About Prince Albert Daily Herald

Prince Albert Daily Herald

The Prince Albert Daily Herald is the daily newspaper of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan — the paper of record for the province's third city and the northern prairie. It traces its roots to the Prince Albert Advocate, begun in 1894 as one of several weekly newspapers serving the community; it became the Prince Albert Weekly Herald in 1908 and went daily in 1911 when W. F. Herman bought the paper. Since May 1, 2018, it has been owned by FolioJumpline Publishing Inc. — an employee-owned company, saved from closure by its own staff — publishing in print Tuesday through Saturday with a community focus. Wikipedia lists paherald.sk.ca as its website.

Overview

Prince Albert — the Gateway to the North, a city of about 37,000 on the North Saskatchewan River — is the service centre for northern Saskatchewan: the forestry, the mining, the agriculture, the provincial correctional and health institutions, and the gateway to the province's northern Indigenous communities. The Daily Herald is its newspaper: the newsroom covers Prince Albert city council, the region's municipalities and First Nations, the courts, health care, education and the life of the northern prairie.

The paper's distinction is its ownership and its mission: an employee-owned community daily — the staff bought the paper in 2018 to prevent it from folding — providing more than 50 local stories and photos per week. All of the paper's employees live and work in the Prince Albert area. It is a community newspaper at heart. The 2018 buyout is one of the great survival stories of Canadian community journalism: when the corporate owner was ready to close the 124-year-old paper, the people who made it — the reporters, the editors, the press staff — put up their own money to keep it alive. The Herald's front pages on the city council's battles, the Raiders' playoff runs, the northern communities' crises and the region's triumphs are the work of journalists who own the paper they write for.

History

The Herald's roots reach to the Prince Albert Advocate, begun in 1894 as one of several weekly newspapers serving the frontier community. In 1908 the paper became known as the Prince Albert Weekly Herald. In 1911, W. F. Herman — who later served as publisher of the Windsor Daily Star in Ontario — bought the Herald and switched it to a daily newspaper; Herman soon flipped the paper back to its original owners, H. M. Hueston and Allan Holmes. The exact date of the first daily edition has been lost to history; the paper celebrated its silver jubilee as a daily in 1936.

The paper was in local hands until 1949, when the Thomson chain purchased it. The Daily Herald was purchased from Thomson Corporation by Hollinger Inc. in October 1995, along with its sister papers the Moose Jaw Times-Herald and the Swift Current Booster; the three Saskatchewan papers were sold to CanWest in 2000 and to Transcontinental in 2002. In May 2016 Transcontinental sold its 13 Saskatchewan newspapers to Star News Publishing of Alberta, and printing was relocated to Wainwright, Alberta. In December 2017 a group of employees reached a tentative agreement to buy the paper from Star News Publishing — preventing it from folding — and on May 1, 2018, the deal was completed: the Prince Albert Daily Herald began operating under FolioJumpline Publishing Inc., owned and operated by its employees. The paper's publisher is Donna Pfeil, and its offices are at 30 10th Street East in Prince Albert.

Content and Sections

The modern Daily Herald is built around Prince Albert and the north. Prince Albert city council anchors the news pages — the paper covers the mayor and council with a dedicated local bureau — extending to the region's municipalities, rural municipalities and First Nations communities. The courts beat covers the region's legal community; health reporting follows the Victoria Hospital; education coverage spans the school boards and the region's post-secondary institutions.

The forestry and mining sectors — the region's economic base — receive sustained attention. Agriculture — the grain, the cattle, the northern farm country — is a constant thread. The northern communities — the fly-in reserves, the resource towns — are covered with a depth that reflects the paper's gateway role. Sports coverage centres on the WHL's Prince Albert Raiders — the junior team that is the city's passion, the Memorial Cup champions, the Art Hauser Centre's roar — the region's deep hockey culture and the community rinks. Opinion pages carry editorials, columns and letters from the northern prairie, and feature sections cover arts, food, homes and community life. Its archives, reaching back to 1894, document the frontier town's history — the settlement era, the North-West Rebellion's shadow over the district, the forestry century, the pulp mill's rise and fall, and the making of modern Prince Albert: a community archive that is among the great documentary resources of northern Saskatchewan.

Coverage and Audience

The Daily Herald serves Prince Albert and northern Saskatchewan — a market of roughly 100,000 people across the city, the surrounding rural municipalities, the forestry towns and the northern communities. Its audience is the region's forestry workers, miners, farmers, health-care professionals, educators and Indigenous families.

Print circulation was reported at 5,684 on weekdays and 6,038 on Saturdays as of 2010, with weekly circulation of 31,425 in 2013; the paper publishes Tuesday through Saturday in print with continuous digital coverage, providing more than 50 local stories and photos per week. In the region, the paper's scoops, editorials and letters pages are the public square — the place where Prince Albert argues about its council, its hospital, its Raiders and its future.

Ownership

The Prince Albert Daily Herald is owned by FolioJumpline Publishing Inc. — an employee-owned company formed in 2018 when the paper's staff bought it from Star News Publishing to prevent its closure. The cooperative model makes the Herald one of the few employee-owned dailies in Canada: the reporters, editors and staff own the paper they produce, and all live and work in the Prince Albert area.

The paper's lineage — from the 1894 Advocate through the Herman daily, the Thomson, Hollinger, Canwest, Transcontinental and Star News eras to the employee-owned FolioJumpline — connects the frontier press to the digital age: 130 years of owners, but the happiest chapter is the current one — the staff's own.

Digital Presence

The Herald's digital edition carries its community journalism online every day: breaking Prince Albert news, council coverage, Raiders reporting, columnists, arts and community features, photo galleries, serving readers across the north and the region's diaspora. Wikipedia lists paherald.sk.ca as the paper's website.

On social media the Herald distributes breaking Prince Albert news, Raiders scores and community stories to a following concentrated in the city and the northern communities. As of 2026, the Prince Albert Daily Herald continues to publish — Tuesday through Saturday in print, continuously online — more than 130 years after the Advocate's first edition, still the employee-owned community daily of the Gateway to the North, still owned by the people who make it, still the north's paper, still standing, still the Herald, still and always the north's own.

The May 1, 2018 employee buyout — FolioJumpline Publishing Inc., the journalists owning their paper — made the Herald a prairie rarity: an employee-owned daily. From the 1894 Advocate to W.F. Herman's 1911 daily, publisher Donna Pfeil's team prints Tuesday through Saturday, filing more than 50 local stories a week: the northern prairie's own paper.

Note: website left empty in frontmatter per project rule for url-unverified rows; Wikipedia lists paherald.sk.ca as the paper's website.