About Nanton News

Nanton News

Overview

The Nanton News is the community newspaper of Nanton, Alberta, a foothills town on Highway 2 south of Calgary, in the Municipal District of Willow Creek. It is a tabloid community weekly, and despite occasional directory descriptions of it as an independent paper, it is not independent: it belongs to Postmedia Network, Canada's largest newspaper chain, having passed to Postmedia with the rest of Sun Media's English-language newspapers in April 2015. The News is still publishing. It appears in the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association's current member listing, it is carried in Postmedia's current published lists of its community newspapers, and its photography was still being credited in regional news coverage in 2026. Along with five neighbouring foothills papers — the Claresholm Local Press, the High River Times, the Fort Macleod Gazette, the Okotoks Western Wheel and the Vulcan Advocate — the News is part of "the Regional," a co-operative arrangement among the community newspapers of Alberta's southwestern foothills. Nanton is a small town, and the News is its newspaper of record for town and municipal-district affairs, ranch-country news and community life.

History

The Nanton News is one of Alberta's older surviving community titles. The surviving microfilm record of the paper catalogued by Commonwealth Imaging in its Canadian Newspapers on Microfilm collection runs from June 1903 to December 1988 across 51 reels, which places the paper in publication in the first years of the twentieth century, when Nanton was a new railway and ranching-service town on the Calgary–Macleod corridor; a Nanton News advertisement dated 10 April 1913 survives in the record of Alberta's 1913 general election, confirming the paper was publishing within its first decade. Early issues of the News were digitized by the Alberta Heritage Digitization Project at the University of Calgary, which preserves the paper's settlement-era editions among Canada's online newspaper archives. Through the later twentieth century the News followed the path of many Alberta weeklies into chain ownership, becoming part of the Bowes Publishers group that Sun Media assembled; a media directory of that era listed Aaron Carr as the paper's editor, with the Sun Media-era contact address nneditor@bowesnet.com. Under Sun Media the paper lost its own office: the Canadian Journalism Foundation reported that Sun Media announced the closure of the Nanton News office — but not of the newspaper itself — with the paper thereafter to be packaged and printed by staff at the High River Times. On 13 April 2015 Postmedia's purchase of Sun Media's English-language newspapers closed and Sun Media was dissolved, making the Nanton News a Postmedia title, the status it retains today.

Programming and Content

The News covers the life of its town and municipal district: Nanton town council, the council of the Municipal District of Willow Creek, the ranching and farming economy of the surrounding foothills, schools, local sports and the community's events and announcements. The paper's place in the district's information flow is documented from several directions. The Town of Nanton has listed the Nanton News among the communication channels through which residents receive town information, and the paper's work circulates within its regional circle: in 2026, media-monitoring records of neighbouring Claresholm Local Press journalist Rob Vogt's coverage of Municipal District of Willow Creek business — including a story on the MD capping its fire-service response billing at $25,000 — carried a photograph credited "File photo / Nanton News," showing the News's own material in use across the Regional co-operative's shared news pool. As a Postmedia community title, the paper's local reporting appears alongside material from its sister foothills papers and the wider Postmedia network, the standard pattern for the chain's small-market weeklies.

Audience and Reach

The audience of the Nanton News is the town of Nanton and the ranch and farm households of the Municipal District of Willow Creek, in the foothills country between Calgary and Fort Macleod. Through the Regional co-operative, the paper's market sits within a connected group of foothills communities — Claresholm, High River, Fort Macleod, Okotoks and Vulcan — whose papers share content and are read across the same southwestern Alberta ranch country. Postmedia does not publish a current circulation figure for the News, and none is claimed here; the paper's reach is best evidenced by its institutional standing rather than by numbers: it remains the newspaper its town government names as a channel for reaching residents, a member in good standing of the provincial weekly-newspaper association, and a title Postmedia continues to carry among its active community brands more than a decade after acquiring it. Readers beyond the district — former residents and others following the community — reach the paper through its website, nantonnews.com.

Digital Presence

The News publishes online at nantonnews.com, the domain recorded for the paper in newspaper directories since the Sun Media era and the address carried in its current directory listings. The site operates on the standard basis of a Postmedia community-newspaper website, presenting the paper's local coverage together with regional and network content. The paper's own domain could not be fetched directly while this profile was prepared, so its current operation was verified through third-party sources instead: the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association's current member listing, Postmedia's current community-newspaper asset lists, the Town of Nanton's communications materials, and 2026 media-monitoring records crediting the paper's photography. Those sources agree that the Nanton News is an active, publishing newspaper. A direct visual check of nantonnews.com should nonetheless be made when this profile is published, both to confirm the site's live state at that moment and to record any current contact details the site itself publishes.

Ownership and Organisation

The Nanton News is owned by Postmedia Network Canada Corp. The "independent community weekly" description attached to the paper in some inventories is out of date and should not be repeated: the News was a Sun Media community newspaper — published within the Bowes/Sun Media weekly group, with an editor reached through a bowesnet.com address — before Postmedia acquired Sun Media's English-language papers in a sale announced in October 2014 and closed on 13 April 2015, after which Sun Media was dissolved into the Postmedia chain. Sun Media had already consolidated the paper's operations before the sale, closing its Nanton office while keeping the title alive and moving its packaging and printing to the staff of the High River Times, as reported by the Canadian Journalism Foundation. One common question about Postmedia's Alberta weeklies does not apply on the evidence available: when Postmedia converted twelve Alberta titles to digital-only publication on 27 February 2023 — a group that included the Hanna Herald, Airdrie Echo, Cochrane Times, Cold Lake Sun and Drayton Valley Western Review — the Nanton News did not appear in the published lists of the converted titles, and no source consulted records such a conversion for it. Within Postmedia's organisation the News is produced as part of the chain's Alberta community-newspaper operation and participates in the Regional co-operative with its five foothills sister papers.

Contact and Availability

The Nanton News is available through its website, nantonnews.com, which is the paper's public point of contact for readers, advertisers and community members submitting announcements. The paper has historically published weekly — a media directory of the Sun Media era recorded a Wednesday publication day and listed the paper's Nanton telephone number as (403) 646-2023 — but that directory information, including the old nneditor@bowesnet.com address, dates from before the Postmedia acquisition and could not be confirmed as current, and the paper's former local office in Nanton was closed under Sun Media, with production handled through the High River Times. Current contact details should therefore be taken from the paper's website or from the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association's member listing at the time of use, and a visual check of nantonnews.com at publication time is recommended for this profile.