About Nelson Star

Nelson Star

Overview

The Nelson Star is a free community newspaper published in Nelson, British Columbia, by Black Press Media. It appears in print and online at nelsonstar.com, covering the small city of Nelson — set on the West Arm of Kootenay Lake in the province's West Kootenay region — and the rural communities around it. Since 2010 the Star has been the only newspaper based in Nelson, a role it assumed after its owner bought and closed the city's century-old daily, the Nelson Daily News. The Star reports on municipal and regional government, schools, health care, the environment, arts and culture, and local sport, in a community known across British Columbia for its preserved heritage main street, its mountain setting and its large population of artists and outdoor workers. Print editions preserved in Black Press's digital page archive for the first months of 2026 are dated Thursdays, and the paper's stories also circulate through Black Press's wider British Columbia news network.

History

Nelson's newspaper tradition long predates the Star. The Nelson Daily News was founded in 1902 and published for 109 years as the newspaper of record for what was often described as the smallest community in Canada with a daily newspaper. By 2010, however, the Daily News was in financial decline, with a daily circulation of approximately 2,000.

Black Press, the Victoria-founded community newspaper group built by David Black, entered the Nelson market with a free competing paper, the Nelson Star, which the Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce directory dates to a 2008 founding. The Star set up on Baker Street, Nelson's main commercial strip, and distributed free copies to homes and businesses. In July 2010, Black Press bought the Nelson Daily News from Glacier Media as part of a larger block purchase of British Columbia papers, and closed the daily within weeks. The closure eliminated 25 jobs. Black Press chief operating officer Rick O'Connor said at the time that the Nelson and Prince Rupert dailies, along with two weeklies shuttered the same day, had lost $1 million in the previous year. The decision was controversial in the community; journalist Timothy Schafer marked the first anniversary in 2011 with an essay titled "Marking a Black Day in Nelson Newspaper History."

After closing the Daily News, Black Press hired that paper's former editor, Bob Hall, to run the Nelson Star, and increased the Star's frequency from weekly to twice weekly. The chamber directory, reproducing the paper's own description, records a print edition every Wednesday and Friday, with a total of 9,000 copies delivered twice a week to homes and businesses from Salmo to Nelson to New Denver. The Star thereby inherited the Daily News's role as the community's paper of record — covering the council chambers, courtrooms, school gyms and hockey rinks of the West Kootenay — while publishing continuously online. Editions archived by Black Press from January through April 2026 carry Thursday dates, indicating the print schedule in place during that period.

Programming and Content

The Star's content is the standard mix of a Canadian community newspaper, produced by a small Nelson-based staff and supplemented by reporting shared with sister Black Press titles in the Kootenays. Its news pages cover Nelson city council and the Regional District of Central Kootenay; a February 2026 edition, for example, reported the regional district's move to restrict non-residential organic waste at its landfills, with fines possible after a nine-month grace period. Transportation on Kootenay Lake is a recurring beat: in January 2026 reporter Tyler Harper covered a lawsuit over the new electric Kootenay Lake ferry under construction near Nelson, in which the company originally hired to build the vessel was being sued for more than $6 million in unpaid fees, and in April 2026 the paper carried notice that the existing Osprey 2000 ferry would be out of service for a spring refit. Health coverage in early 2026 included the temporary closure of the Nelson Community Health Services Centre after water damage. Regional and provincial material is shared within the chain — the Star's January 22, 2026 edition carried a snowpack report credited to Trail Times staff — and its opinion pages publish letters, editorials and guest columns, including an April 2026 column by Kootenay Central MLA Brittny Anderson on recruiting health-care workers to British Columbia's Interior. Sports, arts listings, obituaries, classified advertising and real-estate features round out the paper.

Audience and Reach

The Star is distributed free. According to the paper's own description carried in the Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce directory, 9,000 copies are delivered twice a week to homes and businesses across a corridor running from Salmo through Nelson to New Denver, a reach that takes in the city of Nelson and the smaller communities of the West Arm and Slocan Valley. Its readership is the population of the Nelson area: municipal officials, school and health administrators, forestry and tourism workers, retailers along Baker Street, and residents of the rural electoral areas around Kootenay Lake. Online, the paper's audience extends well beyond its print footprint, because nelsonstar.com stories are carried across Black Press's British Columbia websites and picked up by news aggregators, giving its Nelson reporting a provincial audience.

Digital Presence

The Star publishes continuously at nelsonstar.com, which it describes as operating online and on Facebook 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Print editions are reproduced in Black Press's online page archive, where readers can page through the paper as it appeared in print; the archive preserves the Star's Thursday editions from January, February, March and April 2026. Its reporting is also distributed through the Black Press digital network and third-party monitoring and aggregation services, which carried Star stories throughout 2026. Like other Black Press titles, the paper uses its website and social channels for breaking news between print editions, including ferry disruptions, water advisories and emergency information affecting the Nelson area.

Ownership and Organisation

The Nelson Star is owned by Black Press, the community newspaper company founded by David H. Black in 1975 with the purchase of the Williams Lake Tribune. Headquartered in Surrey, British Columbia, Black Press grew into one of North America's largest community newspaper publishers, with titles across British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories and, through Sound Publishing, in Washington State, Alaska and Hawaii. The Star's Nelson office is listed at Suite B, 91 Baker Street, and the paper is a member of the National NewsMedia Council, the industry's self-regulatory body. Bylines in its 2026 editions include reporter Tyler Harper and longtime staff member Bill Metcalfe.

Black Press itself changed hands in 2024. The company entered creditor protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act in January 2024 and, on March 25, 2024, completed its sale to Canadian institutional investors Canso Investment Counsel Ltd. and Deans Knight Capital Management Ltd. together with Carpenter Media Group, a United States community newspaper operator. Black Press stated that under the transaction the company remains Canadian-controlled, and that it publishes some 150 daily and weekly newspapers in Canada and the United States with approximately 1,200 employees. The Star has continued publishing under the new ownership.

Contact and Availability

The Nelson Star's office is at Suite B, 91 Baker Street, Nelson, British Columbia, V1L 4G8, in the city's downtown heritage district. The Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce directory lists the paper's telephone number as (877) 365-6397 and its editorial email as editor@nelsonstar.com; readers can also reach the newsroom through nelsonstar.com. The paper is available free in print at homes and businesses across the Nelson area on its publication days and online at all times, with recent print editions also readable in Black Press's digital page archive.