemplated their demise, there were more consumers of their main product, print journalism, than ever before. As the New York Times agonized over how to avoid its creditors, its website tallied 20 million unique visitors, making it the fifth most viewed site on the entire Internet. Somehow, the newspaper industry has become so unprofitable that high demand can no longer pay to make the product. The caveat to this, however, is the community newspaper. As a whole, this somewhat antiquated institution of newsprint has weathered the downturn without spilling blood. And nowhere is this truer than in Canada’s North.

According to the Canadian Community Newspaper Association’s 2007 “snapshot” of community papers, the most recent available, 74 per cent of adults in Canada read a community paper, while only 57 per cent read a daily. There are close to 900 community papers in Canada, with a total weekly circulation of 13,900,000. That edges out the circulation of the national dailies, which, counting the biggies like the Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen, is about 8,000,000 over the course of a week. Only Quebecers are more likely to read a big daily than a community weekly. And the spread is biggest in the North: Only 30 per cent of Northerners read a daily paper, while 80 per cent of them read a community paper.

Combine this with the territory’s known resilience to recessions and you have an ideal environment for papers to thrive in. “It’s been one of our best years ever actually,” says Lorna Desilets, manager of the Hay River Hub. She estimates this year’s ad sales are up by 25 per cent. “I was expecting the worst,” she says, “but it turned out to be better than ever.” The paper’s readership, some 85 per cent of the town’s residents, is key, she says.

“I wouldn’t say we’ve been hit hard at all,” says Richard Mostyn, editor of the Yukon News. At The Yellowknifer, the downturn has created “a couple of little dips,” says publisher Jack Sigvaldson. Yet car advertisers are now back, he says, and after hearing all the newspaper gloom from the south, he’s unconvinced. “I see so much on television and in magazines about the demise of the newspapers. What they’re talking about is the problems the dailies are having. They’re in a very different situation because they’re not close to their communities.”

Why have Northern papers weathered the storm so well? For one, they’re sheltered from the digital revolution that’s re-writing the rules in the south, thanks to the North’s skinny Internet bandwidth. And doubtless the large role government plays in the Northern economy has something to do with it, with an endless flow of advertisements for tenders, jobs and public service messages, often in multiple languages. But it may mostly boil down to small being beautiful. Despite the region’s mammoth distances, sparse population and wide diversity, the North has a homogenous sense of itself. That helps local newspapers remain profitable, relevant and respected, sometimes despite themselves.

Distance from the sickness infecting the southern newspaper industry is surely sheltering Northern newspapers, says John Hinds, chief executive officer of the Canadian Newspaper Association. “My analogy is that the further you are in Canada away from a U.S.-buying decision on advertising, the better off your newspaper is.” Francophone newspapers have faired well during the downturn as they’re culturally and somewhat regionally specific, Hinds says, while Toronto and Vancouver papers, competing for big market ads like automobiles with papers from south of the border, are suffering. “The more dependent you are on local advertising the better off you are, and most of the Northern papers are totally dependent on local advertising,” he says. “If you’re based on a U.S. ad-buy it’s tough. If you’re based on a Toronto or Vancouver ad-buy it’s a little better, but not great. And if you’re based on a regional, Yellowknife ad-buy, you’re great.”

Advertising itself is also a different game in the North, and that’s played a role. Though less flashy than national-level ads, government provides a steady stream of revenues. “Because a good part of the advertising is related to government and non-business organizations, we may have been hit a little less with the downturn in private-sector advertising which has hit in southern Canada,” says Michael Roberts, president of Ottawa-based Nortext, which owns Iqaluit’s Nunatsiaq News. “So, we’re managing to survive without any serious cutbacks.”

“I don’t really think [the recession has] had any kind of meaningful impact,” adds Patrick Teskey, editor of the Hay River Hub. “We’re the sole paper in the community – News/North does have a reporter here, but our specific focus is Hay River and Hay River alone. We still get a lot of business from the different businesses in town if they need to get the word out about something. We’re pretty much their only choice.”

But aside from the business of selling ads, there are other reasons behind the continued health of Northern rags. Papers up here remain linked to their community, and enjoy loyalty amongst readers. “Community newspapers are doing well,” says Sigvaldson. “The dailies, I think, are out of touch with their market.” One Northerner who clearly agrees is Jay Bulckaert. A Yellowknife filmmaker and videographer, Bulckaert says he picks up the Yellowknifer every time it hits the stands. “I like it because my friends are in there,” he says, dryly. “I know almost everyone in the paper, so it’s funny to read about them.”

