About Shoreline

Shoreline

Overview

The Shoreline News is a weekly community newspaper serving the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland and Labrador, the most populous part of the province and the region surrounding the capital, St. John's. Published as The Shoreline News, and often shortened to The Shoreline, it is the flagship of a small group of regional papers edited and published by Craig Westcott. In its own boilerplate, carried on its articles, the paper describes itself as founded in April 1989 and calls itself the largest circulation newspaper in Newfoundland and Labrador, saying that it publishes and distributes 13,000 copies weekly at some 175 retail locations throughout the Avalon Peninsula, including St. John's, Paradise, Conception Bay South, Holyrood to Carbonear, St. Mary's Bay, and the Southern Shore. Those figures are the publisher's own description of the paper rather than independently audited numbers, but the breadth of the distribution footprint they describe is consistent with how the paper is characterised by others: the Federation of Historical Societies of Newfoundland and Labrador describes The Shoreline as a community newspaper covering Conception Bay South, Paradise, Conception Bay Centre and the Avalon more generally. At a time when most of Newfoundland and Labrador's community press has been consolidated into a single national chain, The Shoreline remains an independently owned and locally run operation, and a reported feature in CAA Atlantic's magazine in the summer of 2025 held it up as an example of a local paper that continues to beat the odds.

History

The Shoreline News dates its founding to April 1989, according to the paper's own published boilerplate. It began as a community weekly for the fast-growing suburbs and towns west of St. John's, centred on Conception Bay South and the surrounding shore. A description of the paper written in 2003, preserved on a Newfoundland genealogy site, portrays an approximately twenty-page weekly, available on Saturdays, carrying news of Conception Bay South and the area towards Conception Bay North, including Holyrood and Spaniard's Bay. In the decades since, the paper's stated reach has widened considerably beyond that original Conception Bay heartland: its current self-description claims distribution across the whole Avalon Peninsula, from the St. John's suburbs through Conception Bay and down the Southern Shore. The operation also grew into more than one title. Alongside The Shoreline News, the group publishes The Business Post, based in Goulds, at the southern edge of St. John's, which covers its own neighbouring communities; journalist listings for the group show its editor filing for both papers. A more consequential change came in 2024, and it was imposed from outside. The last web printing press in Newfoundland was dismantled that year after Postmedia bought SaltWire, the Atlantic Canadian chain that had owned most of the province's other papers; the press was not part of the sale. As CAA Atlantic's magazine reported in 2025, The Shoreline's weekly edition is now printed in Montreal and shipped to the port of St. John's, arriving every Tuesday morning, a change that sharply increased the paper's production costs even as demand for the print edition remained strong.

Programming and Content

Municipal government is the core of The Shoreline's journalism. Editor and publisher Craig Westcott told CAA Atlantic's magazine in the summer of 2025 that his newsroom covers ten town councils regularly, and another ten to fifteen as time permits, adding that "no one else is doing that." Council reporting visible in the paper's recent output bears that out: its reporters file on council meetings, budgets, taxation, development and public meetings in communities such as Paradise and Conception Bay South, the suburban towns where much of the Avalon Peninsula's population growth is concentrated. Around that municipal spine, the paper carries the standard mix of a community weekly: local sport, including hockey and community road races such as the long-running Kelligrews Soiree 8K in Conception Bay South, school and community events, service-club and church news, and stories about the people and small businesses of the shore. Its sister title, The Business Post, covers the Goulds area and the southern approaches to St. John's with the same council-centred approach; in 2026 its reporting included coverage of Bay Bulls and Holyrood council business by a reporter working under the Local Journalism Initiative. The emphasis throughout the group is on hyper-local material that, in Westcott's words, readers "won't see or hear on TV" — the routine decisions of small councils and the everyday life of Avalon communities that provincial and national outlets rarely record.

Audience and Reach

The Shoreline's audience is the Avalon Peninsula, home to the majority of Newfoundland and Labrador's population. In the paper's own description, it publishes and distributes 13,000 copies weekly at some 175 retail locations, a footprint it lists as including St. John's, Paradise, Conception Bay South, Holyrood to Carbonear, St. Mary's Bay, and the Southern Shore; the paper presents itself, on the strength of that distribution, as the largest circulation newspaper in the province. Those are the publisher's own figures and are not independently audited, but the demand behind them was corroborated by CAA Atlantic's magazine in 2025, which reported Westcott saying that no matter how many copies he prints and piles on store shelves, "they're gone by the end of the day," and that if printing were affordable the paper could easily distribute double its circulation. Westcott attributed that demand to the paper's exclusively local content. Business directory listings give a further, if rough, sense of scale: Scott's Directories lists The Shoreline Newspaper as a newspaper publisher based in Conception Bay South, which is also the base from which the paper's Avalon-wide distribution is organised. Paradise, one of the fastest-growing towns in Atlantic Canada, sits at the centre of the paper's coverage and distribution area.

Digital Presence

The Shoreline publishes online at theshoreline.ca, the website recorded for the paper in the WorldNM inventory. Its journalism also circulates beyond its own site: the article-aggregation service Muck Rack tracks The Shoreline News as an outlet and maintains author pages for its journalists, and those pages show the paper publishing current local stories through 2026, including coverage of the 2026 edition of the Kelligrews Soiree road race and of Paradise and Conception Bay South council business referencing meetings held in July 2026. The group's sister paper, The Business Post, likewise publishes online at thebusinesspost.ca. The Shoreline's digital presence is best understood as an extension of a print-first operation: the reporting gathered for the weekly print edition, which arrives in St. John's by ship each Tuesday for distribution across the Avalon, is the same council-centred local journalism that appears under its bylines online. The paper's own boilerplate, reproduced with its articles online, is also the source of its founding date and distribution claims, presenting The Shoreline News as founded in April 1989 and distributing 13,000 copies weekly at some 175 retail locations.

Ownership and Organisation

The Shoreline is independently owned and locally operated, outside the Postmedia-owned PNI Atlantic News chain that publishes most of Newfoundland and Labrador's other newspapers. Its editor and publisher is Craig Westcott, who leads the group of regional papers that covers the Avalon Peninsula and who files reporting for both The Shoreline News and the group's Goulds-based sister title, The Business Post. CAA Atlantic's magazine reported in the summer of 2025 that the newsroom operates with a staff of just four, a lean team that nonetheless covers ten town councils regularly and up to fifteen more as time permits. Business Post reporting in 2026 was filed in part under the Local Journalism Initiative, the federally supported programme that funds reporters in underserved communities. The group's printing arrangements changed fundamentally in 2024: with the dismantling of the province's last web press after Postmedia's purchase of SaltWire, The Shoreline's weekly edition is printed in Montreal and arrives by ship in St. John's every Tuesday morning, a logistical chain that has raised production costs but has not interrupted the paper's weekly publication. Directory listings place the operation in Conception Bay South, on the shore from which the paper takes its name and where its coverage began.

Contact and Availability

The Shoreline News is available weekly in print at retail locations across the Avalon Peninsula — some 175 of them, according to the publisher — including in St. John's, Paradise, Conception Bay South, Holyrood, Carbonear, St. Mary's Bay and the Southern Shore, with the week's edition reaching the region each Tuesday after its arrival by ship in St. John's. Readers can also read the paper online at theshoreline.ca, and its sister title The Business Post at thebusinesspost.ca. Copies of the print edition are reported to sell out quickly; CAA Atlantic's magazine recorded the publisher's observation in 2025 that the week's copies are typically gone by the end of the day they are put out. No verified public contact email for the paper was established during the preparation of this profile, and none is listed here.