Call Center Company in Westminster, CO

Four recently laid-off Metro Vancouver journalists have announced a fundraising campaign to establish Western Canada’s first newspaper co-op.

On June 4, ex-Tri-City News reporters Mario Bartel and Janis Cleugh, ex-New Westminster Record reporter Theresa McManus, and ex-Burnaby Now reporter Cornelia Naylor were joined by leaders from Unifor and the Union Cooperative Initiative (UCI) to announce the “Save Our Local News Campaign” at the Unifor BC Western Regional Office in New Westminster.

“We want to put the community back into community news,” Bartel said. “Without local news, we’re just left with gossip, speculation, and misinformation spread on social media. You just have to look south to see what the result of that is.”

Local news that matters to you

No one covers the Tri-Cities like we do. But we need your help to keep our community journalism sustainable.

The initiative is a response to Glacier Media’s shuttering of the Tri-City News, Burnaby Now, and the New West Record in April and May – three long-standing papers serving a population of around 600,000 people.

The first phase of the fundraising campaign has now officially launched, aiming to create a single worker-run, community-owned publication for readers in Burnaby, New Westminster, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Anmore and Belcarra. It has a goal of raising $100,000.

UCI, a non-profit specializing in building co-op organizations, and Unifor, which represented the journalists while they were employed at Glacier, have partnered to support the project.

Unifor Western Regional Director Gavin McGarrigle said the union – which represents 10,000 media workers across Canada – has seen frequent closures in recent years.

“This is not just a fight against news deserts, this is a fight for democracy,” McGarrigle said.

Cornelia Naylor, a former education reporter at Burnaby Now, said the loss of coverage is already affecting civic engagement. Last week, the Burnaby school board approved $3.3 million in budget cuts – but no local media were there to report on it.

“We live in these communities too,” Naylor said. “It’s broken my heart to see what happens when communities lose their reliable source of local news.”

Bartel echoed that sentiment, citing data from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He noted nearly 2.5 million Canadians now have no source of local news, 25 print publications are being lost every year and newsrooms are being cut to “skeletal levels” so owners can maintain their profits.

He also stressed the cultural cost of losing hometown storytelling.

“The stories we tell help tie us all together. They contribute to a common sense of connection,” Bartel said.“You won’t read about the next great artist or athlete before they become Michael Bublé, Christine Sinclair or Kent Johnson – I covered all three of those people when they were teenagers.”

To kickstart the effort, Unifor announced a $5,000 contribution, while UCI revealed the campaign had already hit 10 percent of its goal within minutes of the launch.

Jonny Sopotiuk, UCI’s managing director, said the union co-op model is relatively new in B.C. but has a long history across North America.

He said the project is taking cues from a similar co-op model in Quebec, where six local dailies were saved in 2019 after cuts were made by newspaper owners.

In that case, a community organizing campaign raised more than $3 million, the provincial government provided interest free financing, and the local business community started buying ads. A total of 300 jobs were saved.

“We’re not going to have to worry about American owners pulling out funding,” Sopotiuk said. “This is going to be a community-owned, community-focused, community-accountable news organization that’s run by workers.”

Sopotiuk said the public should expect to see “an army” of volunteers and organizations raising awareness about the campaign, knocking on doors and visiting businesses in the coming months.

He added further fundraising and ad campaigns are incoming, and the group has already started planning for the return of a physical paper alongside online news.

“So stay tuned. I really see this as being one of the most viable new cooperatives we’ve seen in this province in quite a long time.”

Bartel added that since Glacier announced the closures, it has become clear that residents have missed the print editions, and the group believes there is still space for physical copies. However, he said those considerations will rely on the success of the fundraising campaign.

“We want to do both . . . (but) it’s not cheap to run a newspaper.”

Elected leaders in Westminster have walked back an earlier commitment to build a robust trail right up to the edge of Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge — with one City Council member saying this week that she was concerned the trail would act as a beckoning “gateway” to land that some consider too dangerous to visit.

Monday night’s decision came as construction began on a long-delayed tunnel under a state highway at the northern end of the refuge. It will provide a thoroughfare for cyclists and hikers seeking to enter and exit Rocky Flats, which for 40 years was a nerve center for Cold War nuclear weapons production.

To complicate matters more on what is already a complicated piece of ground in metro Denver, a federal lawsuit that aims to shut down the tunnel project — along with a bridge that is being erected on Indiana Street on the refuge’s east side — continues to move through the courts.

Westminster Councilwoman Claire Carmelia said the proposed half-mile trail on city land just east of the refuge would be too wide — and inviting — to keep members of the public from trying to get to the refuge. Some health and environmental advocates worry that residual contamination from weapons manufacturing, particularly cancer-causing plutonium, could be unearthed and breathed in on the site.

“The whole idea is to reduce use,” Carmelia said during Monday’s study session. “It’s hard to get on board with this if it’s exactly the opposite of what we want.”

Just seven months ago, the council voted 4-3 to withdraw from an intergovernmental agreement supporting construction of a tunnel and bridge into the refuge. Rocky Flats is home to more than 200 wildlife species, including prairie falcons, deer, elk, coyotes and songbirds.

Westminster followed Broomfield, which had made a similar break from the connections project four years ago, shortly after a plutonium hot spot was found in the soil near Indiana Street.

But in March, Westminster’s city leaders agreed to build a formal trail leading to the future Indiana Street bridge. It would replace an informal single-track trail popular with cyclists that exists there now.

When the scale of that trail — 14 feet wide with a crusher fine surface — was unveiled this month, however, several council members got cold feet.

“To do this project, we’re going to be disturbing the soil,” Councilman Obi Ezeadi said Monday. “This is a classic example of intent and vision not aligning. This risks the perception that we’ve reversed course.”

