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QUEBEC — The association representing the province’s English community newspapers is warning that their members face extinction unless the government takes swift action to help their business models.

And the head of province’s journalist’s federation said Quebec’s English-speaking media not only face the same challenges to survive as the francophone media, there is added peril posed by declining anglophone demographics.

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In an intense day of presentations to a legislature committee studying the future of Quebec’s media, the two-pronged predicament facing Quebec’s English media organizations was front and centre.

Sylvie Goneau, director-general of the Quebec Community Newspaper Association, which has 30 members, opened her remarks with some blunt news. Since 1980, a total of 16 English community newspapers — many of them decades old — have closed in Quebec.

The latest was the Stanstead Journal, Quebec’s oldest weekly newspaper founded in 1845, which ceased publication in May. It is trying to publish a monthly edition now.