Glacier buys Whistler newsmagazine Pique

Pique, the free weekly newsmagazine in Whistler, BC has been bought by Glacier Media Group from Bob Barnett, who owned Pique Publishing. Barnett and his late wife Kathy started the publication in 1994. Glacier owns the major competitor called the Whistler Question, which is part of the sprawling network of more than 100 community papers it owns across Canada. It's not known if the two papers will be merged.

"The media world is not getting any easier for independents," Barnett told Business in Vancouver (a Glacier publication). "I'm still interested in the job, but it's not what it used to be. Glacier has resources that they can bring to the table while everyone works to figure out how to survive in today's media market. 

"It took some time to get my head around the sale. There is a lot of pride in building this from scratch. I took pride in being independent. But it was time."