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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Looking back, and ahead, at the quarter century mark

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Twenty-five years ago this month, as I watched a piece of newspaper slowly kindle a fire under a brush pile, something caught my eye that changed my life forever.

It was a picture of a fellow named Bill Arthur, accompanied by a short story about a community development effort he was helping to lead up in Orr.

I had met Bill previously and always found him intriguing, so I naturally pulled the paper out of the fire and knocked the flame off in the snow. As I read the story, about a grassroots effort to bring a struggling community back to life, I realized it had the makings of a freelance article for a McKnight Foundation publication that had previously published a couple stories of mine.

Two weeks later, I went to see Bill and we talked about all the things that were then happening in Orr. Among them was the launch of a new weekly newspaper, called the Orr Timberjay, which had published its first edition on Dec. 4, 1989. We went to the paper’s tiny new office and he quickly sold me on the adventure of it all.

Before I headed home that day, I had all but agreed to start a Tower-Soudan edition of the paper, though I had yet to inform my wife Jodi. After all, Bill said it wouldn’t take more than ten hours a week, and my naturalist job at what was then called Mounds View North (and is now known as the Laurentian Environmental Center) was part-time. With Jodi helping out, how much work could it be? If we had only known.

There was a strategy, as usual, behind Bill’s efforts to shanghai us to help out the newspaper. Bill understood that a town as small as Orr could never support a real weekly newspaper on its own. By combining forces to create a regional newspaper, he saw a niche for the fledgling Timberjay. And Bill, who liked to start ventures, but quickly became bored by the daily operational aspects of running a business, wanted somebody, or somebodies, who could soon take the helm.

The rest, as they say, is history, and over the course of the next year, we did take the helm, and charted a course without a map, a compass, or any previous newspaper experience. When I look back at those early editions, I realize just how far we’ve come in 25 years.

Of course, we’ve had so much help along the way. Most people in Tower probably thought we were crazy when we told them we were going to start a newspaper. But many local business people knew we shopped in their stores, so they signed up for a few ads and probably figured that’s as long as we’d last. Some have been advertising in the paper ever since, barely missing a week in a quarter century.

It’s been that way across northern St. Louis County, where businesses from Orr to Ely to Virginia have helped make the Timberjay a successful business as well as a widely respected newspaper.

No newspaper, naturally, can survive without readers, and our loyal readers have been our biggest asset of all. Today, the Timberjay enjoys the largest paid circulation of any newspaper north of the Mesabi Range— and by a wide margin. We’ve become the strong regional newspaper that Bill envisioned, and are, today, the overwhelming choice for news for residents of our broad region, which also encompasses Ely since the start-up of our Ely edition in 1996.

We like to say that the Timberjay is the paper that “the locals read,” and it’s true. The vast majority of our readers live right here, year-round. It’s the locals who are the best judges of which paper provides the most value in our region— and they’ve chosen the Timberjay over all others. All we can say is “Thank You!”

As we mark a quarter century, it’s amazing to think back on all that’s happened since that first edition of the Timberjay rolled off the press. We’ve seen school district consolidations, booms and busts in both the mining and logging industries, an epic storm that flattened hundreds of thousands of acres of forest, and a massive forest fire that consumed 80,000 acres in a single day. We’ve seen progress—such as Tower’s long-awaited harbor project— and setbacks, such as school closures in Cook, Orr, and Tower-Soudan. We’ve debated major controversies, from wilderness access, to logging, to mining— and those debates remain with us today.

Readers frequently comment that they’re amazed at the number and variety of stories that we generate week after week. All we can say is that we live in a very interesting place. In most weeks, we simply don’t have room for all the stories our writers and editors have produced.

That’s the other part of the story of our success. From top to bottom, we’ve been able to attract top-notch writers, editors, photographers, designers, and proof readers, who have kept our focus on producing a quality publication.

What is perhaps most amazing about the journey we’ve taken over the past 25 years is how apparently random it all was. When Jodi and I moved here back in 1984, neither of us had the slightest notion of ever running a newspaper. And had an actual Timberjay flown by, momentarily diverting my attention as I lit that brush pile a quarter century ago, Bill’s picture would have turned to ash, and Jodi and I would, almost certainly, be doing something very different today. So much can hinge on seemingly inconsequential events.

While we’re thinking about the past on this 25th anniversary, we’re also taking this time to plan for the future. When Jodi and I took the leap into this new venture, we were still in our 20s. Now, at 53, we’re forced to think down the road and how to keep the tradition of the Timberjay thriving for the next quarter century.

We’ve taken steps in that direction recently, bringing some much-needed young blood into our reporting staff. We’re also making new investments in technology. I can announce today that we are the in process of developing a new smart phone application, called Go Lake Country!, that will provide residents and visitors alike with a one-stop place to find all the news, events, things-to-do, and much, much more from across our area for any mobile device. It will launch in February and we’ll be talking a lot more about it when it’s ready to go.

In the meantime, know that we’re thankful for everything and everyone who has helped make our first 25 years as productive as they’ve been. We’ll be working hard over the years ahead, to ensure that the Timberjay continues to serve its readers and advertisers well. From the beginning, that’s been the key to our success. Here’s to the next 25 years!