Black Press
Canadian publisher of newspapers
Black Press Group Ltd. (BPG) is a Canadian commercial printer and newspaper publisher founded in 1975 by David Holmes Black. Based in Surrey, British Columbia, it was previously owned by the publisher of Toronto Star (Torstar, 19.35%) and Black (80.65%).
In March 2024, it was announced that Carpenter Media Group had completed its acquisition of the firm, in a deal that involved Canso Investment Counsel, Ltd.
Overview
Also known as Black Press Media, the company publishes in the United States through two subsidiaries, Oahu Publications in Hawaii and Sound Publishing in Alaska and Washington. It also owns Northern News Services based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.
After acquiring three newspapers on the Kitsap Peninsula, it formed Sound Publishing in 1987 and has since operated all of its titles in Washington and Alaska. In turn, after purchasing Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the publisher passed the responsibility for maintaining its titles in Hawaii to Oahu Publications, a subsidiary formed in 2001 by BPG.
As of 2022, News Media Canada reported Black Press publishes 106 editions across Canada with a combined circulation of 1,295,243. The number of titles include 70 in British Columbia, 11 in Alberta, two in Northwest Territories and one in Yukon.
History
Canadian business deals (1969–present)
In 1969, Alan Black and Clive Stangoe acquired the Williams Lake Tribune of Williams Lake, BC. The weekly newspaper had previously been owned by Northwest Publications, where Alan Black worked as a manager.
The public source identifies “Black Press” as canadian publisher of newspapers. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Black, Press and Canadian.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Black Press”, the useful work is to connect “canadian publisher of newspapers” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4921504. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975, 2024, 1987 and 2001.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Black Press” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.