Black Press was founded in 1975 when David Black purchased the Williams Lake Tribune. In 1997, Black Press purchased 16 newspapers in the Lower Mainland, including the Maple Ridge News, which had been founded by Gordy Robson in the late 1980s. Its lower mainland portfolio eventually included the Burnaby New West News and the Sunday News, which became the Tri-City News when it began to be published twice a week. The Tri-City News was sold to Glacier Media Group in 2015.

Glacier Media Group was founded on March 23, 1988. It provides business intelligence, marketing and advertising, and community media services. The company owns a large number (60 as of 2020) of community newspapers in British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.

Trinity was a UK newspaper company founded in 1832. It merged with the Mirror to become Trinity Mirror PLC in 1999. In 2015, the company purchased Local World and became the United Kingdom's largest newspaper company. Trinity Mirror purchased the publishing assets of Northern & Shell in 2018 and changed its name to Reach plc.

Over the decades, the company owned many large regional and national newspapers in the United Kingdom and eventually expanded into the North American market. Trinity ran a collection of Canadian community newspapers under its North American subsidiary, Trinity (NA) Holdings, until 1997 when it sold 33 Canadian newspapers to Black Press.

Gordy Robson served as the Mayor of Maple Ridge between 2005 and 2008 and has served as a Councillor for Maple Ridge since 2014.

Gordy and his wife Mary Robson founded the "Maple Ridge News" in late 1984. When the Columbian Newspaper folded in 1985, staff started the Now group of newspapers and Robson decided to expand the News offerings into the Tri-Cities with "The Sunday News" to compete with the Now. About a year later, he started a Tri-City specific edition issued on Wednesdays, which later became the Tri-City News and was expanded to two editions per week. The newspapers were printed by Hacker Press in Abbotsford.

Around 1988, UK company Trinity purchased the Maple Ridge News and the Tri-City News. The collection of "News" papers became known as the News Group, which was eventually purchased by Black Press in 1997.