About Rossland Telegraph

Rossland Telegraph

Overview

The Rossland Telegraph is an independent, online-only community newspaper serving Rossland, a small mountain city in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. Published at rosslandtelegraph.com, the Telegraph provides local news — above all, detailed coverage of Rossland city council — alongside provincial and national items, opinion pieces and columns chosen for their relevance to local readers. It is locally owned and operated, and it is not part of any chain: Rossland's other newspaper, the print Rossland News, is a Black Press title, while the Telegraph remains an independent digital publication.

Rossland is a former gold-mining city of 4,140 people (2021 census) set in the crater of an ancient volcano above the Columbia River, now known for Red Mountain Resort, mountain biking and a preserved heritage downtown. The Telegraph's editor, Sara Golling, has said she always reports on Rossland council because community members should have the opportunity to be well informed about their local government, and its signature "Council Matters" reports aim to give readers complete and accurate coverage of council decisions without click-bait framing, in the paper's own characterization.

History

The Telegraph was founded in August 2008 by Adrian Barnes, a Rossland author, with his friend David Livingston. It was an early example of the online-only community newspaper in British Columbia, launched at a time when Rossland had no local paper of its own in the digital space. The publication expanded under the name Lone Sheep Publishing into a small network of sister online newspapers across the southern Interior: the Trail Champion, the Castlegar Source, The Nelson Daily and the Boundary Sentinel.

In early 2015, at Barnes's request, Sara Golling took over the Rossland Telegraph. The original Lone Sheep partnership was later dissolved, and the five publications became separately owned and operated businesses, although, as Golling has explained, they continue to use an updated version of the original publishing platform, maintain a close relationship and share some articles among themselves. Under Golling the Telegraph settled into its current form: a one-editor independent news site anchored by council reporting, contributed columns and selected wire and syndicated material.

The Telegraph's name gestures to Rossland's rich earlier newspaper history without being a continuation of any earlier title. Rossland's gold-rush press included the Rossland Miner — whose surviving issues, dating from 1896 to 1972, are held by the Rossland Museum & Discovery Centre archives — the Rosslander, published from January 1897 to July 1898, and the Rossland Evening World, launched as a daily in May 1901 and remembered as a crusading voice for militant mine workers in its editorial wars with the Miner. A small city that once supported competing daily and weekly papers is thus a fitting home for an independent news site, and the modern Telegraph is a twenty-first-century successor in spirit to that tradition of small, opinionated local journalism. Its local-history role is recognized by the Rossland Museum, which cites Telegraph reporting — including a 2010 article by contributor Andrew Zwicker and a 2019 interview by Golling — among the sources for its own exhibits.

Programming and Content

Local government reporting is the Telegraph's core. Golling's "Council Matters" column reports Rossland council meetings in detail — the October 5, 2026 instalment, published October 6, covered the final meeting of the outgoing council, a contested rezoning application and the city's reserve funds; the September 8, 2026 meeting report addressed self-storage zoning, bear-proof dumpsters and a new downtown housing approval. The Telegraph has also followed the long-running Record Ridge magnesium mine controversy near Rossland through the courts, reporting in April 2026 on a court decision rejecting an attempt to exclude an Indigenous group from a judicial review of the project.

Housing and tourism policy is a recurring theme in a community the province counts among its fourteen designated resort municipalities: in March 2024, former Rossland planning manager Mike Maturo used the Telegraph's letters page to argue against the short-term rental bylaw council was then considering, an episode covered in its news pages as the debate unfolded. Coverage of Red Mountain Resort, the city's trail network and its heritage downtown likewise reflects a community whose economy rests on outdoor recreation.

Around that core, the Telegraph publishes opinion and analysis intended, in its editor's words, to encourage readers to think about the important issues of the day. Charles Jeanes's "National Identity" column is a regular feature — its September 14, 2026 edition reflected on Canadian identity through the words of Mavis Gallant and George Grant. Letters to the editor form part of the mix: in March 2024, former Rossland planning manager Mike Maturo used its pages to argue against the city's short-term rental bylaw. Community features and interviews — the Rossland Museum has drawn on Telegraph interviews for its own local-history work — round out the offering, together with provincial and national stories shared through the sister-publication network.

Audience and Reach

The Telegraph addresses the population of Rossland itself — 4,140 residents in the 2021 census, up 11 per cent from 2016, according to figures published by the City of Rossland — and the surrounding Rossland Range and Red Mountain area, including the neighbouring communities linked by its sister sites in Trail, Castlegar, Nelson and the Boundary country. Because it is online-only and free to read, its audience also extends to former residents and the city's many seasonal visitors and second-home owners who follow Rossland affairs from away. The publication carries advertising — the City of Rossland's own published accounts show a payment to the Rossland Telegraph in December 2025 — but it publishes no audited audience figures, and none are claimed here.

Digital Presence

The Telegraph is a digital-native publication: rosslandtelegraph.com is its only edition, and its stories are distributed and indexed across the web, with its council reporting and columns regularly surfacing through news-monitoring services such as EIN News within a day of publication. Its court reporting travels further still: a May 2026 province-wide analysis of the Record Ridge case cited the Telegraph's April 15, 2026 report on the judicial review alongside CBC and Global News coverage of the same proceedings. Items dated September and October 2026 — including the October 6, 2026 "Council Matters" report on the October 5 council meeting — confirm that the site remains in active publication. It shares a common publishing platform with its former Lone Sheep sister publications, and readers will find some stories cross-posted among the five sites.

Ownership and Organisation

The Rossland Telegraph is an independent, locally owned and operated business, as the Trail and District Chamber of Commerce described it in a member feature. It was founded by Adrian Barnes and David Livingston in 2008 and has been run since early 2015 by editor Sara Golling, who writes its council coverage and selects its contributed and syndicated content. It has no connection to Black Press or to the Rossland News; the two Rossland papers are separately owned competitors, one digital and independent, the other a print-and-digital chain weekly.

Contact and Availability

The Rossland Telegraph is available free online at rosslandtelegraph.com, publishing on a rolling basis rather than in a fixed print edition. News tips, letters and enquiries can be directed to the editor at editor@rosslandtelegraph.com. The paper's council reports appear after each Rossland city council meeting, and its columns and shared regional stories are posted as they are published.