Such human connections are a big factor behind stability in the Northern newspaper industry. Despite the massive distances separating people up here, the isolation and challenging climate link people together. It’s communities that make newspapers, after all, not the other way around. “It’s more vital because it remains the one medium for news delivery,” explains Mostyn, with the Yukon News in Whitehorse. “Down south, the Globe and Mail is facing huge competition. These markets have got television, radio, free weeklies, Internet, and all the other varieties of news delivery that are going on these days, like Twitter. Whitehorse doesn’t really have television – there is some TV coverage, but it’s not as dependable or ubiquitous as you’d find in larger centres. So that’s meant rather than turning on the tube you still pick up the newspaper. I think that’s protected us a little bit.”

There is a strong sense of place in the North, says Mostyn, “so hyper-local here means a very large geographic area with a very small population. That really intense local coverage is what nobody else – not even the Internet sites – can provide.”

The history of newspapering in Canada begins in the 1820s with Joseph Howe in Nova Scotia, and spreads west. In the North, it begins in Dawson City during the 1898 gold rush and spreads east. Over the years, several of the North’s titles have disappeared, though the Whitehorse Star was founded way back in 1900, predating even the Globe and Mail by 36 years.

Most Northern newspapers aren’t well known outside the North, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t quality products. In the Yukon, Whitehorse has one of the most lively media cultures in all of Canada, given its population of only 23,000. There, the daily Whitehorse Star, the thrice-weekly Yukon News, the weekly entertainment rag What’s Up Yukon, and a Francophone monthly each continue to publish, while further north in Dawson City, the Klondike Sun publishes bi-weekly.

In the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife-based Northern News Services is the closest thing there is to a newspaper chain across the territories. Aside from the twice-weekly Yellowknifer, started in 1972, the company produces six other titles – the Kivalliq News, the Inuvik Drum, the Dehcho Drum, and News/North regional editions for the NWT and Nunavut. The company employs about 60 people.

In Nunavut, the media landscape is less dense but no less accomplished. The critically acclaimed weekly Nunatsiaq News, based in Iqaluit, has been publishing since 1973. Distributed through Nunavut and Nunavik at Co-op stores, content is in English, Inuktitut, and sometimes French and Inuinnaqtun.

Like petulant bookends, Yukon News and the Nunatsiaq News are the most outspoken and defiant, while in the middle reside the North’s softer, more feel-good publications. Each formula has plenty of supporters and detractors.

Both the Yukon News and Nunatsiaq News swear by truth telling. Their investigative journalism and acidic editorials play an honourable newspapering role in Northern society: While individuals may not feel free to speak up and criticize for fear of social retribution – the North is a small, small place after all – they feel good that the paper will say it for them.

In 2003, the Yukon News cracked open a can of worms that has served it well ever since, breaking the story that the just-elected (and still) premier, Dennis Fentie, had been convicted on two counts of trafficking heroin in 1975 and spent 17 months in a federal penitentiary in Edmonton. He hadn’t told voters this fact. The story drew a line in the sand between the paper and the Fentie government. It’s only accelerated of late, with Fentie’s secret talks to privatize the territory’s electrical utility exposed and a huge outrage resulting.

Editor Richard Mostyn seems as busy as you might expect an editor at the Toronto Star to be. “It’s like running in sand today,” he jokes while fielding UHB’s call on a non-deadline day. Surprisingly, Whitehorse is a hotbed of news, largely thanks to a culture of investigative journalism. The News succeeds on newsstands by covering the contentious sides of issues, Mostyn says. “People are picking up the paper. Reader response to the stuff we’ve been doing lately has been off the charts. Letters – dozens of letters. People are engaged and they’re reading. That’s actually a very good litmus test for engagement.”

The paper’s publisher pumps an “awful lot of money” into editorial, Mostyn says, “and I think that matters. I believe that helps make people pick up the paper. You’ve got to surprise people every time. If you’re not doing that, then people are bored with it, and they won’t be willing to slap down the buck.”

Northern News Services’ papers are on the other end of the spectrum. They epitomize the community in the community newspaper formula: News stories are typically soft, pictures feature pets, parades and children, headlines are hokey, and the crusading flavour of other Northern newspapers to hold governments to account is often mitigated with a more advertiser friendly, ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ vibe.

Regardless of what Northern newspaper you look at, though, a few things are true across the board. The majority of Northern newspaper reporting staff is young and, in many cases, in their first jobs in the business. Most aren’t paid well compared to those they’re reporting on. Indeed, Northern papers survive on the passion of their staff, and their profit margins would be far skinnier without a crew of young writers willing to slog for a little money and a chance at something bigger.

Still, the North is clearly a special place for newspapers – something of a panacea, a drop of contrast to an otherwise gloomy picture being painted elsewhere. Just don’t think it will remain like this forever. “It may be that we’re just in a time delay,” says Mostyn. “Things always flow North eventually, even Walmart did. We’re on the frontier so change comes a little slower but it doesn’t mean that change isn’t going to come.”