Publisher’s Letter: It’s Our Birthday!

This past week North Forty News turned 29. We respect the foresight of our founders and the previous owners (Barbara Baker,JoAn Bjarko, and Doug Conarroe) who saw the need for truly local news, a need that wasn’t being adequately addressed by the big, distantly-owned dailies in our coverage area.

But almost 30 years ago the United States had not yet lost close to 2,000 local newspapers. The challenge to report on the news that is most important to you — local news that covers where you live and work, has never been greater.

This past year the pandemic brought serious challenges to our newspaper as so many businesses were closed down that initially, we lost their ad revenue. But a curious thing happened in all this lockdown and “safer at home” time — our readership went way up! On our website, visitors are double what they were just last year.

And especially in rural areas, our pick-up rate is 100%. Our subscriber base increased. As business picked up overall, our advertisers returned and new businesses joined our family of advertisers.

But looking forward, we want to do more. We need the revenue to hire additional staff that can further cover the issues you’d like to see covered where you live.

How you can help:

If you’ve been reading us for free, please consider either subscribing or making a donation.

If you see something in your locale that you believe is newsworthy, let us know at: [email protected]

And if you run a business, consider becoming one of our supporting advertisers. Costs begin at $19 a week for a Classified, recently expanded in size — and repeat insertions result in even lower costs.

We are here to serve you, your community, and communities throughout Northern Colorado but we want to do more.

We welcome your support and we welcome your suggestions.

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LOCAL NEWS — CRITICAL AT A TIME LIKE THIS!

Help us report on the new local reality!

Support our work on your behalf:

Make a donation to support coverage in our communities at:

https://northfortynews.com/donate

For our current subscribers, driveway delivery of North Forty News is now available within a reasonable distance to state highways and urban areas.

Current subscribers register at:

https://northfortynews.com/driveway-delivery/

New and returning subscribers register at: 

https://northfortynews.com/subscribe

Or contact us at [email protected] to learn more about advertising with us including how your ad in our print edition will also show up in the online digital replica of our current edition along with on our website.