There are some things that just tie a community together.
The public school district. The public library. Community gathering places like restaurants, bars and coffeeshops.
And the local newspaper.
About two years ago, a group of Lenawee County residents began meeting at the Adrian District Library to talk about what we saw as a dangerous lack of local news in our area. We saw the cuts that had been inflicted on our local daily by its corporate owners, and we saw the impact it was having on our community. Many ideas were discussed, but a few of us found ourselves drawn to the idea of starting a brand-new, locally owned print newspaper.
In November 2023, the first issue of the Lenawee Voice was published. In it, we laid out four core goals:
- Promoting civic engagement and volunteerism.
- Increasing citizen involvement in government.
- Strengthening local businesses and institutions.
- Helping people feel more connected to their community.
Our philosophy from the beginning has been that we would not try to be all things to all people, but that we would look for needs in our community and try to meet them. That’s why, after the Lenawee Voice marked its first full year of publication, we began to think about starting a new title in Morenci.
The Lenawee Voice tries to be a countywide newspaper, but our Lenawee County community is made up of many individual communities. Having grown up on my family’s farm in Palmyra Township, I have a deep appreciation for the fact that each of those communities has its own history, its own institutions, and its own unique character.
Morenci was the largest of those communities that did not currently have its own newspaper. We believe that a strong community needs a strong local newspaper, and so we saw both a need and an opportunity.
The result is what you are now holding — the first issue of the Morenci Advocate.
The Advocate will be published once a month, and filled with as much local news as we can manage. Like the Lenawee Voice, it will be free. It will be mailed automatically to every household and business in the 49256 zip code. (For those who live outside of the Morenci zip code, you can still get a copy for free by picking it up at distribution spots like the Stair District Library or Mike’s Pharmacy, or if you would like the convenience of having it mailed to you once a month, we will offer out-of-area mail delivery for $35 per year.)
We will not pretend that we can fill the shoes of the State Line Observer, which for years had a well-deserved reputation as one of the best community weeklies in the state. But we believe we can make a difference.
We will be a source for reliable community information. We will be a booster for Morenci’s community institutions like the schools, the library, and local businesses.
How can you help? Well, first of all, you can send us your news. We are a pretty small operation — we don’t have an office, a physical newsroom, or even a single full-time employee. We are a grassroots group of citizens working on this project in our spare time. So if there is anything you want to make sure we don’t miss, please email Erik Gable, content director for both of our newspapers, at [email protected].
If you are a business owner, we hope you will consider advertising with us. Our rates are reasonable, and with automatic distribution to every household in the Morenci zip code, we offer a great platform to reach an engaged audience of local consumers. To learn more about advertising, you can email me at [email protected].
And finally, please support the advertisers who make this newspaper possible! There are 17 different businesses and organizations represented among the advertisers in this first edition. We hope you will do business with them … and tell them that you saw their ad in the Morenci Advocate.
Thank you for reading!
