Editors’ Column
Submit your photos, art and illustrations to be considered for our cover photos to editor@valleysentinelnews.com.
Much like the Helena Lake sign between Arena and Spring Green, we were under water — honestly, still are.
We’ve been largely quiet for some months. Out of health, out of care, out of necessity. No excuse we could offer would cover the poor communication on our part — so we won’t try to make one. We’re sorry.
However, we can offer some context. Things have been incredibly busy. On the heels of speaking on a panel at the Wisconsin Newspaper Association Convention last spring, we attended an Association of Alternative Newsmedia Publishers (“AAN” – of which we are members) conference in Madison late last summer. At that time, it became clear that as the smallest publication and smallest market in both AAN and the WNA, we needed to re-tool things under the hood and build out — all while spread incredibly thin as it was.
Our newspaper is independently owned by its editors and without corporate or other sponsors. We’re all volunteer, including our editors, and we all work other jobs. So, we decided we couldn’t keep doing what we were doing, the way we were doing it (postal rates alone increased more than 60% and printing rates increased over 32% over the five years we published) — which broke our hearts, especially after the consolidation of the Home News. Please know that it felt like we were failing our community at the same time we felt a very real expectation to step up.
One of our editors is continuing to navigate health issues that require time, rest and rebuilding — the kind of healing that stress, overwork and running on fumes objectively set back. We were doing all of those things. We’ve stopped pretending we weren’t. Even so, we were excited about the build-out. We’d planned to keep the community calendar running through a temporary pause in print, while we re-tooled. At the same time, a member of our team who was planning on taking on the calendar was navigating a serious personal crisis — the kind that, when it lands on someone you work alongside, has to come first. We helped where help was needed. With a team this small, that meant pausing other things.
We’re actively looking for ways to give readers a bigger hand in shaping their news. As we’ve said before, being this small, we are truly what the community makes us.
Our website will slowly start to be updated with stories as we ramp back up this spring.
We want to note that we are keeping track of our subscribers during this time and while we haven’t decided exactly how we will do so, any subscriptions during this time will be credited toward the future. We may not be printing, but there are still bills to pay, a press debt to cover and more, and the community support we’ve gotten in this time of our temporary pause has been amazing.
The next print edition is not scheduled at this time, in order to tackle build-out and admin. We’ll publish stories online as they’re ready, and we’re aiming for an email newsletter every other week.
If something’s wrong with your subscription, email us first — editor@valleysentinelnews.com. We can almost always sort it out faster than a chargeback can, and refunds are available to anyone who asks.
We can’t make any promises. But we will try to publish email newsletter editions every other week. We will try to conduct the Best of the River Valley reader poll from late May through June. We will try to launch our newly re-tooled comprehensive community calendar. We will try to be back in print when able. We will try.
If anyone has a boat, let us know.
