On The Right Track
Things have been pretty quiet with Copper Beacon lately, so I thought our faithful readers deserved an update about what’s happening behind the scenes.
First, the bad news.
We haven’t been publishing as much lately, but as the title implies, that’s just a temporary holiday/winter lull. The freelancers we work with have been variably busy with family, other freelance work, and school. As a strictly local organization with a relatively small pool of freelancers, it’s not hard for us to hit the bottom of our call list when people get busy. That should change before too long, but I can’t make any promises, because I won’t be directly involved much longer.
Due to personal circumstances, I wound up moving back in with family downstate, and have been running Copper Beacon remotely with the hope I’d move back before the end of the year, but that doesn’t seem feasible anymore. As such, I’m planning to step down as editor within a month or so.
It doesn’t mean the end of my involvement with Copper Beacon, but I can’t be a good news editor for a community that I’m not even part of. Every community deserves better than that, but especially somewhere as special as the Keweenaw. So, I’m taking a big step back.
Now the good news.
This was inevitable. It’s happening sooner than I think any of us would have liked, but eventually, Copper Beacon was always going to stop being “my baby,” and start standing on its own two feet. It’s almost three years old now, time to walk!
The structure of the organization is all in place. All that’s left is to do the work. From the beginning, we’ve done good work. Has that work filled the hole where quality, local journalism should be? Not yet, but that hole doesn’t look as empty as it did when Copper Beacon first launched, either. That’s thanks to us, you and me. We couldn’t have gotten this far without your support. More people are starting to understand just how big that hole is, and Copper Beacon is gaining subscribers. We’re on the right track, it’s just a matter of time before Copper Beacon is the local institution it was built to be.
I’m working on putting together a small team to step in and handle the day-to-day work of managing Copper Beacon, and I’m committed to being available as an advisor for them as they take the reigns. They won’t have it easy, but with your help, Copper Beacon will keep gaining steam.
With time, I have confidence that Copper Beacon will be everything it is meant to be.