From the publisher

At least once a week and sometimes more often than that I receive an email or a call from a reader telling me they need to update their credit card because it was stolen or hacked.

We don’t cover news outside of Portage County. That’s a business decision as much as an ideological commitment to focusing on the local.

Today I’m excited to introduce our first milestone with the launch of our improved website along with Portage County’s first locally owned online discussion board, the Portager Forum. You now have a friendly and free place to comment on the news, share your events, give feedback to our team and debate local topics. 

There’s a scene in Civil War that scared me more than all the horrors of modern weapons and merciless war crimes. If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t worry, what I’m about to say doesn’t spoil anything. 

After our experience in December with weekly newspaper delivery, we’ve realized this schedule isn’t feasible for The Portager. Starting this month, we’ll be sending The Portager out every other week instead. 

We’ve made significant progress toward the launch of weekly print home delivery. Below you’ll find information about our progress, next steps and what to do if you already paid for a print subscription and wondering where your papers are.

It’s been a while since I’ve shared an in-depth look at The Portager’s progress and future plans. And with so much in the works, I want to bring you up to speed.

Unlike most news organizations, our mission statement doesn’t explicitly mention reporting the news. Sure, journalism is what we do. But I see it as a means to an end.

There were so many big stories in Portage County in 2022. There have been fires and tragedies of all sorts. The kinds that can hit the soul of a community and bring people together. And lots of moving acts of solidarity and courageous leadership.

I need to confess some deep and belated gratitude to the small businesses, nonprofits, political candidates, churches, agencies and individuals who have helped make The Portager what it is.

On Friday, I announced we are considering starting newsletters in nearby cities and asked for your input on which ones. A portion of our readers live just outside of Portage County, and we received useful feedback from them. 

If you want to know whether The Portager and the people who read it are having an impact in Portage County, just ask any elected official or nonprofit organization. You are making your influence felt through your emails, calls and, crucially, through your donations to the areas that need support the most.

We’re now seeking a general assignment reporter to help us deliver high-impact stories about the people and institutions who shape the character of our community. We’re not looking for someone who can do it all — the county is much too big for that. Instead, we need an experienced reporter who can identify subjects our readers will care about, find answers and deliver solutions-oriented articles that have the potential to make Portage County a better place to live.

On Friday, I asked Portager readers if they have a paid subscription or not. If the answer was no, I asked people if they would like to share the reason.

To power our ability to provide more high-quality journalism to every corner of our community, we are seeking a director of growth and sales to professionalize our business development operation and establish The Portager as an unshakable public service institution in Portage County.

The first time I heard about Covid-19, I put it in my mental file for Asian viruses that did not affect my life. SARS, swine flu, MERS and so on. The outbreaks came and went. Even ebola stayed put. I had such an impoverished understanding of contagion. Didn’t we all?

One of the nice things about local news is that it helps us to remember how far we’ve come. Without a chronicle of the time and place we inhabit together, it would be easy to think we collectively accomplished very little this year. 

When people talk about “being thankful,” they’re always talking about something you should do individually. Send thank-you cards. Make a list of things you’re grateful for. Each Thanksgiving, studies reappear to remind us thankfulness has health benefits.