Wallace Miner Folds Weekly Trade Paper Priced Out Of Business
The Wallace Miner, a weekly trade newspaper read by generations of miners and investors, has ceased publication.
Editor C.M. Wilson attributed the paper’s demise to this year’s high newsprint costs and to low circulation. The paper’s publisher, Dan Drewry, could not be reached for comment.
The Miner’s parent company, the Shoshone News-Press, has added a mining page on Wednesdays. Both papers used the same staffers.
Columnist Mike Powers said he was saddened, but not surprised, when company officials told him The Miner was shutting down.
He watched it dwindle down to a single folded sheet, with advertisers dropping away. The final edition, Sept. 21, contained no advertisements except for a house ad urging people to subscribe.
Powers was recruited as a columnist after writing a letter to the editor.
He used his column “Picking on the Outcrops” as a bully pulpit to rail against environmental regulation, tell folksy stories and discuss local issues like the proposed demolition of unused smelter smokestacks near Kellogg and Smelterville.
The News-Press will continue to run his column.
“It’s sort of a sad thing,” Powers said of the paper’s closure.
“Even though some of the mines locally aren’t operating, the companies are - in South America or northern Canada. There are still people interested in it.”
Powers felt the paper didn’t get the staffing it needed to draw in new readers and industry advertisers.
“The guys that were working on it were working for the local paper. It was a sideline for everybody,” he said.
“It was neglected until death, is my opinion.”
The paper carried stock quotes for mining penny stocks, making it a staple with local investors.
It also served as a pipeline out of the valley, sending news about the Coeur d’Alene Mining District to companies and investors around the nation.
“That paper, small as it is, had a real broad circulation,” Powers said.
“I got letters from Germany, Toronto and all over.”
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