For 68 years the Westender newspaper has had the privilege of coming into your homes and your hands, your commutes and your coffee shop visits. It has visited itself upon countless daily conversations.
Thus, it is with mixed emotions that we announce that the paper, Vancouver’s longest-running arts and entertainment weekly, will be publishing its final edition on Dec. 21, 2017.
The Westender may be closing, but its staff, ideas and award-winning reporting will live on in other, growing divisions within its parent company. In fact, all seven staff members of the newspaper have been offered other roles within Glacier Media:
• Publisher Gail Nugent will continue to run the paper’s growing magazine division, which includes the award-winning Growler and The Alchemist magazines, the new Vitiscoming this spring, and community guide publications such as the Pride and Jazz guides.
• Editor Kelsey Klassen will be joining the staff at the Vancouver Courier as digital editor.
• Assistant editor Jan Zeschky will be taking on the role of editor of The Alchemist and Vitis magazines.
• Editorial assistant Tessa Vikander will be joining Vancouver is Awesome as a staff reporter.
• Graphic designer Tara Rafiq will continue in the magazine division.
• And multimedia sales representatives Matty Lambert and Aaron Buckley will be moving to the Vancouver Courier and Growler/Alchemist, respectively.
We’d like to thank both our readers and clients for sharing your stories, milestones, rants and raves with us over the decades. You have been an invaluable part of the Westender community, both in print and online.
If you have a favourite Westender story, memory to share, or a moment the paper impacted your life, we will be running a send-off page in the Dec. 21 edition dedicated to a selection of letters to the editor. Please send your responses to editor@westender.com before Monday, Dec. 18 for consideration.
You can reach all of the Westender staff at their current email addresses, after which we look forward to doing business with you in our new locations.