Councilman Dave DeMott said the more robust trail design was probably the wisest approach, given that it would hold in place soil that is otherwise vulnerable to disturbance, particularly from churning bike tires, if the narrower informal trail remains there.

Both the tunnel under Colorado 128 and the bridge over Indiana are expected to open to the public at the end of May, and that’s when traffic in and out of the refuge will jump, DeMott said.

“Once that bridge is open, like it or not, the traffic is going to increase,” he said during the study session.

On Monday, the council decided to leave the trail situation across its land as is — at least for the time being.

Matt Robbins, the interim deputy director of Jefferson County Open Space, said Tuesday that he wasn’t in a position to comment on the fast-moving events in Westminster this week before he had a chance to talk to city officials. Jefferson County owns the bridge that will span Indiana Street, connecting Westminster property with refuge land administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Our mission is to provide open space, parklands and nature-based experiences for our community,” he said. “And we will provide safe connections.”

Type at least three characters to start auto complete. Recently searched locations will be displayed if there is no search query. The first option will be automatically selected. Use up and down arrows to change selection. Use escape to clear.Search City or Zip Code

Westminster, CO

67°

Sunny

Day 81° • Night 56°

Watch: A Rare Strawberry Moon Rises

Weather Today in Westminster, CO

Feels Like67°

5:32 am

8:27 pm

High / Low

81°/56°

Wind

4 mph

Humidity

55%

Dew Point

50°

Pressure

30.00 in

UV Index

4 of 11

Visibility

10 mi

Moon Phase

Waxing Gibbous

Next 48 Hours

Don't Miss

How Weather Made Boston's Most Famous Home Run Possible

See More

Hourly Forecast

Next 48 Hours

Seasonal Hub

See More

Trending Now

See More

Daily Forecast

Next 10 Days

Radar

Now

We Love Our Critters

Injured Loggerhead Turtle Returns To Ocean In Florida

Don’t Let Summer Heat Hurt Your Dog: Look For These Signs

Injured Sea Turtle Reveals Secret In CT Scan

See More

Get Your Skin Ready For Summer

Expert Answers To Your Questions About Sun Damage

We Asked A Skin Expert About Viral TikTok Skincare Routines

Does Spray Sunscreen Work As Well As Lotion?

Expert Breaks Down How To Spot Melasma On Your Skin

See More

Home, Garage & Garden

Summer Is Hard On Your Car – Here’s How To Take Care Of It

Summer Solutions: 5 Simple Ways To Fight Mosquitoes

Using Rain Barrels To Control Your Garden’s Weather

How To Beat The Summer Heat And Make Your Garden Thrive

See More

Nick Skelton riding Big Star at the Rio Olympics in 2016 [Cealy Tetley]

BIG STAR: THE NICK SKELTON STORY Directed by Sarah George Certificate: 12a ☆☆☆

THERE is that lovely moment in the 1999 Richard Curtis film Notting Hill, when Hugh Grant blags his way into a press junket to meet the Hollywood superstar he has fallen hard for, and pretends he is a reporter for Hare and Hounds.

This film about extraordinary sportsman Nick Skelton and his lifelong passion for all things equestrian is perhaps the only film in the world the Grant character could genuinely have been on such a gig covering.

It is rather niche as a documentary, as is the world of professional horse jumping, but Skelton provides a gentle interviewee and hero, who has overcome life-threatening setbacks to win an Olympic gold medal in his late 50s. That alone makes his story worth telling.

He took a bad fall in 2000 and broke his back. But he somehow managed get back in the saddle, grab the reins and compete to win gold in London 2012 and then in Rio in 2016.

He and his ride – Big Star – retired in 2017 and here we are treated to a pen pic of a life working with horses. The son of a chemist with a passion for equestrian pastimes, he took his first ride aged 18 months, on a pony called Oxo who he loved dearly.

He became a young star as a show jumper – we see plenty of footage of him leaping across fences as a youth – and we hear of the efforts he made to learn how to jump. It’s not exactly rags to riches but we also see the hard graft, the clearing out of stables, and the care for the horses.

Skelton remains fairly unrevealing about the world that created and surrounded his success – from the support and then split from his wife, Sarah, to the tragedy of his accident and how he came back. But he really comes alive when he talks about horses. It opens up a view into a world genuine horse-jumping followers would recognise, but otherwise is a strange and curious place for the uninitiated.

And for all the care the horses are given, one cannot help but wonder what they make of it all: if Sketon’s rides had been more like Jonathan Swift’s Houyhnhnms, would they have let us humans anywhere near them?

Trader Joe’s is bringing its quirky charm to Westminster, with the popular grocery store chain set to open its ninth Colorado location later this year.

The national neighborhood grocer, known for its mix of everyday staples and unique finds like trendy mini canvas tote bags and frozen hash brown patties, has leased a 25,000-square-foot space at City Center Marketplace, between Golf Galaxy and Sierra Trading Post at 92nd Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard.

“We’ve consulted our maps and compass and have found a terrific location for a store in Westminster, CO,” the grocer announced on its website.

“We are proud to be joining the neighborhood, and to continue our commitment to providing nourishment to the surrounding communities through our Neighborhood Shares program.”

The store, 9350 Sheridan Blvd., will be added to the lineup of locations in Boulder, Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins, Greenwood Village, Littleton and Parker.

In addition to unconventional finds, fresh flowers and everyday basics like milk, eggs, meat, bakery items and fresh produce, the new Westminster location will also offer beer and wine, according to the store’s description.

The exact date and time for the store opening later this year has yet to be announced.

Founded in 1967, Trader Joe’s shoppers “travel the world searching for products,” and won’t find a lot of branded items on its shelves.

The company website currently lists 10 planned locations “opening soon” across several states such as Oklahoma, California and Texas.