Welcome to your community newspaper

The La Conner Weekly News is being delivered to every home in the La Conner school district for its annual subscription drive. Dear subscribers, the newspaper you need and trust is being shared this month with your neighbors and friends. The Weekly News will be improved as more people read it, serving its function of informing and knitting the community together.

That has been the functions of newspapers in La Conner since the Puget Sound Mail started publishing here in 1879. The Weekly News is not a direct descendant of that paper but it maintains the legacy of this town having the oldest continuously weekly published newspaper in the state of Washington. That is as much a tribute to area residents as it is to the long line of publishers over the past 142 years.

The world we live in is substantially different from 1879 or 1921. In 1879 Skagit County did not exist, this region being southern Whatcom County until 1883. In 1921 the Roaring 20s had just begun. But through it all good times and bad, drought years and flood years, times of plenty and times of want, residents of greater La Conner have been able to open their local newspaper weekly to keep abreast of news, art, culture, entertainment, farm harvests, sports, schools, government, kids, cats in trees, 100th birthdays and 75th wedding anniversaries – all that and much more.

To those of you surprised to have the La Conner Weekly News delivered, please read. Take the wrap-around page with you into town and visit the merchants wanting you to stop in and look for holiday gifts. Every week, every day is a good time to be shopping locally.

Subscribers – readers – are the reason for the Weekly News. The paper is on the verge of surpassing 900 subscribers. With your decision, it will enter the new year with over 1,000. As a way of saying thanks, and encouraging you to sign up, your subscription will be FREE if you are the 950th, the 1,000th or the 1,050th subscriber. And everyone subscribing or renewing their subscription in December will be entered in a drawing for a $50 gift card to the display advertiser of your choice. Three households will be winners.

This is a fun way to say thank you: Thank you for caring about your local community. Reading – and supporting – the newspaper is one of the many ways our neighbors pay attention to the place they call home. Many of the projects and special activities volunteers support are covered in these pages. In December readers may see their children – or their grandchildren, or their neighbors' children or grandchildren – on Santa’s lap either at the La Conner Rotary Club’s pancake breakfast or at Gilkey Square, where the community Christmas tree will be lit Dec. 4.

The Weekly News strives to put on its pages every week the news of the day, stories big and small, serious and not so serious. That is because the paper is about your community.

The Weekly News is also about democracy. Yes, that means covering the local school board, the town council and the fire district commissioners’ meetings. But democracy is about more than meetings and more than the local, county and state legislature elections that are covered. That is why the editor encourages engagement and participation and invites every one of you to write letters and guest columns. We are all the heartbeat of the community.

Your local newspaper is as old fashioned as democracy and as current as the conversations you have with your neighbor over the fence or at your kids' soccer game.

If you are new to the Weekly News, please consider subscribing and inviting the community into your home weekly.