Staying on top of the happening of any community can be difficult, much more so for local events and small businesses. Often the best places to find these events is from other grassroots sources be they local publications and news outlets. Hastings, unlike so many communities in the 21st century, is lucky to call not one, but three such local news organizations their own: HCTV, KDWA, and this very paper the Hastings Journal.
An oft overlooked source for local happenings comes not from news organizations but from the community itself via local newsletters. While the City of Hastings, Dakota County, and many other municipalities nearby have weekly, monthly or seasonal letters, residents working to get out the word about local events can be a huge driver of community focus. A new newsletter has joined that ecosystem: the Hastings Scoop newsletter.
The Hastings Scoop is a weekly newsletter started in October 2024 written by Hastings resident Brady Greenbush. The newsletter showcases the happenings of the Hastings community ranging from live music to local events to local sports. According to Greenbush, the Hastings Scoop was inspired from a newsletter he stumbled across in Annapolis called “Naptown Scoop,” which aggregated local events.
“I don’t know how I stumbled across it,” said Greenbush.
For Greenbush, the utility of such a newsletter is simply that these events are all in one place. While events exist across websites and on social media, finding them all can be a tall task. Greenbush cites his parents as inspiration for the newsletter: “They didn’t really have a place to find things in one place.”
Greenbush also runs another similar newsletter for Lakeville called the “Lakeville Loop.”
To produce the weekly newsletter detailing the happenings across the Hastings community, he trawls through community pages on Facebook, the websites of local businesses and various government pages for updates on city council meetings and other governmental functions. With a background in digital marketing, Greenbush is working to expand the newsletter’s presence on social media and establish a full-fledged website later this year. Pushing beyond digital marketing, Greenbush has ambitions for physical merchandise moving forward as well.
To sign up for the Hastings Scoop, visit www.hastingsscoop.com/