There was a ceremonial handing over of a goat when Spencer Hall, left, bought the Rocky Mountain Goat newspaper from Laura Keil, who founded the paper in 2010. The goat, Buddy, was loaned for the occasion by Amanda Cameron. (photo by Sharon Ireland)
Small towns can get a bad rap. Valemount – a community of just over 1,000 people, tucked into the mountains about 300 kilometres northeast of Kamloops – has proved a pleasant surprise to Spencer Hall.
Hall, a 26-year-old Jewish trans man, has not only found fellow Jews in the tiny town but also nothing except positive responses to his trans identity. And it’s not like Hall is keeping a low profile – he just bought the community newspaper.
The Rocky Mountain Goat was founded in 2010 by Laura Keil, who sold it to Hall officially on Jan. 8 this year. Hall had been serving as a reporter there since the previous autumn. The market for the weekly paper is the sprawling Robson Valley region, which includes not just Valemount, but McBride, Dunster, Blue River, Dome Creek and Crescent Spur. Free copies are also distributed in Blue River and Prince George and in Jasper, Alta.
Hall grew up in Terrace, studied broadcast journalism at the BC Institute of Technology and then got a job at a radio station in Fort St. John. The job was one of those on-location gigs, where a station broadcasts live from community events.
“But it was during COVID, so I was going to people’s garage sales,” Hall said with a laugh. “The softest possible start to journalism, I guess.”
He moved up the ranks there before being hired as a reporter in Valemount.
The Goat – the quirky name was one of the draws that attracted Hall – is an independent newspaper and the fate of print journalism in the internet age was a consideration before Hall bought the business. However, on a webinar with local journalism professionals, Hall found he is not the only one to have entered the publishing field recently.
His paper, and many others, are getting support from the LJI – Local Journalism Initiative – a federal program that funds salaries for newspapers to hire reporters. The stories they produce are then shared across a network of participating outlets, sort of like Canadian Press or other newswires, Hall said.
“It allows people to bolster their coverage without having to take the financial burdens on,” he said. If a story published in the Goat is relevant to a paper elsewhere in the province or the country, they can run it.
Among locals, the reaction to Hall’s purchase of the paper has been one of relief.
“It was for sale for a couple of years,” he said. People were afraid that it might get snapped up by a corporate conglomerate or, worse, shut down. “Most people that I’ve talked to, they say, thank goodness.”
Some people have even said they moved to the community because it has its own independent paper, which is both an expression of support and a heavy burden to carry as head of a small team of editorial, sales and production staff.
Another happy surprise is that stereotypes about young people abandoning print media (if not news itself) have proven incorrect, based on Hall’s experience.
“It’s also interesting to see how many young people come into the office and say I love reading the paper every week,” he said. “I say, really? You’re 15.”
Hall thinks the accepted wisdom that “print is dead” is itself an antiquated assumption.
“There is an appetite, especially in our market, for people who don’t really want to participate in the 24-hour news cycle of social media and that’s why they find value in the paper,” said Hall.
For all his optimism, Hall is not expecting to get rich.
“I knew I wasn’t going to make money,” he said. “I’m hoping I can make a living. But I view what I do as a public service. It’s something that’s very much needed, especially in today’s climate, and that’s kind of the main reason I did it. I hope that I break even but, if I don’t, it is what it is, I tried.”
As an individual fitting into a new community, Hall has been warmly welcomed. A tiny group of Jews get together to celebrate holidays and his transgender identity was right out there when he did a routine addressing it during a fundraising event.
“We were trying to get a mountain bike pump track installed and I did some stand-up comedy and mine was about being trans and [the response] was overwhelmingly positive,” he said. “Everyone’s been super, super supportive.”
Valemount has a rainbow crosswalk, he noted with a laugh, and a Pride society – not what some big city-dwellers might expect from a remote town.
“I think how we view small towns, especially ones the size of Valemount, isn’t necessarily how they are,” he said. “I think there is the expectation that, because it’s a small town, there’s going to be a lot of ignorance, but people are pretty well informed and with the times here.”
The region is a draw for outdoorsy folks.
“It is surrounded by mountains and on the way to Mount Robson, so we do get quite a few tourists,” Hall said. “It’s actually a resort municipality. There’s a lot of mountain biking and getting into the backcountry … snowmobiling or mountain-biking. Also, we are very blessed to be right in the mountains, so anytime anybody wants to see the mountains, Valemount is the place.”
To check out the newspaper, visit therockymountaingoat.com.