Small Jasper newspaper folds

The last edition of the Jasper Booster was published on Wednesday, leaving the Alberta mountain town with only one weekly paper.

The 46-year-old paper is owned by Quebecor's Sun Media, which blamed increasing costs and shrinking advertising revenues for the closing.

In a column posted on the paper's website Thursday afternoon, editor Brigitte Peterson wrote a goodbye message to the town.

"Having two local newspapers competing for advertising in this small town and covering the same events was often unnecessary and what could be called overkill," she wrote. "On the other hand, it can benefit a community to have a couple of media choices in town to avoid complacent reporting and over-charged advertisers."

Richard Ireland, the mayor of Jasper, said the closing means three full-time and two part-time jobs lost.

"In any community when people lose jobs that's significant and it's sad. But at a community level it's also sad to see the loss of a business that has been here for almost50 years."

Theshutdown leaves Jasper with just one weekly paper, the Fitzhugh, which bills itself as Jasper's independent, locally owned newspaper.

Sun Media announced in December that is was cutting 600 jobs in Quebec, Ontario and Western Canada.