About Mission City Record

Mission City Record

Overview

The Mission City Record is the community newspaper of Mission, British Columbia, a Fraser Valley city on the north bank of the Fraser River, and one of the oldest continuously published newspapers in the province. Founded in 1908 as the Fraser Valley Record, it has served as the newspaper of record for the Mission area for well over a century. The Record is published by Black Press, appears in print every Friday, and publishes daily online at missioncityrecord.com. Its coverage centres on Mission city council, the Mission RCMP, courts, schools, agriculture, business and community life in Mission and the surrounding Fraser Valley. Print editions dated through 2025 and 2026 — including Friday, January 2, 2026 and Friday, April 24, 2026 — confirm the paper continues to publish on its long-standing Friday schedule, and in September 2025 the Record itself reported that it was preparing to leave the downtown First Avenue building that had been its home for eighty-five years.

History

The Fraser Valley Record was founded in 1908 by J.A. Bates, who, according to the Downtown Mission Business Association's history of the city's core, had visions of providing news and events for the entire Fraser Valley from Port Moody to Hope. The Record's own account, published in September 2025, dates its first issue precisely: it was published 117 years earlier, on June 18, 1908. The paper's original office stood near the Canadian Pacific Railway right-of-way in Mission. For its first sixty-three years the Record had only three other owners after Bates: R.D. Cummings of Ashcroft; Lang Sands, who held it from 1933 to 1961; and the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo (Holdings) Ltd., which took ownership in January 1962, an unusual instance of a British newspaper group owning a small Fraser Valley weekly.

In 1940 the Record moved into a concrete building on First Avenue between James and Grand streets, which it shared with a legal office for about six years before taking over the entire building; it remained there for eighty-five years. The paper marked its centenary in 2008 with a year-long "Century of Excellence" feature looking back at one hundred years of Mission's past. It had adopted its present name in 1996 — the Mission City Record — to reflect the name of the community it principally serves, and in 1997 it was acquired by Black Press, the owner under which it still publishes. In its September 19, 2025 edition, the Record reported that its First Avenue building was to be sold and a smaller, more efficient office opened elsewhere in the city. Publisher Steve Scott told the paper that the current building was too big and represented a business model from decades ago, adding that new technology and staffing levels meant the paper no longer needed the footprint newspaper buildings once required.

Programming and Content

The Record's journalism is built around Mission's civic institutions. Its city hall coverage follows council through budgets, planning and organizational change: in April 2026 it reported an efficiency review that prompted a structural overhaul of the city's administration, and in January 2026 it covered the finalization of Mission's Rural Strategy, the plan meant to protect the city's agricultural and rural areas as growth continues. Public-safety reporting is a staple, drawn from the Mission RCMP: the paper's 2025 coverage included a Mission woman's loss of about $45,000 in a cryptocurrency job scam, the recovery of $150,000 in heavy equipment stolen from a Hope construction site and tracked to a Mission acreage, and council's decision to increase police, bylaw and security presence downtown.

Reporter Dillon White's byline appears across much of the paper's 2025 and 2026 news coverage. Beyond news, the Record carries sports, arts and community features, obituaries, classified advertising and a substantial careers section in print, along with the public and legal notices expected of a newspaper of record. The Record describes itself, in its recruitment advertising, as an award-winning community news organization; its historical coverage has ranged well beyond city limits, including stories of regional significance such as the recognition of Stó:lō leader Grand Chief Dr. Rose Charlie, whose 2013 Diamond Jubilee Medal was reported by Record contributor Sieglinde Stieda.

Audience and Reach

The Record's market is the City of Mission and the surrounding Fraser Valley communities along the north bank of the Fraser River, including Hatzic, Dewdney and the rural areas east toward Agassiz. In its own description of itself, the paper states: "We have been the newspaper of record for the Mission area for 103 years and continue to put as much local, pertinent information on our pages and website as possible," a self-description written at the time of its 103rd year that captures its civic role. The Record publishes no audited circulation figure, and none is claimed here. As one of the BC and Yukon Community NewsMedia Association's centenarian members — it appeared in the association's 2022 list of member papers founded in 1908 — it belongs to a small group of British Columbia community newspapers that have published continuously for more than a century.

Digital Presence

The Record publishes online at missioncityrecord.com, where stories are posted through the week and print editions are preserved in the Black Press pages archive. The website carries the paper's news, sports, opinion, obituaries and classifieds, and Record stories are syndicated across the Black Press network of community news sites in British Columbia and beyond. The Mission Regional Chamber of Commerce and local organizations link to the site as Mission's local news source, and the University of the Fraser Valley's library guides list the Mission City Record as the local news website for the Mission area. Black Press sites, including the Record's, were migrated to Village Media's Villager platform under a partnership announced in April 2023.

Ownership and Organisation

The Mission City Record is owned by Black Press, which acquired the paper in 1997. Black Press was founded in 1975 by David H. Black with the purchase of the Williams Lake Tribune and grew into one of Canada's largest community newspaper companies, with titles across British Columbia and Alberta, in Yukon and the Northwest Territories, and in the United States. The Record is part of the company's Lower Mainland group, listed alongside the Abbotsford News, Chilliwack Progress and other Fraser Valley titles. Black Press filed for protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act on January 15, 2024, and announced a restructuring sale the same week its founder retired. The sale of the company to Canso Investment Counsel Ltd., Deans Knight Capital Management Ltd. and Carpenter Media Group was completed later in 2024; Black Press emerged from CCAA protection and remains Canadian-controlled, with its head office in Surrey and Glenn Rogers as chief executive officer. Locally, the Record is led by publisher Steve Scott, who spoke for the paper in its September 2025 report on the sale of its longtime office building.

Contact and Availability

The Mission City Record's office has been listed at 33047 1st Avenue, Mission, BC, in the downtown building the paper occupied from 1940; as reported in September 2025, that building is to be sold and the paper is moving to a new, smaller office in the city, so the current street address should be confirmed with the paper. The Record's main telephone number is 604-826-6221. The print edition is published every Friday and distributed in Mission and the surrounding area, and the website, missioncityrecord.com, is updated regularly through the week.