By Bruce Karnick

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May 13th, 2020 was the first edition of The Hastings Journal, May 14th we had our first subscriber. John McLoone, editor of the Prescott Journal for over a decade before expanding to cover the County of Pierce a year ago, knew that Hastings would have a void to fill when the former paper up and left. He continued to expand with limited staff to bring local news back to Hastings. During the rest of the summer, he supported local sports with coverage in the newspaper. In August, he hired a local, life-time Hastings resident to write, take pictures and sell advertising. Again, he added a Hastings resident to write in October when he expanded to cover Cottage Grove.

Hastings has responded in kind by subscribing to and picking up The Hastings Journal. In fact, nearly 2,500 copies of The Hastings Journal are printed weekly. For that, we whole heartedly say “THANK YOU!” But support local means more to us, just as it should you. One of the ways we felt we could support local and give back to the community that has supported us the last eight months was to donate to Hastings Family Service. In December, we announced that any subscription for the month of December would be donated to HFS and we are happy to say, you helped us raise $1,180! $1,180 dollars that will go back to Hastings residents in need. For those of you that follow us on social media, you know that I personally made a deal with you all. I said if we were to get 100 newssubscribers, I would arrange a time to get out and run Raider Makers on Todd Field. Sadly, we did not hit that benchmark, but thanks to a conversation with HCTV’s Mike Bremer, we are still going to make that happen. Look for a collaborative effort on that some time this summer on Facebook for both HCTV and The Hastings Journal!

John McLoone, Editor of The Journal, presented Associate Director Amy Sutton and Executive Director Chris Koop of Hastings Family Service with the December Subscription Drive donations, totalling $1,180. Photo by Bruce Karnick