Expanding the reach of your community newspaper

Someone called the office Friday asking if anyone was reporting on a Mastiff dog running loose. No, we weren’t aware. Did the caller want to place a classified?

That’s typical at your local newspaper. Covering big dogs running loose, offering classifieds for lost and found and being considered a resource in the community.

In all kinds of ways the newspaper is a community resource. Does the La Conner Yacht Club or the La Conner Firefighters Association make a donation or give a scholarship? They call ahead and there’s a photo in the Weekly News.

Funding for the ring dike around town needs explaining? The Weekly News writes it up. Those funny named Freeholders running for office? The paper organizes a forum.

Whether it is farm or family, students or Shelter Bay, the paper brings you the news of your community weekly.

The paper is a champion for a new library. It stepped up as an Art’s Alive sponsor. And it advocates for birds, bird showcases and farmers, believing that all can not only get along, but can prosper together if the humans work at it.

The Weekly News is very much a local business. Most of its expenses are spent in the community. Utility and software bills are the primary funds spent out of the region.

The paper’s success benefits the community. Staff got a 20 percent pay raise in November. They are almost making a living wage. As the paper grows so will their wages. Local workers, they spend their money locally. The Weekly News reports on the local economy and shares where it stands on wages and taxes.

This local newspaper is as much an institution as the local government, school district, library and fire departments it covers. It is as critical to the character and health of the community as any of those institutions.

And it plays a particular role, the only economic sector singled out in the Constitution, its freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment

Now, for the next three weeks, the Weekly News is conducting a subscription drive, going into 3,600 area homes. It is offering quite a deal: subscriptions at the 2010 rate of $35.

In January, subscriptions will be $45 and a single issue one dollar. The paper is responding to the increase in printing and other costs, the reality of running a business in 2019.

La Conner has had a weekly newspaper continuously published here since 1873, longer than any town in Washington. That’s a record of which to be proud. It is based on your interests and your need for news, your wanting to be informed and your paying attention to life around you.

That record for longevity is your record. Your caring about your community is why the Weekly News exists.

If you are reading this for the first time, or again on an occasional basis, because it came to your home, I hope you will subscribe.

Valued subscribers, I hope you want to renew and, this holiday season, give the gift of a subscription, a love letter from the town you love to your families and friends who care so much about La Conner.