About Stonewall Teulon Tribune

Stonewall Teulon Tribune

Overview

The Stonewall Teulon Tribune is a free weekly community newspaper serving the towns of Stonewall and Teulon and the surrounding districts of Manitoba's southern Interlake region. It is published on Thursdays by Big and Colourful Printing & Publishing, the Manitoba community-newspaper company run by publisher Lana Meier, whose other titles include the Selkirk Record, The Express Weekly News, the Winkler Morden Voice and the Carman Dufferin Standard. The Tribune is supported entirely by advertising and delivered through Canada Post; its own masthead has described it as distributed to 7,600 homes.

The paper is an established, currently publishing member of Manitoba's community press. The Manitoba Community Newspapers Association's published Christmas schedule for 2025 lists the Stonewall Teulon Tribune among the province's active papers, and the Rural Municipality of Armstrong's council agreed in early 2026 to buy a year of advertisements in the Tribune and its sister paper, The Express Weekly News. In March 2026 the Tribune was quoted by name in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly, and its reporting continues to circulate through the Manitoba News 101 aggregation service, which carried Tribune stories from Stonewall dated July 2026. Since May 2020, when Postmedia closed the rival Stonewall Argus & Teulon Times, the Tribune has been the only locally published newspaper based in Stonewall.

History

The Tribune is a 21st-century newspaper, not a continuation of Stonewall's historic press. Stonewall's newspaper history begins in the 19th century: The Stonewall News and Rockwood County Advertiser was published between 1882 and 1891, and on 9 March 1893 the Argus was first issued from that paper's printing plant. From 1922 the older paper appeared as the Stonewall Argus and Teulon Times, and it served Stonewall and Teulon for well over a century under publishers including Ira Stratton, Joseph Saundry and Mervin Farmer. That title should not be confused with the Tribune: the two papers were direct competitors for roughly a decade, listed side by side in Interlake media directories with separate circulations.

The Tribune belongs to the group of Manitoba weeklies Lana Meier built after leaving Sun Media in 2010, where she had been the publisher of twelve weekly and two daily newspapers across Manitoba and northwestern Ontario. A December 2020 profile of her operation in Signal Halifax reported that she started the first three of her own papers later in 2010, added a fourth in 2014 as Sun Media closed more than twenty of its titles, and added a fifth during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, with the five papers based in Selkirk, Stonewall, the Morden-Winkler area, the Interlake and Carman, run from two offices with employees who worked from home even before the pandemic.

The Tribune's own issue numbering is consistent with that chronology: its edition of Thursday, 19 February 2015 is marked Volume 6, Edition 8, which places its first volume in 2010 if, as is customary, its volumes run annually. No separate launch announcement has been located in the sources consulted, so the date is given here as the paper's own numbering indicates rather than as a separately documented founding day. The February 2015 masthead describes the mechanics of the young paper in its own words: "The Stonewall Teulon Tribune is published Thursdays and distributed thru Canada Post to 7600 homes by BigandColourful Printing and Publishing, a division of Interlake Graphics," printed by Prolific Printing and "supported 100% by advertising dollars."

The competitive landscape around the Tribune changed decisively in the spring of 2020. On 28 April 2020 Postmedia announced the permanent closure of fifteen community newspapers in Manitoba and Ontario, and the Stonewall Argus & Teulon Times was among them; its final print editions ran on 4 May 2020 and the Manitoba Historical Society records that the newspaper was closed in May 2020. Meier's papers, including the Tribune, continued publishing through the pandemic, leaving the Tribune as Stonewall's surviving local paper.

Programming and Content

The Tribune is a full-service community weekly. Its front page organises coverage under news, sports, opinion, community, people, entertainment, events, classifieds and careers, and its reporting follows the institutions of its coverage area: the councils of the towns of Stonewall and Teulon and of the surrounding rural municipalities of Rockwood, Rosser, Woodlands, Armstrong and St. Laurent, the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority, local schools in the Interlake and South Interlake school divisions, and the volunteer organisations, churches, agricultural societies and sports clubs of the district.

A single February 2015 edition shows the mix. The front page led on Hockey Manitoba's 100th-anniversary outdoor celebration at Grosse Isle, where two-time Stanley Cup champion Chuck Lefley dropped the puck, with photographs by Jo-Anne Procter. Inside, the paper reported a dispute between the Teulon-Rockwood and Stonewall-Rockwood fire departments and the RM of Woodlands over their shared fire-service agreement, examined a sharp rise in physician vacancies in the Interlake-Eastern health region, profiled a Warren Collegiate Institute student sharing his experience of growing up in foster care, and covered the Rockwood Festival of the Arts' donation of a piano to Teulon Collegiate Institute.

The paper's journalism has been recognised by its peers. At the Manitoba Community Newspapers Association's 101st annual Better Newspapers Competition in 2020, the Tribune's Evan Matthews won first place for Best Agriculture Story, Jennifer McFee won first place for Best Arts and Culture Story and placed third in the Reporter of the Year competition, and Patricia Barrett placed third for Best Habitat Conservation Story.

