With today’s edition, The Munising Beacon enters its second year of consistent publication in Munising and Alger County.
The first edition was released on Friday, May 13, 2022 with the headline story focusing on the missing time capsule from the Mather Centennial ceremony, the Livermores purchasing the Au Train grocery store and local fundraising efforts at an East Channel trivia night. Since then, The Beacon has covered a number of topics centering on Munising and Alger County.
“It’s an unreal milestone and it was only reached because of the support of the community,” said Beacon Editor Brice Burge. “When changes happened elsewhere, we found a way to get local news and information to the people in any way possible. Now it continues to blossom.”
Starting out as with audio news updates on Facebook, Burge joined Newberry News owners Steve and Carol Stiffler in creating The Munising Beacon brand. The small, independently-owned newspaper provided the infrastructure for page layout, editing and advertising to get the publication off the ground.
For the Stifflers, it was all about being neighborly with another U.P. community.
“Everything just lined up and the pieces of the puzzle were all there and we just started putting them together,” he said. “There was the need. We did our best to try to fill the void. I know there were a lot of long nights and probably still are. There’s a lot of thanks and gratitude to pass around.”
While starting the Beacon, The Newberry News was well on its way to being named the 2022 Michigan Press Association Newspaper of the Year. In the interest of staying close to the Newberry and Luce County community, the staff of five individuals looked to transfer the Munising paper to a group that could advance the publication further.
CherryRoad Media, a newspaper group with four publications in Michigan and others across the U.S., acquired The Munising Beacon last September. It is the New Jersey-based company’s first foray into the Upper Peninsula, using its technological strengths to support small-town publications.
“This is one of our ways to give back to our community by acquiring media houses that add so much value to our daily lives, but are suffering the brunt of digital age by losing subscriptions,” CherryRoad CEO Jeremy Gulban said. “CherryRoad has a successful track record of enabling technologies that play an important role in the ‘digital fabric’ of the community and we will use this acumen to enhance the online experience of these media assets.”
The Munising Beacon has not stopped at just existing, but has actively covered and investigated issues impacting the Alger County community and nearby areas attached to local school districts and court systems. One of these areas were local sports, where many of the stories from downstate publications about the Munising boys basketball state championship were first covered by the Beacon. The Beacon is also the first Alger County-based publication to be a voting member for the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association.
In the next year, Burge says continuing the current subscription drive to get into print is the next big goal so things can fall into place during the summer tourism season before the next school year. His personal goals include further coverage of outdoors and local tribal groups, identifying local economic news and continuing to celebrate the area’s First Amendment rights through letters to the editor and guest editorials,
what the people want to read about.
“Including community feedback and support was the only way that this publication was going to survive. Our communities are special and unique, so focusing on what awesome opportunities and stories of resiliency has put together quite the product,” Burge said. “Keeping that in mind will keep the Beacon a local product and a successful product.”
