Support from community has been a great step in reaching print
What an emotional week at The Munising Beacon. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since we put our first stories to page, providing a product as close to a real newspaper as possible in Alger County since the Munising News closed in April 2021.
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a lot of time to celebrate. Our subscription drive, the necessary process to get enough guaranteed customers to justify going to print, has basically been another full-time job. Poster designs, radio appearances, job fairs, social media campaigns and networking are all on top of making sure that we are still covering the big stories in our community.
Thankfully, a number of supporters have found creative ways to help spread the word to help us out during that time. Churches, non-profit groups, local businesses, libraries, Veterans Affairs, Commission on Aging and more sent out email blasts and made announcements at events to reach new audiences. Multiple retail locations have asked how to bring The Munising Beacon to their newsstands once we get to print. Sometimes it’s just a “thank you” or a “keep going” from people on the street that know how much their family members are going to love that feel of a newspaper in their hand again.
Local radio and television have helped promote the drive as well, with a couple stations stopping by today’s one-year anniversary and subscription drive event at Gallery Coffee. The Munising Advisor, another new publication in the area, also has shared our current campaign. The Advisor is an advert, so it cannot provide news and editorial content like The Beacon can, but it still serves a purpose in the community with a different business model and style. Owners Dustin and Jill Denkins ran an ad for our subscription drive in this week’s edition and helped clarify the difference between the two publications to help overcome brand confusion. It was a classy gesture and promotes a stronger understanding of different media formats in Alger County.
Personally, I also want to thank my friends, family and my girlfriend Ali for being there through this process. The last two months have been beyond overwhelming and they have shown support and patience that I didn’t deserve. For a person who works with words for a living, I am historically terrible at clearly expressing my feelings, so I hope this acknowledgement is understandable. Thank you.
That said, we still need to continue. The news doesn’t stop just because there are other tasks at hand. This push for stability through subscribers will not stop either. If you haven’t made the commitment to a subscription yet, please do so today. And please, thank the people, organizations and businesses supporting our subscription drive. They’re good neighbors for doing their part in bringing back a print newspaper to Munising and Alger County once again.