More recent coverage follows the same local brief. The National Retriever Club of Canada's fall 2025 newsletter recorded that the Tribune published an article on 25 September 2025 covering the Canadian National Retriever Championship, held that month at Balmoral, just north of Stonewall. In July 2026, Tribune stories carried by Manitoba News 101 — by Nadia Schultz, Patricia Barrett and publisher Lana Meier herself — reported on the recovery from the storm of 9–10 June 2026 that flooded businesses in Stonewall's industrial park, on volunteers helping flood victims in Stonewall, Stony Mountain and Petersfield, on a provincial upgrade of PR 227, and on a Stonewall church fundraiser concert by the Dandeneau Family Six.

Audience and Reach

The Tribune's readership is the population of the southern Interlake, north of Winnipeg. Its February 2015 front page lists the communities it serves: Stonewall, Balmoral, Teulon, Gunton, Narcisse, Inwood, Lake Francis, Woodlands, Marquette, Warren, Argyle, Grosse Isle, Rosser, Stony Mountain, St. Laurent and surrounding areas. The two anchor towns counted 5,046 residents in Stonewall and 1,196 in Teulon in the 2021 census, and the wider South Interlake census division, which the Tribune's territory broadly tracks, counted 19,749 people in 2021.

The paper's own measure of its reach, printed on its February 2015 masthead, is distribution through Canada Post to 7,600 homes — a figure that, on its face, reaches beyond the two towns into the farm and acreage households of the surrounding municipalities. The paper is free to readers and funded entirely by advertising, so its audience relationship runs through the local businesses, municipalities and community organisations that buy space in it: the RM of Armstrong's decision to purchase a full year of holiday and community-message advertisements in the Tribune for 2026, at a cost of $1,626 plus tax shared with The Express Weekly News, is a current example of that municipal reliance on the paper.

Within its market the Tribune's position has strengthened by survival. For its first decade it competed against the Stonewall Argus & Teulon Times, the Postmedia weekly whose name reached back to 1893; since that paper's closure in May 2020 the Tribune has been the only newspaper published in Stonewall, and one of five Manitoba weeklies in the Big and Colourful group.

Digital Presence

The Tribune's website is stonewallteulontribune.ca, its online home under the paper's name. Its journalism also travels beyond its own site: Manitoba News 101, a provincial news aggregation service, maintains a dedicated Stonewall Tribune channel on which Tribune stories — including the July 2026 flood-recovery reporting from Stonewall — are republished for a wider Manitoba audience.

That measured digital footprint is deliberate. The 2020 Signal Halifax profile of the Big and Colourful group noted that Meier's five papers "have little presence on social media," and quoted her explanation: "We spend our money to make sure we have quality journalism. We don't fill the paper with stuff you can pull off the Internet." The group's model is print-first, with the website and the provincial aggregator carrying the paper's reporting to readers who look for it online.

Ownership and Organisation

The Stonewall Teulon Tribune is published by Big and Colourful Printing & Publishing. The paper's own February 2015 masthead states the corporate relationship precisely: the Tribune is published "by BigandColourful Printing and Publishing, a division of Interlake Graphics," the Stonewall printing company whose name the paper also carried in its contact box — "Stonewall Teulon Tribune - Interlake Graphics."

The company's leadership is a matter of provincial record. The Manitoba Legislative Assembly's Hansard of 15 April 2021 names Lana Meier as the publisher of The Express Weekly News, the Selkirk Record and the Stonewall Teulon Tribune, in a statement recognising Manitoba's community newspaper publishers. Meier remains visibly hands-on: her byline appears on Tribune reporting carried in July 2026. Staff named in the paper's pages and in association records over the years include reporters Natasha Tersigni, Austin Grabish, Evan Matthews, Jennifer McFee, Patricia Barrett and Nadia Schultz, with photography credited to Jo-Anne Procter and Dave Baxter in the February 2015 edition.

The paper is independent of the national chains. It is not a Postmedia, Glacier Media or Torstar title, and it should not be confused with the Stonewall Argus & Teulon Times, the separate Postmedia weekly that competed with it until May 2020, or with the Interlake Spectator of Gimli, another Postmedia title closed in the same round.

Contact and Availability

The Stonewall Teulon Tribune is published weekly on Thursdays in Stonewall, Manitoba, by Big and Colourful Printing & Publishing, and is delivered free through Canada Post to homes in Stonewall, Teulon and the surrounding south Interlake communities. Its February 2015 masthead lists the paper's office at 74 Patterson Drive, in the Stonewall Industrial Park, with telephone 467-5836 and fax 467-2679 as printed; readers should confirm current contact details on the paper's website, stonewallteulontribune.ca, where its present address, advertising and subscription information is carried. The paper's stated commitment, printed in its own pages, is "we will connect our people through articles in the paper to build stronger communities." The Tribune is a member of the Manitoba Community Newspapers Association, whose published schedules list its holiday-week office arrangements alongside those of the province's other community papers.