By Ronald Rudin
Over the past few years, I have been working on a book exploring the 1959 Escuminac Disaster, which saw the death of 35 men when a hurricane struck the salmon fishing fleet just outside Miramichi Bay, which empties into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in northeastern New Brunswick. In developing this project, in pulling together a research grant application, and in the early stages of writing, I became heavily dependent on (really addicted to) the amazing Brunswick News online archive, a searchable database that made it possible to dig into the content, sometimes stretching back over a century, of English-language newspapers across the province that formed part of the Brunswick News empire. With one click, I was able to find references in several newspapers to people and subjects connected with the Escuminac Disaster.
Much, of course, has been written about the consequences of having all the province’s English-language dailies as well some weekly publications in the hands of the Irving family. See, for instance, Julian Walker’s Wires Crossed: Memoir of a Citizen and Reporter in the Irving Press (Victoria: Friesen Press, 2021). Nevertheless, the existence of Brunswick News as an independent corporation with the financial wherewithal and the interest in providing (as part of a monthly subscription) an online database, was no small matter for researchers. Unfortunately, those same researchers, including me, are now going through withdrawal following the removal of the archive from the internet in November 2023, a direct consequence of the acquisition of Brunswick News by Postmedia eighteen months earlier.
As is the norm in such cases of newspaper consolidation, the acquiring company looked for ways to rationalize operations, reducing or eliminating print publications, and transforming the Brunswick News online presence. While previously there had been links that led to the various local newspapers, such as the Miramichi Leader which was important to my research, now there is only a single newspaper referenced online, the (Saint John) Telegraph-Journal, which offers coverage to subscribers pertinent to the various regions of the province, but without any indication that there are (or once had been) local newspapers.
When TJ News, as it is now called, became the sole newspaper online, the online archive disappeared. In the message that told me of the change, Postmedia simply stated that “as a result of this change, access to archive articles will no longer be available.” After cancelling my subscription – I am sure that this shook Postmedia to its core – I made contact with a Brunswick News official with whom I had had dealings back in the good-old days, when I needed to secure permission for publication of a photo for an article that I recently published in Acadiensis and that I had found in a 1959 newspaper, using the database. My contact simply informed me that there is a plan to bring the archive back, even though there is no timeline for the implementation of that plan. I was assured that the Brunswick News archive would not be lost, although my scepticism has grown after writing several times to my contact and receiving the same response.
So why am I writing this? I recognize that my loss of access to the database pales in significance to the loss of employment for journalists and the day-to-day loss of local news across the province. At the same time, there is something easily fixable in terms of returning to the internet an existing database, whose upkeep could be offset by subscribers like me who would gladly pay. If others feel the same, or simply want to provide support for the cause, send a message to: brunswicknews@postmedia.com, although I have no idea of whether this would be read by a real person.
Acadiensis 
Thank you, Ron, for raising the issue and providing detail on how the removal of the digital archives is affecting the work of one major historian. I wrote letters to the editor on the same issue on 16 November and again on 18 January. Neither was published, of course. Like Ron, I received assurances that the problem will be resolved, but there is no indication of when that will happen. Meanwhile, I suggested they might allow access through a public institutions such as libraries and archives, where the resource can be made available. I am struck by how casually the issue has been treated. My sense is that Brunswick News have little control over the situation, another example of the collateral damage effected by the PostMedia takeover. The issue will be of concern not only to historians but to the large number of genealogists and teachers and others who rely on this resource. Indeed, in an election year journalists themselves need to be able to readily check out what public figures and politicians, including the Premier, have said a few months or even years ago. I can add that Julian Walker, the author of Crossed Wires, took an early interest in the problem and published a commentary on his blog on 18 December:
https://www.julianhwalker.com/blog/protect-new-brunswicks-written-history