About Westwind Weekly

Westwind Weekly

Overview

The Westwind Weekly — published under the masthead name Westwind Weekly News — is a weekly community newspaper serving the towns of Raymond and Magrath and the surrounding communities of southern Alberta, including the village of Stirling and the County of Warner area. It is marketed to advertisers as the Raymond Magrath Westwind Weekly News. The paper appears in print once a week, on Thursdays, in a six-column tabloid format, and publishes online at westwindweekly.com. It is owned by the Alta Newspaper Group Limited Partnership, the southern Alberta newspaper group whose titles include the Lethbridge Herald and the Medicine Hat News, and it works alongside the group's neighbouring weeklies, the Taber Times, the Vauxhall Advance, the Sunny South News and the 40-Mile County Commentator. The Westwind Weekly News remains in active publication: its reporting was appearing in December 2025 and through 2026, with local sports coverage dated October 15, 2026, and its stories are shared with, and staffed from, the same southern Alberta newsrooms as its sister titles.

History

No founding record for the Westwind Weekly News was found in the public sources consulted, and no founding date is asserted here. The paper's documented history is that of a title within southern Alberta's long-established group of community weeklies centred on Taber. By the end of the 2000s it was one of five community newspapers published from Taber by Coleen Campbell, who was cited on her departure from the Canadian Community Newspapers Association board — on which she represented the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association from 1995 to 2010 — as publisher of the Taber Times, the Vauxhall Advance, the Bow Island Commentator, the Sunny South News and the Westwind Weekly News. Campbell, the first recipient of the CCNA's President's Quill, had been a prominent figure in the Alberta weekly industry at national level. The paper was an established part of civic life in its coverage area by the mid-2010s: an Alberta Utilities Commission proceeding records that a FortisAlberta franchise agreement notice was advertised in the West Wind Weekly News on March 16, 2016, and a 2015 Magrath story by the paper's Karlene Skretting, on the historic Galt Canal head-gates, is cited in the community's records. Its sister papers carry much longer lineages — the Taber Times traces itself to 1907 — and the Westwind Weekly News now sits in the Alta Newspaper Group, in which Glacier Media holds a partial interest: Glacier's 2023 annual information form, filed in March 2024, lists the Westwind Weekly News among the southern Alberta publications the Alta partnership owns and operates.

Programming and Content

The Westwind Weekly News covers the town and school life of Raymond, Magrath, Stirling and the surrounding farm country. Local sport is a particular strength, reflecting the area's intense school and community sports culture. In December 2025 the paper reported Magrath's U18 and U11 hockey results in Central Alberta Hockey League play and Raymond's undefeated U11 team, and on October 15, 2026 it carried the Raymond Comets' 45–9 home football victory over St. Joseph's of Saskatoon — Raymond being a town whose motto is "Where Champions Live." Community reporting fills the rest of the paper: in the summer of 2026 it covered the launch of Magrath Connects, an independent community-building initiative in Magrath, and the information rallies planned by Alberta Union of Provincial Employees Local 42 members at the Good Samaritan Society care homes in Raymond and Magrath. The paper takes public notices and advertising from the municipalities and utilities in its area, the role recorded in the 2016 FortisAlberta proceeding, and carries the births, obituaries, council news and agricultural reporting typical of a southern Alberta weekly. Its reporting is produced within the group's shared newsroom: Heather Cameron, a Local Journalism Initiative reporter whose byline also appears in the Taber Times and the Vauxhall Advance, filed the paper's Magrath stories in 2026, and sports reporter Garrett Simmons, who also writes for the Lethbridge Herald, covers its hockey and football.

Audience and Reach

The paper's coverage area is the cluster of small communities in Alberta's deep south, along the highways south of Lethbridge: Raymond, a town of roughly 1,400 people known for its annual rodeo and its championship school sports teams; Magrath, a town of about 1,100; and Stirling, a village of a few hundred, together with the surrounding County of Warner farm districts. AdWest, the prairie community newspaper marketing network, puts the population of the paper's primary coverage area at 8,094 people in 2,590 households, a market in which health care, education, construction, retail and agriculture are the leading employers. AdWest's data sheet for the paper, with figures confirmed in February 2024, lists a total circulation of 160 copies, all of it controlled (free) distribution, and an insert quantity of 500 — figures that reflect a small, tightly defined local market rather than a regional one. For residents of these communities, the Westwind Weekly News is the local printed record of council decisions, school sports and community events, complementing the Lethbridge Herald's daily regional coverage.

Digital Presence

The paper publishes online at westwindweekly.com, the website recorded in the inventory and in AdWest's member listings, where its stories appear alongside its print edition. Its articles also circulate through the shared digital operation of the Alta group's southern Alberta titles: Westwind Weekly News stories by the group's reporters are posted online in the same format as those of the Sunny South News, the Taber Times and the Vauxhall Advance, and are tracked by media monitoring services, which recorded its hockey coverage in December 2025, its Magrath community coverage in July and August 2026, and its Raymond Comets football report on October 15, 2026. Verification of the paper's current operation for this profile rests on those third-party records and on the industry filings cited here, because the paper's own domain could not be fetched directly at the time of writing.

Ownership and Organisation

The Westwind Weekly News is owned and operated by the Alta Newspaper Group Limited Partnership, as recorded in Glacier Media's 2023 annual information form, which lists it among the partnership's southern Alberta publications: the daily Lethbridge Herald and Medicine Hat News, the Prairie Post farm publications, and the weeklies Sunny South News, The Vauxhall Advance, the 40-Mile County Commentator, The Taber Times and the Lethbridge Shopper, serviced by one printing plant in the area. Glacier Media holds a partial interest in the Alta partnership. The paper was previously published from Taber as part of Coleen Campbell's group of southern Alberta weeklies, alongside the Taber Times, the Vauxhall Advance, the Bow Island Commentator and the Sunny South News. It is a member publication of the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association through the AdWest marketing network, which lists it in the AB–South West zone. Editorial work is shared across the group's newsrooms: its 2025–26 bylines include Local Journalism Initiative reporter Heather Cameron and sports reporter Garrett Simmons.

Contact and Availability

The Westwind Weekly News is published weekly on Thursdays in print, in tabloid format, and online at westwindweekly.com. It serves Raymond, Magrath, Stirling and the surrounding County of Warner communities in southern Alberta. Advertising deadlines recorded in AdWest's data sheet are Friday at 4 p.m. MT for booking and Tuesday at 2 p.m. MT for material. No separate office address or telephone number for the paper is published in the industry sources consulted; it is produced with its sister Alta Newspaper Group titles in southern Alberta.