About Ponoka News

Ponoka News

Overview

The Ponoka News is a free weekly community newspaper serving Ponoka, a town in Ponoka County in central Alberta, and the rural area around it. It is published in print every Wednesday and distributed free to homes — the paper has explained to its own readers that it is a free, carrier-delivered paper for which no subscription is needed — alongside a website at ponokanews.com. Although directories have sometimes described it as an independent weekly, the Ponoka News is in fact a Black Press Media title: the paper stated this itself in a February 2020 editorial answering readers' questions, and its current editions are published and archived by Black Press. It operates within Black Press's Prairie group of Alberta weeklies, administered alongside sister titles in Stettler, Bashaw, Castor and Rimbey.

The paper's local editorial operation is deliberately small. In its own published account, the Ponoka News explained that its two-person local editorial staff devote themselves exclusively to local news, and that the national and international material appearing on its website and Facebook page is Canadian Press wire content selected and posted by a Black Press digital team based in British Columbia, not written by the Ponoka staff. The result is a classic central-Alberta community weekly: locally reported town news, council coverage, sports, opinion and letters in print, with wire coverage of the wider world carried mainly online.

History

Newspaper publishing in Ponoka is well over a century old, but the Ponoka News's own founding date is not documented in the sources available, and this profile does not assert one. The town's first newspaper was The Ponoka Herald, which began publishing in 1902; the University of Alberta's Peel's Prairie Provinces collection holds 350 digitized Herald issues from 1902 to 1923. The Herald remained a fixture of the town for generations — Cal Dallas, publisher of the Ponoka Herald, served as president of the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association in the mid-1990s — and for a time Ponoka supported two papers at once: a provincial transportation toolkit published in the 2010s listed both the Ponoka Herald and the Ponoka News as separate Ponoka newspapers with separate telephone numbers.

What can be documented is the modern Ponoka News's place inside Black Press Media. In an editorial published on February 5, 2020, the paper told readers plainly that "Ponoka News is part of Black Press," explaining the division of labour between its local staff and the company's digital team. Its editions appear in Black Press's official online page archive, which carries Ponoka News issues dated Wednesday, February 4, 2026 and Wednesday, April 15, 2026, verifying that the paper continues to publish on its weekly cycle. Emily Jaycox has been the paper's editor since 2019; in an April 2026 first-person column published in the sister Rimbey Review, she described starting as editor at Ponoka News in 2019 and continuing to report for the paper, as well as for the Wetaskiwin Pipestone Flyer.

Programming and Content

The Ponoka News's print content is the standard repertoire of a small-market Canadian weekly, concentrated on the town and county: municipal council and Ponoka County business, school and community events, local sports, RCMP and court briefs, obituaries, classified advertising, editorials and letters to the editor. Its coverage follows the rhythms of the community calendar — among its 2026 stories was coverage of the free concert by the Hunter Brothers that kicked off Ponoka Stampede week at the end of June 2026, the Stampede being the town's signature annual event. Because the paper's two local editorial staff work exclusively on Ponoka-area material, everything locally bylined in its pages originates with that small newsroom.

National and world coverage is handled differently, and the paper has been transparent about the arrangement: Canadian Press stories are pushed to ponokanews.com and to the paper's Facebook page by a Black Press digital team in British Columbia, a model shared across the company's community titles. Readers therefore encounter two distinct streams under the Ponoka News banner — original local reporting in the print edition and online, and wire-service coverage of provincial, national and international affairs online.

Audience and Reach

In its own published description of its readership, the Ponoka News says its audience is made up of residents of the town and the rural area of Ponoka, together with the four First Nations of Maskwacis, the Cree community immediately south of the town — and it adds, pointedly, "and that's it": the paper defines itself by a tightly local circulation area rather than regional ambitions. Ponoka County, the surrounding municipality, had a population of 9,998 in the 2021 census, and the town serves as a service centre on the Highway 2 corridor between Edmonton and Red Deer. As a free carrier-delivered weekly, the paper's print reach is built on household distribution across that area rather than on paid subscriptions or newsstand sales.

Reporters' bylines associated with the Ponoka News in journalism directories include Mark Weber — who also reports for the Red Deer Advocate and the Lacombe Express, an example of the reporter-sharing practised within the Black Press group — as well as Danny Rode and Sarah Baker.

Digital Presence

The paper's digital home is ponokanews.com, where locally reported stories appear alongside the Canadian Press material posted by the company's digital team. The Ponoka News also maintains a Facebook page, which the paper itself has described as one of the two channels — with the website — through which its wire content reaches readers. Full print editions are preserved in Black Press Media's online page archive, which is where its February and April 2026 editions can be read page by page. Like many small-market weeklies, the paper's digital presence functions less as a separate product than as a continuous extension of the Wednesday print edition.

Ownership and Organisation

The Ponoka News is owned by Black Press Media and is not an independent newspaper, notwithstanding the description carried in some directories. Black Press was founded by David Holmes Black, who bought the Williams Lake Tribune in British Columbia from his father in 1975 and built the company into one of North America's largest community-newspaper groups. In January 2024 Black Press filed for creditor protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act and announced a restructuring sale; on March 25, 2024 the sale closed to Canadian institutional investors Canso Investment Counsel and Deans Knight Capital Management together with Carpenter Media Group, and the company confirmed it would remain Canadian-controlled. The Canadian Press reported at the time that Black Press published about 150 daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and websites across Canada and the United States and employed roughly 1,200 people.

Within Alberta, the Ponoka News sits in the company's Prairie operation: an Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association citation records that the Prairie Newspaper Group's senior regional administrator held responsibilities for the weekly papers in Stettler, Bashaw, Castor, Rimbey and Ponoka. Day to day, the paper is produced by its two-person local editorial staff under editor Emily Jaycox, supported by the group's shared reporters and by the British Columbia-based digital team that handles wire content.

Contact and Availability

The Ponoka News is published weekly in Ponoka, Alberta, with print editions dated Wednesdays and distributed free to households in the town and surrounding rural area, including Maskwacis. Readers can follow its local reporting and Canadian Press coverage online at ponokanews.com and through its Facebook page, and past print editions can be read in Black Press Media's online page archive. Story ideas and reader correspondence are directed to the paper's local editorial staff in Ponoka.